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Microsoft talks Windows 10 hardware at Computex

With Windows 10 around the corner, it’s no surprise that Microsoft is talking about all the cool new hardware that has been designed to take advantage of the operating sytem’s newest features.

The latest rah-rah session happened at Computex in Taipei, where Microsoft reps sang the praises of a selection of hardware from various big-name manufacturers that they hope will ignite some enthusiasm for the new OS.

Microsoft appears to be aiming for more than “some” enthusiasm; it hopes to see Windows 10 on more than a billion PCs within “two to three years” of its general availability.

This will be helped along by the company’s generous offer of making the OS freely available to Windows 7 and 8.1 owners for the first year, but also by a fairly strong line-up of brand-new machines. Like these:

  • Acer’s Z3-710, an all-in-one PC that delivers powerful computing and enhanced audio in a slim, 1.4-inch-thin chassis.
  • The ASUS Transformer Book T100HA, a 2-in-1 laptop with a detachable keyboard that boasts up to 14 hours of battery life and a tablet measuring 8.45mm and 580g.
  • The ASUS Zen AiO Z240, which features the latest quad-core Intel Core i7 CPU, gaming-grade NVIDIA GTX 960M graphics, a 3-D camera and a six-speaker stereo sound system.
  • Dell’s XPS 15, which features the same virtually borderless InfinityEdge display that made the XPS 13 an industry leader.
  • A new x2 from HP is a 2-in-1, ultra-portable, “tablet first” detachable — with a magnetic hinge design that makes the device flexible and lappable — and with Windows 10, users can transition seamlessly from tablet to PC mode and back again in an instant.
  • A new HP tablet for mobile productivity has revolutionary note-taking capabilities.
  • A new Toshiba PC enables Windows Hello with the latest in biometric security technology, including a face-authentication camera, an Ultra HD 4K screen and optimization for Cortana.

In case you haven’t encountered it yet, Windows Hello is Windows 10’s ability to authenticate you using biometric information, gathered through things like fingerprint readers, specialised cameras, illuminated IR sensors and other hardware. It means, in essence, that you could potentially sign into Windows 10 using your face.

Conspicuously absent from Microsoft’s cheer-session was any announcement of the company’s own Windows 10 hardware, like a new Surface tablet, but that could just be something they’re not willing to talk about yet, and we’ll hear more closer to the actual July 29 launch date.

What do you think? Is this genuinely worth getting excited about, or just another push by Microsoft to drum up a bit of hype ahead of Windows 10’s release?

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