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Microsoft Ends its Surface Pro Financing Program

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Surface Pro
Image Source: azureedge.net

Approximately, a year ago, Microsoft launched a financial program with a payment plan called Klarna Financing, for selling its expensive and pretty Surface Pro Laptops. The program targetted mainly the students and the educators, who wanted to buy an expensive laptop but could not afford it.

The scheme included a 24 months payment program. The buyer could get the laptop on a no interest lease, for that he/she had to pay a particular amount every month till next 24 months. After a successful completion of 24 months, the buyer would own the laptop. Also, the program had offered the buyer to upgrade the laptop with a newer version after 18 months or more, only if the buyer had kept the laptop in good condition. But in case of a failed payment, the buyer had to pay 20% extra.

Now this year, Microsoft has quietly shut down the program and will no longer accept any enrollments for the program. It stated in the FAQ of the company that Microsoft decided to end the program after “much thought and consideration.” It has not given much information about why it is shutting the program down.

The customers who are already registered with the program will continue getting the benefits and will be able to upgrade their laptops to the newer version. Also, for more information, the customers will have to contact the company directly about the Klarna program as Microsoft is also going to shut down the Surface Plus Portal on September 30th of this year.

Lenovo Premium Yoga Laptops & X1 Extreme ThinkPad Unveiled at IFA 2018

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Lenovo Extreme
Image Source: pcmag.com

Many of the tech giants have gathered at the IFA in Berlin and are ready with their new products to be showcased in the event. On Thursday, another tech giant Lenovo unveiled its new X1 Extreme ThinkPad with two other premium Yoga Laptops, C930 and S730.

The latest Lenovo X1 Extreme is embedded with the NVIDIA’s GeForce 1050Ti graphics and will be the first ThinkPad laptop to own it. It has a 15.6 inches 4K high-resolution touch screen with the Dolby Vision support. The laptop is built upon the Intel Core i9 variants with the 8th generation chipsets. The lightweight laptop supports up to 64GB of DDR4 RAM, and up to 2TB of PCIe SSD storage. Also, the laptops claim to have 15 hours of battery life after 100% of charging and the laptop gets charged up to 80% within an hour, thanks to the Rapid Charge technology. For secure login, it has also got the touch and face recognition features. The appearance of the laptop is similar to the older ThinkPad laptops and the chassis is built using carbon fibre, that is capable of absorbing shocks.

Lenovo also announced two more laptops in its Yoga laptops series, the Yoga C930 and S730. The C930 laptop uses the 8th generation Intel Core i5 processor. It holds up to 4 GB of RAM, and 258 GB of SSD storage. The laptop has a foldable 13.3 inches 4K IPS-technology touch screen. It also has a privacy shutter on the webcam and is integrated with a rotating soundbar.

Even being a part of the Yoga series laptop, the S730 is not 360-degree foldable and also does not support a touch feature. The laptop is like a notebook having a slim body with 13.3 inches screen that makes it the look-alike of the Mac AirBook. The laptops support the 8th Generation Intel Core i5 and Core i7 variants, with Intel HD 620 graphics. The laptop holds up to 16GB DDR4 RAM and up to 1 TB PCIe SSD storage.

The laptops will be available in the market during the last 3 months of the year. The price of the X1 Extreme laptop ranges from $1859 ( around Rs. 1,31,900). The Yoga C930 is going to cost $1,399 (around 99,280) and S730 will be available in approximately $999.99 (around Rs. 70,900).

Dell’s New 2-in-1 Laptops with XPS Features at Lower Price

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Dell
Image Source: slashgear.com

It’s still one day left for the IFA 2018, but, we see that Dell could not wait much and has announced the new series of its Inspiron and Vostro laptops. Dell, on Thursday, made the announcement of the launch of a large range of 2-in-1 laptops. The range includes the Inspiron 7000, Inspiron 5000, XPS 13 Chromebook, Vostro 14 and 15 5000 laptops. Dell had recently launched its XPS 13 models that are on the higher price side. And, these new laptops have also got some premium features from the XPS 13 series in them. So you can get the XPS 13 features at a lower price.

The Inspiron 7000 laptops are in three different screen sizes i.e., 13-inch, 15-inch and 17-inch, with full HD 4K resolution. All these new laptops are upgraded with the Intel’s latest Whiskey Lake 8th-Gen processors. The 15-inch and the 17-inch 7000 laptops are also going to have the Nvidia GeForce MX150 graphics card and Intel Optane Memory. The laptops are also upgraded with the ram up to 16GB. Now, another interesting feature that has been added to that new 7000 laptops is that the support of the Amazon Alexa Assistant.

The Dell Inspiron 5000 2-in-1 laptop has similar features to the 7000 series. But the screen size is 14 inches and it has variants in i5 and i7 8th generation processor with an optional support for Nvidia GeForce MX130 discrete graphics. Also, the Inspiron Chromebook with similar features supports the RAM size ranging from 4GB to 128 GB, powered with 8th-Gen Intel Core i3 processor.

All the 2-in-1 laptops are now available in the aluminium exteriors with slimmer bezels. The sleek screen has also reduced the size of the webcam up to 2.7mm that is located on the top of the screen. The USB-C port is also available in all the three laptops that is useful for both Power Delivery and DisplayPort.

The laptops are supposed to be cheaper than the XPS 13 series, but yet with those features, you can’t have them at that lowered price. The Inspiron 7000 lineup costs $879.99 (around Rs 62,000) for the basic 13-inch laptop and the basic model of Inspiron 5000 costs $599.99 (around Rs 42,300). The price of the Dell Chromebook is not clear yet, but all the laptops will be available from the mid of October this year.

Google‘s Indian Payment App Google Tez Becomes Google Pay

Google, India, News, Product, Product Management, Tech News / By
GooglePay
Image Source: vox-cdn.com

Google launched its payment app Google Tez, last September, and after almost a year, it has earned as many as 22 million monthly active users, having done over 750 million transactions. On Tuesday, Google has announced the re-branding of Google Tez as Google Pay, at its annual event, Google for India.

Noticeably, the Google-created app operates on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and in a year, there have been the transactions of an annual average of 2 lakh crore. The rebranding of the app has also got many new features added to it. Google has announced its partnership with the private banks in India, including ICICI, Kotak Mahendra, HDFC, etc. that will offer an easy loan through Google Pay app. The users will be able to get their loan sanctioned in a few clicks, with a minimal paperwork. After all the verification work, the bank will transfer the money into the user’s account instantly and safely.

After the success of Google Pay in India, various other countries have also shown their interest in the Google’s payment app and contacted Google to work with them for their payment app development. Google has also announced that the app will be working globally soon, and will also be available for the online merchants like RedBus, BookMyShow, MakeMyTrip, GoIbibo, Freshmenu, etc.

Caesar Sengupta, the manager at Google Pay, said at the event that the app is created for India, so the features can be modified for other countries. Also, with the rebranding, some global features will be added to the Indian Google Pay app. He also stated that in future Google Pay is also going to help more than 1.2 million local businesses in India.

Citation 500 : Harman Kardon’s $700 Google Assistant Speaker

Google, News, Product, Tech News / By
Harman Kardon Citation-500
Image Source: pocket-lint.com

Harman Kardon is a leading speaker producer company that is known for its unmatched audio quality. The company is about to launch its new range of speaker Citation 500 that is going to be a high-end Google Assistant speaker.

Unlike, the other Harmon Kardon speakers, the Citation 500 is higher in price, i.e. about $700. The company has rendered the speaker in two shades, grey and black, and is covered with the similar coloured woollen fabric. The speaker boasts 200W of stereo audio having high-resolution 24-bit/96kHz support and is smart enough to receive your commands, responding in the same way. But, with the LCD screen and the playback control buttons, available on the top of the speaker, you can adjust the volume, skip the songs or select a particular song manually without shouting at it.

The Citation 500 is a high-end Google Assistant speaker that you get at a mid-range price. It is like a smart-home hub that is feature-rich and goes with your decor.

Harmon Kardon is planning to unveil the smart speaker at the IFA 2018, in Berlin, later this week. And, will start taking preorders, by the end of the September, from its customers, in Europe only. The company has not commented on when the speakers will be available in other regions of the world.

Sony’s Dog Robot to be Launched in the US in coming October

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Aibo
Image Source: wsj.net

Its been around more than two weeks after the Anki’s Vector was launched. Now, Sony has also announced the launch of its Aibo does robot in the US by the coming October this year. Interestingly, The Anki robot has been a success with its launch having a low price of $250. The Sony Aibo, comparatively bigger in size robot has also got more features than the Vector robot and also the price is even higher. The cost of the Aibo robot will be $2,899, and the presale will start in September. Although before delivery they will be exhibited at the Sony Square in Manhattan from Friday through Oct. 14.

The Sony Aibo is a smart dog robot, sleeker than its ancestor Boxy robot and is capable of remembering over 100 different faces, through its OLED-screen eyes. The robot can sense the smile, touch, praise and can play music. It can speak 1,000 words and is enabled with the feature to imitate a real dog, responding to its owner’s commands with a bark. Having a camera on its back and different sensors embedded into it, are helpful to map your house so that it can walk freely in your house. You can add new tricks to its knowledge base and also, using its Aibo app, you can map its activities, give it commands and also manage your house by enabling its camera feature on.

The new Aibo dog robot comes with a charging station, a pink ball and an Airbone. Even having many features included to it, the Aibo robot’s sale may be a little less than the Anki’s Vector due to its high price. As earlier in Japan too its sale was much lesser than the other home robots.