Das Microsoft Surface RT mit Windows RT ist ab heute, Donnerstag, in der Schweiz sowie in 12 weiteren europäischen Ländern erhältlich. Das Gerät ist ab CHF 559.- online unter www.microsoftstore.ch sowie bei Mediamarkt, Saturn, Interdiscount und Fust erhältlich.

Der britische Mobilfunkriese Vodafone erwägt laut einem Magazinbericht die milliardenschwere Übernahme von Deutschlands grösstem Kabelnetzbetreiber Kabel Deutschland. Der neue Vodafone-Deutschland-Chef Jens Schulte-Bockum habe mit dem Konzern-Strategiechef Warren Finegold einen Geschäftsplan für eine Akquisition durchgerechnet.

Apple hat die iPhone-Namensrechte in Brasilien verloren. Das Marken- und Patentamt (Inpi) des Landes sprach die Nutzungsrechte heute der brasilianischen Firma Gradiente zu, die eine Registrierung des Namens „iphone“ schon im Jahr 2000 und damit vor Apple beantragt hatte.

Die Asana-Gruppe hat den Outsourcing-Vertrag mit der auf IT-Dienstleistungen im Gesundheitswesen fokussierte Hint AG mit Sitz in Lenzburg um weitere fünf Jahre verlängert. Damit setzt die Gruppe bestehend aus den beiden Spitälern Leuggern und Menziken auch in Zukunft auf die IT-Dienstleistungen der Lenzburger Unternehmung.

Das ICT-Accessibility Lab der ZHAW School of Engineering hat in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Zentrum für Gerontologie der Universität Zürich eine Broschüre zum Thema „Altersgerechte Webseitengestaltung“ erarbeitet. Die Broschüre ist in ihrer Art neu und soll Auftraggebern von Webseiten sowie Webdesignern selbst als Leitfaden dienen.

Die Nachfrage nach Mobiltelefonen ist im vergangenen Jahr zum ersten Mal seit 2009 zurückgegangen. Nach Berechnungen des Marktforschungsunternehmens Gartner wurden 2012 weltweit 1,75 Mrd. Handys verkauft - um 1,7 Prozent weniger als im Jahr davor, wie die Nachrichtenagentur Reuters berichtet. Mehr als die Hälfte der verkauften Handys waren "Smartphones".

Dell-Gründer Michael Dell bekommt wachsenden Druck von Grossaktionären, den Preis bei der geplanten Übernahme des drittgrössten PC-Herstellers zu erhöhen. Auch der zweitgrösste aussenstehende Aktionär, die Investmentfirma T. Rowe Price, findet Dell bei dem 24,4 Milliarden Dollar schweren Deal unterbewertet.

Mit Oliver Münster hat die auf Business Process und IT Outsourcing für die Finanzindustrie fokussierte B-Source einen neuen Head of ITO Delivery (Infrastructure Technology Outsourcing) unter Vertrag genommen. Münster wird sein neues Amt laut Mitteilung am 1. April antreten.

Neuer Monat, neuer Patchday: Microsoft und Adobe haben zum Februar-Termin eine Reihe an Updates veröffentlicht. So behebt Microsoft insgesamt 13 Lecks, die die Internet Explorer-Versionen ab 6.0 betreffen.

Der US-Chipkonzern Intel will noch in diesem Jahr mit einem Online-TV-Angebot an den Start gehen und damit ins Mediengeschäft einsteigen. Die neue Dienstleistung solle TV-Programme und Inhalte auf Abruf umfassen, sagte Erik Huggers, Vizepräsident von Intel Media, auf einer Konferenz des Blogs "AllThingsDigital" am Dienstag. Intel stehe derzeit in Verhandlungen mit Anbietern von Inhalten.

Several months ago, Google changed its profile pages to include cover photos. Not unlike Facebook's, these cover photos are wide and short, and integrate with a profile picture of your choosing. Unlike Facebook, though, these cover photos require rather weird dimensions: 940 x 180 pixels. In a recent attempt to create a new cover photo, I found it very hard to find anything that would fit these dimensions properly. In addition, Google profiles don't come with a preview feature, which brings a lot of trial and error and repeated resizing into the mix, and in the end, my results were less than desirable. One way to solve this annoying yet common problem is Slicetige-G ($2, free demo with watermarking). , Slicetige-G was made specifically for these stubborn Google profiles. With surprising simplicity, it lets you design a cover photo with just the right dimensions, slice your profile picture from it or add one from file, and even add extras such as buttons, text, images and QR codes. The results, as you will see, are rather impressive. The first step of using Slicetige-G is selecting your cover photo, which is your base layer. This can be an image you load from file, a solid or gradient color, one of the dozens of templates that come with the program, or even self-generated polka dot or bokeh patterns. Once the cover photo is in place, you can drag it around, resize it, rotate it, and even apply some basic filters. One thing you can't do it crop it, so fitting it in Google's appropriate dimensions still requires some work. For your profile picture, you can load a different avatar from file, or even better, slice your avatar straight from your cover photo. You can create some pretty unique and original effects this way.

recommend that businesses deny certain iPhones, iPads and iPods access to Calendar items until the companies can clear up a problem that slows Exchange servers to a crawl when the devices try to sync. The problem reveals itself to end users as an error message when they try to update items with Exchange Server 2010 that says "Cannot Get Mail" and "The connection to the server failed," according to a . The only option presented to users is to choose "OK," Microsoft says. More problematic for IT is that server CPU use jumps, affecting performance for all users. Microsoft describes the problem like this: "When a user syncs a mailbox by using an iOS 6.1-based device, Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Client Access server (CAS) and Mailbox (MBX) server resources are consumed, log growth becomes excessive, memory and CPU use may increase significantly, and server performance is affected." IOS 6.1 comes on iPhone 3GS, 4 and 5; fourth and fifth generation iPod Touch; iPad 2, third generation and fourth generation iPads; and iPad Mini. This makes for a major inconvenience for workers who use these devices at work primarily as a way to access emails and calendaring information.

Another day, . Ho-hum. The PDF software's near-ubiquitous presence has made it a big, fat, juicy target for years now, and by this point, you shouldn't be asking what Adobe's going to do to shore up its perpetually leaky program. Instead, you should ask yourself: Why are you still using Adobe Reader at all? Believe it or not, the PDF viewer scene is bristling with a number of alternatives that receive far less nefarious attention than Adobe's software. Switching away from Reader won't only free you from the tiresome treadmill, it could very well free up some of your valuable system resources. Adobe Reader's so big and bloated that even its most feature-packed competitors seem downright svelte in comparison. Without further ado, here's a trio of PCWorld tested—and approved!—PDF readers that can free you from Reader's headaches, no matter whether you're looking for a simple, lightweight PDF viewer or a more robust PDF editing and creation tool. . If you just want the ability to open PDFs and don't care about bells and whistles, Sumatra PDF is an excellent choice. The program's pretty much limited to straightforward PDF viewing, but it's lightning-fast and uses very few system resources.

with 128GB of storage, you might have luck at a Microsoft Store or Best Buy toward the end of the week. that the company will ship more 128GB models of its Surface tablet to Microsoft Stores and Best Buy stores by Saturday. The info came from Panos Panay, Microsoft's corporate vice president in charge of Surface. Microsoft is also shipping more 64GB models to Best Buy, Staples, and Microsoft Stores (both local and online), but that version has generally been easier to find. lists the 128GB Surface Pro as out of stock, and unavailable for purchase, while the 64GB version shows no shipping delays. The black Touch Cover for the Surface is also out of stock, but other colors are available. The Type Cover, which has mechanical keys, shows no shipping delays.

Researchers from security firm FireEye claim that attackers are actively using a remote code execution exploit that works against the latest versions of Adobe Reader 9, 10 and 11. “Today, we identified that a PDF zero-day [vulnerability] is being exploited in the wild, and we observed successful exploitation on the latest Adobe PDF Reader 9.5.3, 10.1.5, and 11.0.1,” the FireEye researchers said late Tuesday in a . The exploit drops and loads two DLL files on the system. One file displays a bogus error message and opens a PDF document that’s used as a decoy, the FireEye researchers said. Remote code execution exploits regularly cause the targeted programs to crash. In this context, the fake error message and second document are most likely used to trick users into believing that the crash was the result of a simple malfunction and the program recovered successfully.

is a full-blown PC, it's not nearly as repairable as a typical laptop. earned a score of 4 out of 10.) Even just cracking open the device was a challenge. iFixit says it spent an hour figuring out how to get inside – a first for the company – and eventually resorted to a heat gun and guitar picks to pry the display panel open. Once inside, iFixit found that the display was glued together with a tar-like substance.

When you switch your computer on first thing in the morning, what do you do? I bet you open the same browser, open the same Web pages (email, Facebook, news), and start up the same software apps. We are all creatures of habit after all. However, opening up all of these things takes time and effort. Wouldn't you prefer your computer to do all this for you, by the time you come back to your desk with a cup of coffee? If so, the free AutoStarter X3 will be of interest to you. AutoStarter X3 is a neat little app that allows you to make what is called a batch file (bat). Batch files are text files with a list of commands for your computer to do certain things. You can double-click them for the commands to be instantly carried out, or you can place them inside the Windows start menu for the batch files to be executed during the Windows boot-up process. This means, for example, that you can tell your operating system that, during Windows start-up, you want your browser to be opened with a certain list of Web pages pre-opened. Or you want a directory in Windows Explorer pre-opened for you. Or a certain file to be opened. You can even make batch files that start music playlists. Imagine booting your computer up, then sitting back as your browser opens, your Web pages open, and your favorite music instantly starts to play. All without you doing a thing. These are just some of the potential benefits of batch files and AutoStarter X3 helps you set it all up. What is great about Autostarter X3 is that it is a small portable app requiring no installation. Just pop it on a USB stick, or in Dropbox, or simply on your computer desktop. Double-click it and when the simple user interface opens up, click "add" to begin a new batch file. If you have something that you have already worked on in the app, you can open it up to edit it.

Reader Kristie wrote in with this puzzler: "I just found a shoebox full of 3.5-inch disks. I think they were from my old digital camera, but I have no way of finding out because I no longer have a computer (or camera) that can read them. What can I do?" Talk about a trip down memory lane! I haven't so much as laid eyes on a 3.5-inch "floppy" in years, and I'd forgotten that a few early digital cameras did indeed storage images on that kind of media. Needless to say, however, modern PCs don't have floppy drives. (Same goes for not-so-modern ones.) So how can you hope to extract your photos, WordPerfect documents, and any other old data that might be lingering on those disks?