Microsoft announces Surface tablet to rival iPad

After a 2 year domination of the tablet computers market by the Apple iPad which sold 67.1 million units as of 31 March 2012, it appears that Microsoft want a piece of the tablet market action that also include the Touchpad, Blackberry and other Android tablets.

At it's LA event on Monday, Microsoft showed off their latest result of excellent engineering technology that could probably be bad news for desktop computer and laptops manufacturers, Microsoft Surface.

Surface with Type Cover - 2mm more thicker than Touch cover, making the keyboard in total 5mm thick

Firstly, it's made of magnesium-based VaporMg chassis material which is as rigid and also smooth to touch. The Surface tablet computers shown are powered by Intel's 22nm Ivy Bridge chips running Windows 8, and another Surface powered by an ARM chipset and Windows RT.

The Windows RT version is just 9.3mm thin, weighs 1.5lbs, includes a built-in kickstand. It will ship in 32GB or 64GB versions, complete with a 10.6-inch ClearType HD 16:9 display.



Microsoft Surface's Intel-based tablet will run Windows 8 Pro, with a thickness of 13.5mm, a weight of 1.9lbs including USB 3.0 support. This version will also include magnesium casing and a built-in kickstand, but will ship with either 64GB or 128GB storage.

Additionally, the Intel version will include additional digital ink support through a pen that magnetizes to the body of the tablet, and a 10.6-inch covered in Gorilla Glass 2 ClearType Full HD display. Both of Microsoft's Surface tablets feature optional Touch Cover that will contain an integrated multi-touch keyboard and trackpad or Type Cover that is a thicker full tactile keyboard.

For suggested retail pricing, Microsoft will announce it closer to availability and is expected to be competitive with a comparable ARM tablet or Intel Ultrabook notebooks PC. Hopefully with it's lightness and powerful processor capability it'll be affordable for the students in college and to the normal tech enthusiast. The Windows RT PC will be available in October, with the Windows 8 Pro model to ship about three months later.

Akamai: South Korea still have the fastest internet connection in the world

Each quarter, Akamai publishes a "State of the Internet" report that includes data gathered from attack traffic, broadband adoption, mobile connectivity and other relevant topics concerning the Internet and its usage, as well as trends seen in this data over time.

According to the network solutions provider, South Korea is putting other countries to shame with average fiber and broadband internet access speeds of about 16Mbps. By comparison, The U.S offers an average connection speeds of 5.8Mbps, putting it behind a host of country's internet service providers including Romania, Japan and also Switzerland.

Akamai also revealed that cities in the Asia Pacific region are far more likely to have high speed internet, with 61 cities in Japan featured in the list of fastest connections for cities.

The lighter the color, the faster the internet connection speed.

Despite that, only a minority of people have access to the highest speeds. Akamai found that just 27% of all connections came from speeds of 5Mbps or higher. On the mobile-connections side, it saw a spread between 163 kilobits per second and 5Mbps, and found that the vast majority of mobile connections average speeds of 1Mbps.

Other report details include:

• On a year-over-year basis, average connection speeds in Asia increased 13 percent while Internet users in Oceania have witnessed a 132 percent increase.
• Average peak connection speeds in Africa were 55 percent faster than four years ago while users in South America have experienced a 238 percent increase
• Since 2008, South America has seen a 558 percent increase in high broadband adoption, yet still ranks just above Africa in total high broadband penetration.
• Narrowband adoption continued to decline globally with all regions reporting similar percentage declines (64-78 percent).