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Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Amazon Updates Cloud Player: Scan & Match Imports, 256 Kbps Audio Upgrades, Premium Accounts
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- Stupid Celebrities Gossip » Myspace Drama, Riley Giles and Bree Tierney
Bree Tierney and Riley Giles get into a heated argument on Myspace after Bree started talking with the media about the two of them. You can thank lindsay Lohan for this one!
Check out the story
Is Housing Recovery Real? Not Everyone Is Convinced
Seabrook teen honored at Carnegie Hall
Published 03:22 p.m., Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Monday, July 30, 2012
Microsoft details the Touch Mouse's upcoming support for Windows 8 gestures
We already knew that Microsoft would be upgrading its Touch Mouse to support Windows 8 gestures, but the outfit never confirmed which finger movements, exactly, would be built in. Now, Redmond is explaining it all, even though the mouse won't actually get updated until Win8 goes on sale in late October. According to the company, you'll be able to swipe two fingers to the right to toggle between open programs, and two to the left to expose those Charms. Sliding three fingers up and down will allow you to use Semantic Zoom. (Naturally, you'll be able to swipe from side to side to move through the tiles on your Start screen, but you probably already guessed that.) We have a Touch Mouse here at Engadget HQ that we're just itching to update, but until those drivers drop three months from now, it seems we'll just have to find something else to keep us entertained.
Filed under: Peripherals
Microsoft details the Touch Mouse's upcoming support for Windows 8 gestures originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Jul 2012 03:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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US recovers apparent remains of WWII airmen
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Sunday, July 29, 2012
Drake Management Team Accused of Putting 'Entire Drake Business in Jeopardy'
As Drake supposedly renegotiates his record deal, the man who discovered the artist files a lawsuit against Drake's management team for withholding money from Drake that threatens his own profit share.
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UPDATE 4-U.S. probes Enbridge Wisconsin oil pipe spill; line still shut
6A
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Saturday, July 28, 2012
BoA wants pretty dance moves like Girls? Generation?s leg dance?
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Bryce Dallas Howard and Jessica Simpson?New Mom Trendsetters or Totally Not?
Teammates expect J.J. Watt to become a ?megastar?
The NRA's Lock On The Gun Control Debate
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Why Microsoft Can Get Away With Overcharging for the Surface Tablet
What?s the right price for Microsoft?s upcoming Surface tablets? Some observers are arguing that the company should charge more rather than less for the innovative Windows 8 devices.
(Update: Since this story was written, Paul Pallath of Techie-Buzz said he contacted Webhallen, which told him that it set a "high preliminary pricing " for the Surface to allow customers to pre-order them. ReadWriteWeb believes that the central thesis of this story is still valid.)
If the price list posted to a Swedish website had been correct, then the lowest price for Microsoft?s Surface tablet would have been just over $800 - with other models significantly higher. But even if we don't know what price Microsoft will actually charge for the Surface, at least one analyst says Microsoft shouldn?t worry about overcharging, given that a premium pricing strategy leaves room for the company?s manufacturing partners to fill in the gaps.
Microsoft Avoiding Competition - With Itself
Sarah Rotman Epps, a consumer and mobile analyst for Forrester Research, noted that Microsoft could be worried about competing with its manufacturing partners like Asus or Dell. One way to avoid that problem, she said, would be to price the Surface high enough to avoid direct competition.
?Keeping the price point of the Surface high limits the threat to Microsoft?s OEM [original equipment manufacturing] partners,? Rotman Epps said. ?At a $1,000 price point, this won?t be a mass market product, but it will still have the desired effect of exciting consumers and inspiring OEMs to do more with hardware design for Windows 8.?
That would set up an intriguing mix of business models: companies that sell their tablets below cost, such as the Amazon Kindle Fire; vendors that take a middle-of-the-road approach, building in a profit margin; and Microsoft, which under Epps' model would position the Surface as a sort of aspirational product designed to show what Windows 8 can do rather than being a money-maker on its own. It?s kind of like the sexy Corvette in the Chevy showroom primarily designed to inspire Impala and Malibu buyers.
?Microsoft clearly isn?t interested in competing on price,? Rotman Epps added. ?They want to preserve the value of the ecosystem they?ve created. But premium pricing also limits the market for who can afford your product.?
Premium Is Not A New Approach
Adopting a premium strategy wouldn?t be a new approach for Microsoft when selling direct. Take Microsoft Signature, for example.
Users can buy specific, optimized (and more expensive) laptops directly from Microsoft itself, free of the trial programs, printer utilities and other ?crapware? that Microsoft?s original equipment manufacturing (OEM) partners install. For $99, users can also take their existing notebooks to a Microsoft Store to receive the ?Signature Experience.? In this case, Microsoft is positioning itself as the, well, signature experience.
Rival Google has also taken this approach, positioning the premium-priced Google-branded Nexus products as the epitome of the Google hardware experience and leaving the discounts to its partners.
One could also argue that both AMD and Intel also offer premium microprocessors optimized for gaming under their own brands - AMD?s ?Black? Edition, for example.
Who's Gonna Pay?
ReadWriteWeb has already made the case that Microsoft designed the Surface Pro as a business tablet, even as some corporations have already begun adopting Apple?s iPad as a business tool.
Corporate budgetmakers may accept a premium for Windows Surface, if they decide that it provides a better return on investment than the iPad or other competitors. The fact that the Surface Pro runs a native version of Windows 8, and not the ARM-optimized version of Windows RT, may help its cause. The Surface will also be able to run versions of the new Microsoft Office.
Apart from collectors and gadget freaks, though, most consumers might not be so willing to shell out the extra cash, as Rotman Epps noted. But that?s important only if Microsoft is really looking for mass sales of the Surface.
If Surface sales are indeed the goal, said Patrick Moorhead, president and principal analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy, pricing will indeed matter.
?I believe Surface Windows RT tablets must be priced starting at $499 or less without the keyboard case,? Moorhead said. ?The keyboard case adds around $100 in value on top of that. For Windows 8 Pro, users are looking more at a tablet with PC functionality and could garner an additional $100 for a total of $599, or $699 with the keyboard case. The wild card in all of this are the number of high quality Metro apps. I believe Microsoft will need at least 5,000 high quality apps at launch, which based upon the apps in the Consumer Preview Store, looks to be a difficult task.? But the best strategy for Microsoft, however, might be to stake out a high-end price point that its OEM partners need not match.
What Would Be ?Competitive??
At the Surface unveiling, Microsoft announced that the tablets would be ?priced competitively? with current tablet offerings, and that the Pro version would be competitively priced against ultrabooks.
But what does ?competitive? mean? In general, manufacturers who release a product after a competitor have two choices: ?upsell? users, convincing them that the Surface?s feature set justifies a premium price, or try to lure customers through pricing discounts.
?In the case of competing with a market dominating product [like the iPad], it means either coming in as a feature rich but value-priced proposition, or demonstrating a higher value proposition at the same or relatively close price point,? Michael Gartenberg, a mobile analyst for Gartner, explained. ?Zune showed coming with a similar set of features to a market dominated by a competitor at the same price point isn?t going to get consumers to switch. At this point, iPad is the ?safe? choice for consumers, Microsoft will need to convince consumers that their products are a viable alternative, and more importantly, that their approach to the consumer digital ecosystem is the correct one in a post-PC world.?
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