preview

Windows users can grab some Angry Birds and a host of other games when Microsoft's Windows Store opens for business later this month.

The new store is slated to launch in preview mode by the end of February at the same time the Windows 8 Consumer Preview debuts.

Citing a "source familiar with Microsoft's plans," The Verge has spilled the beans on which games will be among the first titles to pop up in the store. Though Pinball and Solitaire will automatically come with the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, several other games will be available for … Read more

Windows 8 may kill the Start menu button, the Super Bowl spawned tons o' tweets, and Facebook admits that deleted photos can still be accessed.

Links from Monday's episode of Loaded:

Microsoft has already cooked up a special Bing page tempting users to check out its upcoming Windows 8 "Consumer Preview."

The first clue is the video of a betta fish swimming from one edge of the screen to the other. Thought of as Microsoft's mascot for beta versions of new operating systems, that particular fish swam its way onto the desktop of the beta for Windows 7 in 2009.

But other more obvious clues are the hot spots and links scattered across the screen that refer specifically to Windows 8 Consumer Preview. Since the page is still … Read more

Say goodbye to the Windows start button. Microsoft has gotten rid of it from the latest build of Windows 8.

Hitting the Web over the weekend, screenshots of the new Windows 8 build display the "super bar," but without the start button orb on the left, according to The Verge. Build 8220 will be the final version released before the beta, now known as the Consumer Preview, debuts before the end of the month.

Until its untimely (or timely) death, the Windows 8 start button located in the Metro UI offered access to the search, share, devices, and … Read more

Adobe Systems has released a second advance look at Photoshop CS6 that shows new work to give a hardware boost to the image-editing software.

The graphics processing unit (GPU) speeds the Liquify tool, which lets people smear images in a finger-painting way, according to a Zorana Gee, a Photoshop product manager. She demonstrated the change in a YouTube video, the second in what looks to be a series of previews of the software. An earlier Photoshop CS6 preview showed new raw image editing tools adopted from the Lightroom 4 beta, a darker user interface, and improvements to brush size selection. … Read more

Microsoft is already testing the waters with the next version of its popular Office suite.

Office 15 officially made its debut as a technical preview yesterday, available to a small number of early testers who will provide feedback that can influence the final release.

And though the technical preview program is already full, a beta of the new Office suite will surface for everyone to play with later in the summer.

A Microsoft blog posted yesterday by PJ Hough, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Office Division, spilled very few beans about the new suite codenamed Office 15. And those … Read more

Apple's Quick Look feature in OS X is a convenient way to preview a document without needing to launch any applications to do so.

Just select a document and press the spacebar, and if the system has a plug-in for handling the document type then the Quick Look server will generate and display the document preview.

Quick Look is intended to be a lightweight option, so the document preview may not be accurately formatted, but it should be enough to show you what the document contains. However, there may be times when this does not work correctly: you might … Read more

CES isn't exactly gaming's biggest stage, but it seems each year its presence increases. At CES 2012, Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo will all be at the big show. While it doesn't appear that Microsoft will have any new hardware on display, both Sony and Nintendo have lots to show off.

Sony is sure to be pushing the Vita, and I'm hoping to get a better idea of how the device will interact with its big cousin, the PlayStation 3. Sony has also told CNET there will be some new Vita games on the show floor for … Read more

Welcome to CNET's predictions for the TV hardware category at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Dave Katzmaier here. I want to do something different for the 2012 CES preview. After nearly 10 years of handling TV reviews and coverage at CNET essentially by myself, I'm now joined by a colleague whose main beat is also TVs: Ty Pendlebury.

He's already written a few reviews and blog posts, done his share of videos and podcasts, and he also has plenty of experience reviewing TVs for CNET Australia and has attended CES in that capacity. So we decided it would be cool for Ty and I to write separate CES TV previews and lump them into this post. Just to keep it interesting, neither of us consulted with the other on what we're writing here, so look upon the repetition not as tedious, but as further confirmation of the inevitable near future. … Read more