15 years ago everybody had a hotmail account, but yesterday marked the final day for Hotmail as Microsoft has now moved all former Hotmail users over to Outlook.com. Hotmail lived a good life, even after being aquired by Microsoft back in 1997, but now it is no more. Luckily if you have a Hotmail address you can continue to use it through Outlook.com, but you can no longer sign up for a new one. AllthingsD has the story.

Hotmail, the Web-based email service Microsoft acquired in 1997 for $500 million — its largest acquisition at the time — is no more. Microsoft said Thursday that it has finished its Hotmail to Outlook.com transition, a massive undertaking that required migrating hundreds of millions of Hotmail accounts and some 150 petabytes of email data to Outlook.com, its much-improved “modern” email service.

What makes the Zotac ZBOX better as a mini PC?  Well, it gets better if you add a PLUS.  The Zotac ZBOX PLUS ID89 is a socketed Core i5 CPU-based system that has enough power to be a main Desktop PC instead of just a little often-underpowered media PC.  Of course this does come with some possible heat issues, so they've included a rather decent cooling system.  Take a look and see how it all shapes up at the link below.

In terms of the specific CPU used, ZOTAC install an i5-3470T which is a 35w, 2.9GHz dual core model featuring hyper-threading (4 threads at one time) and integrated Intel HD4000 graphics. This gives us DirectX11 support as well as the ability to accelerate (and enhance) HD video. GPU computing is also supported as is audio over HDMI.

Source: HardwareHeaven

Day one of CES 2013 in Las Vegas Nevada was madness and we kicked it off with a busy start! This morning BCCHardware was able to meet up with Steel Series to see what they had to show and what they’re working on for the future of tech and gaming enthusiasts. They had a couple of products to show and talk about at their suite such as the Apex and Apex [Raw] keyboards, as well as two new audio products. Steel Series is typically a gaming company that appeals to the gamers. The Apex and Apex [Raw] are gaming keyboards that can be customized to what you want and or how you want to play your game.

Just like the Sensei Mouse that is customizable in many ways, the keyboards are customizable to what you want.  The Apex can produce 16.7 Million different colors and the Apex [Raw] is simply white. All in all, you can tweak a mere 504 keys (thanks to four layers) that can be re-assigned and mapped. One of the keyboards has five zone lighting and the other has two zones for lighting keys. SteelSeries also talked a bit about two pairs of earphones they are working on. Both are tangle free design and are great sounding headphones that won’t feel cheap to your ears!

You would think that the CEO of Google (the maker of Android) would be using an Android phone, right? Well, apparently that is not the case as Google's CEO Eric Schmidt is still rocking his BlackBerry. When asked he said that it was because he loves the keyboard that BlackBerry offers, and as a former BlackBerry user, I will give him a pass on this one. You can head on over to Geek.com to check out more on this story (which isn't really a story but still pretty funny).

You’d probably expect those in the upper echelon of Google’s management to be staunch advocates of its own products like Chromebooks and Android phones. Turns out that’s not always the case. Executive chairman Eric Schmidt, for example, uses a BlackBerry instead. Despite its struggles to maintain market share around the globe, it’s got to make the men and women in Waterloo smile from ear to ear to know that Eric Schmidt of all people, hasn’t replaced his BlackBerry with an Android device.