Smooth Blog

LAS VEGAS – January 8, 2013 – Today at the 2013 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. unveiled Samsung’s Curved OLED TV, breaking the barrier of innovation in home entertainment.
The OLED panel is curved, which provides depth to the content displayed for a more life-like viewing experience.
Additionally, consumers will enjoy the Curved OLED TV for its immersive panorama effect, which is currently not possible with conventional flat-panel TVs. When watching captivating content such as vast landscapes and scenes from nature on the Curved OLED TV, they will feel like they are surrounded by the beautiful scenery.
Leveraging its expertise in display technology, Samsung has optimized the picture quality of the Curved OLED TV to deliver a comfortable viewing experience. Viewing visual contents on Samsung’s Curved OLED TV is a comfortable experience for the human eye, as the curved panel allows the distance between the user and TV screen to be the same from almost any angle.
“Samsung is dedicated to developing innovation television solutions, beyond what consumers could ever expect, or could even imagine. We will continue our tradition of developing Samsung TV innovations by steadily introducing new TV technology that helps enhance the lives of users, even beyond the World’s First Curved OLED TV,” said HS Kim, executive vice president of Visual Display Business, Samsung Electronics.
Please visit our CES booth to experience this future technology firsthand. Samsung’s product line will be displayed from January 8-11 at booth #12004 in the Central Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center.
Full details, video content and product images are available at the Samsung microsite at www.samsungces.com or mobile site at m.samsungces.com as well.
Be sure to also check out the Samsung Tomorrow TV CES 2013 Specials, which will be streamed live throughout CES on the Samsung Tomorrow blog at global.samsungtomorrow.com and the Samsung microsite. After the live presentations, videos will be available at http://youtube.com/SamsungTomorrow

At the 11th Annual J.P. Morgan Tech Forum at CES 2013 today, Windows Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Financial Officer Tami Reller announced that Windows 8 has sold 60 million licenses to date. This represents the cumulative sales of Windows 8 including both upgrades and sales to OEMs for new devices. This is a similar sales trajectory that we saw with Windows 7.

We have seen a significant increase in the number of Windows 8 certified systems since general availability at the end of October. There are now more than 1,700 certified systems for Windows 8 and Windows RT.

Large PC Manufacturers known as Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) have the ability to pre-activate Microsoft® Windows XP software installed on new PCs. As a result, end users are typically not required to activate the software during the set up process by typing in the product key found on the Certificate of Authenticity attached to the PC (COA Key).

In order to reduce a significant source of piracy, Microsoft has disabled online activation for COA Keys that are attached to PCs that have been pre-activated by OEMs. This change should have a minimal impact on licensed users who generally do not use their COA Key to activate the software because it has been pre-activated by the OEM. However, if a licensed end user needs to activate because the OEM pre-activation does not work as expected (e.g., after the replacement of a defective motherboard) they can do so via phone-based activation.

To help minimize the potential impact on licensed users, this whitepaper provides steps licensed end users can take to preserve OEM pre-activation when reinstalling the operating system using any of the four scenarios outlined below (sysprep, OOBEinfo, manual and unattended).

The following product keys should be substituted for XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX in the solutions discussed below.

For any of the solutions outlined below, you can verify that the OEM pre-activation has been preserved by clicking Start -> Run and typing %SYSTEMROOT%\system32\oobe\msoobe.exe /A and then click OK. If the procedure was successful, a message indicating that Windows has already been activated will be displayed.

Note: Instead of implementing any of the solutions outlined below, Volume License customers can use Volume License media to install the same operating system that was licensed from an OEM without acquiring a volume license for a PC being re-imaged. More information about this option is available here under “Re-Imaging Rights”: http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/resources/volbrief.mspx. Because Volume License agreements do not provide a full operating system license, Windows licenses should be acquired as part of the PC purchase from the PC manufacturer.

I. Using “sysprep –reseal –mini” Command

OEM pre-activation can be preserved when Sysprep.exe is run to reseal the system using the –reseal – mini switches by following these steps.

• Ensure the following three files are present in the C:\Sysprep folder: sysprep.exe, setupcl.exe, and factory.exe. These files can be found in the deploy.cab which can be downloaded from the Microsoft® download center available at this location:

  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=7A83123D-507B-4095-9D9D-0A195F7B5F69&displaylang=en

• Create a file named sysprep.inf using a text editor such as Notepad that contains the information shown below substituting the appropriate product key.

  [UserData]
  ProductKey =”XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX”

• Save the sysprep.inf file in the c:\sysprep\ folder.
• Run c:\sysprep –reseal –mini

For more information on the sysprep process, please visit
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/deploy/introductoin.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/deploy/minisetup.mspx

II. Making changes to the OOBEinfo.ini file

OEM pre-activation can be preserved if changes are made to the OOBEinfo.ini file by ensuring that the %SYSTEMROOT%\system32\oobe\oobeinfo.ini file contains the information shown below but substituting the appropriate product key.

[Version]
ProductKey =”XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX”

III. Manual Install

OEM pre-activation can be preserved when doing a manual installation by inserting the appropriate product key listed above when prompted for a product key by Windows setup. If you run sysprep –reseal –mini following the manual install, you will need to follow the steps outlined in Section I.

IV. Unattended Install

OEM pre-activation can be preserved if you use an unattended answer file (Unattend.txt or Winnt.sif) to automate installation by including the information shown below in the answer file substituting the appropriate product key listed above. If you run sysprep –reseal –mini following an unattended install, you will need to follow the steps outlined in Section I.

[UserData]
ProductKey =”XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX”

For more information on sysprep process, please visit
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/deploy/depovg/depxpii.mspx#EIAA

According to the twitter account for the Orange UK Network support team, they will release information via the twitter account when they have the update available for Jellybean…. but reading between the lines, does this mean its an imminent release? you decide!
This is what they posted just 45minutes ago.

“Hi Tweeps – We will confirm release of the Jelly Bean Software via our Twitter feed when we have the release details ;0)  ”

This is the first time they have openly spoke about the update to the wider community other than the typical “we do not have a expected release timetable just yet” that they were peddling recently. And the winky smile? seems a little encouraging.

I make no excuses for the amount of times I have phoned or tweeted Orange asking for the update release details and I have even recently considered installing a community gathered OS for my Samsung Galaxy S3, but considering the first Jellybean updates were released by rival network operators around the 20th september. I make no excuses. 6-7weeks wait is ludicrous. considering all this time is spent modifying it and brutally covering up any real trace of the original and much desired clean look of the Android OS that Google intended.

I for one, will not be staying with Orange unless they improve their software update procedures.

Rant/blog post all in one. aren’t I good to you lot

B~

I personally dont like Windows 8, I guess its great for a tablet like device, but I think Microsoft took a big chance in releasing something like this. Maybe Windows 9 (2013/2014) should be better.