Good news to all the Apple fans who have been holding out to get the new Retina display sporting iPad 3rd generation. In a few short weeks it will officially be available in SA.

On Friday, April 27, the new iPad will also become available in Colombia, Estonia, India, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, South Africa, and Thailand.

However, be aware, that even though “the new iPad” will have 4G capable radios, it will only reach 3G speeds on South African networks. We recently posted our review of the “resolutionary” tablet, and we are still confident in recommending it as the best tablet on the market. The major upgrade is of course the incredible new high resolution display, which even in its 10 inch size, has a million more pixels than your large screen Full HD display TV! Magazines look especially good.

Apple is also marketing the older iPad 2 in a cheaper $399 model, but we do not know whether Core will be bringing in this more affordable model.

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Many people buying a new machine don’t realize that the slowest part of a modern computer is primarily the storage. Therefore, it is important to keep in mind that for the average user, a faster storage system will result in a much faster system than for example, buying a Core i7 instead of a Core i5.

Therefore, the next time you think your machine is running slowly, it might be in your best interest to try upgrading to a proper solid-state disk drive. Now sure, there are some challenges – of which cost and storage space limitations are the greatest. But if you can live with a smaller main storage drive, there is nothing that comes close to the speed increase from a SSD drive.

But the other small issue with upgrading to a SSD drive is the schlep of having to reinstall your operating system and apps. But now Kingston has released a brilliant little kit that makes that whole process a lot faster. While you can purchase the barebones SSD drive, the upgrade kit is actually a pretty awesome deal (about R300 extra). So how does it work?

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While many South African banking consumers are taking advantage of the ease and convenience of Internet Banking to meet their basic banking requirements, most have yet to fully harness the potential of their online banking facilities. According to a new survey, there is a clear distinction between banks when it comes to innovative use of Internet Banking, and customers are more aware of these differences than ever.

This is according to the results of recent research conducted with 1353 Internet banking users by online market research specialist, Columinate, aimed at assessing the Internet banking habits and behaviours of users of this banking medium as well as the overall levels of satisfaction of Internet banking customers with the online offerings of their banks. This survey is the first in Columinate’s ‘SITEisfaction’ series, aimed at measuring website satisfaction across different industries. SITEisfaction will benchmark website satisfaction and provide annual insights to companies in these industries. (more…)

Facebook’s purchase of Instagram for a massive $1 Billion has plenty of people guessing why the world’s largest social network would pay so much for such a young photo-sharing service. It was only a few weeks ago that Instagram was an iPhone-only app that enabled easy photo sharing between other mobile users. But just one week ago it landed on Android, and this week the acquisition by Facebook was announced. Despite some of the analysis out there, Facebook’s reason for buying Instagram is actually still a mystery, but we thought we would take a crack at some of the reasons why Facebook needed this particular service:

1. Facebook’s revenue from mobile usage is currently non existent. While Facebook’s usage from mobile devices is high, it is still arguably a larger-screen focussed experience. Instagram on the other hand, is a purely mobile focussed, finished product. This means that the users on Instagram only stick to their phones for sharing photos with friends, and Facebook may have known that this was a complete product that had the potential to create trouble for them later. The world is moving to mobile after all.  (more…)

For a long time, Apple has marketed their machines as virus-free, but the increasing popularity of Macs has clearly got the attention of malware creators. Kaspersky Lab recently analysed Flashfake, a massive botnet that infected more than 600,000 computers worldwide, and concluded that more than 98% of the infected computers were most likely running a version of Mac OS X. To infect victims’ computers, the cyber criminals behind the Flashfake botnet were installing a Flashfake Trojan that gained entry into users’ computers without their knowledge by exploiting vulnerabilities in Java. To analyse the botnet, Kaspersky Lab’s experts reverse-engineered the Flashfake malware and registered several domain names which could be used by criminals as a C&C server for managing the botnet. This method enabled them to intercept and analyse the communications between infected computers and the other C&Cs.

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“I’m excited to share the news that we’ve agreed to acquire Instagram and that their talented team will be joining Facebook.” – Mark Zuckerberg

It is about a week since Instagram, the mobile focussed – photo sharing service has announced their Android application launch, but it seems a much bigger deal was brewing behind the scenes. Today Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook will acquire Instagram for a billion dollars, but he also went on to explain that Instagram will run as its own seperate company, and keep its mutliple social network roots.

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When I managed to get hold of the 3rd generation iPad, I was a little disappointed to find that it would not fit perfectly into tighter, better designed cases that was made for iPad 2′s. Sure, your average sleeve fit quite well, but cases with any plastic reinforcement would not fit well. So I had to give up on my previous favorite case, the Speck FitFolio, and go looking for a different one. Walking into my local Incredible Connection did not help, as none of the older iPad 2 cases fit the new iPad. (See my review of the 3rd generation iPad here)

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Vodacom customers can expect roaming savings when travelling to 6 African countries where Vodacom and Vodafone operate. These countries include the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique and Tanzania. Vodacom is leveraging its presence and that of its parent company Vodafone in these African countries, to provide customers who travel there with reduced rates applicable across the Vodacom and Vodafone networks.

The flat rates have resulted in roaming data rates being reduced by more than 70%, from R17,50/MB to R5/MB. While still not as cheap as local data, regular smartphone-carrying travellers will appreciate it. In addition, roaming customers will also enjoy free incoming calls when they travel in these countries.

Here is are the decreased call costs:

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