Month: July 2014

OK, this is pretty amazing, if it works! The device is called MindRDR, and is pronounced “Mind-Reader.” It doesn’t actually read your mind, as much as sense your focused thoughts to “tell” the device to send a “take a photo” command to Google Glass. Still… pretty cool!

Microsoft got a bump in sale when they began the “Windows XP Support Ends Soon-Scare,” so, now they are treatening Windows 7 support. Class act, guys!

In Six Months, Microsoft Will Pull The Plug On Some Parts Of Windows 7 Support

Business Insider – Julie Bort – “Microsoft is warning customers that the end is soon coming for free Windows 7 support. Microsoft will end free mainstream support for Windows 7 on January 13, 2015.
This covers all versions of Windows 7, Mary Jo Foley points out.

The end of support generally means no more updated features or performance improvements, unless you are covered by extra “extended support.”

UPDATED: Microsoft has promised to provide security patches even after it ends mainstream support, through 2020. What is ending is design changes, warranty claims and no-charge incident support.

This move will mostly affect consumers. Businesses get extended support and will get all updates for another five years, until January 14, 2020.

That’s important, because many businesses are right now are in the process of upgrading their old Windows XP PCs, but they’re moving to Windows 7, not Windows 8.

There’s some speculation that, given the popularity of Windows 7, Microsoft might change its mind as the date nears and continue to support it a bit longer, like it did for Windows XP. All told, Microsoft supported XP for about 13 years.

That kind of extension doesn’t seem likely at this point. Remember, Windows 8 basically includes a full version of Windows 7, called Desktop mode. With Windows 8.1, it’s possible to run a Windows 8 machine in Desktop mode and almost avoid the new-and-confusing Windows 8 part of the OS.

And Microsoft really needs to nudge consumers into buying Windows 8 machines. More Windows 8 machines means more developers will want to write software for Windows 8, which will make more people want to buy it.

By the way, Microsoft also set an end-of-life of mainstream support for Windows 8 (including the latest version, Windows 8.1), for January 9, 2018.

This is another hint that Microsoft should have its next version of Windows ready in 2015, code-named “Threshold” (sometimes referred to as Windows 9).

If Microsoft plays its cards right, Windows 9 will be to the unloved Windows 8 what Windows 7 was to Vista, which InfoWorld ranked No. 2 on its list of the 25 biggest tech flops (also PCWorld’s “Biggest Tech Disappointment” of 2007.)

Note: The original version of this story said that security patches will end for some Windows 7 users when mainstream support ends. This was an error. Microsoft has confirmed to us that it will continue to provide security patches for all Windows 7 users through 2020. We apologize for the error.”

Now your DropBox sync’ing will be faster than ever!

Dropbox updates desktop client with streaming sync: Up to 2x faster via overlapping uploads and downloads

The Next Web – By: Emil Protalinski – “Dropbox today announced its desktop client is getting streaming sync, a new feature that significantly reduces the time needed to synchronize large files. You can download the new version now from dropbox.com, and the company promises the improvement will be rolled out ‘over the next couple weeks.’

Until now, Dropbox would split its file synchronization into distinct upload and download phases. In other words, a file needed to be uploaded in its entirety before other clients could begin to download it.

With streaming sync, the two phases are done almost concurrently via Dropbox’s servers, hence the ‘streaming’ name. The company claims multi-client sync time for large files is typically 1.25x faster, and can even go up to 2x faster in certain cases.

Clearly the file size needs to enter the high gigabyte range to see the overall sync time reduced by half. Still, shaving off a few seconds on small files and minutes on large files is quite an accomplishment.

Dropbox says the threshold for streaming sync is 16MB. Anything above that mark will get a boost as it arrives on your connected devices or in a shared folder.

The new desktop client has also received a few other new features: four new languages (Danish, Dutch, Swedish, or Thai), scrollable menu notifications, as well as the ability to create a shared link to files and accept shared folder invites right from the Dropbox menu. What are you waiting for? Get downloading!“

Peppermint 5 is a light-weight (easy on the hardware) Linux desktop that tightly integrates your “Cloud” presence into the desktop experience. As Chromebooks become more and more popular, this version of the Linux desktop becomes VERY interesting to turn any PC into a Cloud client!

Peppermint Five is Live!

“Peppermint OS LLC is excited to announce the launch of our latest operating system Peppermint Five. Lightweight and designed for speed, Peppermint Five delivers on that promise whether using software on your desktop, online, or using cloud based apps.

Kendall Weaver, Chief Technical Officer of Peppermint, states, ‘Initially, Peppermint One was designed out of our desire for an operating system optimized for working online. Each year since then, we have improved on it, and we are very excited about new and improved features in Peppermint Five.’

Shane Remington Chief Operating Officer of Peppermint, adds, ‘With this release we are getting ready for the future. The technology landscape is constantly changing, and we are always responding to meet our user’s needs. We are 100% driven to deliver an OS that is fast, secure, and available everywhere, Peppermint Five is another step in that direction.’

Peppermint Five Highlights

• Peppermint Five is built on a Long Term Support (LTS) code base, Ubuntu 14.04. The upstream code base will receive updates for five years.
• Peppermint Ice is our in house built SSB manager, it has been rewritten from scratch and is now significantly more stable and is more feature rich than past versions. The key new feature is that it now supports both Chrome and Chromium as a backend.
• Peppermint Control Center is our new settings app which provides an intuitive interface to customize and manage your workspaces, window behavior, keyboard and pointer settings, keyboard shortcuts and more.
• We’ve fixed a number of upstream bugs present in Lubuntu, the specific project we fork from. Most notable among these are that the network manager applet starts properly.
• Peppermint-Light is our new window manager and widget theme designed to offer a clean and relatively flat look and feel.
• In previous iterations of Peppermint OS we used Alsa for sound. Our users asked for a more robust audio backend with more options and more user-friendly, Peppermint Five delivers with PulseAudio.

We invite you to compare Peppermint to other operating systems, we are confident you will be impressed. To take Peppermint Five out for a test drive, visit our website at peppermintos.com where you can download it for free. If you need help installing Peppermint Five, or have any questions about using it, we have a second-to-none user support team at forum.peppermintos.com.

About Peppermint OS LLC

Peppermint OS LLC is a software company, based in Asheville, North Carolina. Founded in 2010, we are committed to building the best operating system for both enterprise and consumers available on the widest range of devices. To find out more about our company, please visit us at https://peppermintos.com.”