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With the next Patch Tuesday just around the corner, Microsoft on Thursday published the Security Bulletin Advance Notification for March 2012. Next week’s Patch Tuesday will be a lot lighter compared to the one in February. Hit the jump for more.

According to Microsoft’s advance notification, the company will deliver six bulletins addressing seven vulnerabilities on March 13, 2012. This is considerably less compared to last month’s Patch Tuesday, which brought nine bulletins addressing 21 vulnerabilities. Of the six security bulletins, only one is rated “critical,” Microsoft’s highest severity rating. All others, as is obvious from the table below, are … [Read More...]

Feel free to run up and down your block screaming, “Ivy Bridge is coming! Ivy Bridge is coming!” That’s not something you would have wanted to do prior to today, because if a fellow pedestrian grabbed you by the arm and demanded to know exactly when Ivy Bridge would roll into town, all you could have offered in return was a bunch of conflicting info. But in this day and age of the Internet, leaked slides are as commonplace as cockroaches in a dirty motel, and we found one that details precisely when Ivy Bridge will launch.

Assuming the slide … [Read More...]

If you own a Lenovo ThinkCentre All-In-One computer, you’ve got a best of times/worst of times dichotomy going on right now: on the plus side, the touchscreen-optimized Windows 8 Consumer Preview probably feels great with the ThinkCentre’s multitouch display. On the negative side, there’s a chance your PC can catch on fire. Today, Lenovo and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced a voluntary recall of over 50,000 Lenovo ThinkCentre M70z and M90z AIOs after determining that a power supply defect can cause the systems to overheat and burst into flame.

Only certain batches of the M70z and M90z are … [Read More...]

After weeks of rumors and mouth breathing from the techorati, Apple just confirmed what everyone already suspected: Another year, another new iPad. Say what you want about Apple, but at least they’re consistent. Earlier debate swirled around its name: would the new tablet be called the iPad 3 or the iPad HD? (Because that’s vital information!) Neither, as it turns out. The new iPad is called simply, well, the iPad. Some other rumors turned out true, however.

The rumored “Retina-level” display actually exists: the iPad packs 3.1 million pixels in its 2048×1536 resolution for a 264ppi. It also sports a … [Read More...]

Remember LulzSec, the jolly jackasses responsible for so much hacking havoc last summer? So does the FBI; they’ve rounded up five alleged LulzSec members in the U.S., England and Ireland this morning. LulzSec’s 50 day reign of terror seemed almost story-like at times — and like many good yarns, this one ends with a twist. Reports say the Lulz Boat has sunk thanks to the betrayal of “Sabu,” the group’s unofficial leader, who has been secretly working with the government since being arrested back in June.

Fox News reports that Sabu’s real name is Hector Xavier Monsegur; he’s an unemployed … [Read More...]

We reviewed Eurocom’s top-of-the-line mobile workstation, the Panther 2.0, in our June 2011 issue. That high-end behemoth weighed more than 15 pounds and cost upward of $5,000, but it sported a desktop Core i7-980X CPU and a pair of Radeon HD 6970s in CrossFire. This time around we’re taking a look at the company’s lighter-weight mobile workstation, the Neptune 3D.

While also billed as a high-end desktop-replacement, the Neptune 3D is far more modest than its beefy big brother. It’s based on a mobile Sandy Bridge CPU (Intel’s Core i7-2760QM) and a single mobile GPU (Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 580M). The … [Read More...]

Japanese vendor Fujitsu has shown no urgency whatsoever in joining the ultrabook fray. In fact, it remained mum on its ultrabook plans until it published its product roadmap for 2012 last month. The roadmap lists two ultrabook models, both scheduled for May. We now have a few details about one of its upcoming ultrabooks.

The company used its opening press conference at CeBIT 2012 in Hanover, Germany to tease those in attendance with a dummy of one of its upcoming ultrabooks. Called the Lifebook Premium at this point, the said ultrabook is aimed at enterprise users.

This enterprise-centric ultra-thin and-light … [Read More...]

After what’s felt like a lifetime of playing Ezio’s, well, entire life, Assassin’s Creed is finally in for a much-requested/angrily demanded change of scenery. More specifically, the American Revolution is about to get a massive shipment of conveniently placed hay bales, which have somehow been imbued with the magical power to muffle the sound of a 170 lb or so man falling 100 feet. But we digress. So far, Ubisoft’s only officially sent along a box shot of AC III’s tomahawk-wielding main character making a British soldier’s head revolt from the rest of his body, but All Games Beta has managed to … [Read More...]

And we feel the need to clarify that we’re not being literal with that headline, seeing as a certain other game recently attempted to enter geosynchronous orbit because, well, marketers do the darndest things. At any rate, Ken Levine’s magical/society-damning cloud adventure now has an official release date of October 16. This is, of course, a reason to get obnoxiously excited, seeing as the game’s mix of character interaction, high-flying combat, and higher-flying steampunk nightmare birds has looked positively excellent so far. Also, 1999 mode strikes us as an interesting alternative approach to difficulty, even if we’ll go skydiving without a parachute before we … [Read More...]

Microsoft wasn’t the only company releasing Windows 8 Consumer Preview software yesterday. If you’re rocking a Radeon graphics card, you’ll be happy to hear that AMD rolled out new Catalyst drivers specifically tailored for the prerelease OS, complete with supports for Windows 8′s WDDM 1.2 features.

Actually, you might not be pleased to hear the news if you’ve plunked down cash for one of the latest and greatest Radeon HD 7000 GPUs, since the update doesn’t support that family of hardware. AMD promises you early adopters will get Consumer Preview drivers of your own “in the coming weeks,” though.

Here’s … [Read More...]

Earlier today, Microsoft released the Windows 8 Consumer Preview (beta) at the 2012 Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, giving the general public an opportunity to preview Windows 8 on existing x86 systems and provide feedback. But Microsoft’s “Consumer Preview” event wasn’t just all about the beta released today for x86-based PCs. The company also showcased a number of Windows 8 on ARM devices at today’s event.  Hit the jump for more.

Among the devices showcased today were tablets powered by ARM-based SoCs from NVIDIA (Tegra 3), Qualcomm (Snapdragon S4) and Texas Instruments (OMAP5430). Microsoft also announced a seeding program … [Read More...]

Happy Windows 8 Consumer Preview day! Or, rather, happy day-after-Windows-8…. you get the idea. As an astute Maximum PC reader, you’re no doubt itching to get your hands on a not-quite-final build of Windows 8 to tinker around with.

But here’s the problem: You like using your current operating system. In fact, you probably have a great number of files, applications, and games all intertwined with your current operating system. And the absolute last thing you want to do – aside from learning how to use the Metro UI (we kid, we kid) – is back up everything within your … [Read More...]

Be still, our pulsating nostalgia glands. Could there finally be another… ? No. No. We won’t get our hopes up. Even if, you know, Beamdog – a company fronted by former BioWare designer Trent Oster – has commandeered BaldursGate.com and given the whole thing a tease-tacular modern makeover. And even though Oster definitely said, “We’re not related to the Steam complete edition, I can tell you that much. Other than that, we’re hoping to announce something soon.” And even though the site’s source code has skipped its way to a masterful breadcrumb trail of hints, including references to the Infinity Engine and the … [Read More...]

One million dollars. That’s how much Dr. Evil initially wanted for a stolen nuclear warhead, and it’s the same amount Google plans to dole out through various rewards at the CanSecWest security conference to participants who discover full and partial Chrome exploits, as well as bugs in programs than can be a threat to Chrome. The $1 million fund is something Google is doing on its own, as the sultan of search has chosen to withdraw its participation from CanSecWest’s annual Pwn2Own contest.

“Originally, our plan was to sponsor as part of this year’s Pwn2Own competition. Unfortunately, we decided to … [Read More...]

We’ve never been so confused about a processor launch date as we are now. Actually, it’s Intel that appears the most confuzzled over when exactly Ivy Bridge will make its official debut, as conflicting and incomplete reports continue to surface. The latest we’re hearing is that Ivy Bridge is definitely being delayed until June, but let’s back up a moment and see if we can make some sense of it all.

News of an Ivy Bridge delay first surfaced a couple of weeks ago when DigiTimes reported it was hearing that Intel was intentionally pushing back Ivy Bridge’s launch so … [Read More...]

The Windows Phone team has been keeping the Champaign on ice for months now waiting for a reason to celebrate, and that moment may have finally arrived. According to market research firm Strategy Analytics, Nokia has surged pasted HTC and Samsung to become the single largest manufacturer of Windows Phone devices. This is pretty impressive when you consider that the Lumia lineup is only just now hitting the market in full force, and already accounts for 33 percent of all Windows Phone handsets sold. 

Many questioned Nokia’s decision to throw its fate in with Microsoft, and while it’s a bit … [Read More...]

Has it already been almost five months since AMD’s Bulldozer chips launched? Somehow, it has — and that means it’s time for the old info train to start rolling about Bulldozer’s follow up, better known as “Piledriver.” AMD has apparently been paying attention to our pleas for better, faster, MOAR because this week the company announced it was licensing new resonant clock mesh technology from Cyclos Semiconductor to help push Piledriver’s clock speed over the 4GHz barrier.

The Cyclos technology fit right into the standard design and manufacturing processes AMD already had established for Piledriver, so its implementation shouldn’t delay … [Read More...]

While PC geeks may be eagerly awaiting the launch of Ivy Bridge and Kepler GPUs, less hardcore tech fans have been throwing dollars at two particular niches: mobile and the cloud. Box, a cloud storage company competing for your nebulous attention, has just announced a killer new offer that brings those two elements together. The service released an update for its Android app today, and anyone who snags the app in the next 30 days gets a whopping 50GB of free cloud storage space, good for the rest of your life.

That’s a lot of ones and zeros; by comparison, … [Read More...]