Xiaomi introduces first over-the-air          charging system called Mi Air Charge

 Xiaomi aims for a truly wireless future with the Mi Air Charge system, which is capable of charging multiple devices wirelessly from a distance.

Traditional wireless chargers still need to be attached to a power source, be it a battery pack or outlet. The latest technology from Xiaomi, on the other hand, uses radio waves to charge a device over the air — truly without wires.

Xiaomi announced its new Mi Air Charge technology on Friday. The system uses a base station with 144 antennas broadcasting a charging signal to compatible devices.

Xiaomi says that a smartphone with a receiving antenna array can connect to the charging point "within a radius of several meters." The company says that users can move about the room and have objects between the devices without interrupting charging.

A millimeter-wave signal is broadcasted directly to the device via beamforming with a beacon antenna. The device can charge multiple phones at 5W of power each.

Xiaomi hopes to use this technology in smart watches, speakers, and other appliances so that future devices no longer need a power cable at all. They imagine a world where everything in the room is truly wireless.

This isn't the first we've heard of "truly wireless" charging. Apple was previously rumored to be partnered with Energous, an over-the-air charging company, but the rumors never panned out. Although are no current rumors of Apple using distance wireless charging technology, previous rumors began as the Energous CEO said they had partnered with a "tier one company". At the time, it was implied to be Apple.

Nvidia GeForce RTX GPUs Aren't for Ready for Gamers Yet - Here's Why

 At Gamescom 2018 last week, Nvidia lifted the lid on the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, GeForce RTX 2080, and GeForce RTX 2070 with a release date of September 20. The GeForce RTX series is based on an architecture codenamed Turing that merges conventional graphics rasterisation, real-time ray tracing, AI, and compute power for the first time.

Nvidia claims that Turing delivers up to 6X the performance of the previous-generation 10-Series GPUs. Gamers will be able to play the most recent and upcoming titles in 4K with HDR at frame rates exceeding 60fps.

The GeForce RTX series GPUs feature new hardware called RT cores. These allow hardware acceleration of light rays in real time, which has never been possible before with consumer-grade silicon. The possibilities include deferred shading, and real-time transparency and translucency effects with objects in motion, allowing for shadows and light to behave more realistically. All this means that gamers will be able to see reflections of things like explosions that aren't even happening on screen. In theory, this should result in better looking games with a greater sense of fluidity and immersion, which might seem like a breath of fresh air following two years of the Nvidia GeForce 10-series GPUs.

Seagate One Touch SSD 

Seagate knows that consumer interest in portable SSDs is growing, and so its portfolio has also expanded. We have with us for review today the new Seagate One Touch SSD, which is relatively affordable and quite stylish. It's positioned as a tech lifestyle device, and targets people who don't necessarily need the best possible speed but are looking for something better than a typical portable hard drive.

For anyone who hasn't tried an SSD before, the differences compared to a hard drive will be stark and surprising. They're potentially multiple times faster than hard drives, but much lighter, smaller, easier to carry, and more reliable. Many people are happy to spend good money for these advantages.

Seagate One Touch SSD (1TB) design and features

Seagate is definitely focusing on design with this model. The company has gone for a credit-card shape, though despite claims that this device can be slipped into a wallet, it's much too thick for that. In fact, this drive is almost exactly the same size as the very popular Samsung SSD T5, though very different in design.

There's a distinctive textured fabric panel on the top, and a cloth tab with the Seagate logo on one side. The 1TB version of this SSD is available only in white and black, but if you choose the 500GB version, there are special editions with blue, green, red, or grey camouflage prints. Additional artist editions for both capacities are shown on Seagate's US website though these don't appear to be available here, and there's the possibility of more designs coming out in the future.

For a device that's positioned as modern and fashionable, we're quite surprised to see an old Micro-USB 3.0 port on the back, like most external hard drives still use. This isn't as convenient as a USB Type-C Port, which we'd expect on an SSD. Seagate also doesn't include a Type-C cable or adapter, so those with sleek Type-C-only laptops will need to buy an adapter of their own

Asus VivoBook S15 (S532F) WithScreenPad  

Asus took us quite by surprise when it introduced the quirky and unique ScreenPad on its flagship 2018 laptops, the ZenBook Pro 14 and ZenBook Pro 15. The company effectively replaced the standard trackpads on these laptops with fully interactive touchscreens. The idea was to retain all the functionality of a standard trackpad but also open up completely new ways to use a laptop. We had a lot of thoughts about the concept and execution of the ScreenPad idea – not all positive. While there was a lot of potential, it seemed as though Asus had failed to strike the right balance between usability and innovation.

We now have some new laptops with the second-gen ScreenPad, which Asus says has been refined and focused. The concept has also been democratised, and can now be found on mainstream VivoBook as well as premium ZenBook laptops. This could be a good thing, giving Asus a unique and attractive selling point in the crowded market – but it could also backfire, confusing users and making everything more difficult.

WINDOWS 7 SUPPORT ENDS JANUARY 14, CHROME TO OFFER WINDOWS 7 SUPPORT FOR 18 MONTHS MORE: WHAT TO DO NEXT

WINDOWS 7 SUPPORT ENDS JANUARY 14, CHROME TO OFFER WINDOWS 7 SUPPORT FOR 18 MONTHS MORE: WHAT TO DO NEXT !

Windows 7 users can update to Windows 10 by purchasing and installing the software online. Users who are owners of very old machines, should consider installing Windows 8 or Windows 8.1, as Windows 10 may not function properly on old devices.

Microsoft's decade-old operating system - Windows 7 - will reach ‘end of life' on January 14. This means that the company will stop the free technical support and producing ‘security patches' to fix software vulnerabilities. It is recommended that all users switch to Windows 10 or newer Windows versions before Windows 7 support ends. While Windows 7 won't see any support, Google claims that it will keep updating Chrome on Windows 7 devices with software and security patches for 18 more months. This means support for Chrome users on Windows 7 will go on till July next year.The tech giant is all set to end support for its Windows 7 software next week i.e. on January 14. While the software won't stop working, Microsoft won't be delivering any security patches, t hereby making it a breeding ground for hackers to tinker with. The ideal solution, as mentioned, is to update to the latest software. While the free program to update to Windows 10 ended on July 2016, users can  purchase the software and install it easily. 

So, what does the January 14 date mean exactly? On its site, Microsoft says "After January 14, 2020, if your PC is running Windows 7, it will no longer receive security updates. Therefore, it's important that you upgrade to a modern operating system such as Windows 10, which can provide the latest security updates to help keep you and your data safer. In addition, Microsoft customer service will no longer be available to provide Windows 7 technical support. Related services for Windows 7 will also be discontinued over time. For example, certain games such as Internet Backgammon and Internet Checkers as well as Electronic Program Guide for Windows Media Center are scheduled to be discontinued in January 2020."

CES 2020: THUNDERBOLT 4 ANNOUNCED BY INTEL

CES 2020: Thunderbolt 4 Announced by Intel, Will Offer Same Speed as Thunderbolt 3

Intel claims that Thunderbolt 4 will be four times faster than USB 3.1 which offers 10Gbps data transfer speeds. This means that Thunderbolt 4 will top out at 40Gbps speeds.

At CES 2020, Intel announced its Tiger Lake CPUs, and these new processors will come with Thunderbolt 4 support. The next-gen external connector from Intel is confirmed to come with the new 10nm CPUs this year, but the chip maker has avoided revealing too many details as of now. Intel claims that Thunderbolt 4 will be four times faster than USB 3.1 which offers 10 Gbps data transfer speeds. This means that Thunderbolt 4 will top out at 40 Gbps speeds, similar to that of the four-year-old Thunderbolt 3.While Thunderbolt 4 is supposedly not faster than Thunderbolt 3, updating the version number could mean few tweaks are well in store. Intel is remaining mystical on the details for now, but the company should shed some light once its launch nears. Intel spokeswoman Sarah Kane told CNET that the company plans to share more details on Thunderbolt 4 later. She claims, “It standardises PC platform requirements and adds the latest Thunderbolt innovations.”

             Thunderbolt ports are found on premium devices like Apple's MacBook laptops and Dell's XPS laptops, but haven't been adopted as widely as Intel would've hoped. USB continues to be strong competition with the USB 4 announced last year. USB 4 should arrive in products this year, and claims to offer 40Gbps data transfer speeds, similar to that of Thunderbolt 3.The upcoming 10nm Tiger Lake CPUs will feature integrated Xe graphics, improved AI integrations and native Thunderbolt 4 and Wi-Fi 6 for connectivity. The company says that manufacturers will start receiving Tiger Lake CPUs in summer 2020, so laptops with the new processors can be expected to launch sometime by the end of this year.

AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT Graphics Cards for 1080p Gaming Launched in India

AMD announced the impending launch of a Radeon RX 5500 GPU series in early October, and now the Radeon RX 5500 XT has now been launched. With this new GPU, AMD is targeting gamers who want high performance at 1920x1080 without spending too much. According to AMD, gamers who play at 1920x1080 and 2560x1440 represent over 90 percent of the market, and the company is targeting these two groups with the new Radeon RX 5500 and the previously launched Radeon RX 5700 series respectively. There has not been any mention of other GPU models within the Radeon RX 5500 family, at least not yet, although the Radeon RX 5500 XT will be available in versions with either 4GB or 8GB of VRAM.

In India, AMD has announced indicative starting prices of Rs. 12,990 and Rs. 14,990 (both excluding taxes) for the 4GB and 8GB versions of the Radeon RX 5500 XT. Graphics cards in both configurations should be available from Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, ASRock, Sapphire, XFX, and PowerColor in various parts of the world starting today. Asus has announced that its customised Asus Dual Evo 5500 XT (8GB) model will be available priced starting at Rs. 17,500 in India, while a Strix series model (also 8GB) will cost Rs. 19,500 and go on sale a week from today.

AMD will not be creating a reference cooler, and so all graphics cards will be custom-designed versions. The company has shown off images of cards from all its AIB partners, and they appear to vary in size, but all feature either two or three fans. Partners will be free to modify clock speeds and power characteristics.

The Radeon RX 5500 XT GPU is built around the same RDNA architecture, 7nm manufacturing process, and PCIe 4.0 infrastructure as the higher-end Radeon RX 5700 series. The GPU features 1,408 stream processors clustered into 22 compute units. The reference boost clock is 1845MHz, while AMD's "game clock", or the speed that gamers should expect to see consistently, is 1717MHz. AMD has used 14GBps GDDR6 memory on a 128-but bus. The reference total board power requirement is 130W