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We all know steam is a fad that will quickly die. I don’t want to save money I want to pay full price for every game or pay a third party for a second hand copy where the developer gets no benefit.

about 5 hours ago on Microsoft clearly misread gaming market with Xbox One 1 recommend

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Would be less risky but also less rewarding. Also lots of other companies have managed to deal with the proprietary formats, they may not even start from scratch and instead use an existing third party library to get them on their way.

about 6 hours ago on Paper maker FiftyThree raises $15 million to build the Office suite of the future 1 recommend

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The issue I still have with tellme is still the hold start button to use it. It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever to me, if they really felt the need for a specific hold button why isn’t it search as that is usually what you are doing with it.

Ideally though why do you need a separate button why doesn’t the search button (single press) open a better UI that can offer text entry and voice automatically. They would need to work out when you are actually speaking to it but that wouldn’t be that hard, the voice command could be sent off to the server anyway and unless it gets text entry within a few milliseconds that is what it will use.

about 12 hours ago on Why Tellme could potentially be the future Google Now killer

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I would think it will either be in Human Interface Devices or Mice and other pointing devices on the tree. Should be pretty obvious.

about 12 hours ago on Disable Surface RT Touchscreen 1 reply

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Just guessing but go into the desktop control panel → system → device manager. On the devices tree there should be an input device called touch screen or similar, hopefully you can right click it go to properties and disable it on one of the tabs there.

about 14 hours ago on Disable Surface RT Touchscreen 1 reply

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Agree with scaling down being better just because of the apps design. A desktop and tablet app can have appearances much more similar to each other than a tablet and phone can.

I still feel Microsoft need to complete the circle for developers though bringing WinRT variants to WP8 and Xbox.

1 day ago on Why Windows will likely surpass Android in the tablet market. 1 reply

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They said it has a 33% reduction in compute power compared to the PS4 which it does, just depends which way you approach the numbers.

1.84 * 0.66 (2/3rds compute power left) = 1.23 approx

3 days ago on What is a next-gen game? 1 reply

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Really seeing the AMOLED screen I prefer the LCD in the 920. I think the AMOLED is over saturated the only advantage being some power savings.

3 days ago on Worth it to go from the Lumia 920 to the Lumia 925?

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The biggest difference is actually the screen its AMOLED not LED not sure if it has the pureview HD stuff the 920 has but it doesn’t look as good.

3 days ago on Worth it to go from the Lumia 920 to the Lumia 925?

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It has although dropped out of favour recently. I think most people are hoping for a WinRT variant so you can develop an app for Windows 8/WindowsRT and with minor modifications (support controller, kinect…) make it available for Xbox. Microsoft may want stricter testing and curation on top to assure less crap gets in the xbox store.

4 days ago on The Xbox One needs a hat trick. It Needs to be at Build.

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I think the console prices are a bit like a game of poker, each company is trying to read the other. Microsoft probably thought Sony couldn’t afford to subsidize it so went with a higher cost thinking Sony would match. Sony either thought Microsoft would undercut them or just wanted to beat them on price.

So Sony came out on top in the end in fact Microsoft and Sony essentially switched positions. But I don’t think Sony can reduce cost anytime soon with the memory they are using Microsoft may well cut prices quickly.

7 days ago on Does price difference on Xbox One matter year 1?

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Its definitely doable just a bit of a faff having 3 cables plugged into it, power, displayport and usb. Just hoping to reduce that to two with thunderbolt hub or maybe just power with intel widi/miracast but I think the latency is too much for it to work interactively at present.

8 days ago on Surface Pro replaced the iPad... and my DV7... now my desktop?!?!

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I plan to try and achieve similar in the future, waiting for a haswell one.

The main issue you will face I think is scaling, the surface pro is set to 125% dpi scaling. So desktop elements are scaled 25% bigger than normal to make it easier to touch (this is for desktop not metro). When you plug in your monitor everything will be a little big which you can go and change but you have to log out to do it. In Windows 8.1 (blue) it looks like that is fixed and can be a per monitor setting.

The other issue is how many cables are you happy to plug in to setup? There is no professional dock like some laptops have so it means plugging in at least displayport and power and probably usb if you use any external hard drives or have wired keyboard and mouse or maybe you want a wired network.

My hope for Surface Pro 2 is that it swaps to thunderbolt from displayport. That way we can plug everything into a thunderbolt dock and guarantee only needing to plug in two cables.

9 days ago on Surface Pro replaced the iPad... and my DV7... now my desktop?!?! 1 reply

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I would guess the first one you select to sync the start screen on will be the base.I am actually now wondering what happens if you don’t have an app installed. they can guarantee modern apps are installed and sync them but desktop apps could potentially be pinned but only installed on one of your machines.

11 days ago on Setting up Start Screen sync with multiple devices already on Windows 8--How will it work?

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Personally don’t have a problem with it and would rather get a more steam like experience with consoles in the future. Steam games quickly after release get huge discounts, that happens because the money goes to the developer still rather than a third party rental or resale company. Resales and rentals actually cost the developers in server support for most games so it is really unfair a third party is scooping off their profits.I want my money to go to supporting the developer make their next game.

For those that do have a problem with it though. Why didn’t Microsoft make it an online requirement or if you have no net connection you must have the disc in.

11 days ago on My issue with 24-hour checks with Xbox One. I'm not crazy. Trust me :) 2 replies 1 recommend

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I was assuming it has to be more than one console. I know lots of families with more than one ps3 or 360 as one of the kids has one in their room, if they can’t simply use games on either system I would think that is a huge issue.

I am wondering how they could limit that to a single home though. I can’t see a fool proof way to do it. I am thinking maybe they have to be on the same network but there would be ways around that.

12 days ago on XB1: family "shared games" is the DRM carrot... 1 reply

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I would say the fact things aren’t auto pinned to your start screen is the larger feature. You will pin exactly what you want to use regularly on there and it won’t change as stuff is installed. This matches in more with WP8’s start screen and app list.

I personally can’t see an advantage to opening the app list over the start screen which is more customizable. You can still search for an app just by typing from both too.

12 days ago on How do you like the new "show app list instead of Start screen" option? 1 reply

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Looks pretty obvious to me on the image above. You just need to darken the image a bit for the background so it looks inactive like many pseudo dialog boxes do on web pages.

13 days ago on I would've liked the Start Screen to 'overlay' the desktop 1 recommend

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It will for store apps which I assume means metro apps but not for desktop ones AFAIK. Would like to see similar for the desktop so I don’t have an adobe flash update every week and whatever other programs make themselves run on startup just for an updater.

13 days ago on What improvements do people want in the desktop?

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I would also like to see:

• Bandwidth limit file transfers (good for network transfers)
• Pin any folder to taskbar rather than into explorer jump list (there are workarounds)
• Better File History interface perhaps metro
• Windows update like system for installed apps so developers can interface with it to keep apps up to date automatically rather than adobe flash updates, google updater….

13 days ago on What improvements do people want in the desktop? 1 reply 1 recommend

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I expect password protected folders are coming as they were talking about finger print protecting folders so it could use a similar mechanism.

13 days ago on What improvements do people want in the desktop?

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The golden ratio is a good thing to work from although I like the idea of matching A sized paper too (A5, A4, A3…). It has a ratio 1 : sqrt(2) = 1 : 1.41 which is approximately 16:11

The cool thing about that ratio is that it divides into itself so in paper two A5 sheets side by side portrait match one A4 in landscape.

Either way 16:9 with a ratio of 1: 1.77 is too high for most things.

14 days ago on Non-16:9 Tablets? 1 reply

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Impressive they have managed this, I wonder how they are dissipating the heat and if OEM’s could manage the same.

14 days ago on Intel shows off FANLESS Haswell core tablet