HP to partners: sew your way to vertical Win 8 success - Register

Canalys APAC Mastery of a sewing machine may help the channel can cash in on Windows 8, HP representatives have told the APAC Canalys Channels Forum.

Prowess in the domestic arts, the company said, could come in handy thanks to HP's provision of information and assistance to create covers and accessories for its Windows 8 devices.

That's not a call to action for the channel to diversify by asking just what Disney/Lucas will charge to slap Jar Jar Binks pictures on pretty cases, and is instead a service HP feels will appeal to those in the channel with expertise in vertical industries that might benefit from an injection of mobility, Windows 8 style. HP's betting some of those mobility-hungry companies fret about just how to use touch-centric devices in their workplaces and that a custom accessory will get them over the line.

Dion Weisler, senior vice-president for printing and personal systems for HP's Asia-Pacific and Japan, went out of his way to promote the availability of sewing patterns for HP kit in his keynote at the Canalys event.

Anneliese Olson, HP's veep from the same group did so again in a session on the BYOD opportunity in the channel, talking up a "Made for HP" program for accessories designed for its business tablet, the ElitePad. "This is very relevant to a business customer," she said. "If you work in a particular customer segment, we can work with you to meet those needs."

Dan Tindall, global vice president of worldwide channel sales for the same product group picked up the baton in a session on the Windows 8 channel opportunity the next day.

"We can't imagine every business process," Tindall said, adding that resellers with vertical expertise should therefore turn their thoughts to business processes ripe for mobilisation and start to offer ideas – and nicely-sewn sleeves – to take Windows 8 devices into those businesses.

"I strongly encourage resellers to think about their own customer base in this different kind of way," he said. "VARs who can pull this off will have a competitive advantage over those that can't."

But Tindall's vision may not have found receptive ears, as a show of hands among the 100-odd delegates in attendance yielded just three that already conduct any application development for their clientele. Another query asking who among the audience plans to add such services saw just two hands reach skyward.

Nor did the audience appear particularly enthused at the suggestion from Todd Cione, Microsoft's chief marketing and operations officer for the Asia Pacific region, that Windows XP to Windows 8 migrations represent a grand opportunity. Questions from the floor asked why business would do so given many of their customers are yet to adopt Windows 7.

Cione also said he would "prefer it were not the case" that System Center Configuration Manager Service Pack 1, Microsoft's tool for mass Windows 8 deployment and management, is only in beta. Cione added the channel can expect "programs around SP1 of System Centre" before too much more time has passed.

He also said he expects Windows 8 – currently available in 50 form factors in Asia – will continue to find its way into new devices and therefore become relevant to more vertical markets.

That prompted a nervous question from a Windows Mobile 6.5 developer, who wondered if his niche remains viable. Cione responded gently, but left no doubt Microsoft wants the channel to get excited about making Windows 8 look its best, wherever it is needed. ®

Nobody knows what to call Microsoft's ex-Metro UI - Register

Build 2012 Microsoft says it is 100 per cent committed to its new user interface (UI) design principles, as embodied in Windows 8, even though it still hasn't come up with a meaningful name for them.

Speaking at the annual Build developer conference in Redmond this week, Microsoft Principal User Experience Advisor Will Tschumy said the company has been investing heavily in design since 2003, to the tune of $20bn per year.

Those efforts resulted in the Office 2007 and 2010 revamps, he said, and culminated in . . . well, in whatever you call the Windows 8 look and feel.

Redmond first told us that Windows 8's blocky, touch-centric design concept was called "Metro," and that apps built in that style should be called "Metro-style apps."

But in August, Microsoft suddenly announced that it was dropping the Metro name from its Win 8 marketing, insisting that it had never been anything more than an internal code name and that it would no longer be used in public communications.

Fair enough; but curiously, not only has Microsoft never offered any replacement for what had become one of the defining terms of its new OS, but it has never adequately explained why "Metro" suddenly became verboten in the first place.

When asked to clarify the situation, Tschumy offered little insight into why company staffers are no longer allowed to utter the M-word.

"I'm not going to get into the details of why we're not doing that anymore," Tschumy said, but added that the correct term for apps built based on Microsoft's new UI style is "Windows 8 Store Apps."

That's actually slightly more of a mouthful than we've been told previously – and we've been told several things – and Tschumy himself stumbled over the awkward phrasing as he was pressed with further questions.

What's more, the new term isn't very helpful for describing those apps that use the new UI principles but have nothing to do with Windows 8 or its store, such as websites or apps for Windows Phone.

Nonetheless, Tschumy said Microsoft's new design principles were "the exclusive language for our experiences," adding that customers would see UIs based on the same ideas across all of the devices Microsoft touches, including PCs, phones, tablets, and even Xbox consoles.

When one confused Build attendee asked whether the "language" Tschumy was talking about was the same thing as the Windows 8 design principles, Tschumy offered only that, "The Microsoft design principles are the overall set of principles that are driving the Windows 8 Store applications."

But some Build attendees still weren't quite convinced. One mentioned that the Windows 8 Store UI rules seemed to work well for apps designed for consuming content, but not so much for apps designed to do actual work. Tschumy said that how developers lay out their controls will depend on the purpose of the apps they're building, but wasn't much more helpful than that.

Another attendee asked how, if the new design principles are Microsoft's "exclusive language," they would influence Windows 8 Desktop applications. Tschumy answered that the Office 2013 applications already include a few subtle graphical effects to make them fit in better with Windows 8, but he couldn't say whether they would evolve further.

"I can't speak to future plans beyond that," Tschumy said. "But the really cool thing about all of this is that Microsoft is 90,000 people or so, so the fact that we're all behind this and we're all pushing down these design principles is something that's tremendously exciting."

And, might we add, tremendously confusing. ®

Bootnote

Microsoft does have a ton of documentation on its new design principles available at design.windows.com. Still, here at El Reg West we're getting a little tired of not having a proper term to describe Microsoft's company-wide makeover – and the topic does seem to keep coming up.

Since Redmond hasn't been forthcoming, we propose calling it The Interface Formerly Known As Metro, or TIFKAM for short. But perhaps some bizarre and inscrutable symbol would be more appropriate? Send us your thoughts.

IBM's Watson supercomputer goes to medical school - BBC News

31 October 2012 Last updated at 16:41 ET

IBM's Watson supercomputer is to help train doctors at a medical school in Cleveland, Ohio.

The machine gained fame when it beat two human contestants on the US quiz show Jeopardy last year.

Its technology will now be put to a more practical use helping students to consider challenging cases and offering potential diagnoses.

But some critics say the information artificial intelligence (AI) systems draw on is flawed.

IBM's announcement marks the US firm's latest effort to develop its product for the healthcare sector.

Watson is already involved in another project with a New York-based cancer centre, and is also being tested by health insurance provider Wellpoint to tailor treatments and claims forms for its members.

IBM believes the medical sector is one of the areas it will be able to make money from its artificial intelligence system. Others include customer service hotlines and the financial investment industry.

Computer clinicians

Watson is designed to "understand" natural language requests and then access vast quantities of unstructured data to find the best answers to questions.

In a healthcare scenario this would involve analysing both patient records and medical literature.

Watson has been designed to create a list of potential answers to a medic's request, rank them in order of likelihood and then present the most likely solutions along with information about how confident it is of their likelihood.

IBM said it would be used at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine to help students evaluate medical case scenarios and find evidence to support their judgements.

"Cleveland Clinic's collaboration with IBM is exciting because it offers us the opportunity to 'think' in ways that have the potential to make it a powerful tool in medicine," said the centre's chief information officer Martin Harris.

IBM, in turn, said it hoped that Watson would get "smarter" at handling medical language.

"Being able to work with the faculty and students at an organisation like Cleveland Clinic will help us learn how to more efficiently teach and adapt Watson to a new field through interaction with experts," said David Ferrucci, principal investigator of the Watson project.

The effort builds on IBM's work with the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center's research unit in Manhattan, New York.

The two are working to develop an application that could help find the best treatment for a patient with lung, breast or prostate cancer. They hope to pilot an application with a wide group of oncologists by the end of 2013.

Money from medicine

The moves could be lucrative to IBM in the long run.

The US alone spent more than $2.6 trillion (£1.6tn) on health spending in 2010, representing 17.6% of its GDP, according to a recent report by the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development).

IBM's marketing materials suggest that as many as one in five diagnoses are incorrect or incomplete and nearly 1.5 million medication errors are made in the US every year.

Moreover it says the amount of medical information is doubling every five years making it harder for medics to stay across all relevant developments.

The company has indicated that it would request a "share of the value" of any benefit derived from its technology rather than a set fee.

Flawed data

IBM is not the only one aware of the sector's potential.

Researchers at the Clinical Decision Making Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have also looked at applying artificial intelligence to medicine, while software such as Dxplain and Isabel already exist to help medics make the right call.

However, one healthcare tech specialist has suggested we are still 30 years away from computers becoming reliable diagnosticians.

Fred Trotter, technology director at the Cautious Patient Foundation, believes part of the problem is that much of the information that AI-driven systems have to draw on is flawed.

"It simply does not matter how good the AI algorithm is if your healthcare data is both incorrect and described with a faulty healthcare ontology," he wrote on the subject.

"My personal experiences with health data on a wide scale? It's like having a conversation with a habitual liar who has a speech impediment.

"I promise you we will have the AI problem finished long before we have healthcare data that is reliable enough to train it. Until that happens, imagine how Watson would have performed on Jeopardy if it had been trained on Lord of the Rings and The Cat in the Hat instead of encyclopaedias."

Microsoft's browser ballot screw-up cost Firefox 9M downloads - PC Advisor

Microsoft's 16-month browser ballot screw-up in the European Union cost Mozilla an estimated 8.8 million downloads of its Firefox browser, the open-source vendor's head lawyer said Tuesday.

Microsoft faces fines that could reach into the billions for omitting a browser choice screen it was supposed to show European users of Windows 7. The blunder began in late February 2011, when Microsoft shipped Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1), and ran through early July 2012, when authorities notified the company of the oversight.

According to Harvey Anderson, Mozilla's general counsel, Firefox's daily download average fell 63% from approximately 54,000 to a low of 20,000 before Microsoft rolled out a fix for the snafu last summer. After Microsoft updated EU users' Windows 7 PCs with a patch to restore the ballot screen, Firefox downloads increased 150% to an average of approximately 50,000, Anderson claimed.

During the more than 16 months when the ballot was not offered EU users, Mozilla "lost" between 6 and 9 million downloads. Anderson included a graph in his blog post, however, that put the impact at a more specific 8.8 million Firefox downloads.

Last week, the European Competition Commission -- the EU government's antitrust agency -- served Microsoft with formal charges for failing to display the required browser choice screen to systems upgraded to Windows 7 SP1. Previously, the Commission had said that some 28 million users in the EU had been shortchanged.

The browser ballot was the result of a deal Microsoft struck with the Commission in late 2009 after officials launched an investigation triggered by a complaint from Norwegian browser maker Opera Software. Opera accused Microsoft of manipulating the battle for browser share by tying Internet Explorer (IE) to Windows.

The settlement required Microsoft to display a screen in Windows that provided download links to other browsers, including Apple's Safari, Google's Chrome, Mozilla's Firefox and Opera Software's Opera. Safari has since been dropped from the deal, as Apple has halted development of the Windows version.

Microsoft claimed that the omission was simply a "technical error," then apologized and quickly created an update to address the problem.

However, Microsoft blew a chance to correct its flub -- and save it from what may end up being massive fines -- just weeks after the release of Windows 7 SP1, when it ignored a tip from a customer who had noticed the missing browser ballot and reported that to the company's support staff.

Mozilla's decline in the share of the European market sharply accelerated during the stretch when Microsoft was not showing Windows 7 users the ballot.

Mozilla claims that Microsoft's browser ballot omission in the EU resulted in 8.8 million fewer downloads of Firefox than would otherwise likely have occurred. (Image: Mozilla.)

From March 2011 until June 2012, Firefox lost 7.5 percentage points of share in Europe, according to data from Irish metrics company StatCounter, an average monthly decline of nearly half a point. In the 16 months prior, Firefox lost just 2.3 percentage points, an average of 0.14 point.

In the three months since Microsoft reinstituted the ballot, Firefox's average slip has been three-tenths of a point, a 40% reduction from the 16 months when the choice screen was AWOL.

Other factors beside the missing ballot, however, clearly played a role in Firefox's decline, including the concurrent rise in Google's Chrome. During the March 2011 to June 2012 span, Chrome, which was also supposed to be on the ballot, grew its share by 13.7 percentage points, slightly more than the 16 months prior.

Nor did the omission of the browser choice screen keep Microsoft's own Internet Explorer (IE) safe from erosion, although its usage decline slowed by 27% during the 16 months when the ballot was not served to Windows 7 users.

While Anderson did not mention it, the vast majority of Mozilla's income comes from a search partnership with Google, which reportedly is worth $300 million annually to the open-source developers. Fewer downloads would likely translate into fewer users -- although not on a one-for-one basis -- which in turn would mean less revenue from those users searching with Google and clicking on its ads.

Microsoft has about three weeks remaining to respond to the Commission's charges, and can request an oral hearing to air its defense before regulators decide on a fine.

But Joaquin Almunia, the EU's head antitrust official, has talked tough ever since July.

"If companies enter into commitments, they must do what they have committed to do or face the consequences," Almunia said last week during a news conference to announce the charges against Microsoft. "Companies should be deterred from any temptation to renege on their promises or even to neglect their duties. This is why, when this happens, the Commission has the power to impose fines."

Almunia also told Microsoft that it had to offer a ballot display in Windows 8, the upgrade that launched Oct. 26, but that it had finished its investigation into similar charges about Windows RT, the tablet-oriented spin-off, and would not force the company to insert a screen there.

Microsoft promised to comply on Windows 8, and last week said it would push an update to the new OS by its Friday launch.

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer, on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed. His email address is gkeizer@computerworld.com.

See more by Gregg Keizer on Computerworld.com.

Read more about regulatory compliance in Computerworld's Regulatory Compliance Topic Center.

Windows Phone 8 handset roundup: Nokia Lumia 920, HTC 8X, Samsung Ativ S ... - ITProPortal

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On Monday, Microsoft formally unveiled its latest mobile operating system, with the new platform arousing considerable interest in both the US and the UK since it was announced back in June 2012. ITProPortal live blogged from Monday's exclusive London Windows Phone 8 launch in case you want to relive all the main talking points as they happened, but now, it's time to take a closer look at the vehicles responsible for driving Microsoft's latest mobile OS forward. Without further ado, let's meet the first wave of Windows Phone 8 handsets - and make sure to check out our review of Windows Phone 8 as well.

Nokia Lumia 920

Background

Windows Phone 8 has three flagship devices in all, and none is more important for all parties involved than the Lumia 920. The word 'beleaguered' is applied to Nokia and its financial struggles nearly as often as it is tacked onto introductions of RIM, while Microsoft needs blockbuster smartphones as it seeks to push Windows Phone adoption and set its on-the-go operating system on a path to one day competing with Android and iOS. As the only high-end WP8 handset currently on 4G, the Lumia 920 is the one that really matters for Microsoft's new mobile OS - and, by connection, its radical new Window 8 ecosystem as a whole

Design and build

One of the criticisms frequently levelled at the Lumia 920 is that it's a bit chunky. Weighing in at 185g and sizing up at 10.7mm thick, it isn't exactly little black dress material, at least not by today's standards of super-svelteness. For those keeping score, that's more than 70g heavier and 3mm chubbier than the iPhone 5. The Lumia 920 utilises its girth to the full, packing a host of cool features (see below) as well as a powerhouse 2,000mAh battery delivering 10 hours of (claimed) 3G talktime. In other words, don't let the current fetishisation of über-minimalist mobile designs put you off the 920 – a good phone is a good phone and it's not like it won't fit into your trouser pocket. For style-conscious consumers, the Lumia 920 is also noteworthy for coming in a range of fun, bold colours with both glossy and matte finishes available.

Display and processor

The screen measures 4.5in diagonally, making the Lumia 920 a halfway house between the 4in category currently led by the iPhone 5, and the 4.5-5in segment typified by the ultra-expansive Samsung Galaxy S3. Crucially, the Lumia 920 exploits its extra inches, boasting a high quality resolution of 1,280 x 768 pixels at a stunning 332 PPI. Behind the pretty screen, there's a Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset running the show, comprising a dual-core Krait CPU clocked at 1.5GHz and an Adreno 225 GPU.

Features

What potentially sets the Lumia 920 apart from its WP8 rivals is the quality and scope of its additional features. At 8.7-megapixels and an aperture of f/2.0, its PureView-standard primary camera is just that little bit better than the competition, sporting Carl Zeiss optics complete with image stabilisation - a real rarity in the mobile arena. But most importantly, it's the only Windows Phone 8 device currently lined up to run on the UK's new 4G LTE spectrum, as being rolled out by EE this week. It's also NFC-ready to power those futuristic sandwich purchases you've been dreaming about, though unfortunately there's no microSD card slot, so you're tied to 32GB of on-board storage. For added awesomeness, the Lumia 920 also supports wireless inductive charging - hardly essential stuff in 2012/13, but early adopters are no doubt salivating at the prospect of getting a cappuccino and a bit of mobile juice ahead of their peers.

Price and availability

By the UK's (generally) open market standards, the Lumia 920 is a bit of a diva and will only be available on EE and via Phones 4u for the foreseeable future. Unofficial SIM-free pricing hints at an outright payment of around £470 for the 920 and a number of tariffs have already been revealed - though none are exactly a bargain.

A reasonable-sounding £50 down payment will get you a £41 a month, two-year contract with a 1GB data allowance, which is about twice what most heavy smartphone users ideally want to pay for their mobile fix. That said, 4G deals aren't going to come cheaply, and variation by handset and network is likely to be minimal for the time being. 

All things considered, Nokia's new flagship handset is probably the best-rounded, most attractive Windows Phone 8 device currently available - unlike its rivals, the Lumia 920 will arrive in the UK this week. Moreover, our initial hands-on flirtations with the 920 have revealed a phone that feels and operates every bit as smoothly as it should, given the impressive nature of its specifications. We think all of the new WP8 mobiles are worthy of serious consideration, but the Lumia 920 is probably the benchmark.

For more on Nokia's flagship Windows 8 handset, see our Lumia 920 vs iPhone 5 spec comparison.

Windows 8 laptops and PCs buying advice - PC Advisor

Windows 8 is designed to work across a variety of desktop and mobile computers. As hardware makers get to grips with the OS, they'll have to rise to the challenge Microsoft has set: creating computers with a variety of input mechanisms and screen sizes, all utilised via a single, unified interface. Visit our Microsoft Windows 8 review.

It's not such a great challenge for users, though. We've been running Windows 8 for months now, and it's fair to say the transition has been one of the smoothest Windows upgrades many of us have experienced.

And an upgrade it is. If you're new to Windows 8 you'll find it very similar to Windows 7 and Vista – just a little faster and a tad more stable. The Start menu has been replaced with the Modern UI Start Screen, a tiled interface that brings the desktop OS into line with Microsoft's mobile software, and offers access to the Windows Store and apps. But for the regular PC user, the main event will continue to be the classic desktop.

Windows 8 is speedy, good-looking and stable, and it doesn't represent too steep a learning curve. It runs faster and is more stable on the same hardware as Windows 7 and Vista. With Windows 8, fast systems should be available at low price points.

Here, we set out to provide a snapshot of the systems that will be available from 26 October. We set no limits to price or specification, and asked only that vendors submit PCs that will interest our readers.

WorldBench 6, our usual benchmarking tool, is not compatible with Windows 8. We've instead used PCMark 7 (see page 74). Given that the laptops were supplied running Windows 7 (although they will be available with Windows 8 from 26 October), we also ran WorldBench 6 on these machines prior to upgrading them.

• See Group test: What's the best Windows 8 PC?
• See also Group test: What's the best Windows 8 laptop?

Windows 8: Buying advice

All the desktop PCs in our round-up came with Windows 8 preinstalled, and we upgraded the laptops from Windows 7. The vendors have assured us that versions of each machine will be available with Windows 8 from 26 October.

If you do buy a machine that is still running Windows 7, and envision upgrading the operating system, check for a Windows 8 certification logo. The motherboard, in particular, will need to be Windows 8-compatible, and you can check whether your various peripherals will play nicely with the new OS by comparing them to Microsoft's list at tinyurl.com/99wanpp.

Few peripherals designed for Windows 8 were available at press time. In particular, Microsoft has recommended that the OS is navigated using a 10-point touchscreen, but monitor makers are waiting to see the level of demand for such screens before starting production. Of the four desktops here that are supplied with screens, three have only two-point multitouch functionality and one is a standard (non-touch) display. You may decide you want to wait a while rather than splash out on a screen that isn't optimised for Windows 8 now.

If you can afford it, get a PC fitted with an SSD – at least 60GB in capacity if you'll be using it as your boot drive. We saw significantly better performance results in PCMark 7 and noticeably improved system responsiveness from these PCs.

A smaller-capacity SSD can also be utilised to accelerate the hard drive when coupled with Intel's Smart Response Technology. For this you'll need an advanced motherboard, preferably with a Z77 chipset.

Both AMD and nVidia have produced graphics drivers for Windows 8, so your choice of graphics solution should be based on your specific requirements. Non-gamers will get by with integrated GPUs.

For system RAM 4GB is a good starting point. We'd prefer to get 8GB, but not if it means cutbacks have been made elsewhere.

Windows 8: How we test

We test each PC for performance, measuring its speed in everyday computing tasks as well its ability to play games. We asked vendors to submit their systems running Windows 8, but our long-standing benchmark, WorldBench 6, won't work with Windows 8.

For this group test we instead turned to PCMark 7, an industry-recognised test suite that uses 25 different workloads to measure areas such as storage, computation, image- and video manipulation, web browsing and gaming. We understand that results from this benchmark are not absolute, with Intel driver issues in Windows 8 meaning video-transcoding tests can present sub-optimal results. Nevertheless, the results give an idea of the relative performance.

As well as the overall PCMark 7 result, typically a points score between 3,000 and 6,000 with current hardware, we have also published results garnered from some of the suite's sub-routines. These are designed to gauge performance in, for example, creativity and entertainment scenarios. Another test highlights the difference between storage technologies. This is an area that impacts perceived speed more than ever, now that even the slowest modern CPUs are more than fast enough for everyday PC duties.

A major draw for many Windows PC users is playing games. As well looking at the sub-score from the PCMark 7 Entertainment test, we measured each PC's capability in Crysis, a revered first-person shooter that still stretches the mettle of any potential gaming machine. Most modern dedicated graphics cards now allow fast framerates at HD screen resolutions, while even integrated graphics processors can potentially provide smooth, playable framerates at modest resolutions and detail settings.

Windows 8: Conclusion

Windows 8 is designed to take advantage of touchscreens, but you don't need one to use the OS. The overall system requirements are much the same as they are for Windows 7.

If you're happy with the performance of your current PC, then there's no urgency to upgrade the hardware just to run Windows 8.

However, if you are about to buy a new PC, look for a Windows 8-certified motherboard to ensure the best compatibility.

The Modern UI interface may have you itching to try out a touchscreen, and it's tempting to go and buy one now. Be warned, though, that while currently available displays can make the OS more usable, they don't provide the full experience Microsoft has in mind. Some of the gestures required to move around the interface are tricky to perform and, while you may eventually get the hang of it, many gestures eluded us even after persevering.

Today, the best desktop Windows 8 experiences might come from all-in-one PCs that are ahead of the game in touch integration.

iPad mini review round up: What the experts say about Apple's 7.9in tablet - Macworld UK

A selection of tech journalist have got their hands on the iPad mini ahead of its release on Friday, and here's what they have to say about Apple's new 7.9in tablet.

Overall, reviewers seem very impressed by Apple's iPad mini, claiming that the quality of the device is much higher than competing tablets, and that the £269 price tag is well reflected by the standard of the iPad. The downfalls are the display, some reviewers wish that it was Retina like the full-size iPad, but they still note that the other features of the iPad mini outweigh this negative.

Jim Dalrymple at The Loop initially said that he didn't think the iPad mini would fit into his workflow, and suggested that he would stick with Apple's full-size tablet instead. Now that he's seen the iPad mini first hand, though Dalrymple says he was wrong.

In his review, Dalrymple said that has tried many competing tablets, including Microsoft's new Surface, but "the quality of these other tablets is so inferior to what Apple manufactures that they felt like plastic toys in your hands."

"I'm a firm believer in "you get what you pay for." The iPad mini is a perfect example of that," writes Dalrymple. "If you want to save $50 and buy a cheap-ass tablet, go ahead. If you want quality the iPad mini will be waiting for you when you come to your senses."

Engadget's Tim Stevens said that the iPad mini is "Apple's best tablet yet, an incredibly thin, remarkably light, obviously well-constructed device that offers phenomenal battery life.

"No, the performance doesn't match Apple's latest and yet, that display is a little lacking in resolution, but nothing else here will leave you wanting," Stevens said.

"I can't think of another company that cares as much about how its products are designed and built – or one that knows how to maximize a supply chain as skilfully," said Joshua Topolsky from The Verge. "So something tells me that it's no accident that this tablet isn't selling for $200."

"There's no tablet in this size range that's as beautifully crafted, works as flawlessly, or has such an incredible software selection," Topolsky continued. "Would I prefer a higher-res display? Certainly. Would I trade it for the app selection or hardware design? For the consistency and smoothness of its software, or the reliability of its battery? Absolutely not. And as someone who's been living with (and loving) Google's Nexus 7 for a few months, I don't say that lightly."

The New York Times' David Pogue wrote: "Overall, the mini gives you all the iPad goodness in a more manageable size and it's awesome. You could argue that the iPad mini is what the iPad always wanted to be."

At Tech Crunch, reviewer MG Siegler said: "The iPad mini isn't perfect – for one reason [the lack of a Retina display] in particular – but it's damn close to my ideal device."

"The iPad mini is an explosion of handheld joy," Siegler said.

The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg said: "In shrinking the iconic iPad, Apple has pulled off an impressive feat. It has managed to create a tablet that's notably thinner and lighter than the leading small competitors with 7in screens while squeezing in a significantly roomier 7.9in display"

"My only complaints were that it's a tad too wide to fit in most of my pockets, and the screen resolution is a big step backwards from the Retina display on the current large iPad," Mossberg concluded.

"If the mini had a Retina display, I'd switch from the iPad 3 in a heartbeat," said Daring Fireball's John Gruber. "As it stands, I'm going to switch anyway. Going non-Retina is a particularly bitter pill for me, but I like the iPad mini's size and weight so much that I'm going to swallow it."

"My guess its that this is going to play out much like the iPod and iPod mini back in 2004: the full-size model will continue to sell strongly, but the mini is going to become the bestselling model," Gruber wrote.

CNET's Scott Stein wrote: "If the iPad mini had a Retina display, a newer A6 processor, and a slightly lower price, it would be the must-have Apple gadget of the year. Even without that, it's still incredibly appealing."

"When you see it, you'll desire it. Just remind yourself you might not need it," Stein advised.

"If your budget's got more wiggle room, the iPad mini is the best compact sized tablet on the market," said Harry McCracken from TIME. "The result may be a product in a category of one – but I have a hunch that it's going to be an awfully popular category."

Rich Jaroslovsky from Bloomberg wrote: "I can tell you the iPad mini is the best small tablet you can buy."

We'll be getting a closer look at the iPad mini soon, but in the meantime, you can read our hands on review and catch up on the latest iPad mini news by clicking the links below.

Plus, if you still can't decide which iPad to buy, read: Which iPad should I buy?

Analyst: Half of iPad mini sales will be cannibalisations
Amazon takes aim at iPad mini on its homepage
iPad mini shipping times delayed
Why did Apple announce a new iPad so soon after iPad 3?
How Apple's iPad mini compares with Android tablets
Apple's Phil Schiller defends £269 iPad mini price
Opinion: Can a $329 Apple iPad mini compete in the bargain tablet market?