Microsoft's customer satisfaction rating has plummeted to levels it hasn't seen since Windows Vista was the current operating system. Most attribute this fall of satisfaction to Microsoft's new Windows 8 operating system, which has been received by consumers with much discontent.

Windows 8.1 should hopefully help customer satisfaction recover as its rumored the much-loved Start button will be making a return along with an option to boot straight to the desktop mode. Microsoft's ACSI report has consumer satisfaction at 74 out of 100. Shortly after Vista launched, it was just 73 out of 100. In 2011, Microsoft's ACSI was at 78 out of 100 and it quickly dropped to 75 after Windows 8 launched.

David VanAmburg, director of ACSI:

It seems clear that the release of Windows 8 did not give Microsoft a significant bump, as the release of Windows 7 did, nor did it dramatically lower customer satisfaction in a rather short time frame, as the release of Vista did.

 

One of the issues with PC software appears to be that there is less of it out there now. While productivity software remains in demand -- Office, TurboTax, Acrobat -- with so many households that own PCs relying more and more on their tablets, smartphones and gaming systems for entertainment and recreation, the range of PC software may be shrinking, not a welcome sign for diehards [who are] still very loyal to the traditional PC.

We've learned more about Grand Theft Auto V's upcoming special editions that will be available for pre-order. Rockstar is offering up two special editions: the Special edition and the Collector's edition. Both come with special features, though the Collector's edition is more expensive and features more perks.

The Special edition costs just $79.99 and comes with loads of special content. Gamers who opt for the Special edition will be provided with a SteelBook case, a blueprint map of Los Santos and Blaine County, a regeneration boost for each character's in-game special ability bar, extra challenges for the stunt plane, bonus outfits and tattoos, special deals at the in-game shops, and additional weapons.

The Collector's edition comes with even more. It includes everything the Special edition does and adds a unique outer box, a real life "security deposit bag", a New Era hat with the Los Santos logo, classic GTA characters for GTA Online, and a special garage with custom vehicles. It will set you back $149.99, or just under double that of the Special edition.

The game will be released September 17 and pre-orders are now available for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

An eagle-eyed ad watcher caught that Microsoft might have done their math wrong, or just completely lied, in their latest round of Windows 8 tablet ads. In the ads, Microsoft tries to portray that an ASUS VivoTab Smart has a larger screen than the iPad 4. While the diagonal measurement of the ASUS is indeed larger, the actual area of the screen is smaller.

Microsoft claims that the ASUS features a 36 percent larger screen. However, the iPad's screen is actually about 3.55 percent larger due to its dimensions. The ipad measures 7.76 by 5.82 inches and the ASUS measures 8.8 by 4.95 inches. Because of the different ratio, the iPad is actually bigger.

Microsoft has announced that there will be a new Kinect sensor for Windows and an accompanying SDK released next year. The new Kinect sensor will be similar to the one recently announced for the Xbox One, which means we should see a 1080p camera, better skeletal tracking, and a new active IR.

Microsoft says that the new Kinect sensor will power "some exciting new Windows PC experiences." We can expect more information regarding the new Kinect for Windows at BUILD 2013, which takes place towards the end of June. Windows 8.1 will also be making an appearance at the BUILD conference in June.

Thanks to Evleaks, official images of the Hauwei Ascend P6 have been leaked onto the Internet. The device continues to appear extremely thin and is quite good looking. An official release date still hasn't been divulged, but there isn't much left for Huawei to do other than officially announce the device.

We suspect June 18 to be the date it is officially launched because Huawei Device Chairman Richard Yu psoted that the device should be revealed at Huawei's June 18 event in London. Of course, the post was quickly deleted, seemingly adding credibility to the post. If the phone does debut on June 18, you'll be able to read about it on TweakTown.

Samsung can't seem to turn out variants of the popular Galaxy S4 fast enough. Now, the latest is that Verizon and AT&T will be getting Developer Editions of the venerable Galaxy S4. Oddly enough the variants are going to carriers that have been the worst in the past in terms of locking devices down.

The Galaxy S4 Developer Edition will be available in Black Mist with 16GB of internal storage. I find it odd that internal storage on a developer device would be so slim. We doubt that the Developer Edition will be available with a subsidy, so you can expect to pay full price for the device. Users of AT&T will also soon get access to Samsung's new Google Edition Galaxy S4 that was announced at Google I/O.

Now that both next-gen gaming consoles have been announced, EA has been issuing a flurry of press releases detailing games that we can expect on the consoles. Today's announcement sees Need for Speed Rivals coming to both the newly announced Xbox One and the PlayStation 4.

Need for Speed Rivals will make use of the Frostbite 3 game engine, allowing the game to use stunning graphics and continue to blur the line between virtual and real. The game is being developed by EA's newest studio, Ghost Games, and is being built with help from Criterion Games.

Need for Speed Rivals is bringing with it several new features, most interesting of which is AllDrive. The developers explain:

At the heart of Need for Speed Rivals is AllDrive, an innovative new online feature that allows gamers to seamlessly transition from playing alone to playing with friends, eliminating the line between single player and multiplayer. Players will have to keep one eye on their rearview mirror as friends will be able to enter and exit races on-the-fly, creating a world where no two events will ever be the same.

Gamers who pre-order Need for Speed Rivals will receive the NfS Rivals Ultimate Cop Pack for no additional cost. It brings an exclusive Nissan GT-R Black Edition cop car and various other exclusive items. To learn more, head over to Need for Speed's website.

We've seen several great new products out of HP today. First the Envy TouchSmart 14 with a 3,200x1,800 pixel display, now the Envy Rove 20. HP's engineers appear to be working overtime to produce feature-rich products. The Envy Rove 20 is a "mobile all-in-one PC" and is significant as it is HP's first mobile all-in-one.

Ron Coughlin, senior vice president and general manager, Consumer PCs and Consumer Solutions:

Customers are looking for mobility and flexibility in their computing devices to give families new ways to bring generations together. HP is evolving to meet our customers' needs by designing next-generation form factors, like the Rove mobile All-in-One PC, which will enable people to connect, share and create in ways they never imagined.

The system can be utilized like a tablet around the house, running on its built-in battery, or as a desktop all-in-one, making it highly versatile. The 20-inch display is of the IPS variety, meaning users can expect excellent color reproduction and viewing angles. I am a bit disappointed that the resolution is just 1,600x900. The Envy Rove 20 will be powered by Intel's upcoming Haswell line of processors.

I'm just a little bit giddy about this latest announcement from HP. The company as of late is producing more and more products with features that actually matter to consumers in attempts to return to their previous glory. HP has announced a new Envy TouchSmart 14 laptop with a 3,200x1,800 pixel display.

That resolution is packed into a 14-inch screen. The Retina MacBook Pro, for comparison, features a resolution of 2,880x1,800 in a 15-inch display. This means the new HP should pack more pixels into a smaller screen, providing an even higher pixel density. Wow. The Envy TouchSmart 14 notebook will be available sometime in June after Intel launches Haswell.

We aren't sure just how much the machine will set you back, but the version with a 1366x768 display cost just $699. I would venture to guess that the display will be a $150-200 upgrade. We'll have more when this notebook launches, hopefully with a review shortly after.

G.Skill will team up with Intel, ASUS, EVGA, GIGABYTE and MSI to host the G.Skill Official OC World Record Stage event at Computex Taipei 2013 early next month. The event will be held at the Nangang exhibition center at booth IO118.

G.Skill along with a team of overclockers from around the world will take the latest G.Skill extreme performance DDR3 memory to levels never seen before and promises to "break numerous world records" in the process. The finest overclockers from Australia, Japan, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan and the United States will be present to help G.Skill claim the "world's fastest memory manufacturer" title once again.

For those who aren't in Taipei for the biggest overclocking event this year, G.SKILL will be featuring a live stream video for worldwide audiences via G.SKILL website and Hwbot.org during Computex week. Hwbot.org will also be setting up a specific G.SKILL page for the professional overclockers to update their live benchmark results during event. (Source #2)

Johannes Knapp just attended a Nokia press conference for us over in Germany where he got some solid hands-on time with the new Nokia Lumia 925 Windows Phone 8 smartphone.

He compared the 925 in size to the older Lumia 920 and noted that he is much more impressed with the 925 for its sized and appearance, as well as feel in hand with its brushed aluminum feel.

One of the main features of the Lumia 925 is its 8.7MP PureView camera (Carl Zeiss powered) which includes some rather impressive software to create pretty remarkable photos. The one photo feature Johannes focused on was action mode. It takes a series of photos and stitches them together to create some pretty awesome results.

Hit play on the video above for a nice detailed look at the new Nokia Lumia 925.

Today Amazon.com announced that its Appstore is now available in nearly 200 countries worldwide, and features apps for Macs, PC's and Android based devices such as Amazon's Kindle Fire. Alongside this announcement, Amazon said that the Kindle Fire will release to over 170 new countries in June.

"We are thrilled to be expanding the reach of our global app distribution to nearly 200 countries. We think our customers will love the app selection we have to offer and also find features such as Free App of the Day and personalized recommendations very helpful as they discover and explore new apps and games," said Mike George, Vice President of Apps and Games at Amazon. "By further expanding the distribution of apps to millions of customers around the world, we are continuing to make it easy for customers to enjoy their Amazon apps on Kindle Fire and any Android device."

To celebrate this expansion, the Amazon Appstore is bringing back one of its most popular Free Apps of the Day, "Fruit Ninja," along with "Cut the Rope: Experiments." These will be available, for free, on May 23 and May 24. For those not in the know, the "Free App of the Day," is a program in which Amazon offers a paid app for free every day.

Intel's new CEO Brian Krzanich is shaking things up at the chip manufacturing giant. Under his recent reorganization, all of the company's product groups now fall under his direct supervision. Corporate Strategy and Global Manufacturing will now be headed up by company president Renee James. Intel's software division will be controlled by Doug Fisher, and its smartphone division will be headed up by Hermann Eul.

In an internal email to Intel employees, Krzanich said:

"As your CEO, I am committed to making quick, informed decisions. I am committed to being bolder, moving faster and accepting that this means changes will be made knowing that we will listen, learn and then make adjustments in order to keep pace with a rapidly changing industry. Our business faces significant challenges, and we simply must continue to execute while finalizing our future strategy"

The entire world is talking about the upcoming PlayStation 4 and Xbox One at the moment, and rightfully so. It has been many years since we have had a console hardware refresh. Unfortunately some of those involved with the new console seem to have slipped into some sort of false reality.

In a comment on LinkedIn, Electronic Art's Vice President and CTO Rajat Teneja said that Xbox One and PlayStation 4 are "a generation ahead of the highest end PC on the market." He went on to say "The compute capabilities of these platforms and the data transfer speeds we can now bank on, essentially removes any notion of rationing of systems resources for our game engines. Our benchmarks on just the video and audio performance are 8-10 times superior to the current gen. gaming pc systems."

I am going to speculate that Mr. Teneja was speaking about the semi-custom AMD APU that is running in both systems, and that part of his rationing is based on both chips having Unified Memory Access.

Call me biased if you want, but if he seriously thinks that graphics performance is better on an APU based system compared a PC running an 8-core CPU, 32GB of RAM and NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN, then it may be time for EA to seek out a new Chief Technology Officer.

Everyone always complains about the amount of data that Google collects from our searches and for the most part, there is nothing to be concerned with. While Google does use that data for targeted ad placement, they also use it to improve their products and create exciting new things.

This morning Google released one of those new exciting things, and they are calling it the "Trend Visualizer". The new web app is a full screen real-time wall of the most popular searches entered by people all over the US.

The actual effect is pretty trippy and while it may not be of use to everyone, it would be really cool to toss up on a large screen display in an office or workroom.

This morning NVIDIA launched its next flagship GPU, the GeForce GTX 780. The 780 keeps all the styling cues of the massively popular GTX TITAN and features several hardware improvements that make it one of the fastest single GPU video cards ever. Go ahead and review our very own TweakTown review right here.

NVIDIA says that the GK110-powered GeForce GTX 780 has 50% more memory and 50% more CUDA cores than the GeForce GTX 680, and is on average 35% faster than its predecessor. NVIDIA also launched a new real-time gaming recorder called GeForce ShadowPlay, an application that lets gamers record their gameplay in 1080p at 30 FPS.

"With more memory bandwidth, more VRAM, more CUDA Cores, and more all-round speed, the GTX 780 is the high-end GPU of choice for the next-generation of games, arriving on shop shelves this Holiday. Paired with a recent Quad Core CPU, GTX 780 owners will exceed the level of fidelity and performance seen on upcoming consoles, guaranteeing superior experiences in the coming wave of multi-platform next-gen titles, beginning with Battlefield 4, Call of Duty: Ghosts, and Watch_Dogs."

Late last night Kim Dotcom posted a tweet that accused several US companies of infringing on his IP and after some investigation, I have to agree with him. The patents date back to 1997 and cover the two-step authentication that has recently become popular with big sites who are afraid of hackers.

In the tweet, Dotcom accuses Google, Facebook, Twitter and Citibank of infringing on his patent and he says that he never sued them in the past because he "believes in sharing knowledge and ideas for the good of society." and goes on to say "But I might sue them now because of what the U.S. did to me."

For anyone interested, I have linked to the patent at Source #2. It was filed under Kim Schmits, Dotcom's birth name, and details quite clearly the current method of two-step authentication being used today by many companies. We have reached on to Dotcom for an interview and are awaiting a response, so stay tuned to TweakTown for any updates.

The GeForce GTX 780 was just announced by NVIDIA, and is virtually the same power as NVIDIA's GeForce GTX Titan, but for a hell of a lot less money. iBUYPOWER have come out announcing that NVIDIA's latest Kepler-based GPU, the GeForce GTX 780, is now available for their performance gaming systems.

Darren Su, Co-Founder and Vice President of iBUYPOWER has said: "We always stay on the forefront of performance, and equipping our systems with the latest graphics technologies allows us to give our customers the best possible experience". For more information on the iBUYPOWER systems with the GeForce GTX 780, check out iBUYPOWER's website.

If you were expecting Apple to unveil a watch-like device, something along the lines of an iWatch, then you might have to wait until late 2014 according to a KGI Securities analyst, Ming-Chi Kuo. Kuo says that Apple "may not have adequate resources" to develop a version of iOS for the wearable device, which might be the reason behind iOS 7.

Kuo thinks that Apple will cram a 1.5- to 2-inch screen, as well as biometric security thanks to their acquisition of AuthenTec for $356 million. This delay until late 2014 could really hurt Apple's chances of their wearable device being successful, especially if other companies beat them to the punch.

We've been hearing so much about the Xbox One this week, but now we have confirmation from AMD that they are the ones that helped Microsoft design the "semi-custom single-chip" APU that powers the next-gen Xbox One.

The Xbox One features an APU that includes an 8-core processor, GPU and 8GB of RAM on the single-chip. The GPU on the Xbox One is still shrouded in mystery, and is definitely a strange move by Microsoft considering how open Sony are about the specifications on the PlayStation 4.