A NASA spacecraft built to study the atmosphere of Mars like never before will arrive at the Red Planet tonight (Sept. 21) and you can watch it live online.
After 10 months in deep-space, NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft is expected to enter orbit around Mars and begin a one-year mission studying the planet's upper atmosphere. The Mars arrival will cap a 442 million-mile (711 million kilometers) trek across the solar system.
How do you compete when your fiercest rival is willing to give away its product? That’s the dilemma Microsoft faces in trying to compete with Google, which offers the Android operating system and Chrome OS to OEMs for nothing.
Redmond’s response, earlier this year, was to introduce a variant of the Windows client software: Windows 8.1 with Bing. This OS option is available to OEMs at a price that’s a carefully guarded secret but is probably close to zero. Yes, there’s a catch—two of them, in fact. Windows 8.1 for Bing is available only on low-cost devices, and OEMs are unable to change the default search engine during the setup process. (The PC buyer can change search defaults with no restrictions after starting up for the first time.)
In all other respects, this is just Windows 8.1, available in 32-bit and 64-bit versions, with variants in Chinese and single (non-English) languages.
At the IFA tradeshow in Berlin this week, OEMs have begun taking advantage of the lower Windows licensing cost to unleash a flood of small tablets at prices that were previously unheard of for Windows devices. Toshiba’s 7-inch Encore Mini tablet, for example, will sell for $120 in the U.S. (129 Euros in Europe). Acer’s Iconia Tab 8 W, an 8-inch tablet with a quad-core CPU, is priced aggressively as well, at $150. And plenty more are on the way, all running Windows 8.1 for Bing.
The new, cheaper Windows isn’t just for tablets. Microsoft and its OEM partners are taking aim at Chromebooks, with Windows 8.1 with Bing showing up on low-cost laptops this week as well.
Toshiba’s new Satellite CL10-B, for example, is an 11-inch clamshell-style laptop with 32 GB of eMMC flash storage and 100 GB of OneDrive cloud storage, prepaid for two years. The price tag of 269 Euros undercuts the new 13-inch Chromebook 2, which Toshiba is exhibiting a mere 10 feet away at its IFA stand. That device, with a bigger screen, checks in at a price of 349 Euros for 16 GB of built-in storage and 100 GB of Google Drive cloud storage, also prepaid for two years.
And it’s just one of many similar neo-netbooks that will be showing up this fall, including the resurrection of the Ur-netbook, the ASUS EeeBook Z205, at $199. HP’s Pavilion 10Z, introduced earlier this summer, is one of the few Windows 8.1 with Bing devices that includes a touchscreen.
One way that Microsoft and its partners are able to tamp down costs is by shrinking the amount of built-in storage available with these new devices. The specs for Windows 8.1 with Bing allow manufacturers to ship tablets with as little as 16 GB of flash (or SSD) storage. The clamshell devices typically include 32 GB of flash RAM.
The reason PC makers can get away with such skimpy storage is a new feature called WIMBoot, which allows the OEM to install Windows so that it runs directly from the compressed image file previously used only for Windows 8.x recovery functions.
This diagram, taken from a Microsoft technical article for OEMs, explains how the disk layout differs for a WIMBoot installation.
With a WIMBoot installation, the system boots from the same Windows image (WIM) file used for system recovery purposes, freeing huge amounts of disk space. Image via Microsoft TechNet.
The difference in free storage is profound. On that Toshiba Satellite notebook with 32 GB of flash storage, I checked the system disk using File Explorer: there was a total of 24.5 billion bytes of free space (reported as 22.9 GB in File Explorer), which means the full Windows installation takes up only 7.5 billion bytes, or 7 GB as reported in File Explorer. (For an explanation of the confusing way Windows reports disk space usage, see this article.)
That’s a huge improvement over a conventional Windows installation, which can gobble up half of a 32 GB drive. In my tests of other systems using WIMBoot compression, I’ve seen no degradation of performance. In addition, every device I looked at offers expansion through removable storage.
Several of the low-cost devices I’ve seen at IFA so far also include a one-year subscription to Office 365 Personal. Presumably Microsoft is betting that a significant proportion of those device owners will get hooked on Office and renew their subscription when the year is up.
The move is vaguely reminiscent of the inexpensive Starter editions Microsoft released in the Windows Vista and Windows 7 era. Those editions were hobbled, feature-wise, and at one point Microsoft even planned to restrict those editions to running only three apps simultaneously, although they eventually reversed course on that decision. In contrast, Windows 8.1 with Bing contains the full Windows feature set.
And it’s worth remembering that although those early netbooks were unbearably slow, that’s not likely to be a problem with this generation. Modern CPUs are more than capable of handling the demands of media consumption and basic productivity tasks without breaking a sweat. None of these low-priced devices will be suitable for video or photo editing but that’s not their intended role.
For OEMs already dealing with razor-thin profit margins, these new device classes are a mixed blessing at best. The slimmer prices will also drive down revenues for Microsoft, which is used to collecting a full license fee for every Windows device. But for consumers the low prices might be enough to distract attention away from Android devices and Chromebooks.
This story has been updated since its original publication to include discussions of WIMBoot performance and historical comparisons with earlier Windows versions.
A major threat looms over wireless carriers that have invested billions in lightning-fast cellular networks: the humble Wi-Fi router.
Well more than half of the online activity produced by smartphone users happens over Wi-Fi, according to newly released data from Adobe Systems (ADBE). Although the report just came out on Monday, Adobe’s research found that Wi-Fi had already surpassed Web browsing via cellular networks by early 2013. The data come from more than 10,000 websites.
AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ) have spent years building towers and hoarding expensive wireless spectrum for their LTE (long-term evolution) networks under the assumption that they could charge more once their customers became accustomed to watching Netflix (NFLX) on their phones. The carriers have gradually tightened the ropes on how much data customers can use without forking over extra money each month.
As customers have increased their data consumption, companies like AT&T have been happy to offload some portion of that activity to Wi-Fi networks as a way to clear up the cell networks. “But there’s a flavor of too much of a good thing here, where Wi-Fi offloads start to really impinge on the prospects of monetizing all that additional usage,” says industry analyst Craig Moffett. “All the carriers have put their eggs in the basket of incremental usage as the source of revenue growth. It isn’t going according to plan.”
As users become more aware of the limits on their data plans, they’re more careful about moving to Wi-Fi as often as possible, says Tamara Gaffney, an analyst with Adobe’s Digital Index. Wi-Fi networks are also spreading from retail stores to parks and stadiums, creating an increasing number of situations where people can easily leave cell networks.
In an added wrinkle, T-Mobile (TMUS) and Sprint (S) have decided to compete against the bigger carriers by being more generous with their own data plans—undermining the ability of the industry to lower data caps all the way to the bank.
The carriers know the Wi-Fi shift is happening. One response to slowing smartphone revenue is a parallel push to move consumers into tablets, which are great for performing data-intensive tasks like watching entire movies. All of the major carriers in the U.S. have been handing out tablets with reckless abandon. A recent AT&T promotion cut $200 off the price of an iPad to anyone willing to buy an iPhone and sign up for a two-year contract.
But Adobe’s data show a shortcoming in the tablet plan, since 93 percent of Web browsing on tablets takes place over Wi-Fi. Moffett says carriers are barely breaking even on tablets, given the discounts they’re offering on the devices themselves. The companies’ attempts to hawk data plans by giving away iPads are likely to become an even harder sell, because people are proving unwilling to ante up for a new tabletevery two years.
Carriers have also been excited about the Internet of Things, thinking that if you can’t sell data plans to new people, maybe you can sell them to refrigerators and sports cars. Connected cars probably carry the most potential, because they’re essentially giant mobile devices that rely on mobile networks.
But the LTE networks built by the wireless carriers aren’t ideal for stationary objects. Smart appliances that live indoors are likely to use free Wi-Fi rather than expensive data plans. Devices parked in remote outdoor locations are also unlikely to connect via expensive, battery-intensive cellular networks.
Startups have started building low-bandwidth wireless networks for connected devices that cost only a fraction of the subscription fees for LTE networks. While carriers talk a big game about the Internet of Things, Moffett thinks they may not have the advantage they think they do: “Assuming that a lot of the data revenue will go to carriers is, in effect, betting against the ingenuity of Silicon Valley.”
Brustein is a writer for Businessweek.com in New York
it live online.
