The announced launch of the Consumer Preview or the public beta of Windows 8 is part of the lined-up activities before the actual release of Windows 8, which is expected this fall. The first activity was held last year (September) which was the release of the developer preview. After the release of the Public Beta, Microsoft is expected to release a “Release Candidate” and then the actual release of the operating system.

On the day of the launch, Microsoft will allow the beta version to be downloaded by consumers and installed on computers. Millions are expected to get a piece of the Consumer Preview considering the developer preview was widely downloaded by millions of consumers.

Many wonder why Microsoft has chosen the event to take place along the Mobile World Congress. Some thinks that the move may be to highlight the changes expected with the new Windows 8. It may be noted that consumers are going mobile these days, especially with the use of tablets, Android and iOS phones. While Windows 8 will still be a desktop and a laptop OS, the new OS will feature a lot of integration functions with mobile devices.

Windows fans, who are excited for the beta download, must prepare for the online traffic on February 29 to get Windows 8.

The Titan 17 is the ultimate desktop replacement solution that incorporates all the attributes of a professional desktop engine in a package that is compact and yet providing unmatched qualities that both avid gamers and professionals can be proud of. Donning the latest from Intel, the Titan 17 houses the highly rated Intel Core i7 3930K and the i7 3960X Extreme Edition processors, replacing the previous Intel Core i7 990X. Suited with the latest processors from Intel, it accelerates gaming performance and optimum applications usage that adheres the frantic gamer to the wanting user.

Moving towards superiority that gives it the advantage among its contenders, Maingear’s Titan 17 also sports a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580M with supplementary support coming from DirectX 11 and NVIDIA PhysX technologies. By proving so that they can do even more, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580M can be configured via SLI to boost its performance up to 2 times, adhering to today’s state of the art games.

Furthermore, the Titan 17 will also feature direct support from the Quadro 5010M that features up to 4GB of graphics memory alongside 384 CUDA cores. The notebook is also customizable – modifying the Titan 17 will give users up to 32GB of DDR3 memory and can perk up the speed of up to 1866MHz. Other features include two hardwired USB3.0 ports, up to three SSD or SATA HDD with RAID support and an optional optical drive.

From the outside, the Titan 17 features a 17.3-inch, full High Definition LED backlit display with Super Glare Clear type display, a backlit isolated keyboard with 6 shortcut buttons for adjusting the volume, Mute, WiFi on/off, Bluetooth toggles and Camera options. It sure is a complete gaming rig you can depend on.

In closing, the new Maingear Titan 17 is currently available for pre-order at $3,499 with free shipping along with a copy of Jagged Alliance: Back in Action and Batman: Arkham City PC games. Are you interested to get one?

Deciphering NVIDIA’s next generation graphics cards, everything is, for the lack of better term, said and done. It is evidently in reversed order, putting first the highly advanced, dual chipped GTX690 that is stated to be out by Q3 of 2012. With a memory clock ticking in at 4.5GHz, 2×1024 stream processors, a GPU clocking in at 1.5GHz and a core at around 750MHz, there is no question that the GTX690 is NVIDIA’s secret weapon and with a price tag of $995, it’ll certainly come out as a surprise, or if not, a dark horse amongst its competitors, especially with AMD Radeon.

Next in line are three GK110 core models differentiating slightly on the bus and memory bus width: the GTX680 will pack in 512bit with 352GB/s memory, the GTX670 will have 448bit with 280GB/s memory and the GTX600Ti will sport a subpar 384bit alongside 240GB/s memory. Both the GTX680 and the 670 are expected in April while the GTX600Ti will debut by Q2 or Q3 of 2012.

Under the GK104 umbrella are the GTX660 and the GTX650i and again, with slight differences on each other specs. The GTX660 is clocked in at 5.8GHz while the GTX650i comes in at 5.5GHz. Between them is a 100MHz difference in shader clock.

Sealing the deal in NVIDIA’s Kepler lineup are the GTX650 and GTX640, under the GK106 core series. Both clocked in at 5.5GHz and again, a 100MHz difference, with the GTX650 rated at 1.8GHZ while the GTX640 is at 1.7GHz. Both are expected by May of 2012 and will cost $179 and $139, respectively.

With competition brewing in almost all aspects, NVIDIA is not wasting time to procure competitive GPU chips to adhere to the necessities of the community. Proven its worth as one of the best when it comes to graphics cards, NVIDIA is far from settling down and with the roadmap, it’s hard to say whether or not the company is boiling something up once everything is in place and gets the green light.

The Satellite U840 Ultrabook is the latest development by Toshiba for their line of devices in mobile technology. Measuring 14 inches wide, the U840 weighs a little more than 1.73 kg and has been deemed as an ideal device when travelling as well as when staying at home or work. Other specifications include an Intel ULV Core i5-2467M along with a Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit) for its operating system.

Its 14” widescreen HD LED backlit display has a resolution capability of 1366 x 768 while a Hybrid 320 GB plus 16 GB SSD has been integrated for its storage. The U840 also comes with stereo speakers together with an external microphone in-port and a stereo headphone for its audio. Buttons and pointing devices include the Touchpad with gesture control. However, there have been unanswered questions about its Wi-Fi capabilities or battery removal as well as its availability in certain locations.

The Toshiba Satellite U840 has a starting price of 1,614 USD, including tax. Unfortunately, exact details regarding the release of the U840 in Europe and America are still yet to be announced.

The SSD 520 dons a SandForce SF-2281 controller and a custom firmware known as Cherryville on it. The said SSD is a product of corroboration between Intel and SandForce that lasted for almost a year and a half. It also sports Intel’s exquisite 25nm NAND flash and has a SATA 6GB/s connection. Read and write speeds are at 550MB/s and 520MB/s respectively.

Test and reviews proved that the 520 gives a superb performance. It was found to be competing fairly with OCZ’s Vertex 3. Moreover, performance and stability are sound enough whether it is used in an enterprise or in RAID arrays. Its write speed is also abreast with its sequential speed proving that its firmware has a mutual relationship with NAND. The only negative aspect it showed was its high consumption of power.

The 520 is generally a fast SSD but there’s a tradeoff to be paid and it’s the question of it being the reliable SSD. If you’re up to owning one, it would entail you $149 (60GB) to as high as $1,000 for the 480GB variant. By the way, it comes in two (2) forms – 7 mm and 9.5 mm.

At present, Apple has already been investigating the issues together with some test groups that they have organized to help them know the cause of the problem and eventually resolve the issue. Now Apple has decided to pull-out the standard update from its servers altogether and just provide the users the ability to download the combined installation. This combo installer can be downloaded via the combo download link and just a few megabytes larger than the standard installer, but the difference is that users do not really have to deal with those annoying bugs.

Updates are usually meant to improve your software because it is expected to deliver some tweaks and performance improvements, but this is not really what happened to Mac Lion 10.7.3 update. However, it is a good thing that Apple really took time to resolve the issue and pulled-out the said update and decided to replace it with a combo installer instead. Unfortunately, Snow Leopard users out there will continue to experience those security update issues until the time that the company finds a solution for this.

Users who will attempt to download the original released will now be redirected to a separate page that contains the download link and apparently, it will also use a different build number of 11D50b rather than the original 11D50. So if you haven’t rolled back to the 10.7.2 version, why not try to download it via this combo installer or simply wait for another update because for sure Apple is already working on it right now.

Aside from simply making images looks better and more enhanced, this software also saves time as well. In addition to this, you will also notice that the Photoshop CS6 has a darker interface that will enable its users to have a more immersive experience. Apparently, this darker interface was made with the idea of unifying it with other Adobe software such as Lightroom. According to Hughes, the company focused more on the image itself and not on the interface, but there is always an option for users out there to change its interface to the way it looked before if they really wanted to.

In addition to this, the video also introduced a new feature called rich cursor support, which will give users out there instant information about a brush diameter, hardness and opacity. This makes this new software version even more interesting, don’t you think so? And to think that most Photoshop users out there can be conservative, it will not really be surprising if some of these users will not appreciate the changes at all. Adobe seems to expect this that is why it made it flexible and allow it to change from the darker interface to the lighter one.

See more details in the video below:

The Photoshop CS6 is expected to make its debut along with the sixth version of Adobe’s Creative Suite in the first half of 2012. What can you say about this new Photoshop CS6 and its darker interface? What do you prefer the darker interface or the lighter one?

The app is free to download at the iTunes and compatible with the iPod Touch, iPad and iPhone with at least iOS 4.0 software version installed. Several types of digital interfaces can be chosen to suit the users’ tastes. You may select the Slide Controller interface and control the vehicle by dragging your finger on top of the screen panel. The Motion Controller allows you to maneuver the vehicle by tilting and turning the iDevice while the Draw & Drive interface allows young racers to draw a route for the vehicle to follow.

Of course, you cannot enjoy high octane action without getting the vehicle unit! Each iNitro Speeders unit comes with an adaptor that fits snugly on your iOS device perfectly. The latter is needed in order to control the RC unit. Mattel had designed each vehicle to mimic its real counterpart only with plastic exterior. Choose from different models and colors including mini Mustang, Camaro, Mini Cooper, ACR-X etc.

And parents don’t need to worry giving this as an early Christmas gift for their children. Each iNitro Speeders unit costs $33. Check it out.

Microsoft said, via a blogpost, that next Office is the “most ambitious undertaking” and the direction is to make Office 15 mobile. Thus, Microsoft is expected to integrate Office 15 with its cloud services and other mobile apps.

Office 15 is said to feature new versions of its core programs of Word, Excel and PowerPoint. It will also showcase web-based tools via its Office 325. There will also be new versions of Exchange, SharePoint, the conference tool Lync, project-management program Project and Visio, a diagram editor.

There is no information on the official release date of Office 15, except that a public beta version will be available this summer. It is also expected that Microsoft will release Windows 8 first before Office 15.

If you happen to be a gamer and is looking for a cool new laptop, this baby is just for you. To start with, the Y470P has a metal covering that also shows off the brushed metal effect. It’s a 14-inch notebook that offers 1366×768 display resolution. Running things seriously under the hood is Intel’s Core i7 2670QM processor that has a clock speed of 2.2GHz while having 6 MB of cache. Meanwhile, RAM is 8GB DDR3-1333 memory.

The notebook’s distinguishing factor compared to its sibling (Y470) is the graphics card as the Y470P sports AMD’s Radeon HD 7690 graphics partnered with 1GB of video memory. Storage is not a concern as it has 750GB of hard drive space. Other goodies included are DVD burner, webcam (2 MP), WiFi, Bluetooth, three (3) USB ports and 6-in-1 card reader. Serious gaming needs sound and this is supported with the JBL speakers. Powering the laptop is a six cell battery.

The IdeaPad Y470p retails for $1,499 but its price on the web is listed at $1,249. Those who want to avail it at a much lower price should have the eCoupon since the Y470P sells for $799. Shipping is said to be by February 13.