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Microsoft unveils cheap laptops and more tools for education
When it comes to the lucrative education market, Microsoft doesn't want to be left behind -- especially when that Google's Chromebooks are increasingly popular with schools. Microsoft's big selling point this year? More cheap Windows 10 notebooks starting at $189, and a Minecraft: Education Edition update focused on chemistry. As you'd expect, the company also has plenty of updates in tow for its Office 365 education tools, which should make lives easier for teachers and students alike.
Encrypted Text: Mists of Pandaria guide to a raid-ready rogue
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here. I'm not a fan of gearing up. I hate watching my gear fade into obsolescence. I hate swapping out my legendary Fangs of the Father for a set of blue weapons that were given to me after I washed a few yaks and played the role of a pre-employment drug screener for some amped-up goats. Bill Gates infamously picks lazy people to do difficult jobs, because they'll find the easiest way to do it. I am that lazy person. I am always looking for the quickest way to get my rogue into raid-ready shape. The quicker that my rogue is geared up, the quicker I can get back to Eviscerating leveling players of the opposing faction. With a couple of weeks of grinding daily quests and some heroic dungeons mixed in, your rogue can be ready for the first tier of MoP raiding.
Incoming hotfix buffs JP gear, nerfs honor point gear
If you thought the item level of endgame PVE gear purchasable with justice points was a little low, Blizzard apparently agrees with you. Bashiok just let the official forums know that a hotfix is incoming, bumping the ilvl 450 PVE rares to 458. Additionally, the hotfix brings down the item level (and rarity color!) of the ilvl 464 epic PVP gear available for honor to 458 and rare. In conjunction with the hotfix removing the reputation requirements to access the JP gear, it should be considerably less of a hassle -- and involve a lot less PVPing -- to gear up for heroics. The downside is that the PVP gear you probably bought just to cheat the queueing system is a little worse. I can live with that. The full post from Blizzard is after the cut.
Hotfix removes reputation requirements for justice point gear
One of the most controversial decisions in Mists of Pandaria was the idea of putting JP and VP gear behind reputation gates, making you grind to honored with specific factions depending on what you wanted to buy. Blizzard has just put a hotfix in place that removes this requirement for justice point gear. You can now visit quartermasters as soon as you like and buy whatever JP gear you can afford, regardless of your reputation. This should allow new level 90 characters to hop into heroic dungeons much more readily. The full announcement is behind the break, along with a quick guide to finding the reputation quartermasters to grab your gear. You can also visit Commander Lo Ping at Niuzao Temple to buy all JP gear at once.
HP wants to give you some free apps to go with that new TouchPad
Not that it particularly needed it, but HP is sweetening the deal for owners of its now defunct TouchPad, offering up six webOS apps for the price of free. The pack includes apps normally ranging in price from $0.99 to $14.99, featuring the multitasking Glimpse, monster-building Big Boss, Camera for TouchPad, and Audubon Birds, a field guide that's decidedly less slingshot-based that other bird apps. The deal expires on the 31st -- all of the promo info can be found in the source link below. The company is set to offer up another app six-pack in September. Update: We're hearing in comments that the codes are no longer working. Thankfully, HP has promised more free dealies in the near future.
TGS for men, women and children [update 1]
On our way to the Makuhari convention center this morning we decided to take a quick census to better describe the difference between TGS and E3 (and between gaming in America and gaming in Japan). To gather this data, we stood at a chokepoint on the way to the convention center and counted the number of men, women and small children to walk by. As the table below shows, women comprise approximately 25% of the attendees at TGS. The actual number of women here is somewhat higher because we conducted our census at 10 AM, after most of the booth ladies were required to be in costume and posted at their show-floor stations. We lack similar data for E3, but our gut feeling is that there are at least triple or quadruple the number of women at this show, many of them arriving with significant others and children in tow.
