02/08, 10:25am
Logitech M600 takes Magic Mouse cues
Logitech chose Wednesday to unveil its own alternative to the Magic Mouse. The Touch Mouse M600 uses the same concept of an all-touch surface as Apple but with the technology behind its Cube mobile mouse. Having the larger surface solves some of the issues of the Cube, letting users left- and right-click more naturally while opening the door to horizontal scrolling along with the vertical.
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01/19, 4:35pm
Microsoft revenues mask Windows PCs trouble
(Update on PC decline reasons) Microsoft on Thursday revealed record results that masked underlying problems with its core Windows business. It generated $20.5 billion in revenue in the fall, a five percent increase from the same season a year earlier. Most of the increases came from its server business and the Xbox-related Entertainment & Devices group, each of which grew their own revenue by 11 percent and 15 percent.
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01/17, 4:40pm
Ideum 65-inch 3D Presenter made for public spaces
Ideum, which makes Microsoft Surface-like computer tables such as the MT-50, has now revealed its 65-inch MT65 Presenter display that hangs vertically, on a wall. The multi-touch 3D display is meant for public consumption and is thus covered by tempered glass. It can recognize and track up to 32 touch points.
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01/16, 12:10pm
Surface SUR40 arrives a year later
Microsoft on Monday confirmed that the first Surface 2.0 table, the Samsung Surface SUR40, was shipping. Coming out a year after it was first shown, the multi-touch table introduces optics in the panel itself that can see objects and react accordingly. It can now react to as many as 50 simultaneous contact points and uses a quicker 2.9GHz AMD Athlon II X2, a Radeon HD 6700M graphics chip, and runs on Windows 7.
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01/09, 11:05am
Vizio to focus on streaming, pure Windows
Vizio on Monday confirmed its PC plans while hinting at more. It will have five PCs in a more Apple-like roster, including 24- and 27-inch all-in-one desktops, 14- and 15.6-inch pseudo-ultrabooks, and a regular notebook. All of them will focus on links with the VIA Internet Apps of their TV counterparts, as well as a heavy emphasis on streaming video and 2.1-channel audio. In a deliberate attempt to move away from companies like Dell and HP, Vizio is going for a "clean" Windows 7 image free of unwanted trial apps and utilities.
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01/04, 9:15am
Microsoft accuses UK retailer Comet of mass piracy
Microsoft on Wednesday sued British retailer Comet for allegedly committing mass piracy. It claimed the store made and sold 94,000 "counterfeit" copies of Windows XP and Vista as recovery discs. The sales were "unfair to customers," Microsoft's associate general counsel David Finn claimed, implying that customers didn't concern themselves with or know that the discs weren't from Microsoft.
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12/30, 5:00pm
IE9 continues to gain pace at IE8's expense
Microsoft hopes that Internet Explorer 9 will have reached a 25 percent share of the desktop browsing market on its own Windows 7 platform once figures for December are in. According to projections from Net Applications, IE9 will soon become the leading browser among Windows 7 users, overtaking IE8. As it stands, IE9 has now also overtaken Chrome and Firefox in browser user on Windows 7.
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12/30, 2:15pm
App finally makes it to Windows 7 desktops
Yesterday, an unofficial link to Facebook's Messenger for Windows 7
surfaced. Today, Facebook has responded by making an official download available (direct download). Desktops will be the last platform to have received the app, following dedicated releases for iOS devices, Android phones and tablets, BlackBerrys, and Windows Phones.
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12/29, 4:20pm
Photon 100 Windows 7 pro tablet due in February
A Taiwanese smartphone app developer called Bungbungame has unveiled a new tablet dubbed the Photon 100, DigiTimes reported. The tablet is meant for business use only, however, including at restaurants, hotels, insurance companies and for medical care. It runs on Windows 7 Home Premium and packs a dual-core, 1GHz AMD Z01 processor into its 10.1-inch form factor.
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12/29, 3:10pm
Facebook Messenger for Windows 7 up for download
The Facebook Messenger app for Windows 7 PCs that's been in testing since November is now available unofficially from a third party, TechIT found (direct download). Included in the app is the chat function, the ticker feed of friends' activity, and Facebook notifications. The app can snap to the side of the screen thanks to its dock feature.
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12/26, 9:10am
CUPP PunkThis makes dual Android, Windows tablets
CUPP Computing has shown off a new version of its PunkThis board that could lead to tablets with both Android and Windows without compromising both. Taking residence inside an ASUS Eee Slate, the board tested by Engadget would replace the 2.5-inch SATA drive with a full Android device with a 1GHz TI OMAP3730 processor, 512MB of RAM, its own Wi-Fi, and Android 2.3.4. A mini PCIe slot would provide room for a solid-state drive to give storage to the Windows side.
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12/21, 12:55pm
Microsoft takes Apple cue to control its own event
Microsoft confirmed late rumors and said it would make 2012 its last CES keynote. Company Corporate Communications VP Frank Shaw said the company's launch windows "generally don’t align" with the January show and that it didn't make sense to have a keynote or booth in the future. Shaw indirectly admitted that the company was increasingly keynoting CES because it was "the way we've always done it" rather than for actual product launches, which were often months after the show.
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12/20, 8:30pm
Gives attacker ability to run arbitrary code
Microsoft is said to be looking into a new vulnerability in the 64-bit version of Windows 7 that can be exploited through Apple's Safari web browser for Windows, according to a report on Threat Post. The flaw, reported a few days ago by an independent researcher on Twitter and confirmed by Secunia, would allow an attacker to run arbitrary code on victimized machines.
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12/08, 8:20pm
Core i7 powered computer to run ExoPC's own UI
Canadian software developer and slate maker ExoPC has revealed that its forthcoming EXODesk computer will be built by Viewsonic. The 32-inch device features a 10-point table top display. It will incorporate ExoPC's proprietary EXO UI running on top of Windows 7.
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12/08, 6:15pm
Maritz says iPad desire platform agnostic
Using a competing smartphone platform doesn't stop the largest parts of their supporters from preferring the iPad, Maritz concluded in a study on Thursday. While not wholly representative at 2,500 people, the study showed that 53 percent of BlackBerry smartphone owners preferred an iPad, while just 8.5 percent wanted a PlayBook. Even in Android, 41 percent still preferred an iPad, while the next two combined, the Galaxy Tab line (19 percent) and the Kindle Fire (15 percent) amounted to 34 percent.
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12/08, 3:25pm
HP Folio 13 ultrabook ships, already discounted
HP's Folio 13 ultrabook is now on sale, in more ways than one. What was due to cost $900 can be purchased for $850 at LogicBuy or just $703.50 with the NBK3573 coupon code, according to Liliputing. The notebook weighs 3.3lbs and is 0.7 inches thick while sporting a 13.3-inch, 1366x768 display.
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12/08, 12:30am
Microsoft takes Answer Desk service to the web
Microsoft took a low key approach Wednesday to trying to counter Apple's Genius Bar service. AnswerDesk.com takes much of the company's Answer Desk service from its retail shops to free, live chats on the web. Along with diagnosing technical problems with Microsoft software, they also provide the same non-emergency help, such as training users on Office and Windows.
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12/01, 10:05am
NetApplications shows rare Windows reversal
Windows saw a rare increase in its share of the web in November, NetApplications found on Thursday. Microsoft bounced back slightly from a low in October to just over 92.2 percent. The increase pushed the Mac down half a point from its all-time high, although still giving its second-best result to date at 6.46 percent.
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11/22, 5:55pm
Offers USB touchscreen for Windows 7 computers
Mimo has taken its turn at a capacitive USB-powered touchscreen monitor. The Mimo Magic Touch is a 10.1-inch display that can respond to as many as four touch-points at any one time when connected to a Windows 7 computer. For devices running other operating systems, including Windows 2000/XP/Vista and Mac OS X, it still supports a display-only mode.
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11/22, 9:05am
NPD shows HP leading US tablets for most of 2011
HP, not Samsung, was the ruler of non-iPad tablets in the US for the first ten months of the year, the NPD Group said in a new study. With just 1.2 million tablets sold at retail across every company outside of Apple, HP was the leader in the country at 17 percent, or 204,000, sold between its launch and October. The low count suggests that the fire sale $99 TouchPad, not HP's Windows range, was the sales leader by going on clearance.
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11/15, 12:15pm
HP ships Wi-Fi Touch Mouse for Win 7 PCs only
Ahead of an expected intro later this week, HP has pulled the covers off its latest computer peripheral with the X7000 Wi-Fi Touch Mouse. As with its ancestor, it doesn't require USB or Bluetooth to connect, instead relying on a computer's built-in wireless networking. The touch strip only lets users scroll up and down on web pages, however.
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11/14, 10:15pm
Updates to eliminate interruption
Microsoft has previewed a number of improvements to its Windows Update system that are designed to make software updates less intrusive. The Windows 8 team is attempting to address criticisms of Windows 7 and earlier versions, which require users to face frequent notifications and automatic restarts that must be manually stopped.
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11/12, 9:05pm
Chitika has Lion adoption levelling off
Adoption of Mac OS X Lion has slowed significantly in the past month, Chitika found in its latest web traffic results. While it was up to 14 percent in September after being available for two months, it had moved just two percent more by late October to hit 16 percent of the Mac user base. Snow Leopard still had a clear majority at 55 percent, while even the four years old Leopard was at 22 percent.
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11/06, 11:20am
Dell Latitude ST slate ready to order
Dell overnight put up a pre-order page for its delayed Latitude ST tablet. The 10-inch Windows 7 slate is now known to cost $859 and, in the first wave of orders, should arrive by November 29. Base trim gives it a 1.5GHz Atom Z670 chip, 2GB of RAM, and a 64GB solid-state drive along with rear five-megapixel and front 720p cameras.
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11/03, 12:15am
Notebook offers Beats audio
HP has introduced the 3115m, a new notebook that serves as a business-focused variant of the company's Pavilion dm1. Both 11.5-inch notebooks center around a dual-core AMD E450 processor and Radeon HD 6310M graphics, however the 3115m adds Windows 7 Professional and HP's ProtectTools software suite.
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11/02, 8:10pm
HP Slate 2 adds Oak Trail Atom, Swype
HP late Wednesday refreshed its lone remaining tablet through the Slate 2. The Windows 7 hardware keeps the same outside form with an 8.9-inch, 1024x600 display but trades up from the 2009-era Atom of the original Slate 500 to a modern 1.66GHz Atom Z670 from the Oak Trail family. The upgrade theoretically nets it six hours of actual battery life versus the original's claimed five and often much less.
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11/02, 11:25am
ASUS U24E to get Core i5, 750GB hard drive
ASUS may ship a new notebook this month, according to an unofficial report. The 11.6-inch notebook would get Intel's 2.4GHz Core i5, a 750GB hard drive and integrated HD 3000 graphics with an HDMI output, NotebookReview understood. Its promised battery life would be relatively long at seven hours.
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11/01, 12:50pm
Shuttle XPC H7 5820S gets quad, hexa Core i7s
Shuttle PC Europe has just unveiled its latest small form factor desktop, the XPC H7 5820S. Its headline feature is its ability to drive up to 16 displays at once thanks to either the Matrox M9100-series graphics, or NVIDIA's Quadro for 3D applications. The 7.5-inch tall case also houses a choice of quad- or hexa-core Core i7 processors and as much as 16GB of RAM.
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11/01, 12:30pm
Dell XPS 14z starts at $1,000, tops out at $1,300
Dell's supermodel-thin XPS 14z notebook is now up for sale. It starts at $1,000 and includes a 2.4GHz Core i5 processor, a 64-bit copy of Windows 7 Home Premium, and a 14-inch, 1366x768 display. That 0.9-inch thick body also houses 6GB of RAM and a 500GB, 7,200RPM hard drive, along with a dual-layer DVD reader that can burn CDs or single-layer DVDs.
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10/27, 6:15am
Dell launches Latitude ST Windows 7 tablet
Dell has finally made its Latitude ST enterprise-friendly tablet official. The long-delayed Windows 7 tablet surfaced in an official promotional clip late last week. It has now been formally announced on Dell’s European Community forum.
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10/23, 7:45pm
Dell Latitude ST may be Peju tablet revealed
Dell Malaysia has posted a video (direct link, embedded below) that has inadvertently spoiled details of the company's long-delayed Windows 7 tablet. The clip confirms a hinted-at Latitude ST name and lines up with the Peju slate leaked back in July. The 10-inch design has a unique iMac-style dock to turn it into a makeshift desktop with Ethernet, HDMI, and USB ports.
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10/20, 4:35pm
Microsoft summer results shy on Windows and phone
Microsoft posted record results for the summer that were nonetheless muted. Its profit was up six percent from year to year but was enough to get it a new high of $17.37 billion in pure revenue, up seven percent, and a six percent hike in profit to $5.74 billion. Most of this came from the Business and Server groups, which grew eight and ten points each to make $5.62 billion and $4.25 billion each.
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10/17, 6:40pm
Microsoft ads claim it starts with Windows 7 PCs
Microsoft late Sunday kicked off a new TV ad campaign that for the first time portrayed its lineup as a cohesive family. The lead ad (below), "Epic Share," shows a daughter using a Windows Phone to capture her father playing Dance Central 2 on an Xbox 360 with a Kinect, share it with a Windows 7 PC, and edit with her brother in Windows Movie Maker before it goes live on the web. A second focuses just on the PC but shows a son successfully using a PowerPoint presentation to convince his parents to get a dog.
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10/13, 8:00pm
Lenovo IdeaPad U400 at Amazon for $920
Lenovo's recently introduced IdeaPad U400 has now gone up for sale on Amazon. The 14-inch notebook is priced at $920, and the 099329U model gets a 2.4GHz Core i5 processor and ATI's Radeon HD 6470M graphics processor with a dedicated 1GB of RAM. They're paired with 6GB of system RAM and a 750GB hard drive.
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10/13, 3:15pm
Windows 7 passes XP in usage share for first time
Windows 7 has become the first OS to be used more than Windows XP in the decade since launch. New data collected by StatCounter has shown Windows 7 just passing XP as of October at a rate that saw it grow just as much as XP declined. The troubled earlier release, Windows Vista, never got more than a quarter of users.
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10/11, 11:55am
Android emulator works with Windows now, Mac soon
BlueStacks announced it has released an alpha version of its free app player for Windows 7. The BlueStacks app player allows Android apps to run as fullscreen programs on Windows 7 PCs. There is also a push feature that will sync apps between an Android device and the desktop. Ten apps are preloaded, and up to 26 more apps can be installed with the alpha. The emulator gives Android developers access to a much larger market, and PC users access to the library of Android apps.
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10/06, 3:05pm
Dell Peju tablet shows up in leaked photos
What is expected to be Dell's codenamed Peju tablet has been photographed and the leaked images were shared by Engadget. The 10-inch, Windows 7 tablet should arrive with 2GB of RAM onboard, though, as reported earlier, models with at least twice that should be available. The photos also confirm the presence of a USB port, an HDMI output, and a stylus holder.
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10/05, 4:10pm
BCG claims Windows tablet interest trumps iPad
Boston Consulting Group made a controversial claim Wednesday in a study alleging that more wanted a Windows tablet than an iPad. Of the cross-section of Americans, 42 percent said they would prefer Windows on their tablets to just 27 percent wanting an iPad. Only 20 percent wanted Android, and nine percent wanted a BlackBerry PlayBook.
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10/04, 6:20pm
Apple uses relative growth vs Microsoft
Apple during its Let's Talk iPhone event claimed to have outpaced Microsoft in terms of practical OS adoption. In contextualizing six million downloads of Mac OS X Lion, CEO Tim Cook claimed that the Mac's relative adoption rate was much faster, taking two weeks to reach 10 percent of the user base where Microsoft took 20. Downloads helped lead to the faster growth, he said.
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10/01, 11:55am
NetApplications Sept 2011 shows school effect
The Mac hit a pair of record highs in web share during September thanks to the back-to-school effect, NetApplications found in its monthly roundup. The Mac saw one of its sharpest gains in the past year and was up nearly half a point in desktop share to 6.45 percent. Helped by the new leap, Apple's stake in computers has grown by nearly a quarter in the past year, the close look found.
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09/27, 9:05am
Chitika September data sees Mac dent Windows
Sustained demand for Mac OS X Lion has helped the Mac pass 10 percent for real usage share, Chitika has found. The Mac grew by just over a point to hit 10.6 percent in current September figures. Windows was the primary victim, dropping 0.6 percent but now sitting at 77.7 percent.
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09/26, 5:45pm
Series 7 ships from Best Buy by October 23
Samsung's Series 7 performance notebooks are now up for pre-order over at Best Buy. Priced at $880, the 15.6-inch notebook on show uses a quad 2.2GHz Core i7 processor and is available in silver. There is 6GB of RAM onboard and a 750GB hard drive.
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09/23, 5:00pm
Skytab Windows 7 tablet gets EXOPC interface
SKYTEX Technology on Friday announced a partnership with EXOPC that would bring the latter's touch user interface to the former's Skytab S-series Windows 7 tablet PC. The tablet uses a dual-core, 1.5GHz Atom N550 CPU and sports a 9.7-inch, 1024x768 capacitive multitouch display that has as many as four points of touch recognition. Also on board is 2GB of RAM.
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09/14, 3:10pm
Intel shows Thunderbolt finally coming to Windows
Intel's day two Developer Forum keynote saw it introduce Thunderbolt for Windows systems for the first time. A prototype notebook running Windows 7 was shown using the port for the high-speed storage previously only available to Macs. The company had previously acknowledged that Apple had a year's headstart because of its early co-development of the standard.
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09/13, 1:25pm
Windows 8 less hardware dependant than Windows 7
During the opening keynote at the Build 2011 conference, Microsoft's President of Windows and Windows Live, Steven Sinofsky, revealed the minimum required hardware specs of the upcoming Windows 8 operating system. An early-generation Atom processor and 1GB of RAM such that the Lenovo S10 netbook possess is all that's needed to run the software, as it requires less system resources than Windows 7. A slide was shown that proved only about 281MB of RAM and 29 processes is what's needed.
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09/13, 7:20am
Logitech trackpad gives Windows PCs multi-touch
Logitech offered an olive branch on Tuesday to Windows users who want the experience of the Magic Trackpad without having to get a Mac. The Wireless Touchpad provides the same basic concept of a multi-touch trackpad on the desktop with a five-inch 'buttonless' surface that can sit anywhere. Special drivers give Windows the support it doesn't normally have, including two-finger scrolling, three-finger page flip gestures, and four-finger app switches.
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09/12, 7:35am
Launches in Japan next month
NEC announced an addition to its LaVie line of portable computers, a new tablet today dubbed the LaVie Touch. The Touch features a 10.1-inch IPS LCD panel with 1280x800 resolution and runs Windows 7 Home Premium. It will be bundled with wireless keyboard and mouse, and a DVD dock that also serves as a stand. The Touch is 10.4in x 7.2in, 0.62in. thick and weighs 1.6 pounds.
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09/09, 4:25pm
NVIDIA offers GPUDirect tech to developers
At the currently ongoing International Broadcasting Convention in Amsterdam, NVIDIA showed off its new GPUDirect for Video technology that will let app developers create more realistic on-air graphics. It allows industry-standard video I/O devices to communicate directly with the company's pro-oriented Quadro and Tesla GPUs with very low lag. The solution, as NVIDIA sees it, will not only speed up real-time processing of video streams in broadcast and production work but also in manufacturing, healthcare and government agencies.
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09/08, 3:25pm
ASUS outs business tablet with Core i5, Win 7 Pro
ASUS has just introduced its business-oriented Eee Slate B121 PC. The 12.1-inch, 1280x800 tablet is similar to the original Eee Slate but tuned to workers, with security coming from a TPM (Trusted Platform Module) and Computrace LoJack for remote location and data wipes. It likewise ships with Windows 7 Professional, although it still has the Gorilla Glass display and a 1.33GHz low-voltage Core i5.
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09/08, 12:00am
HP Pavilion dm1 gets mid-life Beats and new apps
HP put out its second PC revamp in as many days on Thursday with an update to the Pavilion dm1. Its 11.6-inch crossover notebook now has Beats Audio processing to get better sound from the speakers and headphones. Faster processors also back it up with AMD's Fusion-based, 1.65GHz E-350 and unspecified low-voltage Intel chips now making their way into the ultralight.
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