I recently reviewed the Lenovo Smart Tab P10 and came away thinking it was a device on a trajectory similar to Microsoft’s Surface Pro. In what I considered the early awkward phases of its future proposition, I saw the P10 and its less-premium M10 version as a tablet and separate connected speaker experience attempting to leapfrog the current model of ambient computing known to buyers today and similar to the Surface Pro, I overlooked perhaps one of its biggest selling points, choice.

While the Surface Pro was clunky in its early execution, one of its biggest selling points and what is proving to be its greatest staying power is that it’s a consolidation of financial resources that I often feel tech reviewers take for granted when reviewing expensive and even seemingly inexpensive tech; these devices come with shelf lives much longer than the 30-60 day window we as reviewers become accustomed to. Much like the Surface Pro, the Lenovo Smart Tab P10 and M10 empower their buyers to choose how they use the device.

Where the Surface Pro can make for an awkward dedicated tablet at times, a buyer is also free to use it in tablet mode for as long or as little as they may actually use a dedicated tablet and the same goes for its productivity experience. The Smart Tab P10 and M10 allow buyers the freedom to use it as a tablet or docked Smart Display in a myriad of configurations that more traditional Smart displays are limited by their dedicated construction.

With that being said, much of my earlier review that still holds, however, I took some extra time to play around with the P10 before sending it back to Lenovo and now feel compelled to amend my initial review. The P10, for some, will still be a tablet posing as Smart Speaker/Home Hub-like device, but others might just see what I saw in my late-phase testing of the device, a Smart Speaker/Home-hub-like device that can also offer all the productivity and consumption benefits of a tablet, for roughly the same price as a traditional smart speaker.

Off the top, Lenovo already offers a more traditional smart display experience in its Smart Display powered by Google. The Lenovo Smart Display was first unveiled at CES 2018 and it comes with all the accouterment customary for this type of device, including 10W full range speakers, 8 or 10-inch FHD display and voice assistant for hands-free operations all for the starting price of $199. Other Smart Speakers/Display in this category range from Google’s Home Hub at $149 to Amazon’s pricier Echo Show at $229 and this is where I had to reevaluate the way I reviewed the P10 in that it’s a device that offers all of the features of Smart Display experience while also offering customary benefits of a tablet for a $199.99 starting price.

Being able to dock and undock the display from the premium speaker portion of the P10 and M10 enables a wider range of use cases that move beyond the single room uses often showcased during demos of other Smart Displays. The P10 and M10 can definitely hold their own in a kitchen, living room, bedside table, but they can also do all three at once without having to be moved or the addition of extra hardware.

Once I was able to figure out the Bluetooth issues I was initially having with the dock, I unlocked a whole new world of Alexa Assistant commands and skills used when the tablet was in my bedroom but was gonna later be used in the kitchen or began playing music and video content from different rooms. The P10 and M10 aren’t the only devices that can utilize this sort of Bluetooth magic, but a Sonos set up is arguably more expensive, Chromecast requires the purchase of several pieces of hardware and other Smart Displays are fundamentally limited by their single-use design.

Beyond the Smart Display of the P10 and M10, using the tablet for my more consumption-oriented task led to a better free-flowing of data transfer in the entire experience. When I couldn’t shout out queries for recipes from other rooms due to sleeping children, I was able to un-dock the tablet and take my time to curate a recipe book for lunches and dinners for the week, peacefully and quietly on my couch, that I could later have read to me when cooking.

I also took the time to review the unit as a true Amazon stand, by linking my Amazon Prime music collection the device which made jumping in and out of lists much easier than what I had originally tried doing, which consisted of starting a song in Spotify and having it amplified when docked, thus bypassing the selling points of the Alexa mode.

When initially reviewing the P10 there were two sticking points that I kept running into when using the device, and I was reminded that one of them can be resolved by simply buying the M10. Perhaps, in an attempt to offer a familiar premium smartphone experience in a home hub device, Lenovo opted for glass on glass design for the P10, which for anyone who uses a glass on glass phone without a case knows how unsettling it can be to hold anywhere that isn’t a cushioned couch flanked by tons of soft pillows. However, the M10 offers the same functional experience of the P10 for around $30 less and with a soft-touch back for better grip when the device is being used undocked. The other sticking point was the processing power of the tablet, to which I am still hung up on, but have come to live with. The processing power of the tablet only becomes apparent when compared to my use-case on my Galaxy Note 8 which seems to be quicker at completing tasks.

I use my Note 8 for everything from revising PowerPoint presentations to catching up on Game of Thrones via the Showtime app, but when using any dedicated tablet, I tend to limit my use case scenarios thanks to the proximity of either my smartphone or computer, and I would venture to say a lot of people are in the same boat. While I would like to see the P10 and M10 at least make use of a more powerful Snapdragon processor, I’ve come to acknowledge my actual uses of the tablet were already limited before reviewing the device.

In the end, the M10/P10 are still two devices attempting to offer an experience that’s some might find best served by dedicated hardware, but the reality of spending $199 to $249 to get everything from a tablet, smart assistant, home and kitchen display, Bluetooth speaker and potential home hub is something that more industry manufacturers should look to embrace in the near future.

The second episode of Life is Strange 2 is now available to play for free for all Xbox Game Pass subscribers on Xbox One.
This latest episode follows the events of the first one and also features a tie-in with the Captain Spirit spin-off.

Here’s the official description and trailer:

The two brothers continue their journey on the road into the winter months & struggle against the cold. As Daniel gradually falls ill, Sean’s concern for his younger brother increases and decides the pair of them must make their way to their distant grandparent’s house to recover and seek shelter. During their stay, they encounter next-door neighbour Chris, a young boy the same age as Daniel who believes he is a super-hero by the name of Captain Spirit. As Daniel and Chris begin to form a friendship, Sean insists on Daniel following a set of rules around his power. Will Daniel keep his power concealed or break the rules in a time of need?

Xbox Game Pass is a Netflix-like subscription service for Xbox video games. Every month new game content is added while older games are removed. Subscribers can play the current games in the Xbox Game Pass library in full as if they owned them outright.

Are you an Xbox Game Pass subscriber and are you playing Life is Strange 2? Let us know if you’re enjoying it in the comments below and then follow us on Pinterest for more Xbox gaming content.

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Microsoft has started rolling File Restore for SharePoint and Microsoft Teams, a feature that will allow Office 365 admins to restore any files or folders deleted from the two services within the last 30 days. File Restore was initially announced back at Microsoft’s Ignite conference last Fall, and it should be an important selling point for Microsoft 365 going forward.

“Files Restore is now available for SharePoint document libraries, protecting your shared files in SharePoint, Teams, Outlook groups, and Yammer groups connected to Office 365 groups and uses the same recovery capabilities that protect your individual files in OneDrive for Business,” the company explained in a blog post. Files shared on Microsoft Teams also leverage SharePoint Document libraries, which means that IT admins don’t have to deal with separate storage containers.

To access the new feature, Office 365 admins will need to click the gear icon in SharePoint, select Restore this library, then select a date range and the files that need to be restored. Microsoft is currently rolling out Files Restore to Targeted Release organizations, and the company expect the new feature to be available for all Office 365 customers by the end of next month.

The Windows Insider webcast is coming back at 10AM PDT this morning, and this episode should dive deep into the upcoming May 2019 update for Windows 10 as well as Microsoft’s new Edge Insider browser. Indeed, Kyle Pflug and William Devereux from the Edge team will make a special appearance at 11AM PST, and we hope to learn more about new features coming soon to the new Chromium-based Edge.

Join us tomorrow at 11am PDT as @kylealden and @MasterDevwi join the @windowsinsider webcast to discuss the preview builds of Microsoft Edge. Come chat with us and ask questions in real-time as we stream live on @watchmixer. See you tomorrow!https://t.co/Faua9x5PBg

— Microsoft Edge Dev (@MSEdgeDev) April 23, 2019

After some internal builds leaked in March, Microsoft’s new Edge Insider browser finally became officially available earlier this month with the Dev and Canary public channels. Since then, Microsoft has already introduced new features such as the ability to sync favorites with Edge on Android, as well as support for Windows Mixed Reality headsets. There are many other features currently hidden in the “Edge://flags” menu, but Microsoft is already iterating fast with daily updates in the Canary channel.

There are still many things we’d like to learn about the new Edge Insider browser, including when the Beta channel and macOS version are coming, and we may well get more information more during the podcast this morning. As usual, you’ll be able to watch it live on mixer.com/windowsinsider.

Intel announced today the launch of new 9th Gen Core H-Series mobile processors designed for gamers and content creators. The company is promising desktop-grade performance for complex tasks such as video editing, with up to 33% overall performance leap compared to a 3-year old PC.

The lineup of new 45W H-series chips include Core i5, i7 processors and the top of the line Core i9-9980HK CPU with eight cores that can reach up to 5 GHz with Intel Thermal Velocity Boost. This new Core i9 processor is pretty much a mobile version of Intel’s Core i9-9900K processor that launched last Fall, a chip that could also reach 5Ghz.

All of Intel’s new 9th gen laptop CPUs also support the latest Wi-Fi 6 standard, Thunderbolt 3, as well as Intel Optane memory technology. The new chips will start shipping first in laptops from Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo and MSI.

In addition to the new mobile CPUs, Intel also announced today a pretty big extension of its family of 9th Gen Core desktop processors. The 25 new chips include affordable Pentium Gold and Celeron products starting at $42, as well as new Core i3, i5, i7 and i9 CPUs with prices going from $122 to $439 for the new Core i9-9900 CPU. You can find more details about all the new SKUs on this page.

Microsoft is continuing to build out its already massive array of Azure datacenters, and the latest plans include building two new centers in Goodyear, Arizona. According to AZCentral, a USA Today news site (via DataCenterKnowledge), Microsoft purchased one parcel of land near the Phoenix Goodyear Airport last year for $48 million, and just purchased another 147 acres about 10 miles south of the first one for another $37 million. The city of Goodyear had been secretive about plans for the land, providing The Arizona Republic with a largely redacted site plan, but last Friday allowed the news operation to inspect a fully unredacted plan, revealing plans for the Microsoft datacenters.

In addition, Microsoft provided a statement on the acquisitions:

“As part of our plans to support the growing demand for cloud and internet services in Arizona and across the Western United States, Microsoft recently purchased land at two locations in Goodyear, Arizona where we intend to develop world-class data center facilities.”

Microsoft promises that its data center designs “are more energy and water efficient than traditional enterprise data centers,” as water cooling in arid Arizona is a big concern, and AZCentral also raised concerns that datacenters would not bring as many jobs into the area as a manufacturing facility would.

One phase of construction at the airport site is scheduled for a first phase of development for the first of a potential five massive 250,000 square foot buildings.

There’s no word as of yet on when these datacenters will come online, but Microsoft continues to aggressively build out its Azure services.

The official Slack app has updated for Windows 10 devices with a massive load of bug fixes both large and small.

A lot of visual glitches have been fixes in this update as have some more technical problems such as buggy cursor issue.

Here’s the full release notes:

Bug Fixes

• Interactions with network drives are now handled with grace and panache. Or, at the very least, “better”.
• If you want to launch slack minimized, you now can. We will no longer stand in your way.
• We’ve changed the look, feel and texture of our new HTML notifications. Give them a try! They’re delicious.
• Sometimes on Windows 10, moving the window, say, up would cause a white bar to appear. We raised the bar.
• Also, moving the window would sometimes change the size of the window. Your aim was true; we no longer move the goalposts on you.
• In the Apps and Features and Uninstall a Program window, the icon showing up was not the right one. It now is.
• The notification and unread indicators on the taskbar are now more readable.
• Blurry icons were an issue for some users with multiple displays. Now all is clear.
• The Slack icon, previously appearing with an opaque background color on Windows 10 is now all the clearer for being less clear.
• Some people were seeing sidebar icons for teams other than the one they were in. This was confusing, and has now stopped.
• And finally, if you have been having issues with keyboard or cursor issues, you should no longer be having them.

Slack is a communications and collaboration tool that supports text messaging and voice calls, file sharing, and integration with a variety of other services such as Outlook and OneDrive.

Do you use Slack? Let us know why or why not in the comments below and then follow us on Twitter for more tech news.

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Slack

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Microsoft first introduced a way to bring tabs to File Explorer and other parts of the Windows with Sets, a Windows Insider feature that first appeared in RS5 build 17618. It then disappeared in build 17704, with the company taking it “offline” to improve the user experience while “continuing to better integrate Office and Microsoft Edge into Sets.” At that time, Microsoft promised that “Sets will return in a future WIP flight,” but we haven’t heard much if anything about Sets since.

In the meantime, of course, Microsoft subsequently announced that it was rebuilding Edge using Chromium, which as it turns out affects a lot more than just the browser. We haven’t heard anything definitive as to how or when Microsoft will remove EdgeHTML, which runs lots of OS shell level experiences in Windows 10, including Sets, or what will replace it. Users, however, are still clamoring for a tabbed experience, and one of them asked Rich Turner from Microsoft about it last Friday:

The Shell-provided tab experience is no more, but adding tabs is high on our to do list.

— Rich Turner (@richturn_ms) April 20, 2019

One interesting note to Turner’s response is in calling Sets etc. a “shell-provided” experience, perhaps hinting that the future of OS level tabs will work differently, which it almost by definition will have to as Microsoft eventually removes EdgeHTML from Windows.

For now, if you’re waiting for tabs in File Explorer, you’re going to have to continue to wait. How Microsoft replaces EdgeHTML in Windows 10 is a much bigger issue than replacing EdgeHTML with Chromium in a browser, and we haven’t heard specifics of how that is going to work. At least now we have some indication that tabs will be returning, so that’s good news.

Welcome back to our Windows 10 news recap, where we go over the top stories of the past week in the world of Microsoft’s flagship operating system.

AdDuplex owner to shut down his Windows 10 Apps ratings app AppRaisin, last day to be May 6th

As users continue to leave Microsoft’s mobile platform, and Microsoft’s app strategy remains in a confused state, the development company behind AppRaisin, an app for discovering and rating Windows 10 apps, has announced it is shutting the service down. It will shut down on May 6th.

New Edge Insider browser can change user agent strings based on what website you’re visiting

To alleviate issues on some websites where they’re checking for the browser’s user agent string to change the experience, Microsoft looks to be adding a feature into its new Microsoft Edge browser that will change the user agent string depending on the website you’re visiting. This could help improve performance and reduce issues on some websites.

Microsoft’s Surface Hub 2S to start shipping in June, new 85-inch version coming in 2020

The latest iteration of Microsoft’s enterprise-focused device, the Surface Hub 2S, will start shipping in June. It brings a host of improvements, particularly in the specs of the device. It will come with an Intel 8th gen Core i5 processor inside with 8GB of DDR4 RAM and a 128GB SSD, but there’s also a 4K+ 50-inch multi-touch display that is 60 percent thinner.

Microsoft stops selling midrange Surface Go with 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage

Microsoft’s more affordable Surface device, the Surface Go, has had its midrange option removed by the company. The option that included 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage is no longer available to purchase from the Microsoft Store, leaving only 3 options.

That’s it for this week. We’ll be back next week with more Windows 10 news!

Microsoft news recap is a weekly feature highlighting the top Microsoft news stories of the past week. Sit back, grab some coffee, and enjoy the read!

“Monumental” Minecraft Movie gets a release date – March 4, 2022

After much anticipation, the long-awaited Minecraft Movie has finally been given a release date. Launching on March 4, 2022, Mojang noted that the long wait is due to “making a live-action, full-length feature film is really complicated.”

Dates! They are important, because they allow us to clear our calendars for exciting, nay, MONUMENTAL events. Such as the upcoming Minecraft movie, which finally has one! March 4, 2022. Just around the corner! A few more details here: https://t.co/JfIEBYpptc pic.twitter.com/CstpQVKPdY

— Minecraft (@Minecraft) April 16, 2019

Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription is official and launching later this year

Microsoft’s new subscription that bundles Xbox Live Gold and Xbox Game Pass into one subscription has been confirmed. The new subscription will launch later this year, coming first for Xbox Insiders.

Xbox One S All-Digital Edition is launching on May 7 and will cost $249.99

Microsoft’s disk-less Xbox One has been officially announced. Dubbed the Xbox One S All-Digital Edition, it will cost $249.99 and launches on May 7. But some have raised concerns at how the price difference between this version and the standard Xbox One S is, well, not much of a discount.

Cortana ends support for Wunderlist

Wunderlist, a task management app acquired by Microsoft in 2015, has had its integration with Cortana removed. It looks as though this move is due to the new integration between Microsoft’s To-Do app and Cortana.

That’s it for this week. We’ll be back next week with more Microsoft news!

One of Microsoft’s biggest reasons for making the switch from EdgeHTML as a rendering engine to Chromium has been that certain sites just don’t work well in Edge. Other sites, however, especially video focused properties like Netflix and HBONow, because of the way the old Edge handles PlayReady DRM video content, work better in Edge.

In order to get the best of both worlds, according to BleepingComputer.com, the New Edge can change user agent strings, the bits of code that tell a website what browser a visitor is using, based on a .json file that the new browser downloads from Microsoft when the new Edge fires up. A section of that json file, which you can see by visiting

https://config.edge.skype.com/config/v1/Edge/75.0.131.0?osname=win&channel=dev&clientId=[id]&osver=10.0.18875&osarch=x86_64&osring=WIF&osedition=professional&ostelemetrylevel=full

from a new Edge session (BleepingComputer says this is for the Canary Channel, but we were able to return the .json using Edge Dev), contains a section called EdgeDomainActions. There, the file will identify certain websites, and set the user agent string based on preset domain names. For example, once the user agent string policies are set, applications can be named and the user agent changed from ChromeUA to EdgeUA:

{  
   "EdgeDomainActions":{  
      "user_agent_override":{  
         "version":1,
         "policies":[  
            {  
               "name":"EdgeUA",
               "type":"partialReplacement",
               "value":"AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/64.0.3282.140 Safari/537.36 Edge/18.17763"
            },
            {  
               "name":"ChromeUA",
               "type":"edgeTokenReplacement",
               "value":""
            }
         ],
         "applications":[  
            {  
               "domain":"netflix.com",
               "applied_policy":"EdgeUA"
            },
            {  
               "domain":"facebook.com",
               "applied_policy":"ChromeUA"
            },

and so on. This way, the new Edge can serve up PlayReady DRM features to sites like Netflix using the Edge user agent string, and perhaps better performance and fewer glitches for other sites, like Facebook.com, by mimicing the Chrome user agent string.

Microsoft as of yet hasn’t released a lot of documentation on how the new Edge will work, or in fact even gotten around to posting changelogs for Dev and Canary builds, but we expect to hear lots more about exactly how Edge/Chromium will work, beginning at Build in just a couple of weeks.

The complete list of all eight games for the Castlevania Anniversary Collection have been announced (via Polygon). Konami, the publisher of the series, announced back in March the first four titles to join the collection: Castlevania (NES), Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge(Game Boy), Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse (NES), and Super Castlevania IV (Super NES).

Now it appears the last four titles to join the collection have been officially revealed—Castlevania: The Adventure (Game Boy), Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest (NES), Castlevania: Bloodlines (Sega Genesis), and Kid Dracula (Game Boy). So those who have enjoyed the classic games from the ‘90s will soon be able to enjoy them again not just on the Xbox One console on May 16, but also for the PS4, PC (Steam), and the Nintendo Switch.

In other news, the Arcade Classics Anniversary Collection has been released today. As we have already reported, the bundle comes with 8 classics from the 80s—Haunted Castle, Typhoon (A-Jax), Nemesis (Gradius), Vulcan Venture (Gradius II), Life Force (Salamander), Thunder Cross, Scramble and TwinBee.

As of now, we’re still waiting on the Contra Anniversary Collection, of which only eight titles have been revealed: Contra, Super Contra, Super C, and Contra III: The Alien Wars. This bundle will be released in the summer, and like the previous two collections will only be available digitally.

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Arcade Classics Anniversary Collection

Developer:
Konami Digital Entertainment

Price:
$3.99

Konami is bringing eight of their classic 80s video games to the Xbox One today with the release of the Arcade Classics Anniversary Collection.
Arcade Classics Anniversary Collection comes with the full versions of Scramble, TwinBee, Nemesis (also known as Gradius), Salamander (also known as Life Force), Typhoon (also known as A-Jax), Haunted Castle, Vulcan Venture (also known as Gradius II), and Thunder Cross which are all presented in their original retro styles.

Each game also features new functionality such as game saves, difficulty levels, visual settings, and an ebook containing artwork and interviews on the creation of each title.

Here’s the official description or Arcade Classics Anniversary Collection:

KONAMI starts its 50th anniversary celebration with this first installment of the Anniversary Collection series of the all-time classics! This collection includes 8 arcade masterpieces of the 80s, from Nemesis to Haunted Castle. Experience these KONAMI classics in all their retro glory, now enhanced with modern features.

• New Features: For the first time, these classic titles support mid-game saves, difficulty levels, and display options which provide a fresh experience to longtime fans.
• Bonus Book: Also includes a bonus eBook packed with new information about the titles, including interviews with the development staff, behind-the-scenes insights, and sketches and design documents never before revealed to the public!

Are you a fan of 80s video games and will you be picking this bundle up? Let us know in the comments below and then follow us on Pinterest for more Xbox gaming content.

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