Month: January 2020

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  It feels almost like negligence on my part to say that, until December, I had never driven a Prius. [credit: Toyota ]

This might be a dreadful admission to make, but until late December, I'd never driven a Toyota Prius. It's not that we've ignored the hybrid in our coverage, it's just that it has always been someone other than me driving it. To rectify that error, I spent a week with a 2020 Prius Prime Limited, the $33,500* range-topping plug-in version of the car that, for a while, was a synonym for being environmentally conscious.

Not a huge amount has changed in the two years since Ars last drove a Prius Prime. It's still a plug-in hybrid EV with a 1.8L, four-cylinder internal combustion engine under the hood that generates 95hp (71kW) and 105lb-ft (142Nm). The internal combustion engine uses the more efficient Atkinson cycle; this delays closing the intake valve until the piston is already moving back up during the compression stroke, meaning that it compresses less volume than gets expanded subsequently in the power stroke. As a result, the engine has a thermal efficiency of about 40 percent, which is better than just about any other engine outside of Formula 1 or Mazda's Skyactiv-X engine.

The internal combustion engine is joined by a 71hp (53kW) permanent magnet synchronous electric motor, the two working together to drive the front wheels through a continuously variable transmission, for a total system output of 121hp (90kW). (Beware, purists: the internal combustion engine can directly drive the front wheels when it's more efficient to do so.) The battery pack is an 8.8kWh lithium-ion unit weighing 265lbs (120kg) giving the Prius Prime a range of up to 25 miles (40km) on electric power alone. Recharging is just via AC power and takes about two hours with a 240V source or five hours connected to a 110V socket. The EPA rates it at 133mpge or 54mpg on gasoline alone.

Enlarge / President Donald Trump speaks with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, during an American Technology Council roundtable in the State Dining Room at the White House in Washington, DC, on Monday, June 19, 2017. (credit: Getty Images | The Washington Post)

Amazon is seeking a court order that would prevent Microsoft from doing work for the US Department of Defense under a contract that Amazon says was awarded improperly.

As previously reported, Amazon sued the Trump administration in the US Court of Federal Claims, claiming that Microsoft's Azure cloud service won the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract because of "improper pressure from President Donald J. Trump."

Amazon alleges that the president "launched repeated public and behind-the-scenes attacks to steer the JEDI Contract away from AWS [Amazon Web Services] to harm his perceived political enemy—Jeffrey P. Bezos," the founder and CEO of Amazon and owner of The Washington Post.

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  The Samsung Galaxy S20+ 5G. We're getting pretty wordy with these 5G phone names again. [credit: XDA Developers ]

After the recent leak of live pictures of Samsung's next flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S20, more details have started to trickle in about the upcoming device.

First, a recap: the Galaxy S20 is the follow-up to last year's Galaxy S10. Samsung's naming scheme is apparently changing, and a "Galaxy S11" is not a product that will be happening. It looks like it's now going to be "Samsung Galaxy S [current year]" so this year it's the S20. The model lineup is also changing, too, and we're getting three sizes: the Galaxy S20, Galaxy S20+, and the highest-end phone, the Galaxy S20 Ultra. In the US, they're all going to be 5G with Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 SoCs, and internationally you should be able to find 4G and 5G versions with Samsung Exynos chips.

Now, the new stuff: Max Weinbach, the XDA author who scored the live pictures of the Galaxy S20, has some spec info.

Enlarge / Apple's AirPods.

Today's Dealmaster is headlined by a joint-low on Apple's second-generation AirPods on Amazon. The totally wireless earbuds are currently down to $129, which is $30 off Apple's normal MSRP and about $15 off their typical price online. This is the latest version of the earbuds, meaning they come with Apple's improved H1 wireless chip and support for hands-free "Hey Siri" commands. This model does not come with a case that can be powered up via wireless chargers, though, nor does it support active noise cancellation like the AirPods Pro.

We still can't say these are the absolute best true wireless headphones on the market: the 4-5 hours of battery life is just OK, the lack of physical controls can be annoying, and the sound quality is mediocre as ever. (The Powerbeats Pro from Apple's Beats subsidiary are better in just about every way if you're looking for alternatives, but they're pricier.) Still, we can't deny how simple they are to use with iOS devices, nor how utterly popular they've become. If your heart is dead-set on buying a pair, this current sale matches the AirPods' going rate on Black Friday, so this looks like a sensible time to take the plunge.

If you're not interested in new headphones, the Dealmaster also has big sales on Audible subscriptions, Amazon's latest Kindle Paperwhite, a variety of discounts on TCL Roku TVs, and much more. Have a look at the full list below.

Enlarge / A man looks at the home screen for the "new" Windows 7 platform when it was launched in October 2009. Microsoft has ended support, but the OS lives on. (credit: Katie Collins - PA Images / Getty Images)

We are here to bury Windows 7, not to praise it. Today is the day that Microsoft's extended support for the Windows 7 operating system ends. Microsoft stopped selling Windows 7, which was first released in 2009, on October 13, 2013. Sales of systems with Windows 7 pre-installed ended three years to the day later in 2016. It lived a long life and is survived by Windows 10 and maybe a few remaining instances of Windows 8.

But it seems most organizations are in no hurry to cast off the now-unsupported Microsoft operating system, based on a survey from the enterprise content delivery company Kollective. A survey of 100 US- and UK-based companies found that overall, 53 percent of companies had not completed or had not started migration off of Windows 7 to Windows 10.

The continued presence of Windows 7 was more prevalent in the UK, where two-thirds of businesses are still using the operating system on at least some devices. US businesses were more likely to have moved on, with 40 percent reporting they still had Windows 7. But one-tenth of those surveyed had no idea whether Windows 7 was still running on devices within their organizations.