BlackBerry takes a risk with its latest smartphone design, and breaks some understood conventions of the typical mobile device.

BlackBerry is, and will probably continue to be, a polarizing name in the mobile industry. After a long run as the darling of the business world, BlackBerry became everyone’s favorite punching bag in 2012. Once a status symbol, owning a BlackBerry device like the Bold or Curve is now a source of embarrassment. Those QWERTY devices were stunners though, compared to the so-bad-it-was-offensive BlackBerry Storm or the garish Torch – Frankenstein’s monster of smartphones. But 2013 brings with it a new start for BlackBerry with brand new hardware and a reconstructed operating system, both with a renewed focus on attractive and functional design.

The Hardware

Early reviews have pegged it as bland or boring, but the critics are wrong. The Z10 is a knockout. It looks like it’s been pulled straight out of a science fiction flick. The edge-to-edge screen makes it look positively futuristic while its top competition, the iPhone 5, looks like a half-hearted update to a three-year-old design.

Let’s get down to specifics. BlackBerry has learned from its mistakes. The company has discarded its past love of chrome accents and leather and stripped the Z10 of excess details. By minimalizing the casing, and making it only visible on the top and bottom of the display, it makes the screen even more of a focus as the center of the device. The Z10 is all about the display and BlackBerry captured this truth very well, putting the emphasis where it belongs.

The design is understated, yes, and that’s probably why so many people may find it boring. But it isn’t dull; it is practical, utilitarian, and quite comfortable. There are no bells and whistles, no blinking lights, and no capacitive buttons ever-present at the bottom. The casing reaches down from the top and up from the bottom only to hold the screen together. The back is unadorned, only broken by the iconic BlackBerry logo. It is what a smartphone should look like, no useless embellishments for the sake of “design,” but instead a device meant to handle your virtual life.

This approach to design is refreshing. To compare it to bigger players out there, Nokia’s Lumia 920 puts huge emphasis on hardware flourishes that can be distracting. The 920 is bulky and features a heavily promoted camera. It is difficult to interact with the device without being distracted by its physical features. It is the same with cheaper-feeling devices like the Galaxy S3 with its plastic body detracting from the software experience, a glossy exterior that shines with greasy fingerprints.

We refuse to praise the Q10 with attached keyboard because it is more of the same from the company and feels like a compulsory device rather than an exciting one. We will say that the Q10 is a welcome update to the once-great BlackBerry Bold, but it’s no more than a slicker version of what has come before. Just download SwiftKey and be done with it already.

The Software

Never in a million billion years would we have expected to be impressed with BlackBerry 10 enough to mention it in an article applauding design. But the Canadian smartphone-maker has done something new here, pushing the reliance on touch gestures for navigation to a whole new level while challenging some conventions in the industry.

For starters, the homescreen for BB10 is a 4×4 grid of your recent apps, breaking from the tradition of first showing users a list of installed apps. Touch an app to open it up and swipe up from the bottom to return home – there is no main button to do that for you. And there doesn’t need to be. From the recent apps, you can swipe from the left or right to access different functions. Swipe to the right and you’ll see the expected, seemingly unavoidable, app grid with all of the apps you’ve downloaded from BlackBerry World, which already has 70,000 apps on it. Swipe to the left and you’ll find the Hub, BlackBerry’s answer to the notification center, and it does the job well. The Hub keeps a time-sensitive list of actions you’ve performed, pulling in BBM, text messaging, email, Twitter, etc., to catch you up. A context menu, usually depicting quick settings, can be pulled down from the top of the screen. There is also an interesting, though gimmicky, feature called Peek that literally lets you glance at what you were doing previously.

The touch-centric user interface is how we’ve always wanted smartphones to work. Using capacitive buttons is cheap, buying into archaic remnants of a time when fingers and screens hadn’t met yet. Reaching the homescreen by flicking upwards is a succinct gesture that also reflects a real world action like you are tossing the app off the screen or pushing it off your virtual desk. The remaining gestures are equally simple, reminiscent of Windows 8, with swipes from each edge of the screen doing something specific. Questions of stability and speed aside, BB 10 has implemented compelling work here.

Of course, we still haven’t done a full review – but that doesn’t change the solid ideas being presented. Whether or not BB10 succeeds in revamping the dying brand, we can’t say BlackBerry didn’t give it 100 percent. The BlackBerry Z10 is gorgeous and a bold (not “Bold”) step forward for the company now known simply as BlackBerry.

Bohemia Interactive’s got a third game coming out this year alongside ArmA 3 and DayZ. ArmA Tactics is a strategy spinoff of the company’s military simulator series, and it’s also one of the first games for Nvidia’s new handheld gaming device.

Bohemia Interactive is ready to have a great 2013. DayZ and ArmA 3 are due to release sometime in the next twelve months and both titles have rabid fans anticipating them. The studio’s also planning to branch out beyond its hardcore simulation games too. Bohemia announced ArmA Tactics on Wednesday, a new turn-based strategy game due out this year.

Described as a “turn-based close combat strategy game,” ArmA Tactics lets you control a four-person Special Forces squad in battle fields akin to those in the main ArmA series, though you’ll see your characters rather than play from the first-person perspective. There’s a story-based campaign, but Bohemia says that there will also be randomly generated missions as well. On the surface, it sounds much like an ArmA take on XCOM: Enemy Unknown.

Bohemia isn’t a total stranger to the genre. The studio helped Black Element Software develop and release a remake of Carrier Command, a remake of the 1988 real-time strategy game, just last year. This is the first time the ArmA name has been put on a whole new genre.

The more unusual part of Bohemia’s announcement is that ArmA Tactics will be available for Project Shield, the portable, Google Android-based gaming machine from Nvidia. Both the game and the device are due out some time between April and July, making ArmA Tactics one of the machine’s very first games.

2012 was one of Bohemia Interactive’s best years and one of its worst years. On the one hand, its military simulator ArmA 2 saw what the studio said was a 500-percent increase in sales thanks to the runaway success of Dean Hall’s zombie apocalypse mod DayZ. It was so successful that Bohemia decided to make the mod into an official standalone title that would be out by the end of 2012, shipping alongside ArmA 3. Then both games were delayed to an unspecified date in 2013. That was on top of two of the arrest of two Bohemia developers charged with espionage in Greece.

The developers, Ivan Buchta and Martin Pezlar have been released though, and DayZ is progressing with a plethora of new content. This year looks like it will be markedly better than the last for Bohemia Interactive.

BlackBerry 10 OS was fully unveiled today along with the Z10 and Q10 phones that will run it. To help you sort out all the details, we’ve gathered the pertinent facts together in one, handy place. If you need to know about BB 10, this is your place.

Research in Motion has announced the release of BlackBerry 10 and two smartphones, the Z10 and Q10 during a live streamed, global event. There has been a lot of information released today, so here’s our quick guide covering all you need to know about BlackBerry 10.

It’s not RIM anymore, it’s just BlackBerry

BlackBerry 10 isn’t just a re-invention of an operating system. To show its commitment to change, Research in Motion (RIM) has changed its name. Now, RIM is officially known as “BlackBerry.” Using the tagline, “One brand, one promise,” CEO Thorsten Heins said, “We have transformed ourselves in and out.” That’s quite a promise, so does BlackBerry 10 live up to its introduction?

BlackBerry Z10

You may feel as if you already know the Z10, as it has been leaked so extensively. This is BlackBerry’s full touch phone and it boasts a 4.2-inch touchscreen with a 1280 x 720 pixel resolution, a dual-core 1.5GHz processor, 16GB of internal memory and an 8-megapixel camera. It also has 2GB of RAM, a microSD card slot, NFC and Bluetooth 4.0. At 9.3mm thick it’s not the slimmest smartphone available, and at 138 grams it’s not the lightest either. See how the Z10 compares to the iPhone 5 and Galaxy S3 here.

The Z10 is compatible with 4G LTE networks all over the world, and will be offered in black and white color schemes, although the latter will be exclusive to Verizon in the U.S. and Phones4U in the UK.

Read our full hands-on impressions of the BlackBerry Z10.

BlackBerry Q10

RIM (or “BlackBerry”) couldn’t get away with ditching the traditional QWERTY BlackBerry phone, which according to Thorsten Heins, was a must-have piece of hardware for the firm. Not much is known about the technical specification of the phone yet, only that it has a 3.1-inch touchscreen, a 720 x 720 pixel resolution and a glass-weave back panel, which is supposedly lighter and stronger than plastic. Early reports indicate the Q10 shares the same dual-core, 1.5GHz processor and 2GB of RAM as the Z10. Unlike the Z10, its availability hasn’t been announced; however, during the Q&A session after the BB 10 launch event ended, it was revealed the U.S. should see the phone in April. See how the Q10 compares to older BB phones here.

Read our full hands-on impressions of the BlackBerry Q10.

BlackBerry 10

BlackBerry 10 the software is what BlackBerry the firm is pinning its future hopes on, and like the Z10, it has been previewed, tested and leaked until there was almost nothing left to reveal at the launch event. However, it was good to see it up and running in its final version on stage and the smooth, gesture controlled user interface is sure to have won it many fans.

The new operating system promises an excellent keyboard, a super-fast web browser, easy one-thumb controls, the ability to keep your work phone and personal phone separate on the same device using Balance, plus 70,000 applications, plus movies and music available inside the BlackBerry World store at launch.

In addition to all this, we were treated to a demonstration of BBM Video, where a BlackBerry Messenger conversation was instantly turned into a video call, plus the a screen sharing session showed BBM Video’s versatility. BlackBerry Remember, an all-encompassing personal organizer was shown, as was the camera’s clever time-shift feature. BlackBerry 10 will operate in exactly the same way on both the Z10 and the Q10 and there will be no difference in features either.

The Competition

Despite BlackBerry not acknowledging the iPhone exists, it does and it’s very much BB 10’s competition, as is every top-end Android smartphone from the Samsung Galaxy S3 to the HTC One X+. What’s more, BlackBerry has said it will be updating BB 10 hardware every 12 to 15 months, so the phones we’ve seen today will be with us until at least this time next year.

Under normal circumstances, this isn’t a big problem, but in-between now and then we’re almost certainly going to get a new iPhone, the Galaxy S4 and the new HTC M7, plus new Windows Phones. The same can be said on the software front, as Android 5.0 and iOS 7 are on the cards for later in 2013. BlackBerry 10 needs to be very good indeed if it’s to stay fresh in amongst all this new hardware.

If anyone should be looking over their shoulders it’s Microsoft, as BlackBerry 10’s ability to appeal to both business and personal users – through features like Balance – could be the level of versatility needed to attract those who don’t want to get involved with Apple or Google.

BlackBerry’s understated Q10 could be its a dark horse, a device which really doesn’t have any competition, as the QWERTY Android phones that do exist aren’t worth buying. If the firm is right, and there really is still demand for this form factor, the Q10 could be a winner for BlackBerry.

Should you put your money down?

This is a tough one, as BlackBerry 10 is completely new and comes from a manufacturer that despite appearances, is still on the brink of having to sell off parts of the business to survive. Hardcore BlackBerry fans won’t care though, and those wanting something different should take a look.

Potential buyers in the U.S. won’t need to make a decision yet, as the phones are still at least a month away from going on sale. It’s a different story in Canada and the UK, as they’ll both get to buy the BlackBerry Z10 over the coming week. UK network O2 is offering a slightly reduced tariff on the Z10 for the first two weeks – from £42 per month down to £36 – making it a good choice. In Canada, Telus, Bell, and Virgin are all pushing the Z10 for $150 with a frightening three-year contract, which could have the unfortunate effect of prompting anyone wavering to look elsewhere.

Adopting BlackBerry 10 at this early stage is more of a risk than choosing Android or iOS as your mobile ecosystem, but could be seen as comparable to adopting Windows Phone. More than any before it, BlackBerry 10 is a try-before-you-buy OS, but there’s a good chance it could turn out to be what you’re after. Exactly how many people will think this way remains the big question.

17-Bit Entertainment’s comes roaring out the gate with a debut game that may not change the world but is a nearly perfect game of quick fix strategy. Skulls of the Shogun is an effervescent panacea of strategy hounds that need a break from XCOM.

It can be said that Chess is a perfect game. It’s beautiful with its simple, but distinctive pieces on a black and white board, and it inspires beautiful thoughts through strategy, practice, and understanding of an opponent. There are an astronomical number of different possible chess matches—1.0516 X 10ˆ270993 different matches to be exact—and no human being can possibly play them all. Amazing as it is though, sometimes chess is exhausting. Sometimes you want the satisfaction of strategy but without the rigmarole of painful patience. Call it fast food for the brain. 17-Bit’s debut game Skulls of the Shogun will scratch that itch and then some. A perfectly executed slice of strategy gaming, Skulls of the Shogun is sweet relief for anyone exhausted by the strain of XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Fire Emblem, and similarly chess-like video games.

Funny Little Skeletons

Skulls director, Jake Kazdal, wears his heart on his sleeve in Skulls of the Shogun. Unlike those aforementioned strategy games, Skulls hews closest to Nintendo’s Advance Wars series, especially with its lighthearted tone. Samurai general Akamoto is struck down in battle and sent to wait centuries in line for access to the afterlife. Being an irascible, pragmatic leader of men both living and dead, Akamoto decides that waiting is for suckers and moves to conquer the land of the dead, rallying deceased soldiers to his cause. This leads him into a war against the Shogun of the Dead and the Kurokawa, Akamoto’s former second in command and murderer.

Ignore the seemingly seriousness of the set up. In practice the story’s a charmer, with a cartoon look that’s part ‘60s pop art and part PlayStation-era role-playing game. The dialogue especially keeps Skulls light. The very first stage in the campaign includes references to Tombstone and Anchorman while characters introduced throughout – like the violence-loving god of thunder Raiden – make things funny.

The humor actually makes it easier to absorb how the game is played. At the start of each stage Akamoto is given a set number of soldiers to command: a selection of archers, cavalrymen, and foot soldiers. Each character type has strengths and weaknesses compared to others. Cavalry for instance can cover long distances over Skulls’ contained jungles, forests, and rice paddies, and they can take out archers without worrying about counter attacks. Cavalry are easily knocked back by foot soldiers though, making them vulnerable near thorn bushes or cliffs. Akamoto himself is a powerful force, but he also needs to be protected since the match is over if he gets knocked down.

Steady Strategy

Skulls slowly adds layers of complexity on top of this. Eating the skulls of downed enemies upgrades soldiers. Possessing shrines will let you summon healing or attack-spell wielding monks, or even more soldiers provided you’ve collected rice from the field. Every little action throughout Skulls has a perfect balance of risk and reward, and by the time the game reveals the full swath of possibilities for what you can do in a fight, it’s warmly taught you everything you need to know.

A perfect example from the middle of the game: Kurokawa’s up on a ridge with archers sniping your forces. There’s no way to reach him on foot, and using your own archers will only get them killed from counter attacks. Nearby is a shrine to summon a Salamander Monk, a just-introduced character that can summon a rampaging ogre into battle. The game doesn’t explicitly tell you to summon a monster up on Kurokawa’s ridge, it just makes a simple, quick scenario to use knowledge you just learned in the previous stage. Skulls is full of seamlessly designed moments like this.

Some might be worried about a lack of depth in the game. There are no persistent units or deep character management in Skulls of the Shogun, which makes perfect thematic sense. It’s the land of the dead! New soldiers are everywhere just waiting to join the cause, but no one’s looking to upgrade themselves beyond a little comfort during their eternal rest. It also makes Skulls far more approachable than a game like XCOM. Not having to worry about losing long-lasting soldiers due to a single crappy decision in Skulls makes the prospect of replaying a 30-minute level far more tolerable. Strategy games usually thrive on a sense of permanence. Skulls soars precisely because each fight is its own distinct scenario.

That also makes it easy to pick up and play against other people. Skulls’ multiplayer options let you play against friends on a single Xbox in your living room, or online against players on Windows 8, Windows Phone, and Surface tablets as well. Online players don’t even have to tackle each other at the same time. Make a move during your morning commute and your opponent can respond when they feel like it. I didn’t get to test the game on anything but an Xbox 360, but multiplayer on a couch is a succulent delight.

Conclusion

Like chess, like the very best games, Skulls of the Shogun just works. That it’s funny, pretty, and easy to learn is just a bonus.

There is nothing about 17-Bit’s game that’s going to change the world. There’s no revelation waiting inside its strategy, no piece of design that will transform the way we think about strategy games. It’s a simple idea executed just right, which is an impressive enough feat on its own. Skulls isn’t chess, but it doesn’t have to be.

Score: 9.5 out of 10

 (This game was reviewed using Xbox 360 copy provided by 17-Bit)

The new Targus Touch Pen gives laptops running Windows 8 the power of touch.

Did you upgrade your laptop to Windows 8? Does it feel like it would be a whole lot easier to use if you could just reach out and touch (or possibly punch) the screen? You can stop cursing out your mouse thanks to Targus. The company found a solution – or at least a workaround – with its new Touch Pen that promises to give your Windows 8 laptop the power of touch. Honestly, it sounds like a product that should be pitched on a late night infomercial. Thankfully, it’s not. It’s available through Targus for one easy payment of $100.

Targus describes the pen as a way to bring new life to an older laptop that’s been upgraded to Windows 8. The pen comes with a USB-powered magnetic receiver that attaches to the bezel of your laptop screen and gives the screen its “touch” ability. Unfortunately, your digit will not do; the pen has to be used in order to manipulate items on the screen. As long as you don’t mind the pen, you can swipe through tiles, doodle in Paint, and and scroll through Web pages. 

The pen requires a one-time calibration and setup, but after that, just clip the receiver onto the side of your screen, plug in its USB cord, and it’s ready to go. It’s as easy as plugging in an external mouse.

Sure, it sounds great; but does it actually work? According to the folks over at PC World, it does. They took the Touch Pen for a spin on an aging 17-inch laptop that was recently upgraded to Windows 8 and came away with a positive impression of it. Like most add-ons, it’s likely not a cure for all of your Windows 8 gripes, but it’s a relatively inexpensive step in the right direction.

After a botched film adaptation and a lackluster sequel in 2010, the Prince of Persia series is primed for a refresh. Despite leaked screens suggesting otherwise, Ubisoft says that it’s put the famous franchise on hold.

Ubisoft’s got a lot on its plate right now. It’s revived Rayman series is about to get a new Wii U entry with Rayman Legends; ZombiU is a strong new franchise; Watch Dogs doesn’t exist in any real way and people are psyched up for it; it bought up Obsidian’s South Park: The Stick of Truth and Patrice Desilet’s 1666 from THQ; and Splinter Cell Blacklist is about to bring Sam Fisher back to living rooms after a three-year hiatus. And that’s not even counting the non-gaming things it is up to, including Assassins Creed and Splinter Cell films. The schedule is just packed. Hence, it makes sense why Ubisoft is stepping away from one of its most profitable and last series, Prince of Persia.

Ubisoft Montreal CEO Yannis Mallat confirmed in a new interview with IGN that despite the fact that the company hasn’t put out a new Prince of Persia since 2010, the series isn’t coming back any time soon.

“Brand management is a tricky thing,” explains Mallat, “It needs people’s attention a lot. I think it is fair to say that, right now, Prince of Persia is being paused. But we said the same thing for some other brands that suddenly popped up because a team is willing to do it.”

Jordan Mechner’s original Prince of Persia was a staple of PC gaming after it was first released in 1989, but the series didn’t become a huge part of Ubisoft’s stable of properties until the series was re-imagined in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time on PlayStation 2, Gamecube, and Xbox in the early ‘00s. A series of sequels to that game sold well, but to diminishing returns. Ubisoft has tried to resuscitate the series twice in the past five years, first with a fantastical reboot in 2008 (pictured above) called Prince of Persia and then a return to the Sands of Time series in 2010 with Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands. Neither recaptured audiences’ attention. The critically panned 2010 Prince of Persia: Sands of Time film starring Jake Gyllenhaal didn’t help, despite managing a decent international gross. 

It appeared in August that Ubisoft was planning to reboot the series yet again with a game codenamed Prince of Persia Zero, targeted at next generation consoles like the Xbox 720 and PlayStation 4. Based on Mallat’s comments  that game may have been shelved, though that doesn’t mean the series is dead.

“I’m not scared at all for Prince of Persia fans. We’ll find something to entertain them with in the future,” said Mallat, “Prince of Persia is as important as any other franchise for Ubisoft. As soon as we have something to show, we will.”

Our initial impressions of the BlackBerry Z10 are positive thanks to the smoothness of BlackBerry 10 and great design. Savior of the brand? Maybe. A solid contender in a crowded smartphone market? Definitely.

There’s a lot riding on the new BlackBerry Z10 smartphone. It’s the first device to launch with the Blackberry 10 operating system and will be the standard-bearer for the revival of the brand. It must stand out in a sea of similar-looking Android phones and convince people that it’s modern enough to compete. And its parents probably want it to go to Harvard and become a doctor someday.

If you project too many expectations on any device it can fall flat. But from our first impressions, the BlackBerry Z10 may be able to stand up to the pressure and fulfill some of the hopes pinned on it. This phone has a solid design, speedy performance, and runs a slick, well-organized OS. Will it be able to stem the tide of BlackBerry defectors and maybe entice new users? Keep reading to find out.

The BlackBerry Z10′s design is reminiscent of the iPhone 5, mostly because it’s about the same size. It feels good in the hand thanks to the gentle curve of the edges on the back and the overall narrowness of the body. The 4.2-inch display extends to the right and left edges, giving the front of the phone an uncluttered, zen-like look. The whole design is like this, from the subtly textured back to the minimal buttons on the edges. The focus is, as it should be, on the display itself.

We’re impressed by the 4.2-inch display’s bright colors and crispness. The pixel dense 1280 x 768 pixel HD resolution also helps. It’s a good canvas for the BlackBerry 10 interface. In the demos, the touchscreen proved sensitive and responsive; however, we did note that the screens got smudgy pretty fast and that impacted performing gestures.

The entire interface is gesture based and can take some getting used to. The gestures themselves are simple and easy to understand and remember, so the learning curve won’t be too steep. Overall, the OS looks like it’s designed to make navigation faster and get users where they want to go efficiently. This is a big plus.

Best example of this? The BlackBerry Hub. BlackBerry has always appealed to messaging fiends most. For those users, the Hub will not disappoint. We like that it can pull messages together from multiple sources – email and BBM to LinkedIn and Facebook – but doesn’t look messy or disorganized or overwhelming. Same goes for contacts and calendar. Messages, appointments, and your connections flow together in a way that makes it easy to parse the tons of data thrown at you everyday.

Another way the Z10 helps calm the chaos is by dividing work and personal stuff with BlackBerry Balance. We’ve seen separate profiles before and like the idea in general. The difference here is that there’s a firewall between the work and personal halves of the phone. Even if you’re assigned the Z10 by your IT department, your boss still won’t be able to peek at what’s going on over on the Personal side. And the Work side is protected by a password and other security measures.

The Blackberry faithful didn’t react well to the last touchscreen-only device from RIM in paert because so many still love the physical keyboard. There will be a phone for those people soon enough (the BlackBerry Q10), but don’t write off the Z10 just because it doesn’t have a keyboard. Our first impression of the new keyboard is very positive thanks to the predictive text, the ability to flick words, and other gestures that make typing easier and faster. It won’t offer the same tactile sensation as a physical keyboard, though accuracy is less of an issue than on other touchscreen devices. That’s the key here.

Setting aside all the baggage of the past and the hopes for the future, our first impression of the BlackBerry Z10 is very positive. The interface is everything you’d expect from a modern smartphone, it’s backed by a ton of apps, the design is light, comfortable, and attractive. Oh, and the screen is beautiful. It’s well worth checking out when it finally comes to U.S. carriers in March.

Samsung and Apple are continuing to dominate the smartphone market just about everywhere on the planet, but the story is a little different in the second most populated country in the world. A recent report is now indicating that Nokia is the most trusted brand in India, beating out the likes of Samsung, Sony and other major cell phone manufacturers.

It is perhaps because, while Nokia has lost significant market share, it still does reasonably well with lower-end cell phones for emerging markets like India, an area that some of the other cell phone companies tend to ignore. It also helps that Nokia is growing its Lumia family of Windows Phone devices and these are starting to do pretty well in places like India, Russia and parts of Asia. These hit the higher end market, helping to balance Nokia’s portfolio.

To further spur on its success in India, Nokia is even hosting a reality television show there where consumers can present app ideas to a panel of judges. The best ideas are then made into a reality, turning them into real apps for Nokia’s Windows Phone devices. Windows Phone and Nokia may be lagging behind in markets like the United States, but it shows that the Finnish company is able to capitalize on opportunities where it sees them.

Starting February 1, college students can get Windows 8 Pro for 35 percent less than the regular price. Thanks, Microsoft!

Microsoft’s Windows 8 Pro upgrade promo is slated to end tomorrow, January 31, 2013. That means if you fail to make your purchase by then, you’ll have to pay $200 for an upgrade instead of $40. We suggest getting yourself a copy now if you’re going to buy one anyway. You can always install Microsoft’s new operating system at a much later date. However, if you do end up missing the promo, you can still get the upgrade for only $70 … as long as you’re a college student or a university or college staff member. 

In a blog post today, Microsoft announced the student promo and rollout schedule. The new promotional rate will be effective February 1 in the U.S., the day after the introductory price offer ends. A total of 49 additional countries will follow, with rollouts slated for February 21, March 7, and March 19. While $70 is still a lot higher than $40, it’s still better than having to pay the full $200 for a Windows 8 Pro upgrade, especially if you’re a broke college student living on a diet of ramen and canned beans. Note that Microsoft will verify your identity if you apply for a student copy of the OS, so don’t try any funny business. There’s also a limit of five discounted copies within a 12-month period in case you decide to equip more than five devices with Windows 8 this year. 

Considering upgrading to Apple’s latest operating system, Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8.2), is only $20, even the $70 student discount of Windows 8 seems like a lot. Students, will any of you take advantage of the discount and upgrade to Windows 8? 

← Previous Next →

The first touchscreen BlackBerry 10 phone, the Z10 is out and we’re on the scene to check it out. Here are our hands-on pictures of the new phone.

A few weeks back during CES 2013, we had the chance to play around with BlackBerry 10 and were quite impressed with it. Now the OS has officially been launched and has a couple devices to call home. Perhaps the most exciting of the new handhelds from BlackBerry is the Z10.

Positioned as the flagship phone for BB 10, the Z10 takes the road less travelled for a BlackBerry product and offers a sizable and vibrant touchscreen display. The 4.2-inch screen is packed with pixels with a resolution of 1280 x 768 pixels. While the screen is impressive, it’s the operating system that is the real point of interest on the Z10. We snapped some pictures of the device and it’s fresh OS to give you a look at what to expect if you’re one of the planned early adopters just waiting to get your hands on it.