Most modern SSDs come with some form of hardware encryption. On these drives with hardware encryption, it’s usually permanently turned on - all data written to the NAND is typically stored in encrypted form. This stems from the fact that all writes to NAND had to be scrambled to begin with (writing long repeated strings of data to NAND can cause problems for data retention). The earliest implementations weren’t sophisticated enough to be considered real encryption, but these days it’s not uncommon to see hardware AES-128/256 support. The bad news has been that relying on OS driven filesystem encryption always meant the use of software encryption on top of your drive’s native encryption. This was particularly a problem on SandForce based drives, where full disk...

Microsoft Announces Xbox SmartGlass Service For Windows 8, Windows Phone

While we’ll leave most of the E3 gaming announcements today to the gaming press, there is one bit of news that has come out of E3 that’s going to...

1 by Ryan Smith on 6/4/2012

Hands on With ASUS' Tablet 600 & Windows RT

Earlier today ASUS announced its first Windows RT device, the Tablet 600. Based on NVIDIA's Tegra 3 SoC (T30), the Tablet 600 features a 10.1-inch 1366 x 768 IPS...

17 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 6/4/2012

Hands on With Acer's Iconia W510 x86 Windows 8 Tablet

Check out the gallery below for tons of shots of Acer's 10.1-inch Iconia W510 x86 Windows 8 tablet with keyboard dock. It's clear that touch and ultra thin form...

6 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 6/3/2012

Acer Completes its Windows 8 Lineup with Touch Enabled All-in-Ones

Two more Acer announcements for you today. The Acer Aspire 7600U (27-inch, 35mm thick, 64-point multi-touch, 1080p) all-in-one and the Aspire 5600U (23-inch). The 7600U swivels at all four sides...

6 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 6/3/2012

Acer's Full HD Touch Enabled Windows 8 Aspire S7 Ultrabooks

Acer joined the likes of ASUS with its announcement of the Full HD 11.6-inch and 13.3-inch Aspire S7 ultrabooks. Unlike ASUS however, Acer is announcing touch support with the...

7 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 6/3/2012

Acer Introduces Windows 8 Tablets with Docks: Iconia W510 & W700

We just sat down for Acer's Computex press conference in Taipei. Today it's unveiling two x86 Windows 8 tablets: the Iconia W510 and W700. The W510 features a 10.1-inch...

17 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 6/3/2012

Microsoft Releases Windows 8 Release Preview; NVIDIA & AMD Prep New Win8 Drivers

Closing out the month of May, Microsoft gave everyone an early present by putting up the final preview version of Windows 8, the Windows 8 Release Preview. Originally expected...

23 by Ryan Smith on 6/1/2012

Media Center for Windows 8: An Add-on At A Nominal Price

AnandTech has been covering the Home Theater PC space since those halcyon days when Windows XP Media Center was rolling out, and the era of dual-core Pentiums promised tolerable...

99 by Jason Inofuentes on 5/5/2012

Windows 8 Release Preview Due in First Week of June

Microsoft has announced that the Windows 8 Release Preview, a near-final build of the upcoming operating system, will be available to the public in the first week of June...

38 by Andrew Cunningham on 4/24/2012

Microsoft Announces Windows 8 Product Editions

Microsoft Communications Manager Brandon LeBlanc has finally given us our first official information about product editions for Windows 8, which is now confirmed to be the product's actual shipping...

56 by Andrew Cunningham on 4/16/2012

Microsoft Talks Windows 8 Touch Experience on Windows 7 Tablets

Microsoft's Jerry Koh and Jeff Piira gave some insight into the Windows 8 touch experience in yet another Building Windows 8 blog post yesterday. They talked specifically about the...

18 by Andrew Cunningham on 3/29/2012

Microsoft Talks Screen Resolution in Windows 8, Suggests "Retina"-esque Tablets

Microsoft's David Washington has penned another informational tome on the Building Windows 8 blog, this one about Windows 8 and its support for varying screen resolutions. The above chart...

29 by Andrew Cunningham on 3/22/2012

NVIDIA Releases 296.10 GeForce Driver, Introduces Windows 8 Driver Support

NVIDIA has just posted the WHQL-certified GeForce driver 296.10 for Windows 7 and Vista desktops and laptops and Windows XP desktops, and has also released a 296.17 driver specifically...

6 by Andrew Cunningham on 3/13/2012

Google and Mozilla Working on Metro-Enabled Browsers, Opera May Follow Suit

Both Mozilla and Google have confirmed to various sources that they have begun (or are planning to begin) work on Metro-style versions of their Firefox and Chrome browsers for...

11 by Andrew Cunningham on 3/13/2012

In-Depth with the Windows 8 Consumer Preview

Windows has changed a lot since Windows 95 ushered in the modern era of the desktop operating system almost two decades ago—the underlying technology that makes Windows what it...

286 by Andrew Cunningham, Ryan Smith, Kristian Vättö & Jarred Walton on 3/9/2012

Windows 8 Consumer Preview: A Quick Look at Battery Life (Updated)

With each new operating system in recent history, Microsoft has promised better battery life. We tested this back in the early days of Windows 7 and found that while...

113 by Jarred Walton on 3/1/2012

AMD Releases Video Driver for Windows 8 Consumer Preview

In conjunction with today’s release of the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, AMD has released a new set of drivers specifically for Windows 8. Dubbed the AMD Catalyst driver for...

18 by Ryan Smith on 2/29/2012

Microsoft Demonstrates Windows to Go

Windows 8 supports installation to removable flash media via a feature called Windows to Go. Your apps, settings, and OS can all be installed to a USB stick and...

12 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 2/29/2012

Microsoft Demos Windows 8 on 82-inch Touchscreen

Microsoft is talking a lot about the importance of touch input to the Windows 8 experience in everything from tablets to high-end desktops. To show just how far you...

23 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 2/29/2012

Microsoft Shows Windows 8 CP on Tegra 3, Krait, OMAP 5 & Clover Trail

Update: Despite Microsoft referring to the test platform as running on a next-generation OMAP processor, TI tells us that the Windows 8 tablet was running an OMAP 4470, not...

4 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 2/29/2012

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