Skype goes down globally, investigation underway

There's a pretty widespread outage of Skype going on right this minute, judging by the explosion of tweets relating to it. It's not universal, as we've been able to log in and use the internet communicator for both text and video chat, but something's definitely gone wrong. So far, we've noticed our OS X machines are ticking along just fine, but our Windows computers are not. Importantly, we had to upgrade one of our Windows desktops to "break" Skype, which indicates it could be a fault contained in the latest version, but then again, it could have simply been just a case of terrible timing. The iPhone and Android apps look to be unaffected, but skype.com is down and out. Skype is on the case right now and will have more details for us "soon."



Update: Skype has a solution for bringing tech savvy users back online. It requires deleting the shared.xml file, instructions for which are available for Windows 7, XP and Mac OS X (so yes, Apple computers have been bitten by the same bug too). A simpler fix is said to be in the works as well.

@Skype (Twitter)

Droid Incredible 2 review

It wasn't that long ago that we were jonesing for a Nexus One on Verizon. What HTC gave us instead was the Droid Incredible, with the same 1GHz Snapdragon CPU and gorgeous 3.7-inch AMOLED display -- not to mention a better camera (8 megapixel vs. five), 8GB of built-in flash storage, an optical trackpad, HTC's Sense UI on top of Eclair, and a dash of funky industrial design. The Incredible was an impressive phone with a lovely camera, marred only by questionable battery life and lack of supply, forcing HTC to build a Super LCD-equipped model to satisfy demand. Judging by the popularity of the Incredible, it came as no surprise that following HTC's announcement at MWC, the Incredible S eventually became Verizon's Droid Incredible 2. With a 4-inch Super LCD display, global CDMA / GSM radio, front-facing camera, updated internals (including 768 MB of RAM), trick capacitive buttons, and a Froyo-flavored serving of Sense, the Incredible 2 seems like a worthy successor to last year's Incredible. Does it live up to our expectations or is it just another fish in the crowded sea of Android? Does it significantly improve upon the original formula or is it merely a refresh? Hit the break for our review.

Droid Incredible 2 review

Hardware

There's no doubt that the Incredible 2 is an extremely handsome, if not sightly austere looking handset. It's much like the interior of a late 20th century BMW -- all class, all business, and all black. Compared to the original, it's slicker and softer, with rounder edges and much better build quality thanks mostly to the ultra-rigid machined and anodized black aluminum screen bezel. Gone are the old model's whimsical red accents, red innards, and red battery. Instead you'll find a translucent black chassis and a black battery under the hood. Even the bevel around the earpiece is finished in black. Yes, this is Darth Vader's phone, the Droid he's been looking for. The back cover features the same grippy soft-touch finish and unique layered motif as the Incredible, but instead of two "steps", there's only one this time around. Like the HTC ThunderBolt, the Incredible 2 includes contacts (missing from the Incredible S) for an optional inductive charging back, and integrates some of its antennae into the battery door. Pop the cover, and there's a Verizon / Vodafone SIM under the 1450mAh battery plus a 16GB microSD card pre-installed.

Despite the bigger screen, the new version is only marginally larger than the original, about the same weight, and actually a smidgen thinner. The layout is almost identical to its forebear -- the headphone jack and power button have swapped places, and the camera flash is now arranged horizontally instead of vertically. On the left side you'll find the volume rocker and micro-USB connector while the right side is devoid of any controls. The top edge hosts the power button, a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, plus a secondary mic, while the bottom edge hides the primary mic, along with an indent to pry the battery cover off. A sheet of Gorilla Glass protects the 4-inch display, the 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera next to the Verizon logo on top, and the four capacitive buttons at the bottom. The earpiece and notification light live in the aforementioned aluminum screen bezel above the glass. In back there's an 8 megapixel autofocus camera with dual-LED flash on top, a rather tinny sounding speaker, the embossed HTC logo, and the "with Google" stencil towards the bottom.

The 4-inch WVGA Super LCD display deserves a special mention. It's one of the best LCD-based panels we've come across -- bright without any leaks or spots, with naturally saturated colors, deep ink-like blacks, and superb viewing angles. Other than pixel density, it gives the iPhone 4's IPS screen a run for its money and even warrants a nod or two from the notoriously smug Super AMOLED crowd. We've mentioned the trick capacitive buttons before, which rotate when the handset switches between portrait and landscape for apps that support both display modes. It turns out the buttons are drawn by groups of tiny LEDs which are turned on and off based on orientation.

At first glance, the Incredible 2 specs look somewhat pedestrian in this day and age of dual-core processors, qHD displays, and LTE radios. But don't be fooled by the numbers. That 1GHz CPU is Qualcomm's latest generation MSM8655 Snapdragon SoC with Adreno 205 GPU -- it's fast, power efficient, and backed up by a generous 768 MB of RAM. Like with the Thunderbolt (which shares the same processor), we consistently recorded Quadrant scores ranging from 1500 to 1700 -- pretty remarkable for a single core device running Froyo. You'll find the usual collection of sensors on board (compass, gyroscope, accelerometer, proximity, and ambient light) along with the standard assortment of radios (WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, GPS / AGPS, and even FM) plus Qualcomm's popular MDM9600 Gobi module (also used in Verizon's iPhone 4), which supports CDMA together with quadband GSM and dual-band HSPA (2100 / 900MHz). In our tests, calls sounded great thanks to the dual noise-reducing microphone setup, and reception was problem free.

Battery life is excellent for an Android smartphone. Starting from a full charge, the Incredible 2 managed 36 hours and 40 minutes of up time before we decided to plug it back in with 7% battery life remaining. That was mostly light use -- reading email (3 accounts), checking Twitter, and occasionally replying or posting -- with all the radios (except Bluetooth) turned on. Still, this included 30 minutes spent with the handset strutting its stuff in front of the camera for our video review, 20 minutes being used as a hotspot, taking / uploading a few full-size pictures, and only 6 hours idling while we slept.

Camera

The camera on the original Incredible was no slouch. It could be coaxed into taking fantastic shots given enough care and attention. The Incredible 2 takes this formula to the next level, with a camera that's capable of producing amazingly realistic pictures without too much effort. It features HTC's next generation 8 megapixel sensor with autofocus optics (also found on the Thunderbolt) plus a dual-LED flash. Color balance and exposure are top notch. Low-light performance is impressive. Noise is kept under control without compromising detail. In fact, we're pretty sure we're dealing with a backside-illuminated sensor here. There's a certain clinical precision to the pictures captured with the Incredible 2 that we've really come to appreciate -- the camera simply gathers a tremendous amount of information, resulting in amazing shots.

Droid Incredible 2 sample shots

The Incredible 2 captures 720p (HD) video at 30fps with decent results. While it performs significantly better than its predecessor, video recording isn't as stellar as photography. The frame rate isn't quite as smooth as with some other devices (the iPhone 4 comes to mind), and sound quality leaves room for improvement. The camera interface offers a plethora of settings: there's touch-to-focus (for both stills and video), flash mode, Photo Booth-like effects, and additional options nestled within the menus (such as timer, exposure, while-balance, resolution, ISO, and face detection). The digital zoom is activated by pressing the volume rocker or by using an on-screen slider. Unfortunately, there's no dedicated 2-stage camera button, no panorama mode, and the 4-inch Super LCD display, while gorgeous, tends to wash out in direct sunlight, making it difficult to properly frame shots.

Software

While the Incredible 2's hardware is supremely refined, things are bittersweet on the software front. It's running Sense, which we've reviewed in detail alongside the Incredible S. We appreciate that it brings a polished, friendly, and consistent user experience across HTC's multitude of devices, and also provides the company with a strong brand identity, but we're just not fans. The problem is that with each revision of Sense we feel more alienated from what we came looking for in the first place, namely Android. Sense is starting to look and feel like its own OS -- Android in a parallel universe -- with almost every aspect of the user interface getting customized, and deviating significantly from the Android way. Certain changes are positive, like the cool time / weather widget, the fast boot feature, and the much improved music player. Others are frustrating, like the the convoluted dialer / call log and the poor keyboard layout (who decided to put the hide button just below the shift key?!) We realize that it's all a matter of taste, and that some people will choose to go down the rabbit hole into Sense wonderland, but we're purists. So HTC, give us a way to disable Sense, and all will be forgiven. Oh, and third-party launchers and keyboards don't count - like most people, we don't have the time or interest to customize our phones beyond installing a few apps.

Sadly, the Incredible 2 ships with Android 2.2.1 (Froyo) which, despite having stayed properly refrigerated for the past 9 months, is getting rather stale. The good news is that the Incredible S is in the process of receiving an Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) update, so Verizon's version can't be far behind. Overall, we don't have much to complain about -- Froyo still provides solid performance, especially when paired with speedy internals. The phone feels snappy and light on its feet all around. It's clear that HTC's spent time fine tuning Sense to make it highly responsive. Still, there's room for improvement in some areas like the web browser which, while loading and rendering pages briskly, falls short of matching the rest of the user interface in terms of smoothness when scrolling and zooming around heavy sites like Engadget.

The most glaring issue we have with the Incredible 2 is the criminal amount of crapware that Verizon decided to pre-load on the handset -- apps that can't be removed and will forever litter the app tray. Some of them, like Adobe Reader, Kindle, Quickoffice (basic version), Skype, and Slacker are apps you'd likely want to install anyway. Others, such as Blockbuster (a shortcut to the Market), Let's Golf 2, NFL Mobile, and NSF Shift don't have the same widespread appeal, but are passable. But it's with apps like City ID, My Verizon Mobile, V CAST Apps, V CAST Media, V CAST Music, V CAST Tones, V CAST Videos, and VZ Navigator that things become downright ludicrous. Apparently Verizon wants to lump its sexy flagship 3G Android smartphone together with its generic dumbphones by contaminating it with utterly meaningless carrier-branded apps and services. We can only hope that a few heads will roll in Verizon's marketing department after we publish this review, and that common sense prevails with a Gingerbread update that allows us to uninstall the offending apps.

Wrap up

We'll come right out and say it: the Droid Incredible 2 is the best 3G Android smartphone on Verizon today. If you live in a 3G-only area or you can forgo LTE (and the Droid Charge), the choice basically comes down to the Incredible 2 and Verizon's iPhone 4. With this device, HTC is pushing the single core Snapdragon platform to the limit, then packaging it into an attractive and beautifully finished product. It improves upon the already excellent Droid Incredible with a nicer screen, an even better camera, global roaming capability, and most importantly, amazing battery life. It's an incredibly (ahem) well rounded handset -- the perfect storm of quality, refinement, power, and efficiency -- as long as you can live with Sense. And that's the crux of it -- while we think Sense will appeal to many people, we feel that HTC is doing its core audience of passionate, tech-savvy, pure Android aficionados a disservice by not providing a way to disable it (or at least making it easier to install custom ROMs via an unlocked bootloader). This, together with the insane amount of pre-loaded crapware, are the only major issues we have with respect to the software. Of course we'd have liked to see Gingerbread available out of the gate, but this looks like it will be remedied soon. In the end, the Incredible 2 isn't a fish in the sea of Android -- it's a shark seeing Verizon red and ready to devour the competition. Considering how much of a runaway hit the original Incredible was last summer, perhaps HTC should have called this new version the Jaws 2?

Dell XPS 14 review

When Dell told us of its plans to revive its tried and true XPS laptop line we were pretty darn excited. With so much brand dilution in the past few years -- there's been the Adamo XPS and the Studio XPS -- the products have noticeably strayed from providing the rock solid gaming and multimedia experience they were once known for. There's a reason XPS stands for Xtreme Performance System, right?! The new line, which includes 14-, 15-, 17-inch systems, has all the ingredients to set it back on track -- including Core i5 / i7 processors, NVIDIA GeForce 400M graphics with Optimus, JBL speakers, a backlit keyboard, an HD webcam and a solid aluminum lid – but has Dell succeeded in creating a well-rounded multimedia machine? And does it rival our oh-so-adored HP Envy line? We've spent the last week using the more mobile $899 XPS 14, so read on to find out in our full review!

Dell XPS 14 review

Look and feel

If you want our honest opinion -- and we're assuming you do -- the new Dell XPS machines aren't gorgeous, but they're not hideous, either. These rigs are fairly middle-of-the-road in terms of design, and that's probably the reason that the bigwigs in Round Rock haven't gone out of their way to highlight design on Dell's website or in ads. All of the machines have anodized aluminum lids and bottom panels, while the rest of the chassis is made of black and gray plastic. Similar to the Inspiron 14R and M101z, the design takes on more of a wedge shape as the battery is built-in to the base of the system so that it doesn't jut out. We tend to fancy the flared look, but it does give it a chunkier trunk. We'll say it flat out: if you're seeking a more attractive 14-inch PC, you really don't have to look any further than the HP Envy 14, but if you're content with a laptop that doesn't turn heads, the Dell XPS will fit the bill.

The 13.9 x 9.7 x 1.3-inch / 5.35-pound XPS 14 is the most mobile system within the new XPS line, but it's still larger and thicker than some comparable 14-inch laptops out there – the Envy 14 is thinner at 1.09-inches and the ASUS U43jc measures 13.7 x 9.6 x 1.2 inches. That said, it's not as heavy as HP's alternative, and Apple's 5.6-pound MacBook Pro 15 will weigh you down a pinch more. That extra girth does leave quite a bit of port space – the system is surrounded by two USB 2.0 ports, a USB / eSATA combo jack as well as HDMI, Ethernet and DisplayPort sockets. Where's the VGA port? That's the question we've been asking ourselves for the last week. It's a pretty big bummer considering there's quite a bit of leftover room to fit one in. There's also a headphone and headphone / mic ports, but you'll definitely prefer listening to music through the speakers – more on that soon. Lastly, the DVD drive and SD card slot live on the right edge. You can add a Blu-ray drive to the configuration for a whopping $450. (That price seems to go down if you go with an XPS 15 or 17.)

Keyboard, touchpad and screen

Unlike every other laptop coming out of the gate, the XPS 14 doesn't have a chiclet keyboard. Not having the extra gaps between the keys was an adjustment -- we've gotten extremely adept at typing on those keyboards -- however, one we were able to make. The keyboard itself is quite firm, and there's no noticeable flex – although, the plastic keys have a slightly too much give. What happened to the rubbery feeling keys on the M1530 is beyond us, but we're happy to sign a petition to get Dell to bring 'em back! Still, we typed the entirety of this review at a very decent clip and we're big (big!) fans of the backlight. The backlight can be adjusted or turned off by either tapping the F6 key or sliding the toggle in Windows Mobility Center. The top row of function keys doubles as multimedia controls, and there's a strip of LED touch controls above it which includes shortcuts to WavesMax Audio settings, Windows Mobility Center and another that can be customized to launch a program or website of your choice.

Dell gets a major point in our book for using an "old school" touchpad with dedicated right and left mouse buttons. As we've said before, we've become increasingly fed up with the flaky integrated mouse button designs or ClickPads. The 3.2 by 1.8-inch pad isn't as wide as it could have been, but it does the trick for navigating the display. The two mouse buttons are slightly mushy, but we'd rather that than uncomfortable, firm buttons that have to be broken in.

The 1366x768-resolution, 14.0-inch WLED display is quite bright, and was crisp enough when watching a 720p Jackass 3D trailer. There's no higher resolution screen option on the 14 -- you've got to go up to the 15 or 17 to nab a 1920 x 1080-resolution display. The panel itself is decent, although vertical viewing angles are a bit problematic – tilting the screen back a bit while sitting on a table caused color distortion. Horizontal angles were better. Our biggest complaint about the screen comes with its glossy plastic bezel – we just would have liked to see a flush glass bezel here or something a lot less shiny and fingerprint prone. The hinge, which sits on top of the system to apparently bring it closer to you, feels solid and doesn't wobble much.

Smack in the center of the top bezel is an HD webcam – the first one ever to ship on a laptop. As you'd expect, the quality of our video in a video call over Skype was quite good – our buddy in San Francisco said he could tell that we had woken up early and that we'd recently gone to the dentist. It's hard for us to say if the native cam is better than some of the peripheral HD cams from Logitech and FreeTalk since we couldn't compare them side by side, but it's much better than the average VGA or 1.3 megapixel webcams, that's for sure. If you're a vlogger – you know, a video blogger! -- you'll love the fact that you can record 720p video right through Dell's Webcam Central software and upload straight to YouTube. Speaking of that software, it's definitely a time killer – we spent more time than we care to share distorting our face and putting on different accessories.

Speakers

Rarely do we dedicate a section of a laptop review to speakers, but the built-in high-fidelity JBL speakers on the XPS 14 are so impressive it only seemed right. Dell claims the speakers are the loudest, clearest and cleanest found in any laptop out there, and we have to admit they may just be right. Of course, we're waiting for a rebuttal from the HP Beats team in a matter of moments. The two 3W speakers above the keyboard (the XPS 15 and 17 both have subwoofers on the bottom) along with the Waves MaxxAudio technology software produced some of the best audio we've heard on a laptop...maybe ever. Keep in mind we are yet to test ASUS's giant NX90 with Bang & Olufsen speakers. Compared to our MacBook Pro 13 and the Envy 17, music in Windows Media Player and Pandora was noticeably fuller and more detailed. It is almost a faux surround sound, and even when we played Mafia II on the rig we were hearing voices from one speaker and the screeching of our tires through another. It's just an awesome audio experience.

Performance and graphics

The Dell XPS 14's 2.53GHz Core i5 460M processor and 4GB of DDR3 RAM didn't leave us with any performance complaints. Our typical day-to-day activities, which included simultaneously surfing the web with over ten tabs open in Firefox, checking Twitter via TweetDeck, chatting in Trillian, writing in Microsoft Word 2010 Starter, and light photo editing using Gimp, all went off without a hitch. The 500GB 7,200rpm hard drive was also quick to open applications, but it appears that you can easily swap it out for a faster SSD if that's your wont.

	PCMarkVantage	3DMark06	Battery Life
Dell XPS 14 (Core i5-460M, NVIDIA 420M)	5796	6827 / 1955	2:58
HP Envy 14 (Core i5-450M, ATI HD 5650)	6038	6899/1928	3:51
Sony VAIO Z (Core i5-450M, NVIDIA 330M)	9949	6193	4:25
ASUS U33Jc (Core i3-370M, NVIDIA 310M)	5574	1860/3403	5:10
Toshiba Portege R705 (Intel Core i3-350M)	5024	1759	4:25

Being one of the first laptops to enter our "lab" with NVIDIA's newest GeForce 400M graphics cards, we were pretty eager to see how this guy fared against older systems and just how well it could power through some of our favorite games. As you can see in the chart above, the GeForce GT 420M card scored noticeably higher on 3DMark06, which just tests graphics, than the other systems we've reviewed with the previous generation GT 300M cards. However, it didn't score as high as the Envy 14's ATI HD 5650 GPU. Nevertheless, the GT 420M card blew through Batman: Arkham Asylum at 30fps and Shattered Horizon at 42fps. Our new favorite title – Mafia II – looked glorious on the screen and we were crusin' in our Smith Custom at 42fps and shooting our MP40 at 34fps. Obviously, the card was also able handle both 720p and 1080p video flawlessly.

Of course, we never had to lift a finger when it came to switching between Intel's integrated graphics and the discrete GPU, thanks to NVIDIA's Optimus. The GPU automatically flipped on when we launched the demo version of Mafia and even a 1080p clip. However, we should mention we couldn't get it to kick on when trying out the demo version of Lara Croft: Guardian of Light -- the software isn't listed in NVIDIA's profiles. We had to go into the Steam folder, find the game, and right click to launch it with the GPU on. Oh, how did we know the GPU wasn't on? Well, the lower frame rates were a good indicator, but also NVIDIA's got that new tool up there to help with that. Up until now, when we've wanted to see if the GPU was on or off we'd have to use a tool that NVIDIA designed for reviewers, however, the XPS comes with NVIDIA's latest Verde drivers, which actually displays the GPU activity at the moment as well as which programs are using it.

The G420M card also supports NVIDIA's new 3DTV Play technology, which allows you to plug in the laptop via HDMI to a three-dee TV and play your favorite 3D games or movies. Sadly, we don't own a 3DTV and thus, couldn't test it out. We're willing to bet that most of you are in the same boat.

The XPS 14 isn't immune to warm temperature and high fan noise. The system got considerably toasty when playing Mafia. The fan on the left side did go into overdrive, but the warm air got annoying enough on our lap that we opted to put it on a desk. During regular usage, the system was much cooler, though the palmrest did get a bit warm overtime.

Battery life and software

To be honest, we expected the Dell XPS 14 to last longer on a charge. On our video rundown test, which loops the same video at 65 percent brightness, the six-cell 56Wh battery with the GPU off lasted just shy of three hours. During regular use, we got closer to four hours before we had to scour around for an outlet. There are certainly other laptops with similar parts that last longer (eh hem, Envy 14!), and given the fact that Dell went with Optimus, it's a bit puzzling why the system didn't actually have better endurance. Dell does offer a nine-cell 92Wh battery for the XPS 14 for an extra $40, but, of course, that will add a bit more weight to the chassis.

Like most of Dell's recent machines, the XPS 14 boots to a very clean desktop with just Dell's dock centered at the top of the screen. As for deleteware, we're happy to say we didn't find all that much of it hiding within the Start menu. Dell does throw on Skype, CyberLink PowerDVD, Roxio Easy CD and DVD and McAfee, but there were no signs of website shortcuts disguised as programs!

Wrap-up

Without a doubt, the Dell XPS 14 packs some extremely attractive features: the system's JBL speakers are some of the best ever put into a laptop, its Core i5 processor combined with NVIDIA GeForce GT400M provides seriously solid gaming and performance muscle, and its HD webcam captures crisp video and pictures. When you consider you get all that for $899 it sounds rather amazing, but it's far from a perfect system – it's chunkier than the others out there, doesn't top the style charts, and its standard battery is gonna keep you close to a wall. If you're after a better combo of beauty and brawns, we have to say the $999 HP Envy 14 or $1,299 Envy 17 are your best bets, but the XPS certainly has enough going for it to make it worthy of its moniker.

Bill Gates considers Skype 'a great purchase' for Microsoft, helped make it happen

The aftermath of Microsoft's announcement that it'll buy Skype for $8.5 billion was filled with speculation about why the price was so high, who Microsoft was bidding against, and who inside Redmond was the driving force behind such a large expenditure. At least one of those queries has been demystified today, thanks to Bill Gates asserting himself as "a strong proponent at the board level for the deal being done." Microsoft's Chairman of the Board expressed his enthusiasm for gobbling up Skype in an interview with the BBC -- one which UK residents may see in full at the iPlayer link below -- and concluded that "it's a great purchase that a lot of innovation will come out of." Adding his support to Steve Ballmer's already public excitement about the Skype takeover, Bill stresses that "the importance of software is higher today than ever," while also predicting that video conferencing is set to become much better and bigger than we've yet seen. We've got our webcams at the ready, Bill!

BBC (1), (2), HARDtalk (iPlayer)