It’s Sunday so it’s time for Adi’s Week in Tech News. This is your weekly round-up of the week’s technology news.
If you are one of the people who have decided to put the latest preview edition of Windows 10 (Microsoft’s upcoming operating system), then there is something else that Microsoft wants you to check out. They have released preview editions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint. All of these are universal apps which have been optimised for touch screen devices. This basically means that you get the same Office experience whether you use a smartphone running Windows 10 or a tablet running Windows 10, It will all be the same.
Google has offered up a version of it’s Google Earth application on PCs and Macs for free for quite a while. It gave you a way to look at the map of the world. More importantly, you would be able to “fly” from one location and then zoom in on another location to get a bird’s-eye view. However, what you might not know is that there was a pro/premium version of Google earth pro. It used to cost $399(£264) a year, but Google has now decided to make Google Earth Pro available for free. Better still, you can get Google Earth Pro for free right now. Once you have downloaded Google Earth Pro from the link above, use your email address as your username and GEPFREE as the license key.
The folks at Raspberry Pi have released a new model of their small computers called the Raspberry Pi 2. It sports a A 900MHz quad-core processor, 1GB of RAM, 4 USB 2.0 ports and an Ethernet port. Of course, you also have a HDMI port, a Micro SD slot and a headphone port. As you can see What makes this a really interesting, is that because of the specs, the Raspberry Pi 2 will be able to run Windows 10. Incidentally Microsoft has announced that they will make it free to Makers through the Windows Developer Program. The Raspberry Pi 2 is priced at $35 (£25).
An Ubuntu-powered smartphone is coming to the market a year and a half after a previous attempt to launch a model via crowdfunding failed. The Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu edition relies on a card-like user interface that is not focused on apps. Unlike the original proposal, the handset does not become a desktop PC when plugged into a monitor. It is initially being targeted at “early adopters”, who developers hope will become advocates for the platform.
Telecoms group BT has paid £12.5bn to buy mobile operator EE. The takeover creates a communications giant covering fixed-line phones, broadband, mobile and TV. The stock market greeted the move by sending BT shares up by 4.5%, to the highest since 2001, when it sold off its old mobile operation O2. But rivals TalkTalk and Vodafone have already called for competition authorities to step in and force BT to spin off its Openreach operation.