Ecomatrix Computer Hardware

The retail tariff for most versions of Windows 7 will be the same as Microsoft has been charging for Vista all along, except that the Home Premium edition of Windows ME II SP7 will set punters back a bit less than the Vista equivalent.

Windows 7 Home Premium will be priced at £20 less in the UK at £149.99 and $40 less in the US at $199.99, for the full package, or £79.99 in the UK and $119.99 in the US for the just the upgrade from Vista. Such a deal for the home user, for what is essentially just an overly hyped service pack to Windows Vista.

Microsoft claims the price cut for the Home Premium version is down to its vast popularity, but we rather suspect that the Vole is knocking down the price due to fears it won't sell. Windows 7 Professional will be priced at £219.99 in the UK and $299.99 in the US for the full package, or £189.99 in the UK and $199.99 in the US for the upgrade. Windows 7 Ultimate will be priced at £229.99 in the UK and $319.99 in the US for the full package, or £199.99 in the UK and $219.99 in the US for the upgrade.

Social networking is a more popular online activity than email, according to a new survey. The survey by market research firm Nielsen Online found that on average one of every 11 minutes spent online around the world is devoted to social networking and blogging sites. The survey identified Facebook as the world's most popular social network with 108.3 million users, followed by MySpace with 81 million users. Far behind in third place was Classmates Online, with 19.7 million users; Orkut, with 17.5 million users; and Linkedin, with 15 million users. Facebook seemed to be the most addictive of the social networking sites with the average user spending three hours and 10 minutes online every month, the survey found. But Orkut had by far the highest penetration in any single country with 70 per cent of online Brazilians using the Google-owned service. The survey found that growth in social networking was three times as fast as the pace of general online growth with much of that acceleration coming from the middle-aged. The most popular age group with Facebook in terms of growth is the 35-49 category, which increased by 24.1 million people last year. The category of men and women aged 65 and above moving to social networking grew by 7.0 per cent, while the 17-and-under category dropped by 9.0 per cent.

The addition of a built-in SD card reader to the 13" and 15" MacBook Pros may have dubious utility for many users, but Apple has seen fit to include at least one feature with lots of potential use. Properly formatted and partitioned SD or SDHC media can be used to boot a MacBook Pro equipped with an SD card slot.

 Apple has posted a knowledge base article on the new SD card slots, noting compatibility with various capacity media, certain filesystems (exFAT is not one of them), and lack of support for SDI/O cards. But, an SD card formatted as Mac OS Extended and given a GUID partition map can be used to install a bootable version of Mac OS X. This could be very handy as an emergency backup and troubleshooting volume, for instance. It could also be used to set up or install software in enterprise or education environments.

While the functionality is still not as handy as an ExpressCard slot—if you're going to miss that on the 15" MacBook Pro, we feel your pain—it's still better than only using the slot to read photos from your digital camera, and makes it useful to a wider range of users.

  

 

Microsoft has revealed a motion-sensing gadget for the Xbox 360 that uses the player's full body to control video games.Dubbed "Project Natal," the new accessory is a horizontal bar placed near the console that allows players to control their games and Xbox media without touching hardware. 

Rather than rely on a wand to detect motion like the ubiquitous Nintendo Wii, the device uses a 3-D depth camera and microphones to recognize players' voices and movements for controlling what's on screen

The device was pitched as a way to lure non-traditional video game customers that may be too intimidated to wield the Xbox 360's usual button-and-joystick-laden controller.