How to make Windows 8 Metro open files on the desktop

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One of the more annoying behaviors in Windows 8 and 8.1 is that all of your files are set to open in native Metro-style apps. For instance, if you're working on the desktop and view a picture or PDF, it opens full screen in the associated app. If you're working on a traditional computer without a touchscreen, this is frustrating to say the least. Especially if you're on a laptop with a single screen. Here's how to take control of your Windows 8 system and make your files open in the desktop programs you want them to.

Change default program file associations

Note: Here I am using the Window 8.1 preview but the process is virtually identical in Windows 8.
From the Windows start screen type: default programs and select the Default Programs icon under results.

The Default Programs windows will open on the desktop. Here you have a couple of ways to change the default programs that open your files. The easiest is to click "Set your default programs."

Now select the program you want to set as your default for your files. Here I'm selecting Windows Photo Viewer because I can't stand it when I want to view an image and the Photo app opens up. This way it will open on the desktop like it used to.

Altair 8800 Clone: A near-empty box filled with history

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Owning a piece of computer history can be expensive and not much fun. You can buy a vintage MITS Altair 8800, one of the world’s first successful desktop computers, on eBay, but a good one will cost you over US$4,000. That’s why computer enthusiast Mike Douglas developed the Altair 8800 Clone. It’s a modern, inexpensive, functional reproduction of the historic Altair 8800 computer that uses 21st century technology to recreate a bit of computer history for hobbyists and educators.
When the MITS Altair 8800 hit the market in 1975, it was as if NASA started giving away Apollo space capsules. In those days, computers were still things that even people who worked with computers had trouble getting access to. They were large, expensive and still rare enough that you had to book time on them for even the simplest job. The MITS company of Albuquerque, New Mexico used the newly-developed Intel 8080 processor to change all that when it used the microchip as the basis for the Altair 8800, a computer that could sit on a tabletop and sold for only $621 assembled.
The computer featured on the cover of the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics wasn't the first hobby computer, but it was the first that came as a complete kit instead of list of parts or, also a first, fully assembled and tested. Exactly how many were sold isn't known, but it's estimated over 2,000 were delivered into the hands of consumers and the Altair 8800’s computer bus became the defacto industry standard.

Today, all this is surprising when a computer can be plugged in and connected to the internet in a matter of minutes of unpacking. To modern eyes, the Altair 8800 looks incomprehensible. There’s no keyboard, no monitor and the first ones didn’t even have any ports. It was just a blue and white box measuring 7 x 17 x 17.5 in (17.7 x 43.1 x 44.4 cm) with rows of switches and LED lights on the front panel marked with cryptic labels such as “HLTA” and “WO.” It ran on undiluted machine language and programming it was a long, tedious process of flipping switches to input binary code. It was also prehistoric in performance with 64 K of RAM and a CPU running at 2 MHz. Then there was the fact that assembling the kit was a long, difficult job.
Despite all this, MITS couldn’t keep up with demand and some buyers camped in the company’s car park waiting for their machines. After they got their machines assembled, the enthusiasts would then rack their brains trying to figure out what to do with the things. Meanwhile, a company called Traf-O-Data offered to write a new version of BASIC as the operating system for the Altair 8800. The partners behind Traf-O-Data went on to start an obscure software company called Microsoft.

The Altair 8800 Clone was started by Mike Douglas in 2012 when he discovered how much it would cost to buy a vintage Altair 8800. Even reproduction kits were expensive and hard to obtain, so Douglas decided to use the original data sheets and schematics to design his own replica with modern technology to emulate the original Altair 8800. The result was the Clone, which looks and acts like the original, but the inside is made of 21st century components. What started as a hobby became a business because producing things like custom casings or nameplates is only feasible when done in commercial runs.
The Clone duplicates the look, feel, features, and performance of an Altair 8800 down to the limitations and quirks, and it will run software written for the Altair 8800. This has a strong educational and nostalgia factor because, for all its historic significance, the Altair 8800 had some real design problems. The only thing the Clone can’t do is play “The Fool on the Hill” over an AM radio as an early Altair 8800 was famously programmed to do. That’s because the modern parts don’t bleed radio emissions, so they can’t be manipulated to play songs on a receiver.
The most obvious difference between the Clone and the Altair 8800 is that the former is suspiciously light. The modern components are so small compared to the original that the the power supply, circuit boards and buses have been replaced with a whole lot of nothing. At first glance, it looks like an empty box with a few wires running between the front and back panels. The case itself is an original design to emulate the Altair 8800s, though simpler inside to keep down construction costs.

The eyes have it in Tobii’s new Ultrabook prototype

Swedish company Tobii Technology has been working to bring laptops integrating its eye tracking and gaze interaction technology to market for a few years now, first demonstrating such a device at CeBIT in 2011. The most recent example is a new prototype laptop that combines Tobii’s eye-tracking technology and a Synaptics ForcePad touchpad in an Ultrabook form factor.
Tobii already offers its PCEye system for Windows desktop PCs and at CES in January unveiled its REX Developer Edition peripheral, also aimed at Windows desktop users, that boasted its Gaze interface.
Both pieces of hardware were too bulky to cram in a laptop, and even the prototype laptop unveiled in 2011 that was developed in partnership with Lenovo had bulges in unfamiliar places. But the company has now managed to get the required hardware down to a size that fits almost imperceptibly into a slim Ultrabook form factor.

The integrated eye-tracking technology allows users to point, navigate and scroll through documents on the laptop through Tobii’s Gaze user interface. This combines eye-tracking with mouse, keyboard and touch controls, while the inclusion of a ForcePad touchpad from Synaptics adds pressure inputs to the mix.
Tobii will be showcasing the prototype laptop in the coming months in the US, Europe and Asia to demonstrate the potential of its technology to media and OEMs in the hope they will integrate it into future products.
Source: Tobii Technology

2013 MacBook Air (11-inch) vs. Microsoft Surface Pro

compares the specs (and other features) of the new 11-inch MacBook Air, and the Microsoft Surface Pro

Mobile devices have turned the traditional PC market upside down. While Apple's "post PC" strategy is all about the iPad, the Mac still gives it a horse in the traditional PC race. Microsoft's strategy is more convergent: it wants hybrid devices like the Surface Pro to become our primary computers. How do the two measure up? Let's find out, as we compare the specs (and other features) of the 2013 MacBook Air to the Microsoft Surface Pro.