It was only four months ago that Microsoft increased the available OneDrive storage for Office 365 subscribers to one terabyte, and apparently there was still room for improvement. Today, on the OneDrive blog, Microsoft announced that Office 365 subscribers will now be offered unlimited OneDrive storage. The last year or two have seen a dramatic shift in the Cloud Storage segment, with the major providers like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and others all jockeying for position. Microsoft had already thrown down the gauntlet in June by offering up to 5 TB (1 TB x 5 users) for $99.99 per year with Office 365 Home, but no longer willing to rest on their laurels they announced what will be the final storage increase for Office 365.

Consumer Cloud Offerings   OneDrive Google Drive iCloud Drive DropBox Box Amazon Cloud Drive Free Storage 15 GB 15 GB 5 GB 2 GB 10 GB 5 GB Paid Storage (USD/year) 100 GB - $24
200 GB - $48
Unlimited - $70 (With Office 365 Personal)
Unlimited x 5 users - $100 (Office 365 Home) 100 GB - $24
1 TB - $120
10 TB - $1200
20 TB - $2400
30 TB - $3600 20 GB - $12
200 GB - $50
500 GB - $120
1 TB - $240 1 TB - $100 100 GB - $120 20 GB - $10
50 GB - $25
100 GB - $50
200 GB - $100
500 GB - $250
1 TB - $500 Versioning Office files (30 days) Yes (30 days) No Yes (30 days)
Unlimited with PackRat addon No (Personal Tier) No File Restore Yes (1 year) Yes (30 days) No Yes (30 days)
Unlimited with PackRat addon Yes (30 days) Yes Operating System Support Windows
OS X
Android
iOS
Windows Phone Windows
OS X
Chrome OS
Android
iOS Windows
OS X
iOS Windows
OS X
Linux
Android
iOS
BlackBerry
Kindle Fire Windows
OS X
Android
iOS
Windows Phone
BlackBerry Windows
OS X
Android
iOS
Kindle Fire

That is not to say that there is still not room for improvement with OneDrive. In September, Microsoft announced an increase in the maximum file size for OneDrive, which now sits at 10 GB per file. That is a great increase over the relatively tiny 2 GB file size limit that was imposed before, but when you offer unlimited file space, it would be nice if unlimited file size was offered as well.

When you are talking about allowing users to store all of their data forever, I believe some more work needs to be done on the Recycle Bin as well. The increase in Recycle Bin time from thirty days to one year is a good step, but OneDrive only supports versioning for Office Files, which may leave someone stuck if they accidentaly save over their original photos as an example. More emphasis needs to be placed on the recovery tools now that cloud storage is offering so much capacity.

Still, Microsoft has a very tempting offer, and you can see why their transition to Office 365 on both the consumer and business end have seen such large gains in their quarter end results. For less than 60% of the cost of 1 TB of Google Drive, Office 365 personal gives unlimited storage as well as the full Office Suite for both the desktop and tablet. For the household, Office 365 Home allows the same benefits but expands it to five users.

There are still advantages to other platforms though. Some people love the ease of use and API features available in Dropbox, whereas others live and work in the Google ecosystem and would therefore be more likely to opt for Google Drive. Apple, though late to the Cloud Drive party, now offers iCloud Drive as well for those in the Apple ecosystem.

It will be interesting what happens next. Many of the cloud drive solutions leverage third party data storage (AWS, Rackspace, Azure, and the like) and they will have difficulty competing on price alone.

The new storage caps will increase from the current 1 TB limit over the next couple of months for all users, but if you want to jump in as quick as you can you can visit this link to get on the wait list. Office 365 for Business customers will need to wait a bit longer to move past 1 TB, with rollout expected starting in 2015.

Competition in this space has been intense, and while I do not see anyone competing any longer on price, features and api support may well be the next battleground for your cloud storage dollars.

Update: One of our readers let us know that the Recycle Bin has changed from 30 days to 1 year, so the story and table have been updated to reflect this. Thanks deeksterjay!

Source: OneDrive blog

Today Amazon has announced their foray into the market for small HDMI streaming dongles. The Fire TV Stick competes with Google's Chromecast, the Roku Streaming Stick, and the Microsoft Wireless Display Adapter. Amazon notes in their advertising that the Fire TV Stick has more powerful hardward and faster WiFi than the Google Chromecast. I'm not quite sure how effective this will be at swaying buyers, as I would imagine many buyers don't care about the hardware inside of their HDMI streaming stick as long as it can stream their 1080p content. I've put Amazon's comparison image between the different streaming sticks below. Notably missing is the Microsoft Wireless Display Adapter

The real appeal of the Fire TV Stick is for buyers in Amazon's ecosystem. The Fire TV Stick supports popular streaming services like Netflix and Hulu, and includes expected features like streaming content from mobile devices. On top of all that, it includes the wealth of content available for Amazon Prime subscribers. Anyone who wants to try out Amazon Prime will receive a 30 day trial along with their Fire TV Stick.

At $39 the Fire TV Stick essentially matches the Chromecast on price and provides Amazon users a good alternative to other HDMI sticks. Amazon is also running a promotion for today and tomorrow that allows current Amazon Prime subscribers to purchase the Fire TV Stick for only $19. At less than $20, I can expect many prime users may purchase one simply to try it out.

It has been a busy year for Apple, although one could argue it has been more of a busy few months. The yearly updates for most of Apple's products now occur in September and October, and as a result we've seen the release of a number of new products and services in a very short period of time. On the hardware side we have the new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, the iPad Air 2 and Mini 3, the iMac with Retina 5K display, and a preview of the upcoming Apple Watch. The software side has arguably been even more exciting with the release of iOS 8 and its first major update iOS 8.1, OS X Yosemite, and Apple Pay. 

The theme this year appears to be integration and the power of a software and hardware ecosystem. Apple has always had some level of integration between iOS and OS X. As time went on, both operating systems began to share a core set of applications like Reminders, Calendar, and Notes. The iPad extended this even further by bringing the iWork and iLife suites to mobile. iCloud also played a key role in integrating both systems, by synchronizing documents and photos between all of a user's devices. However, the launch of iOS 7 with its visual and functional enhancements left many of the shared features and applications on OS X feeling left behind. Read on for a look at how Apple has brought OS X up to speed, and integrated both of their operating systems together.

As promised earlier this week, AMD has pushed out a new Catalyst beta driver release to go hand-in-hand with this week’s launch of Civilization: Beyond Earth.  Though not entirely Civ focused, 14.9.2’s biggest change is that it enables Mantle support for the recently released turn based strategy game, including Mantle SFR support for Crossfire.

Otherwise these drivers do contain a handful of other Crossfire fixes, including fixes for Total War: Rome 2, Alien: Isolation, and Shadow of Mordor.

As usual, you can grab these drivers over at AMD’s website.

Yesterday after an all-day session of benchmarking on Wednesday, we published our initial performance results for Civilization: Beyond Earth. As can often be the case with limited testing, we ran into a problem and were unable to find a solution at the time. In short, while there was a lot of talk about how developers Firaxis had spent some effort to improve latency using a custom Split-Frame Rendering (SFR) approach with Mantle on CrossFire configurations, we were unable to produce anything that corroborated that story. Emails were sent, but it took half a day before we finally had the answer: enabling SFR actually requires manual editing of the configuration file. Oops.

We could ask why manual editing of the INI file is even necessary, and there are other user interface items that would be nice to address as well as I noted in the conclusion of the original Benchmarked article. But that's all water under the bridge at this point, so let me issue a public apology for not having the complete information yesterday.

I've updated the text of the original article (and added a discussion of minimum frame rates in case you missed that), but since many people have potentially read the article already and are unlikely to revisit the subject, I wanted to post a separate Pipeline to update everyone on the true performance of CrossFire with Mantle and SFR. But before we get to that, let me also take this opportunity to provide some of the additional information from Firaxis and AMD on why SFR matters. Firaxis has a couple blog posts on the subject (including one highlighting the benefits of Mantle with multiple GPUs), and here's the direct quote from AMD's marketing folks:

With a traditional graphics API, multi-GPU (MGPU) arrays like AMD CrossFire are typically utilized with a rendering method called "alternate-frame rendering" (AFR). AFR renders odd frames on the first GPU, and even frames on the second GPU. Parallelizing a game’s workload across two GPUs working in tandem has obvious performance benefits.

As AFR requires frames to be rendered in advance, this approach can occasionally suffer from some issues:

• Large queue depths can reduce the responsiveness of the user’s mouse input
• The game’s design might not accommodate a queue sufficient for good MGPU scaling
• Predicted frames in the queue may not be useful to the current state of the user’s movement or camera

Thankfully, AFR is not the only approach to multi-GPU. Mantle empowers game developers with full control of a multi-GPU array and the ability to create or implement unique MGPU solutions that fit the needs of the game engine. In Civilization: Beyond Earth, Firaxis designed a "split-frame rendering" (SFR) subsystem. SFR divides each frame of a scene into proportional sections, and assigns a rendering slice to each GPU in AMD CrossFire configuration. The "master" GPU quickly receives the work of each GPU and composites the final scene for the user to see on his or her monitor.

If you don’t see 70-100% GPU scaling, that is working as intended, according to Firaxis. Civilization: Beyond Earth’s GPU-oriented workloads are not as demanding as other recent PC titles. However, Beyond Earth’s design generates a considerable amount of work in the producer thread. The producer thread tracks API calls from the game and lines them up, through the CPU, for the GPU’s consumer thread to do graphics work. This producer thread vs. consumer thread workload balance is what establishes Civilization as a CPU-sensitive title (vs. a GPU-sensitive one).

Because the game emphasizes CPU performance, the rendering workloads may not fully utilize the capacity of a high-end GPU. In essence, there is no work leftover for the second GPU. However, in cases where the GPU workload is high and a frame might take a while to render (affecting user input latency), the decision to use SFR cuts input latency in half, because there is no long AFR queue to work through. The queue is essentially one frame, each GPU handling a half. This will keep the game smooth and responsive, emphasizing playability, vs. raw frame rates.

Let me provide an example. Let’s say a frame takes 60 milliseconds to render, and you have an AFR queue depth of two frames. That means the user will experience 120ms of lag between the time they move the map and that movement is reflected on-screen. Firaxis’ decision to use SFR halves the queue down to one frame, reducing the input latency to 60ms. And because each GPU is working on half the frame, the queue is reduced by half again to just 30ms.

In this way the game will feel very smooth and responsive, because raw frame-rate scaling was not the goal of this title. Smooth, playable performance was the goal. This is one of the unique approaches to MGPU that AMD has been extolling in the era of Mantle and other similar APIs.

When I first read the above, my initial reaction was: "This is awesome!" I've always been a bit leery of AFR and the increase in input latency that it can create, so using SFR to avoid the issue is an excellent idea. Unfortunately, it requires more work and testing to get it working right, so most games simply stick with AFR. Ironically, while reducing input latency is never a bad thing, it honestly doesn't matter nearly as much in a turn-based strategy game like Civilization: Beyond Earth. What we'd really love to see is use of techniques like SFR to reduce input latency on games from genres where input latency is a bigger deal – first-person games like Crysis, Battlefield, Far Cry, etc. and third-person games like Batman, Shadow of Mordor, Assassin's Creed, etc. being prime examples. With that said, let's revisit the subject of Civilization: Beyond Earth and CrossFire performance, with and without Mantle:

Our graphing engine doesn't allow for sorting on multiple criteria, otherwise I might try sorting by average + minimum frame rate. Regardless, you can see that across the range of options the CrossFire Mantle SFR support is now doing what we'd expect and improving frame rates. But it's not just about improving frame rates; as the above commentary notes, improving input latency is also important. We aren't really equipped to test for input latency (that would require a very high speed camera as well as additional time filming and measuring input latency), but the minimum frame rates definitely improve as well.

What's interesting is that CrossFire without Mantle (which uses AFR) has higher average FPS in many cases, but the minimum frame rates are worse than with a single GPU. The two images above show why this isn't necessarily a good thing. We haven't tested SLI performance, but I have at least one source that says SLI performance is similar to CrossFire AFR: higher average FPS but lower minimum FPS. It's entirely possible that driver updates will improve the situation with D3D, but for now CrossFire with Mantle SFR definitely scores a win over Direct3D AFR as it provides for a smoother gaming experience.

Let's look at the above charts in a different format before we continue this discussion.

We can see that even with just two GPUs splitting the workload, our CPU has apparently become a bottleneck with the R9 290X. Average frame rates still show an increase going from 4K Ultra to QHD Ultra to 1080p Ultra to 1080p High, but when we look at minimum FPS we've apparently run straight into a wall. For the R9 290X with Mantle, CrossFire effectively tops out with a minimum FPS of roughly 65FPS while a single GPU hits a lower minimum of around 50FPS without Mantle, and regular CrossFire on the 290X (i.e. without Mantle) has a minimum of 45FPS. Again, there are likely some optimizations that could be made in both drivers and the game to improve the situation, but it wouldn't be too surprising to find that Mantle and SFR with three or four GPUs doesn't show much of an increase over two GPUs.

I do have to wonder how applicable the above results are to other games. Last I checked, Mantle CrossFire rendering on Sniper Elite 3 was basically not working, but if other software developers can use Mantle to effectively implement SFR instead of AFR that would be nice to see. But didn't we have SFR way back in the early days of multiple GPUs? Of course we did! 3dfx initially called their solution SLI – Scan Line Interleave – and had each GPU rendering every other line. That approach had problems with things like anti-aliasing, but there are many other ways to divide the workload between GPUs, and both AMD (formerly ATI) and NVIDIA have done variations on SFR in the past.

The problem is that when DirectX 9 rolled around and we started getting programmable shaders and deferred rendering, at some point synchronization issues cropped up and basically developers were locked out of doing creative things like SFR (or geometry processing on one GPU and rendering on another). The only thing you can do with multiple GPUs using Direct3D right now is AFR. That may change with Direct3D 12, but we're still a ways out from that release. Basically, AFR is the easiest approach to implement, but it has various drawbacks even when it does work properly.

Of course there are other potential pitfalls with doing alternative workload splitting like SFR. They can require more work from the CPU, and as you add GPUs the CPU already creates a potential bottleneck. AMD informed us that the engine in Civilization: Beyond Earth is actually extremely scalable with CPU cores, so while we're testing with an overclocked i7-4770K, AMD said they even saw a 20% improvement in performance (with Mantle) going from hex-core Ivy Bridge-E to octal-core Haswell-E with R9 290X CrossFire. There are apparently other cases where certain hardware configurations and game settings can result in an even greater improvement in performance thanks to Mantle (e.g. the 50% increase in minimum frame rates on the R9 290X at our 1080p High settings).

The bottom line is that if you have an AMD GPU, games like Civilization: Beyond Earth can certainly benefit. Maybe Direct3D 12 will bring similar options to developers next year, but in the meantime, congrats to both AMD and Firaxis for shining the light on the latency subject once again. NVIDIA made some waves with similar discussions when they released FCAT last year, but the topic of latency and jitters is definitely important – and don't even get me started on silliness like capping frame rates at 30FPS by default (cough, The Evil Within, cough).

Over the last couple of years, the ultra-compact form factor (UCFF) has emerged as one of the bright spots in the troubled PC market. Intel kickstarted the category with their Sandy Bridge NUC kits in early 2013. Recognizing the popularity of this segment, other vendors also began to promote similar products. GIGABYTE targets this market segment with an extensive lineup of products under the BRIX brand. We recently looked at the high-end Haswell BRIX, the GB-BXi7-4500. Today, we will take a look at the opposite end of the spectrum - the Bay Trail-D Celeron J1900-based GB-BXBT-1900. As a note, due to GIGABYTE's regional marketing policies, this model is currently not being sold in the North American market, but targets price conscious buyers everywhere else.

This afternoon, Microsoft announced record first quarter revenue for its fiscal year 2015 which ended September 30. Revenue was up 25% year-over-year, and came in at $23.2 billion. Gross margin was up 12% year-over-year at $14.9 billion. As a percentage, Gross Margin was down however, which resulted in a lower operating income of $5.8 billion, which is down 8% from last year. Net income came in at $4.5 billion, which is down 13% from 2013. Because of this, earnings per share also slipped to $0.55 per share, down from $0.63 a year ago.

Microsoft Q1 2015 Financial Results (GAAP)   Q1'2015 Q4'2014 Q1'2014 Revenue (in Billions USD) $23.201 $23.382 $18.529 Operating Income (in Billions USD) $5.844 $6.482 $6.334 Gross Margin (in Billions USD) $14.928 $15.787 $13.384 Net Income (in Billions USD) $4.540 $4.612 $5.244 Margins 64.3% 67.5% 72.2% Basic Earnings per Share (in USD) $0.55 $0.55 $0.63

Microsoft breaks their product and services into two divisions. Devices and Consumer focuses on end user products such as Xbox, Surface, Lumia phones, and the related consumer focused software options. Commercial focuses on enterprise which means Server, System Center, SQL, volume licensing, and other enterprise software and services.

Devices and Consumer (D&C) revenue grew 47% to $10.96 billion, as compared to Q1 2014. On the D&C Licensing segment, Windows OEM revenue was down 2%, however there was growth in the number of licenses sold. Microsoft changed the licensing fairly substantially during their 2014 fiscal year, which results in Windows being no cost for a lot of the lower cost devices. Windows OEM Pro licensing was down 4%, which the company feels is in-line with normal business PC replacement cycles. This would also not cover any businesses which utilize volume licensing, with that revenue falling under the Commercial branch. Continuing with licensing, Office Consumer revenue was down 5% for the quarter, with that loss being expected with the move to Office 365 for consumers. Windows Phone licensing revenue was down 46%, which is not unexpected when the operating system license fee was removed. The Gross Margin for D&C Licensing declined 3%, which Microsoft accounts for due to the end of the Nokia commercial license agreement with Nokia’s phone business being purchased last fiscal year. Overall, D&C Licensing revenue was down 9% to $4.09 billion.

The next D&C segment is Computing and Gaming Hardware, which is a look at the Surface and Xbox platforms. Surface enjoyed a strong quarter with revenue coming in at $908 million. Surface Pro 3 interest is strong, with Microsoft seeing good sales to students, professionals, and enterprise adoption of their latest tablet.  Xbox sales were also up, with 2.4 million consoles sold in Q1. There was no break down of Xbox One vs 360 numbers provided. I’m sure Microsoft is hoping for better Xbox One sales, with the new console launching in 28 additional markets last quarter. This segment had a good quarter, with revenue up 74% to $2.45 billion, and Gross Margin was up 134% to $480 million.

Phone Hardware, which technically did not exist as part of Microsoft a year ago, had a solid quarter as well. Microsoft sold 9.3 million Lumias in Q1, which was a modest gain year-over-year. They are seeing better sales in Europe, and especially with the lower priced phones. It seems to be that this is where the Lumia brand is focused, with the majority of the product launches this year being lower cost devices. The former Nokia feature phone line “performed in line with the market for feature phones” and there was no additional information here. The Phone Hardware segment came in at $2.61 billion in revenue and had $480 million in Gross Margin, although the margin gain was partially from non-recurring items which means those gains will not carry forward for Q2.

The final consumer segment is D&C Other, which is the consumer cloud offerings from Microsoft. Office 365 Consumer (Personal and Home versions) is now up to 7 million active subscribers. This is a 25% gain from the previous quarter. This helps explain the traditional D&C Licensing drop for Office, with Microsoft seeing good success in the subscription model for Office. Search revenue was up 23% due to higher revenue per search in addition to search volume. Bing search share in the US was up 140 basis points to 19.4%. Worldwide figures were not given. Gross margin for the cloud offerings was down due to investments in online infrastructure, and clocked in at $310 million. Overall revenue was up 16% to $1.81 billion.

Commercial revenue is the bigger piece of the pie for Microsoft, and this side of the house had a revenue gain of 10%, with $12.28 billion in Q1. Gross margin for Commercial gained was up 9% to $9.91 billion. Breaking down the segment, Licensing was up 3% to $9.87 billion, with Server product revenue up 11% which was due to double-digit growth for SQL Server, System Center, and Windows Server. Windows Volume Licensing was up 10%, and Office Commercial products declined 7% due to the transition of customers to Office 365.

Commercial Other had a 50% revenue gain, with a Q1 revenue of $2.41 billion. This gain was heavily assisted by a 128% increase in Commercial Cloud revenue and the adoption of Office 365, and especially the higher priced SKUs. Customers are also purchasing additional cloud features such as Enterprise Mobility Suite and Azure Active Directory.

Microsoft Q1 2014 Segment Overview (in Billions USD)   Q1'2015 Q4'2014 Q1'2014 Percentage for quarter D&C Licensing Revenue $4.09 $4.90 $4.48 17.6% D&C Licensing Gross Margin $3.82 $4.52 $3.92 25.6% D&C Computing and Gaming Hardware Revenue $2.45 $1.34 $1.41 10.6% D&C Computing and Gaming Hardware Gross Margin $0.48 $0.02 $0.21 3.2% D&C Other Revenue $1.81 $1.76 $1.55 7.8% D&C Other Gross Margin $0.31 $0.29 $0.32 2.1% Phone Hardware Revenue $2.61 $1.99 N/A 11.2% Phone Hardware Gross Margin $0.48 $0.054 N/A 3.2% Commercial Licensing Revenue $9.87 $11.22 $9.58 42.5% Commercial Other Revenue $2.41 $2.26 $1.60 10.3% Commercial Overall Gross Margin $9.91 $10.99 $9.08 66.3%

Fiscal Year 2015 has had a solid start for Microsoft, with record revenue for Q1. A little bit less impressive is the decline in net income. With a PC industry that has pretty much leveled off, the traditional businesses of Windows and Office are losing some of their luster. With Microsoft moving Windows to a no cost licensing model for lower cost PCs and smaller devices, we can expect Windows revenue to continue to drop over the next while. Low cost is generally higher volume, so this could mean a substantial decrease in revenue from the Windows team. However there are some good signs as well in the Consumer segment. Surface sales are almost at $1 billion for the quarter, but more importantly Surface is also making money. Anyone who follows Microsoft earnings will likely never forget the massive write down for the initial Surface lines, so it is promising to see the Surface team having some success. Also, as the traditional licensing method of Windows and Office has seen decreases, Microsoft’s cloud offerings are gaining a lot of traction and continue to see large gains in users and revenue.

On the Commercial side, it is interesting to see the strong gains because not only is the on-premise infrastructure seeing strong gains, with > 10% grown for Server, SQL, and System Center, the cloud based infrastructure, which at one point was thought to be a replacement for on-premise servers, also saw a 128% increase in revenue for the quarter. As companies move to the cloud for their computing needs, Microsoft has a strong offering here due to being able to provide both on-premise and cloud products that work together. It is fascinating to see double digit growth in a product like System Center, when someone looking in would assume a legacy product such as System Center, which is used to primarily manage desktops, would be replaced by a cloud solution like Microsoft Intune. Clearly businesses are seeing a need to expand into the cloud, but keep some or all of their existing infrastructure as well.

Unfortunately the Microsoft press release did not have any forward looking statements, as they were saved for the webcast which should be available by the end of Thursday. I will try and update this article with that information when it is released.

Source: Microsoft Investor Relations

BatteryBoost initially launched with the GTX 800M series earlier this year, and our first look at the technology came with the MSI GT70 with GTX 880M. That may not have been the best starting point, and unfortunately most of the gaming notebooks we've looked at since then haven't been much better. Armed with the latest MSI GT72 sporting a Maxwell 2.0 GTX 980M, NVIDIA claims that BatteryBoost is finally going to hit the 2+ hours mark for gaming. Read on for our in-depth testing of BatteryBoost.

One of the longest running gaming franchises around, the Civilization series goes all the way back to my high school years. There have been many changes along the way, but the core turn-based strategy gameplay remains. With this latest release, Civilization once again heads beyond the confines of our planet. What sort of hardware does it require to run the game, and does this fifth Mantle enabled title add anything new to the mix? That's what we're here to find out.

NVIDIA just released their latest driver updates today, bringing us up to version 344.48. These are WHQL certified drivers, and they're also Game Ready for several upcoming titles. NVIDIA specifically calls out Civilization: Beyond Earth (launching tomorrow), Lords of the Fallen (coming October 28), and Elite: Dangerous (a Kickstarter game currently available in Beta form). You can snag the drivers at the usual place, or if you're like most people and are running a desktop GPU on Windows 7/8.1 64-bit, here's the direct link; the drivers are also available for most NVIDIA laptops.

Looking over the complete release notes, the 344.48 drivers also bring DSR (Dynamic Super Resolution) support to Kepler and Fermi GPUs, there are a few tweaks to upcoming games (e.g. Assassin's Creed Unity notes that control panel FXAA is disabled), and SLI profiles have been added for ten new games. There are no specific details on performance improvements with the new drivers, which is insteresting as usually about a month or two after a major GPU launch (i.e. GM204), NVIDIA will further refine their drivers to extract more performance; perhaps we'll see some performance enhancements in the near future for GM204 owners.

AMD officially announced price cuts on their current APU product stack yesterday, which means the cost of a "mainstream" AMD system is now $20-$30 lower than before. Here's the quick rundown of features and pricing for the affected APUs, which include both the new Kaveri APUs as well as previous generation Richland APUs:

AMD APU Pricing, October 2014 Kaveri APUs A-series APU Model CPU/GPU Cores CPU Clock Graphics GPU Clock TDP (cTDP) MSRP (USD) A10-7850K 4CPU + 512GPU 3.7-4.0 R7 720 95 (65/45) $143 A10-7800 4CPU + 512GPU 3.5-3.9 R7 720 65 (45) $133 A10-7700K 4CPU + 384GPU 3.4-3.8 R7 720 95 (65/45) $123 A8-7600 4CPU + 384GPU 3.1-3.8 R7 720 65 (45) $92 A6-7400K 2CPU + 256GPU 3.5-3.9 R5 756 65 (45) $58 Richland/Trinity APUs A10-6800K 4CPU + 384GPU 4.1-4.4 8670D 844 100 $112 A8-6600K 4CPU + 256GPU 3.9-4.2 8570D 844 100 $92 A4-6300 2CPU + 128GPU 3.7-3.9 8370D 760 65 $34 A4-5300 2CPU + 128GPU 3.4-3.7 7480D 723 65 $31 A4-4000 2CPU + 128GPU 3.0-3.2 7480D 720 65 $27

Obviously there are differences between the Kaveri and Richland/Trinity platforms and APUs, so keep in mind that Kaveri requires a socket FM2+ motherboard while Richland/Trinity uses socket FM2 (though there are boards that support both chips). The Kaveri graphics are also GCN based while Richland/Trinity use the older VLIW4 architecture, so you can't simply compare the number of GPU cores and clock speed to determine which is faster. The CPU architectures are also different, Steamroller for Kaveri and Piledriver for Richland. Finally, Kaveri APUs support Configurable TDP (cTDP), which allows you to run the APU at lower power targets while potentially giving up a bit of performance in fully loaded situations.

In terms of performance, the fastest AMD APUs basically match up against the Core i3 Intel parts on the CPU side, while the GPU portion of the APUs tends to be quite a bit faster. You can legitimately run most games at moderate details with the Kaveri R7 options, while in many cases Intel's HD 4600 will need to drop the resolution and/or quality to reach reasonable frame rates. As for Kaveri vs. Richland, the CPUs end up mostly being equal (Kaveri wins some tests and Richland wins others) while the GPU favors Kaveri.

Besides the price drops, AMD is also announcing a gaming bundle through the end of October for their A10 APUs (7850K, 7800, 7700K, 6800K, and 6790K): purchasers of one of those APUs can select one of Murdered: Soul Suspect, Thief, or Sniper Elite 3 using the code that comes inside the box. Alternatively, the code can be used to purchase Corel Aftershot Pro 2 for $5 (instead of the normal $60+).

Finally, AMD notes that the above price changes may take some time to show up at retailers. Checking Amazon and Newegg, it looks like the APUs are still priced a bit higher than the suggested prices in the above table. I've linked the prices, and all of the Kaveri APUs remain $15-$25 than the MSRP. The faster Richland APUs on the other hand are much closer to the above prices, but the budget APUs tend to be closer to $15 above MSRP right now. Most of the prices should sort themselves out in the coming days, but you'll want to shop around. Note that there are other APUs that AMD did not specifically list in the price cuts, so prices may or may not decrease on those parts.

Today Google announced a new Gmail related product that has been years in the making. It's called Inbox, and it's a re-imagining of the email inbox to adapt to the changes in how email is used that have occurred over the past few decades. With email becoming more prominent, and increasingly focused on sending media as well as text, there have always been initiatives to better adapt the email inbox to these changes. Last year Google introduced categories to the Gmail inbox which sorts emails into different sections such as Social emails, Promotions, and Updates. Inbox expands upon these concepts to better organize your mail.

Bundles are a new feature within Inbox that expand upon categories by grouping emails into specific groups. For example, all purchase receipts and financial statements are grouped together so they can be easily found and navigated. Inbox can also group emails based on ways you specify.

Highlights is a feature that grabs the relevant information from emails and presents it in an easily readable manner. Google claims Inbox will even add additional information not explicitly stated in emails like package tracking status or flight times.

Reminders allows the user to set reminders from within the app, and Assists are cards that Google will bring up with information that may help a user complete a task they have reminded themselves to do. These can also be snoozed if they come up at an inconvenient time.

Inbox is currently in a closed beta, and Google is already sending out the first round of invitations to users. Users who are invited will be able to invite their friends to join the beta program as well. Users can also email [email protected] to get invites as soon as the next wave becomes available. Google has put together a video explaining the features and benefits of Inbox, which has been embedded below.

There are many options in the market for users wanting to interact with HTPCs and media streamers. In this short piece, we review the keyboard / trackball / touchpad options from Adesso and look at how they stack up against the Logitech K400 and some of the options from IOGEAR and SIIG that we have reviewed before.

Microsoft used the Windows Blog today to announce the availability of the first update to the Windows 10 Technical Preview, which was announced just three weeks ago. The new build is 9860, and contains several new features as well as bug fixes.

I have been running Windows 10 since it was released. My initial install was into a Virtual Machine, and after using it as a VM for a while I installed it on my primary PC in order to get a good feel for it. I am still working on my initial thoughts for the new Windows, but, being a technical preview, it has a few bugs that made me switch back to Windows 8.1.

In the blog post, Microsoft lays out the fact that there are bugs and features still missing which will be added later. Some of the interfaces have regressed in style and function as the new interfaces are being finished. While this is generally a normal process for software development, we do not normally get such early access to a pre-release version of Windows, so we are also along for the ride. Windows 8, for example, had a very early developer preview, and then a consumer preview came later which added a lot of additional features and functionality. This round, the features will be added to the current preview for all of the people in the Windows Insider program to get a taste of them.

The first big new feature, which debuted on Windows Phone 8.1, is Action Center. The Windows 10 build is adding this as a notification center, but at the moment is only enabling basic functionality. The quick actions, prominent in Windows Phone, will be coming later. Action Center is now available in the System Tray for easy access. One nice feature is that it will be available to desktop apps as well as Universal Apps. I expect it to also carry the Windows Phone customizations so you can select which apps you want to display in the notification list as well, in the event you have an app that likes to steal the show.

Action Center is not the only feature from Windows Phone to come to Windows 10. Battery Saver is also present in the new build. As with Windows Phone, you can set this to be on which reduces background tasks, or you can have it set to come on automatically when the battery is at a certain percentage. Right now, the latter settings are greyed out.

Yet another Windows Phone feature which helps you keep track of data usage is Data Sense, which is also new to this build. Data Sense keeps track of all wireless network data use, and can keep cellular based connections in check by limiting how much data is available and giving the user a graphical listing of how much data is remaining, as well as which apps are consuming the most packets. Hopefully they add the ability to track wired network traffic as well.

Windows 10 focuses a lot on the keyboard and mouse, so Microsoft has added many new keyboard shortcuts for those that like to keep their hands on their typing device:

• Snapping window: WIN + LEFT or RIGHT (can be used with UP or DOWN to get into quadrants)
• Switch to recent window: ALT + TAB (unchanged) – Hold shows new Task view window view, let go and switches to app.
• Task view: WIN + TAB – New Task view opens up and stays open.
• Create new virtual desktop: WIN + CTRL + D
• Close current virtual desktop: WIN + CTRL + F4
• Switch virtual desktop: WIN + CTRL + LEFT or RIGHT
• Move active app to another monitor: WIN + SHIFT + LEFT or RIGHT

Virtual desktops are also new to Windows 10, and based on user feedback, Microsoft has added an animation to make it easier for a user to know when they are switching destkops. This was one suggestion which was added from over 250,000 pieces of feedback already generated by the preview. Microsoft goes into detail about how the process works and explains why some feedback may take longer to add to the build than others.

Windows 10 build 9860 now offers users earlier access to some of the code. In the PC Settings, you can select which line of Preview Builds you want. Some people will want every update as soon as it is available, whereas others may want to hold off and wait for more of the bugs to be worked out first. Windows 10 is accommodating all of these users in the preview builds by allowing you to choose how fast you get the new code.

Windows 10 is certainly a big departure from Windows 8, and not just in desktop use. Having such early access to the previews, and having Microsoft actively requesting and implementing user feedback is a big change from the Steven Sinofsky (former President of the Windows Division) ways. While the technical preview is generally pretty good, it is not as polished as something like Windows 7 or 8.1, but if you want to check it out, visit preview.windows.com and sign up.

My copy of Windows 10 is updating right now to the new build, and once it is completed I hope to have another post with initial thoughts of the new Windows soon.

Source: Windows Blog

The majority of the Chromebooks tend to have 16GB of onboard storage with some high-end models having twice that. For the intended usage where everything is done in the web, that is sufficient, but when you need local storage for offline occasions (e.g. when traveling), 16GB or 32GB will not get you far. There is always the option of carrying external storage to expand the internal storage, but there is another alternative: upgrading the internal SSD. Read on to find out how the upgrade is done and how MyDigitalSSD's Super Boot Drive M.2 2242 SSDs does in our Chromebook tests, as well as how it fares as a standard SSD.

This afternoon, Apple released their financial results for Q4 2014, which ended September 27, 2014. Strong iPhone sales, as well as a resurgence in Mac sales, boosted the company’s revenue above the $40 billion USD guidance to $42.1 billion. Operating income came in at $11.165 billion, with a net income of $8.467 billion for the quarter. This resulted in an earnings per share of $1.43, which beat analysts’ expectations of $1.31 per share. Gross margin was a respectable 38% for the quarter, compared to 37% in Q4 2013.

Apple declared a cash dividend of $0.47 per share which will be paid out to all shareholders of record as of November 10th, on November 13th. Over $20 billion was returned to shareholders in Q4 as part of the share buyback program and other market transactions.

Apple Q4 2014 Financial Results (GAAP)   Q4'2014 Q3'2014 Q4'2013 Revenue (in Billions USD) $42.123 $37.432 $37.472 Operating Income (in Billions USD) $11.165 $10.282 $10.030 Gross Margin (in Billions USD) $16.009 $14.735 $13.871 Net Income (in Billions USD) $8.467 $7.748 $7.512 Margins 38.0% 39.4% 37.0% Earnings per Share (in USD) $1.43 $1.28 $1.19

As is the norm, the iPhone was the star of the show. In September, Apple of course launched two new iPhone models which brought the total volume of devices sold to 39.272 million for the quarter, which is up 11.5% from the previous quarter and 16.2% from the same quarter a year ago. The iPhone 6 and 6+ are apparently selling very well, with Apple selling all of the units they are making at the moment. iPhones accounted for 56% of Apple’s revenue this quarter. With the iPhone 6 only being available for a couple of weeks this quarter, expect the units to jump significantly for Q1 2015, which began September 28.

The surprise for this quarter was Mac sales, which grew an astonishing 21% year-over-year, and 25% sequentially. It is even more amazing when you consider that the MacBook Pro line only got a slight refresh last quarter, and the iMac, Mac Mini, and MacBook Air got no significant updates at all. Apple said that they “won back to school” and they certainly did as a percentage increase. Overall Mac sales were 5.52 million, as compared to 4.413 million last quarter and 4.574 million at the same time last year. With this increase, Apple stated that they have the highest PC sales percentage since 1995. Revenue for the Mac was also big, as would be expected with the gain in sales. Mac revenue is now back to number two overall for the company with $6.625 billion for Q4.

Apple Q4 2014 Device Sales (thousands)   Q4'2014 Q3'2014 Q4'2013 Seq Change Year/Year Change iPhone 39,272 35,203 33,797 +12% +16% iPad 12,316 13,276 14,079 -7% -13% Mac 5,520 4,413 4,574 +25% +21% iPod 2,641 2,926 3,498 -10% -24%
 

iPad sales continue to be the thorn in Apple’s side these days, with a sales decrease for the third consecutive quarter. iPad sales fell to just 12.3 million, down from 14.1 million last year, which is a 13% drop. Clearly they are not giving up on the market, and the two new devices launched last week as well as the holiday season should put an end to the decline in sales for Q1. Apple said that iPad sales were ahead of iPhone sales over the same initial four years, so they are happy with where it is at, but still three straight quarters of sales decline is not what they would have been hoping for.

The venerable iPod likely got the final unit and revenue breakdown, with the iPod going to be rolled into the new Other category, with the iPod being joined by Accessories, Beats, Apple TV, and other products in the new reporting category such as watches when they are released. iPod sales fell 24% from last year, with 2.6 million devices sold. Revenue came in at just $410 million (just!) for the quarter.

Finally, iTunes/Software/Services was up 8% year-over-year with $4.6 billion for the quarter, with the App Store continuing to drive revenues for the Apple ecosystem.

Apple Q4 2014 Revenue by Product (billions)   Q4'2014 Q3'2014 Q4'2013 Revenue for current quarter iPhone $23.678 $19.751 $19.510 56.2% iPad $5.316 $5.889 $6.186 12.6% Mac $6.625 $5.540 $5.624 15.7% iPod $0.410 $0.442 $0.573 1% iTunes/Software/Services $4.608 $4.485 $4.260 10.9% Accessories $1.486 $1.325 $1.319 3.5%

Outlook for Q1 2015 is a big boost for the holiday season. Revenue is expected to come between $63.5 and $66.5 billion with margins between 37.5 and 38.5 percent. Q1 will of course include more sales of the new iPhone, but also new product launches such as the iPads, and the Mac refresh we saw last week. Also new to the quarter will the Apple Pay, which was not available for Q4 2014. Apple divulged on the earnings call that it will not be charging anything to retailers or consumers for using the new pay system, but that they do have a financial arrangement with the financial institutions to earn money through the system. Details of those arrangements were kept confidential. In the end, if someone is paying, it will of course be the consumer even if it is just through product markups. We do not know though if the cost of the system will be any higher than the credit cards already charge, so it may amount to a zero anyway.

Apple has been a company which has been printing money for a long time, and with the latest product launches that does not seem to be ending anytime soon. The one key here is Mac sales, which were very high, especially when compared to the PC industry as a whole which has recovered somewhat, but is possibly still at small decline overall for the year.

Update: The story originally stated Software and Other would be a single category, but there will be two categories for Software and Other.

Source: Apple Investor Relations

The history of the semiconductor manufacturing business is both a story of great success and great failure. On the one hand semiconductor manufacturing has allowed the creation of devices that have transformed society, and unusual for most technologies it has remarkably improved at a steady rate for over 40 years now, making Moore’s Law a reality. On the other hand the history of the semiconductor business has been one of a constant weed-out process, as every generation of technology has seen the number of players narrow as the cost and complexity of semiconductor manufacturing continues to grow. Compared to the early days only the richest and most powerful firms have survived, and today the price of progression has claimed another player: IBM.

Today IBM has announced a remarkable, though not entirely unexpected deal. The company is announcing that they are transferring the bulk of their semiconductor business over to GlobalFoundries, essentially divesting themselves of the business entirely and getting out of chip fabricating altogether. But in a deal that is all too indicative of just how brutal the semiconductor manufacturing business is, IBM is not selling the business to GlobalFoundries or even giving it away for free; today’s deal will see IBM pay GlobalFoundries to take the business, with IBM handing over $1.5 billion in cash and working capital to GlobalFoundries in order to entice them to take over the business.

A deal of some time in the making, IBM’s divestment of its semiconductor manufacturing business comes as a result of the business’s continued technological and financial troubles. The business has lost money for quite some time now as IBM has struggled to attract business to keep their fabs at capacity, as IBM’s POWER chip manufacturing volume isn’t enough to sustain the business on its own. Compounding matters, IBM has been behind the curve in process technology development, which has seen competitors and partners alike such as TSMC and Samsung take the lead in rolling out new manufacturing nodes and securing the lucrative contracts that come with being the leader.

IBM East Fishkill (Image Courtesy Dutchess County Economic Development Corporation)

By divesting themselves of their semiconductor manufacturing business, IBM is cutting loose a business that is losing them money, but it is also a necessary step to enable the consolidation of manufacturing rather than a dissolution of the business entirely. Though in better shape than IBM’s business, GlobalFoundries has their own struggles with technology and volume, so taking on IBM’s business will allow the two businesses to be consolidated and ideally a larger, stronger semiconductor manufacturer to emerge.

Overall then, the deal sees GlobalFoundries taking on everything related to semiconductor manufacturing from IBM except for IBM’s semiconductor R&D division, which IBM will hold on to. This means GlobalFoundries is acquiring IBM’s existing fabs in Fishkill and Essex Junction, IBM’s engineers and other technical experts outside of their retained R&D division, IBM’s extensive semiconductor patent pool, and their commercial microelectronics (contract manufacturing) business. The importance of IBM’s manufacturing expertise in particular should not be understated, as while IBM hasn’t been a cutting-edge foundry, their expertise will be an important factor in helping GlobalFoundries narrow the gap with its competition and prosper. Meanwhile to cap things off, GlobalFoundries will also be acquiring IBM’s foundry patronage, with IBM signing up to use GlobalFoundries for their 22nm, 14nm, and 10nm chips for the next 10 years.

Finally, this acquisition also calls into question the future of the Common Platform alliance, the manufacturing alliance between IBM, GlobalFoundries, and Samsung. With IBM essentially bowing out of everything other than R&D and GlobalFoundries licensing Samsung’s 14nm process rather than licensing IBM’s or developing their own, Samsung is now the strongest member in a party of 2. How GlobalFoundries and Samsung continue this relationship – and more importantly GlobalFoundries’ role as a developer versus a customer/licensee – remains to be seen.

RGB variants of mechanical keyboards are very popular nowadays, but what about those users that want to stick with a classic membrane keyboard and gamers on a budget? SteelSeries' Apex Gaming keyboard might be what they are looking for, as this membrane-based keyboard comes with a fully programmable layout, numerous macro keys and RGB backlighting. 

Today Apple released iOS 8.1, the first major update to iOS 8 which launched in September alongside the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Prior to 8.1 we got a small bug fixing update in the form of iOS 8.0.1, which was quickly followed by iOS 8.0.2 due to a major bug that broke Touch ID and cellular connectivity on the newly released iPhones. Since then, Apple has been working on implementing some features that were not finished in time for the original launch, as well as making changes based on user feedback.

The first such change is the re-addition of the camera roll. The camera roll was part of iOS since its early releases, and with iOS 8 it was removed in favor of a recently added photos album. This solution was more accurately named than the camera roll which was really an album that held every photo on the device, but it was not as familiar to users and did not display every single photo. Users have been very vocal about their dislike of this change and with iOS 8.1 the camera roll returns with the same behaviour as previous versions.

The update also brings features that were shown early this year at WWDC but not included with the initial iOS 8 release. iCloud Photo Library is finally available for all users, albeit as a public beta. SMS Relay is finally enabled, which allows users with supported Macs and iPads to send and receive SMS messages using the phone number associated with their iPhone. 

The last major feature included with 8.1 is Apple Pay on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Apple's new payment solution makes use of NFC and Touch ID for making and authorizing credit card purchases using their iPhone. While Apple Pay with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus can be used to make purchases in stores, on the recently launched iPad Air 2 and iPad Mini 3 it is limited to online purchases due to the omission of NFC.

In addition to new features, iOS 8.1 includes fixes issues with connections to Bluetooth hands-free devices, poor WiFi performance with certain routers, and various other bug fixes, security fixes, and small changes. A list of security patches in the update can be found here on Apple's support website. The update is rolling out now to the iPad 2 and later, iPhone 4s and later, and the iPod Touch 5. The size of the OTA update will vary based on your device but on an iPhone 6 running iOS 8.0.2 it weighs in at 126MB.

 

Try this one on for size: a compact 60% keyboard with mechanical switches, with a fully customizable layout. Officially launched this past Wednesday and available as a group buy for the next two weeks, that's exactly what you get with the Massdrop Infinity keyboard. There are only a couple potential drawbacks: there are no key labels by default, and this is truly a compact keyboard so there are only 63 keys in total, so you're basically going to have to set up some additional layers to access things like cursor keys, document navigation, etc. Oh, and if you’re not a touch typist, this this will probably drive you insane – though on the other hand, if you're trying to become a touch typist, this might be the keyboard to push you over the edge!

Massdrop shipped me a prototype for some initial impressions. At first blush, I wasn't sure what to think – no labels, no backlighting, and even the chassis is a bit barebones. Still, even without customizing the keyboard layout there's something sort of cool about having a blank slate to work with. The dimensions are basically what you get if you take the main portion of a standard keyboard…and then stop there and don't add anything extra. Function keys, 10-key, document navigation keys, and dedicated macro keys are nowhere to be found. Instead, what you get is a space saving keyboard that looks a little different from your usual input device.

Part of the cool factor of the Infinity is that it allows you to customize many options. It supports both Cherry MX switches as well as the new "better than Cherry MX" Matias switches with Alps stems. I can't say whether they're actually better or not, but Matias are available in "clicky" and "quiet" options (basically Blue or Brown equivalents), while Cherry MX options consist of Blue, Brown, Red, Black, or Clear. You can also choose from various keycaps that are compatible with Cherry MX or Matias switches, but these are an extra $35 (Cherry MX) or $45 (Matias) – note that the Matias switches are $10 less than the Cherry MX switches, so basically the price is the same if you include keycaps. The keycaps are blank PBT plastic with a DSA Profile from Signature Plastics, if you're curious. For some it might seem odd for a keyboard to not include keycaps by default, but if you're enough of a keyboard enthusiast to be considering the Infinity, there's a good chance you already have some keycaps available.

Before you commit to buy the Infinity, let's be clear: there's some assembly required. It would be cool if Massdrop offered a pre-assembled option (for people like me that just don't care to do the soldering on their end). Then again, if it tacked on $50 I'm not sure many would be interested. Anyway, the assembly instructions let you know what's required, and if you're handy with a soldering iron you should be fine. Once the keyboard is assembled, you need to load a keyboard layout into the microcontroller. As a preview sample, my unit came pre-programmed with a slightly modified QWERTY layout, but the online configurator allows you to do just about anything you might imagine (up until the point where you run out of memory on the keyboard). The final software that allows reprogramming isn't actually available yet, but it should be ready well before anyone who joins the drop actually receives their keyboard.

All of the customizability in the world won't do much good if the keyboard doesn't work well, and this is where things start to get highly subjective. I've used plenty of keyboards over the years; some have been good, others have been okay, and only a few have been truly terrible – and the bad ones were all laptop keyboards, if you're wondering. After my forays into ergonomic mechanical keyboards last year, one thing that I came to realize is that it's possible to adapt to a different keyboard layout over time, at least if you're willing to put in the effort. The default layout on the Infinity is basically standard QWERTY, so in that regard there's not a lot to learn for a touch typist.

The bigger issue I have is that I do use document navigation keys and the cursor keys all the time, so having them move from dedicated keys to combination keystrokes is not something I really want or need. I'd much rather have a slightly larger keyboard rather than deal with extra layers (key combinations) to access these keys. I also use function keys regularly, and Acer's S7 Ultrabook as an example didn't please me when it removed the row of function keys and turned them into Fn key combinations. Given these changes and my typical use patterns, I don't think the current design of the Infinity is something I would really enjoy using long-term, even if it is somewhat novel at first.

Outside of the missing keys, the typing experience on the Infinity is pretty much what you'd expect from any Cherry MX mechanical keyboard. The sample I received came with Cherry MX Clear (which on their own look pretty White, but there's a difference) switches, and as someone that has used MX Brown switches in the past I actually thought it was using Browns at first; the difference between the two options is very slight. Anyway, the action is smooth and precise, and I have no problem typing on it in general – this entire article in fact was written using the Infinity, and other than the first minute or so figuring out where a few keys are located I've had no real problems.

The keycaps are an interesting choice as well, as they're far more textured than most keycaps that I've used. They have a feeling of robustness and durability, and if that's what you like then they won't disappoint. The default keycaps are blank, however, so even as a touch typist I find that I occasionally have my fingers in the wrong spot and it takes a second to adjust – I would like to have a little bump on the F and J keys to help me out, but then that's always an option if you order your own keycaps.

The design of the keyboard chassis is also a bit unusual. The PCB with the soldering pins from the mechanical switches is fully exposed on the bottom, while the main frame consists of a sturdy piece of bent metal (some form of steel it appears). It's definitely unique, and it didn't get in the way of my typing, but it's not something everyone will immediately love. The metal frame also gives the Infinity a decent amount of heft, which I don’t mind but it might be a bit heavy if you're looking for a keyboard to carry around in a briefcase (and again the exposed PCB on the bottom could be a concern).

There's one final hurdle to overcome, and that's the price. Massdrop works on a group buy principle, so they require a certain number of people to join a "drop" – if the minimum isn't met, no one pays and the drop is canceled. In this case, the minimum number of people needed to have the Infinity ship has already been achieved (i.e. more than 25 people), and at present 74 people have committed to buy if 100+ people join the drop. At 100 or more committed buyers, the price will be $100; that's a steep price for a keyboard and as noted above it doesn’t even include everything you need; you also need the keycaps ($35-$45 extra) if you don't have some, and shipping in the continental US is another $11.39, so basically we're looking at $145 for this customizable 60% keyboard.

That might seem like far too high a price, but we're dealing with a relatively low volume part, and even looking around online it doesn't look like there are many options that are significantly less expensive. The Ducky Mini generally costs $130 or so, though it does include backlighting (with dual color blue/red LEDs) and it comes fully assembled – it also comes with either Cherry MX Blue or Red switches. The KBC Poker 2 Mini comes with Cherry MX Blue, Black, Red, or Brown switches, but it costs $180 to $200 (or more). Then there's the Happy Hacking Keyboard Professional, with electrostatic capacitive switches, which can cost $260 or more. In comparison to such options, other than the Ducky Mini the Massdrop Infinity looks rather affordable – and if you're interested in the Ducky Mini, I would be remiss in not pointing out the Massdrop where you can get the Ducky Mini for $110 (currently five days remain).

Ultimately, I guess it comes down to how much you want a mini (aka "60%") keyboard in the first place. I'd be much happier personally with something like the CODE Keyboard that adds dedicated function keys and document navigation keys for around the same price (there's another drop for that), but more importantly I don't have any particular need for a compact keyboard in the first place so there are numerous full size mechanical keyboards priced around $100 that suit me just fine. It's sort of interesting to me that input from hundreds of "keyboard enthusiasts" went into the design of the Infinity, and yet at the end of the day it can still be a very polarizing device. I'm sure there are people who love the end result, and I'm equally sure there are going to be others that shrug and wonder, "Why bother?" If you're in the market, though, the potential to pick up the Infinity and design your own layout is certainly worth considering.

Gallery: Massdrop Infinity: A Fully Customizable 60% Keyboard