Alienware Aurora

 

It's been 2.5 years since we last reviewed an Alienware desktop. Despite a complete chassis redesign, the $2,569 Alienware Aurora gaming PC feels familiar. This system trades heavily on its stylized appearance, and although it has some interesting features built into its case, we still wish Alienware would push as hard as its competitors to maximize performance. Some gamers might prioritize dramatic case visuals when considering a high-end gaming PC, and for them the Aurora will have some appeal. If instead you would rather trade case lighting for a few more frames per second, we can think of desktops from several other vendors that deliver better performance for the dollar.


Design
You may know Alienware best from its old bulbous alien-head case designs, but the new look takes a more angular approach. Alienware has also abandoned the old bug-eyed effect for a more armored appearance, but overall the new case has a similar silhouette to the original Alienware design.
Around the case you'll find a few unique design touches. Push the Alienware logo on the top of the case and the main drive-bay door slides down mechanically to reveal the Blu-ray drive and media card reader. There was no front-accessible hard-drive bay in our review unit, though, nor does Alienware offer one as an option for this system.
On the top of the case, you can push down a panel on the leading edge to reveal the USB 2.0, USB 3.0, and audio inputs. The ports all face the rear of the case, which means you can't see them from the front of the system when you want to connect something. To remove the case's side panel, you lift up a tab on top of the case on the rear-facing edge.
Case lighting has long been a differentiator for Alienware. With the AlienFX software included with all of its desktops you can customize the color and behavior of the four external lighting zones around the case. You can choose from a variety of colors for the LEDs, as well as make them blink or fade between two different colors. You can also assign the color to change when you receive a new e-mail, although that's the only available application tie-in. Along with the AlienFX software, you get Alienware-made apps for power management and thermal controls.

Features
No other vendor we're aware of offers similar control over case lighting. Between that feature and the stylized case, you'll be hard-pressed to find a more unique-looking gaming desktop than the Alienware Aurora. But if you prioritize performance for the dollar over appearance, you might wish Alienware had spent less time on this system's looks.

	Alienware Aurora	Maingear Vybe SuperStock
Price	$2,596	$2,849
Motherboard chipset	Intel P67	Intel P67
CPU	3.9GHz Intel Core i7-2600K (overclocked)	4.8GHz Intel Core i7-2600K (overclocked)
Memory	4GB 1,866MHz DDR3 SDRAM	8GB 1,600MHz DDR3 SDRAM
Graphics	(2) 2GB AMD Radeon HD 6950	(2) 2GB AMD Radeon HD 6950
Hard drives	2TB SATA 600 7,200 rpm, 1TB SATA 300 7,200rpm	250GB Intel SSD, 1TB 7,200rpm Samsung
Optical drive	Blu-ray/DVD burner combo	dual-layer DVD burner
Operating system	Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)	Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)

We'll compare the Alienware Aurora with Maingear's Vybe Super Stock, a recent Editors' Choice Award winner with a similar price. The Vybe might look more conservative on the outside, but its more aggressive internal components give it a demonstrable performance edge.
The biggest difference between the two is the CPU overclocking. The Intel Core i7-2600K chip comes with a feature called Intel Turbo Boost Technology, which dynamically adjusts the clock speed among its various cores depending on the workload. The baseline speed of the chip is 3.4GHz, but the upper limit by default is 3.8GHz. Alienware tweaked the upper limit of its 2600K to 3.9GHz, and it offers a boost to 4.1GHz for an extra $75.
From Maingear, you can get the same CPU overclocked to a top speed of 4.8GHz. That difference reflects one of the issues that has plagued Alienware since it was acquired by Dell in 2006. With Dell's marketing muscle behind it, Alienware can expect to sell more PCs than it did as a boutique vendor. In order to manage the costs of supporting those systems, Alienware needs to achieve as much standardization and predictability in its configurations as it can. With built-in thermal detection and other safety features, overclocking is a far less risky operation than it used to be. But that's apparently not enough to allay Dell and Alienware's concerns, which unfortunately means the Aurora doesn't ship with its overclocking potential fully realized.


We also take issue with the Alienware's solid-state drive offerings. The Aurora shipped with two mechanical hard drives: a 1TB SATA300 drive and a faster 2TB SATA 600 drive. That's a lot of storage, and in comparison Maingear's 1.25TB total storage space seems small. That said, Maingear included a 250GB solid-state boot drive and a 1TB mechanical drive for storage. If you drop the Maingear's SSD down to a 128GB model, the price of the system falls to $2,500, and you retain the same fast drive access with only a minor loss in storage space. Alienware, though, only sells a 512GB SSD, which, while roomy, would add another $900 to the price of this system. If you're more interested in faster drive access than storage space, as any gamer might be, Alienware has no more cost-effective option.

The Alienware Aurora's remaining features compare well enough. The 4GB of RAM is a small allotment for this price range, but it's also 1,866MHz memory, which is faster than the 1,333MHz and 1,600MHz RAM we normally see. The pair of 1GB AMD Radeon HD 6950 graphics cards is appropriate for the price, and the Blu-ray/DVD-burner combo drive is a welcome feature as well.

Homebrew Computer Club reunion lights up Silicon Valley

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak (right) talks to fellow original Homebrew Computer Club member Len Shustek at the club reunion in Mountain View, Calif. Monday night

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- In this corner, it's Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. In that corner, it's phone phreaking pioneer Captain Crunch.
Over there, it's Apple employee No. 1 Bill Fernandez, and across the room, there's Lee Felsenstein, the creator of the world's first mass-produced portable computer, the Osborne.
Welcome to the Homebrew Computer Club reunion, an extremely rare gathering at the Computer History Museum tonight of dozens of the earliest home computer makers. Thirty-eight years after the first meeting of one of the most famous groups in the world of technology, nearly 100 of its original members got together to celebrate the club, themselves, and perhaps most important, the dawning of the personal computer revolution.


"Everybody here is [among] the founding fathers of the home computer industry, the people who started the home computer industry," said John Draper, aka Captain Crunch. "This is amazing. Never have I seen so many prominent [technology] people together in my life."
Draper should know. After all, said Homebrew member Roy Nordblom, Draper "is a wizard."
For those that didn't attend one of the original meetings, which began in the garage of computer engineer Gordon French in March 1975, it's hard to know what the dynamic was like in those days. But walking among the giants of the computer world that came out for the gathering tonight, what seems evident is that what mattered most to these people is their shared interest in what at that time was an extremely nascent pastime.
Though Wozniak was predictably mobbed, many of those waiting to talk to him were young people well aware of his legacy. Among the Homebrew members that came out, though, there was a much less deferential attitude. That is to say, these were contemporaries, people who have passed 38 years watching the industry they helped create grow into one of the world's most important. And for them, it seemed much more like a family reunion than a place to gawk at all-star talent.
Then again, it was also a place to recount famous stories. Woz, for example, told how he had drafted the drawings for the Apple II himself, by hand, but original Apple CEO Mike Scott "prettied them up." Or how, once when he went to an auction and found himself holding documents that were created by famous computer scientist Alan Turing, his reaction was "Whoa, I was just shaking to touch them."
Later, Woz recalled of hearing about the first Homebrew meetings, he thought, "I'll go down and I'll be a hero. [But] they're all talking about this thing called a microprocessor. They're talking 8080, and 8008 [chips] I thought, 'Oh, my gosh, I got so scared, I'm not one of these people that knows what's going on. This is not for me.'"
'Still vertical'
How important was it for living Homebrew members to make it to the reunion? Judging by the fact that original member Marty Spergel couldn't get himself physically to Silicon Valley but made sure he was still there via a telepresence robot, it was pretty important.
With the virtual Spergel rolling through the meeting, members would walk up and greet him almost as if it was actually him. As the robot came up to three members, Spergel asked how they were doing. One, Harry Saal, joked, "We're still vertical, so that's good."

Homebrew Computer Club member Marty Spergel greets fellow club members via telepresence robot at the reunion.

Indeed, there was a lot of white hair in the room tonight. And not surprisingly. It has been 38 years since the club began. Attending the reunion, said Terry Winograd, a famous computer science professor at Stanford who taught, among others, Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, was a "chance to see a lot of them, how grey and old they've gotten, like me."
Winograd actually wasn't a Homebrew member himself. Because he was at Stanford, in the heart of Silicon Valley, at the time the club was founded, he had his own access to "big computers" and didn't need to join. But he was friends with many of the members. These days, he said, he's been seeing a resurgence of the do-it-yourself culture on which the Homebrew Computer Club was founded. It's the "notion that [if] you get a few of the right tools, you can build something interesting."
Unfortunately, Winograd added, though that DIY culture was in evidence in the 1970s, and is again today, there was a long period in the interim when the maker energy was beaten back by the giant companies that came along to dominate the computer industry. "You couldn't compete with Intel," he said.
But perhaps that's exactly why the people who founded the Homebrew Computer Club are such heroes to those for whom computers and technology are as important as breathing.
Though a reunion, tonight's event was open to the public -- via a Kickstarter campaign -- and there were dozens of people far too young to have known the club except as the basis of an origin story. Others, though, simply had a geographic disadvantage.
One of those was Bob Roswell, the owner of a Baltimore computer store and a small vintage computing museum who flew to Silicon Valley for the chance to meet so many of the luminaries he has spent decades looking up to. "Just to meet some of these guys is kind of a dream of a lifetime for me," Roswell said. "I'm in awe to see all the people here."
But if Roswell had been in Silicon Valley in 1975, he could very easily have been part of the group. It was a regular gathering of equals, people who loved computers, and who knew what the advent of these machines could mean.

To Spergel, the club and its members was about establishing "this thing called camaraderie. Looking forward," Spergel added, speaking via the telepresence robot, "it still exists to this day."
And that makes sense. Maybe Woz put it best, speaking to the hundreds of people who came out for the reunion. He recalled the club meetings in the mid-1970s, even before Apple was getting off the ground: They were "the most important day of my life...every other Wednesday night."

Apple v. Samsung trial redux: What you need to know (FAQ)

                      Apple and Samsung are fighting over patents.


The latest installment in the Apple versus Samsung patent infringement saga kicks off Tuesday. This time, it's all about the money.
In August of last year, a nine-person jury sided with Apple on a majority of its patent infringement claims against Samsung Electronics. At that time, the jury awarded Apple $1.05 billion in damages, much less than the $2.75 billion sought by the Cupertino, Calif., electronics giant. Samsung, which asked for $421 million in its countersuit, didn't get anything.
However, Judge Lucy Koh in March ordered a new trial to recalculate some of the damages in the case, striking $450.5 million off the original judgment against Samsung. What that means is Samsung is still on the hook for about $600 million in damages, but a new jury has to decide how much else it owes.
Essentially, this trial is a do-over of last year's jury ruling on damages. To get a better understanding of what this means, CNET put together this FAQ.

What was the original trial about?
Apple originally filed suit against Samsung in April of 2011, accusing the Korean company of copying the look and feel of its products. Samsung countersued two months later over patent infringement. The initial trial, which stretched more than three weeks in August of 2012, wrapped both of those cases in one, somehow squeezing together the patent infringement issues, alongside antitrust claims and even trade dress issues.

The trial, held in San Jose, Calif., was characterized by a massive trove of evidence that unveiled some of each companies' biggest secrets. Apple tried to show that Samsung wasn't making anything that looked remotely like the iPhone or iPad until both of those products launched. And Samsung largely pointed to internal documents that showed it was at work on touch-screen phones with giant rectangular screens and rounded corners well before Apple showed up.
A jury ultimately ruled in Apple's favor.
Why did the judge order a new trial?
Koh determined the original jury didn't correctly calculate how much Samsung owed Apple for patent infringement. As she noted in March, "the court has identified an impermissible legal theory on which the jury based its award, and cannot reasonably calculate the amount of excess while effectuating the intent of the jury."
Why did the jury have such a hard time determining an acceptable number in the first trial?
To reach their decision, jurors had to work through a 20-page document that required them to discern which devices from the two companies infringed on which patents -- a daunting task considering Apple had accused nearly two dozen of Samsung's devices of violating patents. In the new trial, jurors will have to fill out a one-page form.
What does the jury have to determine this time around?
Apple says consumers would have bought its iPhones and iPads if Samsung hadn't offered similar products. For the retrial, it all comes down to how much Apple lost from the sale of Samsung's devices that infringed on its patents. On that one-page form, the jury will have to determine the overall amount Samsung owes Apple, as well as the dollar breakdown by product.

Outside US District Court in San Jose, Calif., the scene of the Apple v. Samsung trial.

 

Where does the retrial take place?
It will be held in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose.
How long will it last?
The trial should last six days. It begins November 12 with jury selection and possibly opening statements. It's slated to end November 19, and then the jury has time to deliberate. The expectation is everything will be wrapped up by November 22 or early the next week ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday.

How much money is at stake?
Hundreds of millions. Koh cut about $450 million from the initial ruling, and jurors can award Apple more or less than that amount.

What devices does the retrial apply to?
The products in question include the Galaxy Prevail, Gem, Indulge, Infuse 4G, Galaxy SII AT&T, Captivate, Continuum, Droid Charge, Epic 4G, Exhibit 4G, Galaxy Tab, Nexus S 4G, Replenish, and Transform. The Prevail in particular racked up $57.9 million of the damages tally, which Koh said was a failure on the jury's part, since the device was found to infringe only on utility patents, and not on design patents.

What does this mean for consumers?
Not much. The earlier trial determined Samsung had infringed on Apple's patents, and the Korean company already redesigned the devices to avoid issues. It's a third trial, scheduled for March, that could have some impact. That covers devices Samsung has released following Apple's original suit, including the Galaxy S3.
 
What does this mean for Apple and Samsung?
A few hundred million dollars means very little financially for Apple or Samsung, which generate billions of dollars a year in profits. But where the retrial could be key is setting up appeals. It also could create precedence for further cases related to patent infringement in the new mobile world.


Why don't the companies settle?
Apple and Samsung have held settlement talks many times but haven't been able to reach a compromise. Part of the problem has involved licensing rates for patented technologies. Both sides reportedly have made proposals that were rejected by their rival.

At this point, the litigation is more about pride and being proven right than about money. Steve Jobs, the late Apple co-founder and CEO, long maintained that Google's Android operating system was a rip-off of Apple's iOS, and he didn't want to settle any lawsuits with Google or its partners.


What's next?
This retrial doesn't mark the end of the Apple-Samsung battle. There are likely to be appeals galore, and another patent trial starts in March. The upcoming trial in 2014 deals with a newer set of devices from both companies, as well as different patents, but it pits both tech giants (who are also business partners) against one another yet again.
Apple filed the new suit against Samsung in February of last year, claiming Samsung's Galaxy Nexus infringed on four of its patents. The case has since grown to include a multitude of products including Samsung's Galaxy S3 and Note 2, along with a counterclaim that targeted Apple's iPhone 5. Koh told both sides they needed to trim down the number of accused products to 25 and patent claims to 25.

America's first next-gen aircraft carrier takes high tech to sea

 

                            

The USS Gerald R. Ford is the first of the most advanced class of aircraft carriers in history.
(Credit: Newport News Shipbuilding) 

 

The world's most-advanced aircraft carrier should be meeting a bottle of champagne today. Head on.
The USS Gerald R. Ford will be christened during a ceremony in Newport News, Va., an event that will usher in the next generation of aircraft carriers. The Gerald R. Ford is the first of its class -- the Ford class. And over the last few years, the shipbuilders at Newport News Shipbuilding have been putting together a vessel that is intended to move the aircraft carrier technology needle forward significantly.

Apple developing large, curved-screen iPhones, says report

                                               Something like this Samsung?


Without rumors, what would Apple be? Just another company trying to sell you a nice phone.
So Sunday it was heartening to imagine that, in 2014, Cupertino might be releasing two new phones.
Each would be larger than the current iPhone 5. And each would have a curved glass screen.
Bloomberg, citing someone with knowledge of the development process, says that the new iPhones would have screens of 4.7 inches and 5.5 inches.
This is almost as large as the Samsung Galaxy Note's 5.7 inches.

If this isn't exciting enough, these new Apple phones -- set for release, perhaps, in September 2014 -- would also have special new sensors. These would be able to feel whether pressure being applied was light or heavy.
In October, Samsung teased its Galaxy Round, a phone that, at least in one sense, rocks.
Like all Apple rumors, this one should be rocked a little to see how quickly it might go to sleep.
After all, iPhone 5 was said by an unnamed source to enjoy curved glass screens. That was in 2011.
What seems evident is that form is an area of deep research for all hardware manufacturers, as they sense that function might have plateaued.
Now that our phones can run our lives, tell us how healthy we are and maybe even when we're going to die, what else can they possibly do?

Look up! Satellite parts falling down this week

                                  A wing in your back garden?


If you're a careful sort, you'll have been preparing for a couple of months now.
But, should the warnings have eluded you, then please consider this your overhead traffic alert.
The "Space Ferrari" is on its way down to Earth and no one is sure exactly where all the pieces are going to land.
Its reported in september , this beautifully nicknamed satellite (official name: the Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer) is running out of fuel and on its way back to Earth.
The hope then was that the European Space Agency would at least have a clue as to where some of the parts might land.
However, The New York Times reported that little progress has been made in this regard. And things are a touch imminent.
Indeed, Rune Floberghagen, the ESA's mission manager, told the Times: "Concretely our best engineering prediction is now for a re-entry on Sunday, with a possibility for it slipping into early Monday."

The good news is that most of the satellite should burn up on re-entry. But up to 40 pieces -- some almost as heavy as Mike Tyson's 230 lbs. -- might be flying into a neighborhood near you.
The ESA believes that a very small part of the Earth's surface might be affected by the debris. But we've all seen video of people being struck by lightning, so you just never quite know what might occur.
Of course, the chances of you seeing or hearing it -- never mind being affected by it -- are extremely small.
The ESA doesn't want you to worry. As NBC News reported, the agency said that you're 250,000 times more likely to win the lottery than to be struck by a piece of the "Space Ferrari."

'Comet of the Century' ISON coming into view this week

This enhanced image of Comet ISON is based on Hubble telescope observations from May

There are high hopes for Comet ISON, which will pass the sun this month and could put on a spectacular show in the sky in the process. The comet, making its virgin journey around our star from the Oort Cloud right now, could be one of the brightest comets to be observed from Earth in many decades, if not longer, or perhaps ever.
Or, ISON could melt down, break apart, and fizzle away into darkness at any moment as it comes ever closer to grazing the surface of our friendly neighborhood massive fireball.
Whether ISON delights or disappoints, it's certain to be the most observed comet in human history. Aside from images already captured by the space agencies' big-boy telescopes like the one from Hubble above, NASA is also encouraging and assisting anyone with lenses -- be they in telescopes, binoculars, or eyeballs who wants to capture the icy rock's journey around the sun.

In short, Comet ISON is setting a new bar for interstellar paparazzi -- it's kind of like stalking your favorite Deep Space Nine character at Comic-Con. And as of right about now, you can start getting in on the mass comet-stalking meme.
ISON should make a U-turn around the sun on Thanksgiving Day, and if it survives that close solar encounter, it's believed that it could put on a light show visible with the naked eye. In the coolest-case scenario, it could be bright enough to rival the Great Comet of 1680, which reportedly could be seen in the daytime with a tail that stretched across the sky.
But ISON can also be seen with relative ease by amateur astronomers right now. If there are clear skies in your area in the early Friday morning hours (after 1 a.m. on the West Coast), it should be observable with good binoculars or a small telescope in the constellation Virgo.
If you can't see ISON this week, try again next week as it's likely to be brighter as it comes closer to the sun.

Man in Tesla Model S fire: 'I'd buy another one'

                                      Car brands enjoy testimonials from happy drivers.


But there's something a little more powerful, when the testimonial is from a driver whose car just caught fire.
In a blog post on Tesla Web site, Juris Shibayama, an MD from Tennessee, explains what happened when his Model S caught fire last Wednesday.
He ends his explanation with a line that not everyone would expect: "I would buy another one in a heartbeat."
Shibayama said that he struck a three-pronged trailer hitch in the middle lane of the interstate. He continued:

About 30-45 seconds later, there was a warning on the dashboard display saying, 'Car needs service. Car may not restart.' I continued to drive, hoping to get home. About one minute later, the message on the dashboard display read, 'Please pull over safely. Car is shutting down.'

He said he had time to remove his possessions, even though, he said: "About 5-10 seconds after getting out of the car, smoke started to come from the front underbody of the car."
Next, he said he got 100 yards away and, some two minutes later, the car caught fire.

It seems as if the protective shield around the car's battery had been punctured.
Shibayama, though, believes he was fortunate: "Had I not been in a Tesla, that object could have punched through the floor and caused me serious harm."
A cynical few might wonder whether his statement was assisted by the drivers of Tesla's PR machine. However, Shibayama's words are very clear: "This experience does not in any way make me think that the Tesla Model S is an unsafe car."

The fact that this is the third Tesla Model S fire in the last two months will lead some to wonder that there might be safety or design issues with the car. Not according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which gave it a 5-star safety rating. (The NHTSA is said to have contacted authorities in Tennessee to see if further investigation is warranted.)
Perhaps the three fires represent a coincidence, or the fact that a few more Teslas are now on the road. But as an endorsement, Shibayama's openness to buying another one is as good an advertisement as Tesla could hope for in the circumstances.
I have contacted Tesla to ask how the post came about and will update, should I hear.
Ultimately, we all buy cars on trust. It seems that at least Juris Shibayama, MD, has not lost any faith after his dangerous experience.

For Android tablets, 8 (inches) is the new 7

             The Samsung Galaxy Note 8: This tablet comes with a stylus


The tablet market had its breakthrough moment when Apple's iPad arrived sporting a nearly 10-inch screen. Later, much of the significant action among tablets centered on those in the 7-inch realm.
In general, the 7-inch size marks the border between so-called phablets and proper tablets. The group has included the first Android tablet, the original Galaxy Tab from Samsung, the first Nexus-branded tablet from Google (and Asus), and the first Amazon Kindle Fire, introduced at $199, which represented a new pricing benchmark.
But since the introduction of those models, tablet market prices have spiraled down, attracting a glut of 7-inch Android devices. Walmart, no less, has several exclusives. Many of these are available for less than $150 and some for even less than $100. With the range of budget products coming from companies including Hewlett-Packard, Monster Products, and Vivitar, it has been tough to differentiate based on anything but price.

But if tablet brands aren't finding seventh heaven, perhaps eight will allow for one-upmanship. Over the years, several companies tried dancing around the 8-inch mark, with Motorola introducing the 8.2-inch version of its Xoom tablet and Samsung unveiling a 7.7-inch Galaxy Tab as part of what once seemed a crusade to leave no third-of-an-inch increment without a tablet representative.
Variety does seem to have spiced things up, however. Today's selection of Android 8-inchers, while more expensive, are showing more creative differentiation than we're seeing in the 7-inch category. Among the entrants:
The starter pack: E Fun. One of the companies that's slugging it out at Walmart in the 7-inch category, E Fun has long offered tablets in larger sizes as well. The Premium 8HD edition of its Nextbook tablet was one of its first to support Google Play, a huge improvement from the SlideMe store that had previous limited its app selection. Your price of your ticket to this Play, though, leaves no doubt that some 8-inchers are ready to follow their smaller cousins into the bargain basement: $99 at Walmart.com.
 
The widebody: Acer. An early entrant into the budget 8-inch space, the Acer Iconia A1 came to market after Acer had been early to jump on the Android tablet bandwagon with the 10.1-inch A500. Unlike that device but like the Nextbook, the A1 has a display with a 4:3 aspect ratio, the same as the iPad Mini. While the wide bezels make the A1 somewhat hard to handle one-handed, many people prefer this for viewing photos, Web pages, and other documents. That said, the A1 is a significant step up from the Nextbook in terms of performance and support for Bluetooth.
 
The scribbler: Samsung. Samsung actually has two 8-inch Android tablets; the 8-inch version of the Galaxy Tab 3 is the middle child of the ho-hum Tab line that includes 7-inch and 10-inch models. The nearly identical 8-inch Galaxy Note, though, includes an S-Pen and its optimized apps and gestures for which the handset king is eager to build developer support, landing the 8-inch Note between the large Note 3 smartphone and the very large but high-resolution Note 10.1 or, in other words, nearly the perfect size for one-handed padlike applications.

                                      The Lenovo Yoga tablet takes a stand.

 

 

 

The standup: Lenovo. After dabbling in the 7-inch Android tablet space, Lenovo has bridged the worlds between the pancake-flat iPad Air and the kickstand-equipped Microsoft Surface with the Yoga Tablet. The device, also available in a 10-inch version, includes a cylindrical side that can be rotated to reveal a kickstand suitable for movie watching, and the company throws in Dolby Digital audio processing to augment that task. The Yoga Tablet's roll bar makes for great battery life and provides a bit of tilt for typing and a handle for reading. Lenovo has attempted to extend the Yoga brand by saying this extends the tablet to a number of modes (including a dubious "hold mode"), but putting all the battery on one side of the device does allow the rest of it to be quite svelte.
As the Nextbook Premium 8HD shows, these step-up tablets aren't necessarily high-end goods, but there's significant pressure to step up the game even at the lower end of the size spectrum. The 8-inch tablets must justify their premium over the cheaper 7-inchers. They also have to compete against the smallest tablet size for ("real", x86-based) Windows tablets that include Microsoft Office.
And of course, there's the king of the tablet hill, the iPad, which is available in an 8-inch Mini version. Apple's latest lineup leaves plenty of room to maneuver around between the original, now at $299, and the new Retina Display-equipped model mocking the iPad 2 at $399. When it comes to Android, though, a smaller screen doesn't have to equate to a smaller number of options.

New zero-day bug targets IE users in drive-by attack

A pair of vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer currently being exploited in the wild to install malware on computers that visit at least one malicious Web site, security researches warn.
The classic drive-by download attack targets the English versions of IE 7 and 8 in Windows XP and IE 8 on Windows 7, security firm FireEye warned in a company blog post Friday. However, the security researcher wrote that its analysis indicated that other languages and browser version could be at risk.
"The exploit targets the English version of Internet Explorer, but we believe the exploit can be easily changed to leverage other languages," FireEye researchers Xiaobo Chen and Dan Caselden wrote. "Based on our analysis, the vulnerability affects IE 7, 8, 9 and 10."
The second of the two holes is an information leakage vulnerability that is used to retrieve the timestamp from the program executable's header.
"The timestamp is sent back to the attacker's server to choose the exploit with a ROP chain specific to that version of msvcrt.dll," the pair wrote. "This vulnerability affects Windows XP with IE 8 and Windows 7 with IE 9."
The exploit's "ROP chain," or return-oriented programming, is a technique for disguising executable code from security defenses.

FireEye wrote in a follow-up post that further analysis found that the exploit was part of an advanced persistent threat (APT) in which attackers inserted the exploit code directly "into a strategically important website, known to draw visitors that are likely interested in national and international security policy."
Further distinguishing this exploit from others is that the payload was delivered without first writing to disk, a technique that "will further complicate network defenders' ability to triage compromised systems, using traditional forensics methods," the researchers wrote.
"Specifically, the payload is shellcode, which is decoded and directly injected into memory after successful exploitation via a series of steps," FireEye researchers wrote in the latest post. "By utilizing strategic Web compromises along with in-memory payload delivery tactics and multiple nested methods of obfuscation, this campaign has proven to be exceptionally accomplished and elusive. APT actors are clearly learning and employing new tactics."
FireEye did not identify the affected Web but said the attacks can be mitigated by using Microsoft's Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET).

Amazon to begin offering Sunday delivery option for purchases

Amazon will begin Sunday delivery of packages to customers in the nation's two largest cities later this month with the help of the US Postal Service.



The Internet retail giant announced late Sunday it would begin offering the delivery option for certain items in New York and Los Angeles metropolitan areas on November 17. Amazon expects to expand the offering next year to Dallas, Houston, New Orleans, and Phoenix, the company said in a statement.
"If you're an Amazon Prime member, you can order a backpack for your child on Friday and be packing it for them Sunday night," Dave Clark, Amazon's vice president of worldwide operations and customer service, said in a statement.
Sunday delivery will not be available for all merchandise offered on the site; eligible items will offer Sunday as a delivery option at chckout. The delivery option will be free to Prime customers who choose the two-day shipping option. Non-Prime customers will be able to use Sunday delivery as well, but they will pay standard shipping costs for business day delivery.
Amazon will deliver packages to USPS locations on Saturday nights or Sunday mornings, and the post office will then deliver the packages to customers, the Wall Street Journal reported. For more than a year, the service has been building a "flexible" workforce that would be willing to work Sundays, the newspaper reported.

Amazon did not reveal how much it would pay the USPS for service on Sundays, a day in which mail and packages are usually not delivered by the service. Amazon declined to offer more details on its arrangement with the USPS.
The move ratchets up retailer competition to win customers through promises of quicker delivery. Amazon first turned up the heat in 2009 with Local Express Delivery, which offered same-day delivery of items to customers in select cities. Google began testing same-day deliveries in San Francisco last year, while eBay announced last month it would expand its same-day delivery service, dubbed eBay Now, to 25 cities next year.
The Sunday delivery option could also be a shot in the arm for the USPS, which is expected to lose $6 billion this year.