Students, Buy a PC Get Xbox Free

Tej Kohli brings a good news for the American students, who can  now get a Xbox 360 free with a new PC buy. Tej Kohli blog brings the details on this latest offer.

From May 22 onwards, students who buy new PC worth $699 or more will get a free Xbox 360 4GB console, the software giant announced through their official blog today. The offer is available for internet users, who makes a purchase from Dell.com, HP.com or Microsoft's online store. Those who want to buy a laptop offline, can head to a retail outlet of Best Buy or Microsoft's stores.

Tej Kohli reports that to get the Free Xbox 360, students will need to have a .edu email address at the time of purchase. For those who don't have an .edu id, can walk in to a retail store and show their student Ids.

Currently, the Microsoft's Xbox 360 console is priced at $200. The hardware features built-in Wi-Fi and comes with a Black Xbox 360 wireless controller. If you want an additional storage, you can buy a hard drive separately.

The Xbox 360 is selling like hotcakes in the retail market of late, says Tej Kohli. According to a research firm, the software giant sold 297,000 unit in April and outdid Sony's Playstaion 3 and Nintendo's Wii. Microsoft claims that the Xbox 360 has been the best-selling console in 10 of the past 11 months.

Microsoft's free Xbox 360 offer is valid through September 3, or until stock lasts. The offer will be coming to Canada and France "soon".

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Bing Surpasses Yahoo in Search!

Tej Kohli congratulates Bing on beating Yahoo! in the US internet search.

In round one of the battle of the search engines, “Bing” defeated “Yahoo”, marking a historic win!

Bing's bounce over Yahoo in the US search volume should not come as a surprise to anyone who has been following the horse race, but it is a iconic milestone for a small search engine whose major directive is to grab some of the Google's advertising pie.

Throwing Yahoo out of the way, Bing's dream of giving a real competition to Google becomes a little less far-fetched. Bing, together with windows Live and MSN now have 13.9 percent share of all search queries. While Yahoo's share fell to 13.1%, Google still rules the roost with whopping 65.1% share. However, by other metrics, Bing is still at the third position.

Eventually though, the competition is only interesting in the way it inspires competitors to come up with new features and services. The battle between Google and Bingo will play out in three venues:

Basic Search

The recent launch of Google Instant tool by Google, which shows and alters search results as you type, is one example of how search engines will try to trump one another in order to make themselves stand out. The ultimate search results are somewhat same when separated from their interfaces, but there no mistaking Google from the pack now. Whether bingo will follow the footsteps of Google or will do something innovative on its own, is yet to be seen!

Extra Features


It's a pain to use different search engines for different services, hence, it falls upon Google and Bingo to develop the most attractive all-encompassing service that include maps, images and other things apart from the traditional search. Of late, Google has strengthened its real-time search engine to pull better results from Facebook and Twitter. Likewise, Bing has introduced streaming music, games and movie information to its search results. Recently, Bing also updated its Maps to include Cab fare calculator and support for OpenStreetMap.

Mobile


Google has a strong foothold when it comes to mobile searches, since it's a default search engine for iPhone and of course Android. But Bing might get a boost with the launch of Windows Phone 7, along with the Bing's iphone and Android apps. Besides this, the compulsory use of Bing in the Verizon's latest Fascinate phone might not be received well by Google fans, but it will give Bing another helping hand, although forcibly.

 

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Will Microsoft be the next Numero Uno in Tablet PC market?

Microsoft is looking forward to increase its share in the tablet PC market like it did in netbooks as consumers demand a software that accommodates in the existing ecosystem, a senior executive said on Tuesday, despite the early dominance of Apple iPad in the market and news of strong Android competitors in the offing.

When Taiwan's Asustek first launched netbook PCs in 2007, they all ran on the lower-cost, open source Linux system, but Microsoft eventually took over this sector with more than 90 percent of all netbooks now powered by windows.

"Having watched this movie play before, there's some consistency in the themes," corporate vice-president for original equipment manufacturing Steve Guggenheimer told Reuters in an interview.

"You get a lot of noise, you get a lot of energy around the alternatives, but then when people start selling these machines, and it can't quite do what the consumers want, your printer doesn't work, retailers get returns, then that's when it's hard."

According to Gartner, a research firm, more than 10 million tablet PCs are expected to be sold in 2010, with users begining welcoming such gadgets with open arms, which include Apple iPad, Dell's coming soon Streak and Asustek's Eee Pad, which it introduced this week.

Microsoft also stated that it can see the sign of growth in corporate demand, with 45% of the chief IT officers it talked to are ready to getting ready to deploy its just out windows 7 system.

"We're starting to see that commercial refresh," Guggenheimer said. "There's really good energy on the commercial side, but it hasn't caught up with the level of the consumer yet."

All top computer brands are largely dependent on the demand by corporate sector, like Lenovo and Dell have said they are seeing signs of increasing corporate demand, as businesses still using decade old Windows XP upgrade their system.

As far as the Google's prospects with smart phone market are concerned, Guggenheimer remained skeptical, largely because Google's android system does not have a common platform that could intersect different mobile brands and manufacturers.

"When you write an app for Windows, it can immediately reach hundreds of millions of users," he said. "The challenge for Android is that (software developers) will need to have multiple versions for each individual phone."

Android is Google open-source OS for smartphones. Handset manufacturers like HTC and Samsung can do a little bit tweaking in to software to meet their own requirements.

Taking fourth place from Microsoft in the smartphone OS market in the first quarter of 2010, the Android system has put the company in good position as handsets look geared up to overtake PCs for internet surfing.

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