Mihăiță Bamburic

Microsoft is no stranger to controversy, even attracting negative attention when it comes to the advertised storage of its own Surface tablet lineup. The interwebs buzzed after the company admitted the shortcomings of Surface RT, which only comes with 16GB of user-accessible storage in 32GB trim, and now the same issue is raising its head all over again with Surface Pro, just days before the big launch.

As most knowledgeable Windows users will concede, Microsoft's latest consumer operating system does take up quite a bit of storage space due to its fully-fledged nature. For example, on my personal computer running Windows 8 Pro 64-bit, the "Windows" folder by itself uses just over 16GB. So it's not overly difficult to imagine Windows 8 Pro will take up a lot of Surface Pro's free space. Of course this is something that educated pundits surely know (or at least they should).

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Right after Kim Dotcom launched Mega on January 19 I succumbed to temptation and registered for a new account. My initial foray was, however, short lived as no confirmation email arrived in my Outlook.com inbox. Clearly, Microsoft's service and Mega did not play well together.

Dotcom shed some light on the matter when he posted the following on Twitter: "Don't use Hotmail to register on Mega. They have mysteriously black holed emails from our domain. Gmail works fine", He shortly followed this up with: "We are working on the 'confirmation email' issue. Some mail services react allergic to an unknown domain sending millions of confirmations". Intrigued by the issue I asked Microsoft for a statement concerning the confirmation email issue with Outlook.com accounts.

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Another day, another Galaxy smartphone. On Tuesday, Samsung unveiled a new handset as part of the company's ever expanding Galaxy lineup, this one dubbed the Galaxy Express.

The new device slots in-between the Galaxy S III Mini and the Galaxy S III, with similar design characteristics including the traditional rounded corners. Samsung could have named the new device the Galaxy S III Average, as the handset features a 4.5-inch Super AMOLED Plus display with a resolution of 800 by 480 and a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, both of which are in-between the specs of the two S-branded smartphones.

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After teasers and tweets, it's really no secret that today is the big day when Microsoft launches Office 2013. The suite has already been available for TechNet users since mid-November, but in typical Microsoft fashion the consumers are the last to get their hands on the goodies.

Office 2013 Home and Student, Home and Business, and Professional, as well as Office 365, are currently available for purchase in different markets, including United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Australia, with pricing adjusted depending on the region.

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To be frank, acronyms like "SAFE" and "BYOD" are not overly exciting, especially when combined with words like "business" or "enterprise". There's just something missing that makes related adverts unappealing and boring. Samsung, however, begs to differ and has meshed all those terms together with unicorns to create two rather cool video ads.

The two commercials are, at core, related to SAFE, which is short for Samsung for Enterprise, and the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) movement but with an emphasis on entertainment rather than bombarding the viewers with too many technical details. At the same time the South Korean corporation did not pass on mocking BlackBerry devices, once known as the business world's top choice for at-work smartphones.

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In a move that aims to consolidate the company's branded app selection on Lumia Windows Phones, Nokia has unveiled a new, subscription-based premium service dubbed Nokia Music+, that builds atop of the established Nokia Music platform. A "+" sign can make quite the difference.

Music+ is not designed to replace currently available free services such as Mix Radio, but rather to offer Lumia owners the paid option for "unlimited music discovery". The Finnish manufacturer says that Music+ is aimed at "people who care enough about music to pay something for more quality and choice" and, depending on the user's location, will run for around EUR3.99 or $3.99 per month. But what are the advantages?

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Ever since leaked ROMs started to surface, more than two months ago, it was obvious that Samsung was planning to officially release Android 4.1 Jelly Bean for the popular Galaxy S II smartphone. The only question at the time was: When?

At the time of writing this article Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean, build number JZO54K, is available for the international variant of the Galaxy S II (codename "I9100") in Spain, with other European markets likely to follow in the upcoming period. The available official distribution comes hot off the press as it ships with a January 14 time-stamp.

With the latest official build, Galaxy S II owners can expect a revamped Touch Wiz skin, with design cues borrowed from the Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note II user interfaces. The most noteworthy improvements over the previous build, based on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, include Project Butter for increased responsiveness and fluidity, redesigned lockscreen, and new widgets, as well as an updated notification bar with a higher toggle selection.

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Microsoft's efforts to improve the company's cloud platform, Windows Azure, most definitely do not fly under the radar. Over the past few months the software giant brought Windows Azure Services to Windows Server 2012, introduced a plethora of new features for its cloud platform, updated the Windows Azure SDK for .NET and, on Tuesday, announced the general availability of Windows Azure Media Services.

Windows Azure Media Services is basically a Media Platform as a Service or PaaS, as Microsoft likes to call it, that allows users to implement video streaming, using various formats, to Android, HTML5, iPad, iPhone, Xbox, Windows 8 or Windows Phone, among other supported clients. Developers can control Windows Azure Media Services through REST APIs or Java SDK and .NET SDK in order to build an automated media workflow which can upload, encode and stream video.

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Firefox OS is anything but a secret with Mozilla releasing important details down the road since its unveiling and even an eye-opening operating system simulator, the latter introduced little more than two months ago. Frankly, the only important missing piece of the puzzle is the hardware on which Firefox OS is designed to run.

Mozilla decided to shed some light on the matter and through Geeksphone, that works in conjunction with Telefonica, revealed two developer preview phones, dubbed Keon and Peak. Spoiler alert: If you're hoping to see two LG Optimus G Pro devices in disguise you're in for a big surprise.

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On Tuesday, Japanese carrier NTT DOCOMO took the wraps off its new smartphone and tablet lineup, arriving in the Spring. From the significant number of new devices that will be launched starting from January 25, one stands out from the rest -- the new LG Optimus G Pro smartphone.

NTT DOCOMO's decision to unveil the Optimus G Pro shows unfortunate timing, seeing as on the same day LG revealed plans to introduce its current flagship handset, the Optimus G, into more than 50 new markets, starting with Singapore at the end of January.

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Before anyone labels me as an Android fanboy, let me tell you this -- I like Windows Phone 8, I like it a lot. Even though my smartphone of choice is the Google Galaxy Nexus running either of the two Jelly Bean iterations, Microsoft's mobile operating system has always appealed to me, especially the latest iteration which is by far the best of the bunch. I’ve always wanted to review Windows Phone 8, but there was one big problem -- I couldn't get a review unit for an in-depth look at it. So I did what PR folks were not expecting -- I bought an HTC Windows Phone 8X.

So why the Windows Phone 8X? There are not many devices running the new OS at the moment, but in my part of the world the selection is even more limited -- HTC is the only manufacturer that currently sells a Windows Phone 8 smartphone. The price is also very attractive at EUR479 which is marginally less than what the Samsung Galaxy S III goes for, for instance. By contrast the Nokia Lumia 920, which is not yet available locally through official channels, costs more than EUR700 at major retailers, a price difference that I cannot justify at all. So, as you can imagine, the Windows Phone 8X is my one and only choice.

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Keeping up with recent CyanogenMod tradition, the team behind the popular green droid custom distribution unveiled the first monthly release based on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. The build is designed to offer users a stable experience, more suitable for daily use compared to the usual nightly builds.

CyanogenMod 10.1 M1 is currently available only for a limited number of devices, including the Google Nexus lineup (Nexus S, Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 7 including the 3G variant, Nexus 4 and Nexus 10), the US variants of the Samsung Galaxy S III, the Samsung Galaxy S (codename "galaxysmtd" and "galaxysbmtd"), the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 (versions P3100 and P3110), the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 (versions P5100 and P5110) as well as the Hardkernel ODROID U2 open development platform.

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Following the new smartphone flagships introduced at CES 2013, the Xperia Z and Xperia ZL, Japanese Android device manufacturer Sony has unveiled the successor to its Xperia Tablet S slate. Dubbed the Xperia Tablet Z, it sports a dust-proof and water-proof shell, and a lightweight and thin form factor.

The Xperia Tablet Z comes with a 10.1-inch display with a 1920 by 1200 resolution (known as WUXGA), backed by Sony's Mobile BRAVIA Engine 2 technology. The panel features a 16:10 aspect ratio, an interesting choice seeing as how Sony's own recent smartphones feature the narrower 16:9 aspect ratio for each of their respective screens.

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The Nexus 4 was anything but a secret long before Google officially raised the curtain on October 29, last year. Impressive specs, affordable price, the promise of timely upgrades, all were compelling arguments as to why I must buy one when sales start. However, Google didn't care about my enthusiasm and had other plans in mind, offering the smartphone only to a limited number of markets. Lucky me, I'm not invited to join the party. So what can I do?

Like any passionate, but patient, enthusiast my first thought was to buy one from the German Play Store, the closest one to my location and with the lowest prices as well, instead of moving to another country or shelling out more than $500 or $600 on eBay. So I asked a colleague of mine to help me out. I would pay for the Nexus 4 and he would send it my way after receiving the package. Easier said than done, obviously, as I shortly found out that Google only accepts credit cards issued in Germany. That was Plan A, by the way. OK, but now what?

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Like it or not, the New Zealand-based entrepreneur Kim Dotcom continues to make headlines thanks to his latest project, Mega. The cloud storage service launches on January 20, and merely days before the big opening Dotcom revealed that Mega will indeed be mega in the storage department.

In a Twitter post, Kim Dotcom said that Mega will offer "generous limits for free [plan] users". But just how much is "generous"?, you may ask. The soon-to-be-introduced service will give users a whopping 50GB of free cloud storage, matching MediaFire's offer, and top established market competitors such as Box, Dropbox, Google's Drive and Microsoft's SkyDrive. Basically if there's a "box" or "drive" in the title, then it's not as "roomy".

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