Accommodation In Santa Clarita - Here’s Why Apple’s iPad Sales Are Falling

Source - http://wallstcheatsheet.com/
By - Nathanael Arnold
Category - Accommodation In Santa Clarita
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

 

Accommodation In Santa Clarita

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) saw a decline in iPad sales for the first time according to its recently released third-quarter results. The Cupertino, California-based company sold 14.6 million iPads during the June quarter, 2.4 million less than the amount it sold in the same quarter last year.

Although this statistic alarmed some Apple watchers, the year-over-year decline in iPad sales is hardly surprising considering the fact that Apple released a new iteration of its tablet in March 2012. In this sense, comparing iPad sales figures from the June quarter in 2012 to the same quarter in 2013 is like comparing apples to oranges.

However, it should also be noted that the majority of the iPad sales drop is directly attributable to a “1.9 million unit channel inventory swing,” as stated by Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer during the third-quarter results conference call, Yahoo Finance reports. “We built 1.2 million units of iPad channel inventory in the June quarter last year whereas we reduced channel inventory by 700,000 units in the June quarter this year.”

The days of paying for costly software upgrades are numbered. The PC will soon be obsolete. And BusinessWeek reports 70% of Americans are already using the technology that will replace it. Merrill Lynch calls it "a $160 billion opportunity." Computing giants including IBM, Yahoo!, and Amazon are racing to be the first to cash in on this PC-killing revolution. Yet, a small group of little-known companies have a huge head start. Get the full details on these companies, and the technology that is destroying the PC, in a free video from The Motley Fool. Enter your email address below to view this stunning video.

Hotel Reservations In Santa Clarita - SIM Cards Have Finally Been Hacked, And The Flaw Could Affect Millions Of Phones

Source - http://www.forbes.com/
By - Parmy Olson
Category - Hotel Reservations In Santa Clarita
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

Hotel Reservations In Santa Clarita

Smartphones are susceptible to malware and carriers have enabled NSA snooping, but the prevailing wisdom has it there’s still one part of your mobile phone that remains safe and un-hackable: your SIM card.

Yet after three years of research, German cryptographer Karsten Nohl claims to have finally found encryption and software flaws that could affect millions of SIM cards, and open up another route on mobile phones for surveillance and fraud.

Nohl, who will be presenting his findings at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas on July 31, says his is the first hack of its kind in a decade, and comes after he and his team tested close to 1,000 SIM cards for vulnerabilities, exploited by simply sending a hidden SMS. The two-part flaw, based on an old security standard and badly configured code, could allow hackers to remotely infect a SIM with a virus that sends premium text messages (draining a mobile phone bill), surreptitiously re-direct and record calls, and — with the right combination of bugs — carry out payment system fraud.

Payment fraud could be a particular problem for mobile phone users in Africa, where SIM-card based payments are widespread. The deployment of so-called NFC payment technology, already slow to take off, could also be at risk, Nohl says, as well as the ability for carriers to track charges to each caller’s account.

There’s no obvious pattern to the flaw beyond the premise of an older encryption standard. “Different shipments of SIM cards either have [the bug] or not,” says Nohl, who is chief scientist at risk management firm Security Research Labs. “It’s very random.”

In his study, Nohl says just under a quarter of all the SIM cards he tested could be hacked, but given that encryption standards vary widely between countries, he estimates an eighth of the world’s SIM cards could be vulnerable, or about half a billion mobile devices.

Nohl, who was profiled by Forbes’ Andy Greenberg in 2011 for his work on breaking mobile encryption standards, believes it unlikely that cyber criminals have already found the bug. Now that word of the vulnerability is out, he expects it would take them at least six months to crack it, by which time the wireless industry will have implemented available fixes.

That effort may already be underway. Nohl says at least two large carriers have already tasked their staff with finding a patch for the SIM vulnerability, which they will share with other operators through the wireless trade body GSMA.

“Companies are surprisingly open to the idea of working cooperatively on security topics because the competition is somewhere else,” says Nohl. “The competition is organized crime, not AT&T versus T-Mobile.” (The situation in similarly in finance, where payment services like MasterCard, Visa, and American Express will work together under  industry association EMVco to improve security standards for smart cards.)

The market for SIMs is almost entirely fed by mobile carriers, and supplied by two leading global vendors, Gemalto and Oberthur Technologies. Both have profited heavily from the huge growth in mobile handsets: ten years ago there were 1 billion SIM cards worldwide, and today there are more than 5 billion, says ABI Research analyst John Devlin, though the market is slowly reaching a plateau. SIMs are thought to be one of the most secure parts of a phone, he added, and as the carrier’s property, are “key to their relationship between you and I, the subscriber.”

Vodafone would not answer questions about the level of encryption its SIM cards used, and referred all media questions to GSMA. Both Verizon and AT&T said they knew of Nohl’s research, but said their SIM profiles were not vulnerable to the flaw. AT&T added that it had used SIMs with triple Data Encryption Standards (3DES) for almost a decade; Verizon did not specify why its SIMs were not vulnerable.

The London-based GSMA said it had looked at Nohl’s analysis and concurred that “a minority of SIMs produced against older standards could be vulnerable.” It said it had already provided guidance to network operators and SIM vendors who could be impacted by the flaw. “There is no evidence to suggest that today’s more secure SIMs, which are used to support a range of advanced services, will be affected,” a spokesperson added.

Vacations In Santa Clarita - Leap Motion: Control Your PC Through Air Gestures

Source - http://www.usatoday.com/
By - Edward C. Baig
Category - Vacations In Santa Clarita
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

Vacations In Santa Clarita

You're not about to replace your mouse, trackpad, keyboard or even touch-screen as the chief ways to control your computer. But then you start using the new Leap Motion Controller and -- at least in some circumstances -- you can imagine relegating those other devices to the bench. 

Using the compact Leap Motion box, I was able reach out into the open space in front of my computer and pluck a digital harp, manipulate a three-dimensional rendering of molecular structures, dissect a frog and — in the popular game of the same title -- Cut The Rope. I didn't make physical contact with the computer or any other devices.

Leap Motion is a gesture-driven peripheral for PCs and Macs that I've been fascinated with ever since the South By Southwest Interactive conference in March where I had my first hands-on — nope, make that hands-above -- experience with the clever motion controller. Though my experience at home with Leap Motion wasn't perfect, I'm no less intoxicated not only by what it can already do but by what it promises to do in the future. 

For now, you can draw or paint with your fingers, mold 3-D objects, or explore Google Earth through hand gestures. You can interact using objects too.

Today, Leap Motion finally starts shipping to customers who preordered it for $79.99, considerably cheaper than the $249.99 Microsoft Kinect sensor that Leap Motion is inevitably compared to. Leap Motion reaches Best Buy stores July 28. The controller was originally supposed to ship in May.

The smallish (0.5 by 1.2. by 3-inch) rectangular unit plugs into the USB ports on a PC or Mac — both long and short proprietary USB cables are supplied. Once in place, the controller can detect even the subtlest hand and finger movements, anywhere inside an interaction area that goes about two feet above the controller, two feet out to either flank (150 degree angle) and a depth of two feet on each side (120 degree angle). You can use multiple hands and fingers, depending on the gestures required in the specific apps that work with the controller. For that matter, another person can stick their hands into this invisible cone of detection too and have the computer respond provided the hands aren't somehow overlapping in space. 

Inside the controller are two camera sensors and a pair of infrared LEDs, but the real wizardry arrives with the software. Leap Motion claims an accuracy level of up to 1/100th of a millimeter, and for the most part I found it responsive, though a couple of the apps that work with it crashed in my tests on an iMac and at least one lagged a bit. Figuring out and mastering the gestures within certain apps may take some trial and error -- at times the interaction gets a bit finicky.

You find compatible apps inside the aptly named Airspace store. Many are free, though others fetch 99 cents on up. Leap Motion has around 75 apps a modest but reasonably diverse sum. Some apps work on PCs and Macs, some just on one platform or the other. 

The Airspace store is nicely laid out, with sections devoted to music & entertainment apps, creative tools, science, education, productivity & utilities, and other categories. In the "experimental" apps section, you'll find Touchless for Mac and Touchless for Windows, free apps that let you create a "virtual trackpad" in the air for interacting with your computer. I tried the Mac version but didn't exactly excel at it right away. As I wrote this review inside Microsoft Word, I was able to scroll up or down by moving my entire hand towards the computer screen with my hand and then raising it up or down but it was just as easy to manipulate the trackpad the old fashion way. Through Touchless, you can do a "click" gesture by pointing a single finger towards the screen.

I didn't quite master the $2.99 Swoosh DJ app from a developer called Just Add Music Media either. But I had a good time with it anyway. Working in tandem with the music grooving inside iTunes, Swoosh simulates a spinning vinyl disc. Through gestures and movements, you can create reverb effects, or pause and restart a song. But for some reason whenever I tried playing songs in iTunes after using Swoosh, the volume within iTunes was turned all the way down.

I also had fun trying out the $3.99 Frog Dissection simulation app from Emantras, which lets you explore the inner organs of the amphibian wielding virtual scissors, scalpels and forceps -- mercifully without formaldehyde or a mess. 

I can't say it is easier reading the New York Times via their free Leap Motion app, than through more traditional methods. In fact, you feel slightly silly twirling your fingers in the air to navigate from one article to another, pointing and holding your finger to select what to read, and drawing clockwise circles to scroll up or counterclockwise circles to scroll down. And then when you're done reading the piece, you shake your entire hand to escape, which also isn't natural.

For now, you'll need the Leap Motion controller itself to exploit the company's technology. But Leap Motion has struck deals with Asus and Hewlett-Packard to embed 3-D motion control into machines from those computer makers.

During South by Southwest, Leap Motion marketing vice president Michael Zagorsek told me that the company hoped to make the user interface disappear altogether. "I'm not clicking on something to do something else, I'm not touching something to do something else. There is no interface, it's just me represented here," Zagorsek said.

To be sure, you'll still rely on the mouse and keyboard most of the time. But with Leap Motion you won't always have to.

Meeting Space Santa Clarita - This Is Why You Dislike Bing

Source - http://betanews.com/
By - Robert Johnson
Category - Meeting Space Santa Clarita
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

Meeting Space Santa Clarita

I love Bing. There aren’t many products (Xbox) that I’ll admit to being a fanboy of but Bing is getting pretty close to that status for me. I’m an oddity because most people don’t use Bing at all; either because they’ve used it and didn’t get the results they wanted, or based on word of mouth about it being so terrible. I don’t know where you fall, but I would bet most of you reading this don’t use or even like Bing. That’s unfortunate because you’re missing out.

Yes, Bing is good. But why do so many people hate it? Why do so many googlers refuse to even give it a try? Why do those who actually do give it a try, enter one search query, fail to get the results they want, and go back to Google, never giving Bing a second chance?

In April, SurveyMonkey conducted a study comparing Bing and Google. 641 test participants were given two pages of search results, one with Bing branding and the other Google, and were asked which results they preferred. Participants preferred the Google results.

In another survey 262 participants were given the same results but this time the branding was swapped: Google results labeled Bing and Bing results labeled Google. More people preferred the Bing results labeled Google.

When you look at both studies an interesting thing appears: more people preferred the Bing results labeled Google than the Google results labeled as Google. According to Matt Wallaert of the Bing team:

Before explaining the psychological forces at work here, let me put to rest any concerns of corporate trickery. Bing wasn’t involved in this study in any way. We didn’t even know it was happening until after the results were released, and since Google recently became a prominent investor in SurveyMonkey, it would be hard to argue that SurveyMonkey had a pro-Bing bias. To the best of our understanding from the outside, this was impartial, data-driven research done by an internal team at SurveyMonkey.

He goes on to explain why people chose based on brand rather than quality. The explanation is found in a psychology concept known as confirmation bias. According to the most accurate encyclopedia on the planet (that was a joke), confirmation bias is a "tendency of people to favor information that confirms their hypotheses".

Confirmation bias has to do with how people process information, particularly any way in which people avoid rejecting their assumptions whether they are searching for evidence, interpreting it, or recalling it from memory.

The Search for Evidence

In this bias, people hold a hypothesis which they assume to be true. They test it in such a way that requires an affirmative answer that supports their hypothesis. In other words, they tend to look for the evidence they would expect if their hypothesis were true. For example, if I assume Bing returns bad results, then I would be intentionally looking for all the bad results instead of the good ones.

Interpreting Evidence

In this bias a person will make a judgment call on the evidence to support their original hypothesis. For instance, again, if a person with a "Bing sucks" attitude, arrives at Bing results, they will interpret those results as bad. But if shown the same results labeled as Google, they will interpret them as good.

Recalling Evidence

Information is remembered selectively. That means that when a person has a positive experience with a service they inherently have a negative assumption about (i.e. Bing) they will only remember the ways in which that service provided a negative experience.

So what?

The point I am trying to make is this, perhaps confirmation bias is the reason why Bing is hated by so many people. Regardless of the fact that in some cases Bing still lags behind Google, in pure search results, I can count on one hand in the past two years where Bing has failed me. From the Bing blog:

Think of it this way: have you ever tried using Bing, not found what you wanted, and then immediately went back to using Google because "Google is better at search"? But then when you use Google and it doesn’t give you the right results, you change your search and try again because you "searched wrong", rather than giving Bing a try? That’s the confirmation bias: if you were truly trying to find out which search engine was better, you’d give them an equal chance to give you right and wrong answers.

This happens a lot. I’ve had people tell me that they’ve tried Bing and did not find what they were looking for. But something tells me that they were not looking hard enough because they didn’t overcome their inherent bias against Bing. I understand that Bing is not perfect and still has some growing to do. Remember, Google wasn’t perfect either and it took time for it to grow into what it is today. Bing is innovating at a rapid pace and although I would love to see it add features a little bit quicker, I’m a happy Bing user.

The Solution

My solution to this problem is this. Try Bing for 30 days. In other words, use Bing and nothing else for 30 days; use the maps, local search, general search, images and travel for 30 solid days and let me know how it goes. This is what I did back in 2010, about one year after Bing launched. I decided to give it an honest try. And I haven’t been back to Google since. Yes, I occasionally use Google when I don’t find what I need on Bing, but eventually I will stop using Google altogether because this behavior has not yielded any positive results for me: if I don’t find it on Bing, I typically don’t find it on Google either. Bing is just that good.

California Vacation Packages - Risk of Human-to-Human Spread of Deadly New Bird Flu Virus Higher Than Previously Thought

Source - http://news.yahoo.com/
By - Dina Fine Maron
Category - California Vacation Packages
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

California Vacation Packages

Before this year the H7N9 bird flu virus linked to 133 human infections and 43 deaths was never seen in people. All the available evidence suggests that an effective biological barrier apparently kept a pandemic at bay—humans only contracted the novel virus via direct contact with poultry or environments such as live bird markets rather than by human-to-human transmission. New analysis from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS), however, suggests that the virus is closer to becoming a disease transmitted among humans than previously thought.

A large study comparing the genomes of the five reported human H7N9 strains with 37 H7N9 viruses isolated from more than 10,000 poultry market, farm and slaughterhouse samples from across China suggests that the virus would only need small mutations in its protein structure in order to become easily transmissible among humans. Moreover, testing in ferrets—widely considered to the best proxy for humans in flu testing—finds that one lethal strain of the virus that killed the first H7N9 victim in China is transmissible via respiratory droplet, meaning that it could conceivably be spread by coughing and sneezing. The new results are published in Science today. “Our findings indicate nothing to reduce the concern that these viruses can transmit between humans,” says study author Hualan Chen of the CAAS.

The new findings are “worrisome,” says Charles Chiu, an infectious disease expert at the University of California, San Francisco. “For this particular virus, for H7N9, whether or not there is human-to-human transmission is a critical question.”

Since April the number of H7N9 cases has abruptly dropped, but public health officials are concerned that, like other avian influenza viruses that have seasonal infection patterns, H7N9 could mount a resurgence in the fall. With more cases of H7N9 there would be more opportunities for the virus to mutate among humans and, consequently, make the necessary amino acid changes to create human-to-human transmissible H7N9. The H7N9 viruses isolated from birds and humans are already closely genetically related. In the Science analysis researchers found the viruses can bind to human airway receptors, but they maintain the ability to bind to avian airway receptors, too. In order for the virus to be transmissible among humans, it must further mutate to lose its ability to bind to avian airway receptors—a genetic re-sorting the authors say might be possible with only a few amino acid changes.

The Science paper’s results diverge somewhat from earlier research. A study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control published in Nature last week also considered H7N9 transmission in ferrets and found that although ferrets housed together transmit the flu, when the animals were physically separated but shared the same air via a net between their cages, the healthy ferrets only rarely contracted the virus. In that work CDC researchers looked at respiratory droplet transmission in two different strains of H7N9 and found that in a strain originating in Anhui Province, China, only two out of six ferrets contracted the virus whereas in a strain from Shanghai, only one out of three ferrets contracted the virus. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.)

In the new study researchers also looked at multiple H7N9 strains and found the virus was similarly transmitted via direct contact. But in contrast to the authors of the Nature reports, they found that all three ferrets exposed to the Anhui H7N9 strain contracted the virus when exposed via respiratory droplets. The Science study authors ran the experiment twice and received the same results.

The significance of the conflicting airborne infection figures from the two studies is unclear because both studies looked at very small numbers of ferrets. Some of the discrepancy could have stemmed from differences in the lab environments. Alternatively, the virus may have changed slightly as the samples grew in the labs. What these studies, along with other existing research, make clear is that H7N9 can indeed spread via airborne transmission, but that this mode of transmission is not very effective compared with direct contact, says Richard Webby, an influenza expert at Saint Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. The new Science report “adds a whole lot of data to the growing list of evidence that this virus is something we need to be worried about,” he says.

Adding to the virus transmission concerns is the fact that chickens, ducks and mice experimentally infected with avian strains of H7N9 show no visible disease symptoms. In outbreaks of H5N1, another flu strain, severely infected poultry served as a warning knell for human infection. But H7N9 could silently spread in poultry markets and there would be no easy way to detect it.

Chiu says that the new findings should prompt more robust surveillance of poultry populations. Other public health measures to combat the virus in humans include washing hands, avoiding touching the eyes, nose and mouth, and coughing into the elbow to help stop the spread of transmission. “Replication in humans,” the authors wrote, “will provide further opportunities for the virus to acquire more mutations and become more virulent and transmissible in the human population.”

Hotels In Northern California - A Pregnant Pause: 8 Things Every Woman Should Know About PCOS

Source - http://shine.yahoo.com/
By - Babble.com
Category - Hotels In Northern California
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

Hotels In Northern California

Are you having trouble getting pregnant? Do you have an onset of adult acne? Is your hair starting to fall out? Then you might just have some other signs of PCOS, too.

Polycystic (pah-lee-SIS-tik) ovary syndrome, commonly known as PCOS, affects as many as 5 million women in the United States. It is the result of a hormonal imbalance whereby the ovaries make more androgens than normal. Androgens are male hormones that females also make, and having higher than normal levels of these hormones affects the development and release of eggs during ovulation. In women with PCOS, mature eggs are not released from the ovaries, and instead become very small cysts inside the ovary.

I have PCOS. It was not until I had issues with infertility that it was discovered, but looking back the diagnosis makes a lot of sense. (That is a sentiment I have heard from several women who have it as well.) PCOS is actually the most common cause of female infertility. Since then I have come to know my own symptoms (such as severe pelvic pain) and take medicine to ease them.

 Symptoms of PCOS can vary, and while there is no known cure - there are several treatment options available. Here is what you need to know about PCOS:

1. Causes

There is no one known cause of PCOS. Experts theorize that genetics can play a factor, though in my case that theory does not hold true.

A woman's level and resistance to insulin may also play a role in causing PCOS. Experts have found that many women with PCOS have too much insulin stored in their bodies because they have problems using it. Too much insulin in the body seems to increase the production of androgen, thus starting the hormonal imbalance that is PCOS.

2. Reproductive Symptoms and Concerns

Because of the high levels of androgens in the body, PCOS can result in reproductive issues, such as:

• Cysts on the ovaries
• Problems with ovulation
• Pelvic pain
• Infertility
• Irregular or painful menstrual periods

3. Cosmetic Symptoms and Concerns

There are cosmetic symptoms of PCOS too, including:

• Acne or oily skin
• Weight gain, often around the waist
• Issues with hair, such as: dandruff, thinning hair or hair loss
• Excessive hair growth on the face, chest, stomach, back, thumbs, or toes
• Dark patches of skin on the neck, arms, breasts, or thighs
• Skin tags - excess flaps of skin in the armpits or neck area
• Weight gain, often around the waist

4. Pregnancy Symptoms & Concerns

Many women (like myself) are diagnosed when they have fertility issues. However, there can also be issues arising from PCOS during pregnancy, such as:

• Miscarriage
• Gestational diabetes
• Pregnancy-induced high blood pressure
• Premature delivery

5. Long Term Symptoms and Concerns

Some of the other serious, more long-term concerns associated with PCOS are:

• Anxiety or depression
• Sleep apnea
• Diabetes
• High blood pressure
• High cholesterol
• Endometrial cancer

6. Tests

There is no single test to diagnose PCOS. If you or your doctor suspects that you may have PCOS, he or she will look at any or all of the following:

• Medical history
• Physical exam
• Pelvic exam
• Blood tests
• Vaginal ultrasound (sonogram)

7. Treatment Options

Treatment options may vary depending on whether you are at an age or stage where pregnancy is an issue. Some people may also wish to treat the issues that happen as a result of PCOS, such as acne and hair loss.

Most healthcare practitioners will encourage following a healthy lifestyle, including:

• limiting processed foods and high sugar foods
• eating healthy meals with lean meats, vegetables and whole grains
• engaging in regular moderate-to-vigorous exercise

8. Other Treatment Options

Other treatments for PCOS may include:

• Birth control pills (for those who do not wish to be pregnant)
• Progesterone pills (such as Provera)
• Diabetes medications (such as Metformin, which is also known as Glucophage)
• Fertility medications (for those who wish to become pregnant)
• "Ovarian drilling" surgery (for those who wish to become pregnant who have not responded to fertility medications)
• Anti-androgen medicines (such as Spironolactone or Finasteride)

Again, please note that treatment options will vary from person-to-person and all treatment options should be discussed with a healthcare practitioner.

Santa Clarita Local Colleges - Windows 8 Tablets: A Confusing World For Buyers

Source - http://www.zdnet.com/
By - James Kendrick
Category - Santa Clarita Local Colleges
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

Santa Clarita Local Colleges

The choice by Microsoft to make Windows 8 an OS for desktops, laptops, and tablets has been cheered by many and jeered at by others. Whatever side of the Windows 8 for every device camp you fall on the fact is that the multi-dimensional OS is here to stay. Microsoft wants everyone to buy Windows 8 tablets and numerous models are starting to hit the market. 

Tablets running Windows 8 come in all sizes and styles, each trying to get consumers to purchase one rather than the competition, iPads and Android tablets. Having choice is always a good thing for prospective buyers but that may not be the case when it comes to tablets running Windows 8.

Buyers looking for an iPad have a choice of two sizes and that's it. The purchase decision comes down to which size you want, large or small. The decision is easy with storage space the only option other than size. Most buyers don't want integrated LTE and it usually doesn't enter the purchase decision process.

Shoppers wanting an Android tablet have more options but many of them end up getting a Samsung tablet. It's the biggest selling brand in the Android tablet space. Samsung offers several different sizes so once the consumer decides on how big a tablet is desired the purchase decision is straightforward.

Samsung tablets come with different storage sizes and like the iPad that's the only real decision for purchase. Like the iPad, Samsung Galaxy tablets all run good ARM processors and similar hardware components. 

Even the budget Nexus 7 tablet has good hardware inside and buyers don't have to wade through various internal hardware options.

The same is not true for those looking at the Windows 8 tablet. While tablets of different sizes are beginning to appear on the market, size is only one of several choices that may end up confusing prospective buyers.

The big choice confronting Windows 8 tablets is of course the Windows RT vs Windows 8 option. Buyers will often find Windows RT on the cheapest of the tablets available, due to the ARM processor inside (like the iPad and Android tablets). The fact that legacy Windows apps cannot be installed on Windows RT tablets is another reason these tablets are cheaper than full Windows models. While current advertising leads buyers to believe that Windows RT and Windows 8 are the same, there's a big difference in the two as noted above.

Once the choice to get a tablet with full Windows 8 is made, buyers need to get familiar with the different Intel processors being used before making a purchase. Most of the cheaper tablets have an Atom processor inside, and while that handles common tasks with ease they aren't the best performing choice. Buyers may end up frustrated by lags doing typical tasks like watching video with the Atom.

To get the best performance possible on tablets running Windows 8 buyers need to go with full Intel Core processors. That usually drives the prices up significantly, even double that of the iPad or Android tablet. That choice also hits the battery life hard, dropping it from near all day utility to just four or five hours. That's not even close to what the competition delivers.

It's no wonder that tablet buyers may be confused when it comes to buying a Windows 8 tablet. There are two versions of Windows to choose from along with several different processor options. The choices can overwhelm non-techie buyers, who often end up buying based on price.

In the Windows world low price means inferior processors which translates into low performance. The buyer will likely end up less than thrilled with the tablet for this reason.

So the typical tablet shopper can choose from the iPad, Android tablet, or Windows tablet. The iPad decision just involves a single model making the purchase process simple. The same is basically true for Android tablets as most branded tablets come with a single model. The iPad and Android tablets all have powerful hardware configurations that run all available apps with ease.

That's not the case with Windows tablets. Some run all Windows apps, some don't, and depending on the hardware inside some tablets may not run heavy apps very well if at all. The only tablets that run all Windows apps well are the high-end models that come with prices that are much higher than the competition. It's no wonder tablet buyers seem to be going with the competition much more often than the Windows 8 options.