Microsoft unveiled the next version of Windows on September 30, choosing to skip a version number and hop from 8 to 10. While the final version of Windows 10 is expected to be released in 2015, the Technical Preview release - targeted at PC experts who understand the risks involved in downloading unfinished software - is now  available.

Understanding Windows 10

In this preview, Windows 10 will go through a lot of change with updates, and you will have access to the Windows Feedback app. This app helps send feedback to Microsoft about the different features they are adding and removing to Windows 10 in the preview period and thus, helps you be a part of the team that improves and polishes the OS.

That apart, there are many new features that you can try out with Windows 10. For one thing, it has a new start menu - a blend of live tiles and classic desktop apps. The Windows apps also don't have to run in a forced full-screen mode, making them more useful for desktop users. Windows 10 also features much improved file explorer and search features.

Windows also finally supports multiple desktops now. If these are features you had been crying out for since switching to Windows 8, then the Windows 10 Technical Preview will be quite appealing.

Warning
Before you proceed to try this release, know that you might face system-breaking bugs and end up losing data. If you're installing Windows 10 on your primary PC, we suggest you take a complete backup. Microsoft recommends that you install it on a secondary PC, which is sound advice when using unfinished software.

How to download Windows 10 Technical Preview
If you still want to go ahead, then here's how you can download the Windows 10 Technical Preview.

1. Join the Windows Insider Program using this page.

2. Make sure you have a machine that meets the Windows 10 minimum system requirements:

Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster

RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) (32-bit) or 2 GB (64-bit)

Free hard disk space: 16 GB

Graphics card: Microsoft DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM driver

A Microsoft account and Internet access

Microsoft also notes that you won't be able to play DVDs using Windows Media Player after installing the preview. It says that some processors and hardware configurations might be blocked from installing the preview, without naming any specific models. Currently, only three languages are supported in the preview - English, Simplified Chinese and Brazilian Portuguese.

3. Download the Windows 10 Technical Preview install files directly from these links:

• Download Windows 10 English 32-bit (2.9GB)
• Download Windows 10 English 64-bit (3.8GB)
• Download Windows 10 English UK 32-bit (2.94GB)
• Download Windows 10 English UK 64-bit (3.79GB)
• Download Windows 10 Chinese (Simplified) 32-bit (3.05GB)
• Download Windows 10 Chinese (Simplified) 64-bit (3.96GB)
• Download Windows 10 Portuguese (Brazil) 32-bit (2.91GB)
• Download Windows 10 Portuguese (Brazil) 64-bit (3.76GB)

4. After downloading one of these files, you can use an app like ImgBurn to burn the Windows 10 image file to a DVD or a USB pen drive.

5. Double click (or double tap if you are on a touch device) setup.exe and follow the on-screen instructions.

If prompted for the Windows 10 Technical Preview product key, use NKJFK-GPHP7-G8C3J-P6JXR-HQRJR

User data and rollback
If you are installing the preview on top of Windows 7 or 8 and above, you should be able to preserve Windows settings, personal files, and most apps when upgrading to Windows 10 Technical Preview. However, Windows Vista users will have to do a clean install, and since the Windows 10 Technical Preview is x86 only, Windows RT users are completely out of luck.

If, after installing Windows 10 Technical Preview, you want to go back to your old version of Windows for whatever reason, you need to be prepared before you install the preview. Windows 7 or Vista users should create recovery media from a recovery partition on your PC using software provided by your PC manufacturer. Windows 8 or above users should create a USB recovery drive.

Check the Microsoft website for more information before proceeding with the installation of Windows 10 Technical Preview.

Updates and other information
Once you've installed the preview, you'll get automatic updates. Your preview copy will expire on April 15, 2015, by when we should have a consumer preview of Windows 10. Microsoft has posted instructions to help you familiarise with the new Windows 10 operating system.

The Windows Insider Program allows users to stay on the cutting edge of Windows software. Microsoft will issue frequent updates that you can download as and when available.

A consumer preview version of Windows 10 will be available early next year, and that is probably a much better option for most users. If you can't wait though, you can download this early release build of Windows 10.

For more tutorials, bookmark us now.

Google on Wednesday unwrapped Android 5.0 Lollipop, officially replacing the "Android L" code name by which the latest version of its mobile platform previously had been known.

"Lollipop is our largest, most ambitious release on Android, with over 5,000 new APIs for developers," wrote Sundar Pichai, Google's senior vice president for Android, Chrome & Apps, in a blog post. "Lollipop is designed to be flexible, to work on all your devices and to be customized for you the way you see fit."

Three new Nexus devices -- the Nexus 6 phone, the Nexus 9 tablet and the Nexus Player Android TV streaming media player -- will run the new version of the mobile platform and will be available for preorder later this month, with in-store availability planned for November.

The new software also will be available on Nexus 4, 5, 7, 10 and Google Play edition devices in the coming weeks, Pichai said.

Marking Android 5.0's official debut, Google also installed the official "Lollipop" statue at its Mountain View, California, headquarters.

Consistency On All Devices

After previewing Android 5.0 Lollipop at its Google I/O conference in June, Google offered further news about it last month, when it confirmed that the software would feature encryption turned on by default.

Now there are details about its other features as well.

Reflecting an approach Google calls "Material Design," for instance, Lollipop features a consistent experience across devices.

"Now content responds to your touch, or even your voice, in more intuitive ways, and transitions between tasks are more fluid," Pichai explained.

Battery-Saver Feature

Aiming to offer users more control over their devices, the software lets them adjust settings so that only certain people and notifications can get through at certain times, such as while in the middle of a meeting. When an important notification comes through in such situations, it's visible directly from the lockscreen.

Also new in Lollipop is a battery-saver feature that extends device life by as much as 90 minutes, Pichai said.

Multiple user accounts and guest user mode are enabled, and devices can be secured with a PIN, password or pattern -- or by pairing the phone to a trusted device like a watch or car with Smart Lock.

Google Saying They Get It'

"There's something to be said for offering a consistent design across devices," Ramon Llamas, research manager for mobile phones at IDC, told LinuxInsider.

However, "let's be 100 percent clear: This is not the first time anyone has done that," Llamas added.

Apple has, he pointed out, as have Microsoft and BlackBerry to some extent.

"This is Google saying they get it," Llamas said. "No one wants to have to reinvent the wheel when they're looking for the same content or playing the same game."

Pure Android Experience

Equally important will be making the design obvious, Llamas suggested.

"Some smartphone vendors, who shall remain nameless, cram everything under the sun in there, and some of those features you don't get around to using," he explained. "Simplicity and obviousness will help drive usage."

By and large, Android 5.0 gets a thumbs-up, Llamas said: "There are things to like, and there's enough for all the individual OEMs to put their own spin on it."

That may please the Android multitudes, but "for the true Android cognoscente, the new Nexus devices can't get here soon enough," added Llamas. "They want the pure experience."

Other Emerging Markets

Android 5.0 represents the most extensive update to the platform since Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich was released in 2011, said Ronald Gruia, director of emerging telecoms at Frost & Sullivan.

"They're clearly trying to push Android as the platform of the future, and they want it on every connected device," he explain. "This is the first step in that vision."

The software's relatively small footprint will enable it to run even on entry-level devices, Gruia pointed out, which will help ensure that "emerging markets like China and India don't miss out on some of the new features."

Playing Catch-Up

Android 5.0 does offer "a cleaner and somewhat more user-friendly UI for Android," independent mobility analyst Michael Morgan told LinuxInsider.

The use of Android Runtime (known also as "ART") and support for 64-bit processing will go "a long way toward making the Android experience snappier or less laggy," he added.

"I expect these features will be welcomed by consumers and will inherently improve the overall user experience," Morgan said. "However, I also believe that is Android playing catch-up to the iOS experience that already exists." 

We always endeavor to bring readers news of operating system update for various smartphones and tablets, and today we have bumper news on this score. A Samsung device Android 4.4.4 update roadmap has leaked, giving expected time frames for 13 different phones.

Android 4.4.4 KitKat is the latest version available, although we firmly expect the new Android L upgrade to become available in the coming weeks. For now it’s back to Android 4.4.4 though, and the roadmap below gives plenty of information for when you should expect your device to receive this update.

For example there’s a ‘completed’ status of the update for the Galaxy S5 (SM-G900I and SM-G900F), Galaxy Note 3 (SM-N900), and Galaxy Note 3 LTE (SM-N9005) and all of these are listed for the update in October. Other devices listed have either a ‘pending’ or ‘Final Testing’ status shown, with an estimated time of arrival as November this year

As you can see from the leaked image the devices scheduled for the Android 4.4.4 update in November are the Samsung Galaxy S4, Galaxy S4 LTE, Galaxy Note 3 Neo, Galaxy S4 Mini Duos, Galaxy S4 Mini, Galaxy Grand 2 Duos, Galaxy Grand 2, Galaxy Note 2, and Galaxy Note 2 LTE. You can see individual model numbers in the roadmap image.

It’s believed that Google will announce more about the upcoming Android L update tomorrow, so hopefully it shouldn’t be too much longer until we can start giving readers news about when their devices will receive the new OS version.

Source: XDA Developers

The Android 4.4.4 update for the HTC One (M8) has began rolling out hours after the reveal of its new handset, the HTC Desire Eye, and the new EYE Experience features of HTC's Sense 6.0 operating system.

The update (software build 3.28.401.6) will officially bring the HTC One (M8) to Android 4.4.4 KitKat, with the 252 MB download's most notable inclusion being the new EYE Experience app features.

The EYE Experience camera settings offer a number of new modes such as "auto selfie" and "crop me in", which simultaneously takes a photo with both rear and front cameras to place your mugshot in the image captured behind. This seemed like an interesting concept with dual 13 MP cameras, but we don't know how well this will work with the HTC One (M8). 

The update is currently only available in Europe, but the US should soon follow, given what is by all accounts an unsubstantial upgrade, technically speaking. That being said, the release of 4.4.4. has been somewhat murky for the HTC One (M8) in the US, with release of KitKat 4.4.3 including most of 4.4.4 updates anyway. Still, if you can't wait for the over-the-air update from your carrier, you can manually install the patch by heading over to the XDA forums where its already been posted.

Last month, AT&T had to cancel its Android 4.4.3 rollout for the HTC One (M8) after users complained about its effects on their battery life. AT&T customers had already began installing official 4.4.3 patch when they discovered that their device battery life was crashing. Last we heard, AT&T still hadn't resolved the issue.

Both Sprint and T-Mobile users had already downloaded and been running 4.4.3 problem free, while Verizon was late to the 4.4.3 KitKat party, releasing their version of the patch on September 11th. Verizon users who have downloaded the update are able to take advantage of HTC’s “extreme power saving” mode, which offers a mere 1% battery discharge for every 8 hours of use. 

The Android 4.4.3 patch included camera and gallery app updates, bluetooth optimization, and patches for BoomSound, Motion Launch and Quick Settings. A “Power History” tab was also added to the settings menu, somewhat ironically for AT&T users.

With all of these software version running around in different regions it can be hard to keep up. 

Baffled by Higgs bosons, quantum mechanics, and the accelerating expansion of the universe? This year's physics Nobel Prize is for something that's reassuringly understandable and useful: the blue LEDs used in everything from home lighting and headlights to TV screens and traffic signals.

Three researchers received the 2014 Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for the invention of this blue light-emitting diode (LED), a technology now used in high-speed networking, data storage, smartphones, water purification, and efficient home illumination.

The winners are Isamu Akasaki, a Japanese citizen and professor at Meijo University and Nagoya University; Hiroshi Amano, a Japanese citizen and professor at Nagoya University; and Shuji Nakamura, an American citizen and professor at the University of California in Santa Barbara.

The key advantage of their invention 20 years ago is the production of light with far less waste of electrical energy than with preceding technologies like incandescent and fluorescent lights, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in awarding the prize.

"A quarter of energy consumption goes to illumination," said Per Delsing, a physics professor at the Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, during a press conference announcing the award. As a result, any increase in efficiency and consequent saving of energy "is really going to have a big impact on modern civilization," he said.

Nobel Prizes in physics often go to fundamental discoveries such as the Higgs Boson. But when the committee makes an award for an invention, "we really emphasize the usefulness of the invention," said Anne L'Huillier, an atomic physics professor at Lund University in Sweden, also speaking at the press conference. And the blue LED is nothing if not useful.

Recent Nobel prizes have been awarded for concepts that are very far from day-to-day human experiences -- giant magnetoresistance, Bose-Einstein condensates, superconductors and superfluids, and the accelerating expansion of the universe, for example. The blue LED -- something you can buy at the local home-improvement store -- seems downright mundane by comparison.

But it's anything but ordinary, said H. Frederick Dylla, chief executive officer of the American Institute of Physics, who called the work a "tour de force" because it required a combination of materials science, physics, and chemistry. Indeed, the invention of the blue LED was on a short list of his institute's candidates for the prize, he said.

"It's a very expensive technology requiring atomic-layer epitaxy, where layers are put down atomic layer by atomic layer at a very high vacuum," Dylla said. It's vastly more complicated than incandescent lights, he added. "Compare that to drawing tungsten wire and putting it into a blob of glass and blowing out the air with some argon, and you have a light bulb for a few cents."

The colors of LED

The white light from the sun can be reproduced artificially by blending three colors of light: red, green, and blue. LEDs are very efficient at converting electrical energy into visible light, but blue LEDs proved much harder to engineer than red and green ones. It took more than a quarter century after red LEDs were invented in the early 1960s before semiconductor materials and fabrication techniques grew sophisticated enough to enable blue LEDs in the mid-1990s.

White LEDs work either by packaging trios of red, green, and blue LEDs or by using just blue LEDs whose light also excites phosphors that emit green and red.

Now those white LEDs are spreading rapidly across the globe, led by lighting applications.

Incandescent lights -- the traditional Thomas Edison-era light bulb -- work by heating up a filament until it glows. That approach produces light, but most of the energy is wasted as heat.

Fluorescent bulbs are more than four times more efficient, a big step forward. But LEDs are nearly twenty times as efficient as incandescent bulbs, and they aren't saddled with the risky mercury-related health risks of fluorescent bulbs. As an added bonus, LED lights last longer, too.

White LEDs are now used widely in streetlights, traffic lights, flashlights, vehicle headlights, and as costs come down, home and office lights. They're also a major force in electronics, providing the light in screens in laptops, phones, tablets, and TVs.

Akasaki and Amano worked together on the technology at Nagoya University, while Nakamura at the time was working at Nichia Chemical Corporation. It took more than a decade of work to produce practical blue-LED designs in the 1990s.

The trio will split an award of about $1.1 million. That's a lot more than the $200 that Nichia paid Nakamura for his invention -- but less than the $8 million he won in 2005 in a lawsuit arguing that he deserved a bigger share of the royalties his invention brought in.

Advantage of basic research

Dylla is happy to see a Nobel Prize awarded to something comprehensible to the public. But that doesn't mean scientific inquiry should be directed only toward products that have an obvious commercial or practical benefit, he said.

"I am troubled by some who say if the government funds research, it should only be...directed towards things that have a practical application," Dylla said. "The trouble with that limited view is that most of what ended up as practical applications of science have come from rather unfettered basic research on the nature of matter or how energy interacts with matter."

For example Einstein's famously mind-bending theory of general relativity may seem remote. But ignoring it would make navigation with today's GPS satellites "highly inaccurate."

"You can trace many advances in science and engineering that have obvious and immediate practical applications to a foundation of basic science," he said.

Many consumers are still gnashing their teeth about Windows 8, but this week Microsoft unveiled Windows 10 – much muttering about the Start button, but the big deal here is turning Windows into one big platform effectively for everything from Xbox to mobile phones, laptops to tablets. In that sense, Windows is well ahead of iOS or Android, although by the time 10 comes out both will surely have made strides to catch up.

The theme, however, comes back to the increasingly important war of platforms, and Microsoft of all the main players seems to be confused. Apple at least knows where it stands – just try visiting icloud.com on an Android browser – but Microsoft is pursuing a genuinely open strategy by making Office apps for the iPad. In reality that’s its only option with so many people using rivals products from Google and Apple, but it highlights the dilemma: try to make Windows the dominant platform and hope people remain loyal despite the debacle of Windows 8, or try to become a maker of world-class apps and services.

The future is unclear for all three players, Google, Apple and Microsoft, but what is obvious is that there isn’t room for three of them, especially as the web itself will increasingly become the platform for everything. With that in mind, it’s tempting to say that just as Nokia declined, so too must at least one of the trio. But it could, in truth, be any of them or all three.