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The 8th gen iPad may share a 10.2in screen with its 7th gen predecessor, but it's a whole different story under the hood.

Powered with a new A12 Bionic processor, the new iPad 2020 promises 40% better CPU performance, stronger graphics, and is the first iPad to integrate Neural Engine Apple's AI and machine learning software that allows better image processing and AR (augmented reality) support, along with a smoother Siri experience.

To top it all off, the iPad 8 is also cheaper than last year's model.

The device went on sale on 18 September and is available to buy from Apple, and from a number of other retailers (and network carriers) though not everyone has it in stock. In some cases, you may need to wait weeks to get your hands on one. But not if we can help it.

Here we're looking at pricing as well as which retailers have the new 10.2in iPad in stock with quick delivery turnarounds.

Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide View more prices

The iPad 2020 is 20 cheaper than the 2019 model which started at 349 which means there's no reason to pay full price for the 7th gen iPad, which is still available to buy widely, though now at slightly reduced prices.

Our advice remains clear though: if you're choosing between the 7th generation and the 8th, go for the 8th. You'll get a stronger processor and much better value.

Don't forget, you can also get money off the new iPad (2020) if you trade in your old iPad. Unfortunately, Apple won't offer trade-in discounts on non-Apple tablets, in which case you might be better off trading in via other retailers (listed below).

For everything there is to know about the newest iPad, including design and software updates, see our dedicated article.

The iPad (8th gen) is available buy directly from Apple, along with a few other select retailers in the UK.

Shipping is free from Apple, though delivery will take between 7-10 business days in the US and 3-4 weeks in the UK.

For faster delivery we'd recommend the following retailers:

These network carriers break the cost up into monthly payments if you don't want to pay in one go, but they do have longer wait times:

These retailers are currently out of stock but check back often if they're your preferred retailer:

The new iPad qualifies for an Educational Discount, so you can pick it up for even less. The Apple Education pricing applies to university students, parents of university students, and teachers or staff of all levels. The discount knocks up to 80/US$100 off a new iPad.

Read more about Apple Education Discount here.

You can also head to Apple's UK Education Store, Apple's US Education Store or Apple's AU Education Store to explore the discounts for yourself.

We're separately looking at the best iPad deals of the month if you want to save on a different model.

Link:
Where to buy the 10.2in iPad 2020 (8th generation) - Macworld UK

Microsoft is starting to take preorders for its 85-inch Surface Hub 2S today. The large screen device, originally unveiled in April 2019, will now go on sale in January 2021, just missing Microsofts initial target of releasing the hardware at some point in 2020. Microsoft is pricing the 85-inch model starting at $21,999.99.

A $21,999.99 collaboration display might not seem like the type of device that businesses are rushing to buy in 2020 as a pandemic has kept a large number of people working remotely. Microsoft acknowledges that reality and claims the Surface Hub 2S has helped bridge remote teams and central response locations for hospitals, health care providers, and even in education.

Weve seen schools and educational institutions accelerating their digital transformation driven by the need to offer equitable remote or hybrid learning for students, says Robin Seiler, Microsofts corporate vice president of devices. To increase engagement, many institutions are replacing older technology including projectors and whiteboards with digital collaboration solutions like Surface Hub.

Microsoft believes Surface Hub could act as a way to ease the transition back into the office or as part of a hybrid environment. As many parts of the world move back to the office or plan for new hybrid and satellite work environments, Surface Hub will be there to ease that transition even with new considerations in space planning like the need for social distancing, says Seiler. One benefit to a larger screen that Hub provides is that it can help implement social distancing for people to stay six feet apart while working together.

Im not sure how many businesses will agree that Surface Hub is a priority for returning to offices, but the devices have certainly been popular, with reports from a few years ago suggesting the devices were selling out at one point.

It was supposed to be a big year for the Surface Hub 2S, and Microsoft had planned to use a special process cartridge to upgrade the smaller 50-inch devices internals. Microsoft scrapped those plans back in February, just weeks before the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. At the time, Microsoft promised a software update for Surface Hub 2S owners instead.

That software update is now arriving in October, dubbed the Windows 10 Team 2020 Update. It includes support for the new Microsoft Edge browser, dual-pen inking, passwordless sign-in using FIDO2 security keys, and the ability to quick transition a Microsoft Teams call to the larger display. There are also a bunch of security and management improvements for IT admins to better manage these displays in workplaces.

Finally, Microsoft is also allowing owners of the 50-inch Surface Hub 2S to use a full version of Windows 10 on the device. Surface Hubs ship with a variant of Windows 10 thats designed for the bigger screens, and theyll now be free to use the full version of Windows 10. This will also include sign-in support with Windows Hello through the fingerprint reader on the Surface Hub 2S.

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Microsofts giant 85-inch Surface Hub 2S will arrive in January 2021 for $21,999.99 - The Verge

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The "Behavioral/Mental Health Software Market - Growth, Trends and Forecasts (2020 - 2025)" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The key factors propelling the growth of the market is the increasing stress conditions requiring for mental health management, government funding and initiatives toward EHR adoption in behavioral health organizations and improved health reforms during the forecast period.

Increasing work stress is found to be the major reason for the requirement of mental health care management. As per the data published on February 2019 by American Psychological Association, 75% of adults have reported experiencing moderate to high levels of stress in the past month and nearly half of them reported that their stress has increased in the past years.

Companies Mentioned

Key Market Trends

Electronic Health Record Segment is Expected to Grow Fastest During the Forecast Period

The demand for EHR built specifically for mental health is increasing due to increasing incidence of mental disorders like Parkinsons's Disease, especially in developed parts of the world. As per a 2018 report by the Parkinson's Disease Society of the United Kingdom, the incidence cases of the disorder are expected to increase from 145,500 in 2018 to nearly 168,600 by 2025.

A specialty-specific EHR makes a difference to the medical staff and the patients associated with the management of behavioral/mental health as it provides the advanced capabilities that include practice management and a patient portal among other integrated benefits. Its integrated EHR suite includes patient records, documentation, scheduling, practice management, and an online patient portal. Hence the focus on better continuity of care, various advancement in terms of technology and growing adoption of these products are likely to contribute to the market growth in the future.

North America Holds the Largest Share in the Market and is Expected to Follow the Same Trend over the Forecast Period

The market in North America accounts for major share in terms of revenue and is expected to maintain its position over the forecast period. With the increasing burden of depression and stress due to work-life or personal life, the adoption rate of behavioral/mental health is also rising.

The web-based EHR, medical billing, and practice management presently are used by thousands of physicians across the United States and thus the adoption rate has been increasing year-on-year. Hence, with the rising acceptance and improved healthcare infrastructure, increasing mental health awareness is also driving the overall market across the North America region.

Key Topics Covered:

1 INTRODUCTION

2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

4 MARKET DYNAMICS

4.1 Market Overview

4.2 Market Drivers

4.2.1 Increasing Stress Conditions Requiring for Mental Health Management

4.2.2 Government Funding and Initiatives toward EHR Adoption in Behavioral Health Organizations

4.2.3 Improved Health Reforms

4.3 Market Restraints

4.3.1 Data Privacy Concerns

4.3.2 Usage of Traditional Paper-based Systems

4.4 Porter's Five Force Analysis

5 MARKET SEGMENTATION

5.1 By Function

5.1.1 Clinical Functionality

5.1.2 Administrative Functionality

5.1.3 Financial Functionality

5.2 By End User

5.2.1 Community Clinics

5.2.2 Hospitals

5.2.3 Private Practices

5.2.4 Other End Users

5.3 Geography

5.3.1 North America

5.3.1.1 United States

5.3.1.2 Canada

5.3.1.3 Mexico

5.3.2 Europe

5.3.2.1 Germany

5.3.2.2 United Kingdom

5.3.2.3 France

5.3.2.4 Italy

5.3.2.5 Spain

5.3.2.6 Rest of Europe

5.3.3 Asia-Pacific

5.3.3.1 China

5.3.3.2 Japan

5.3.3.3 India

5.3.3.4 Australia

5.3.3.5 South Korea

5.3.3.6 Rest of Asia-Pacific

5.3.4 Middle-East and Africa

5.3.4.1 GCC

5.3.4.2 South Africa

5.3.4.3 Rest of Middle-East and Africa

5.3.5 South America

5.3.5.1 Brazil

5.3.5.2 Argentina

5.3.5.3 Rest of South America

6 COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE

6.1 Company Profiles

6.1.1 Accumedic

6.1.2 Askesis Development Group Inc.

6.1.3 BestNotes

6.1.4 Cerner Corporation

6.1.5 Credible Behavioral Health Software

6.1.6 Netsmart Technologies

6.1.7 NextGen Healthcare

6.1.8 Qualifacts

6.1.9 Valant Medical Solutions Inc.

6.1.10 Welligent Inc.

7 MARKET OPPORTUNITIES AND FUTURE TRENDS

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/hw7v0w

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Worldwide Behavioral/Mental Health Software Industry to 2025 - North America Holds the Largest Share in the Market - ResearchAndMarkets.com - Business...

Sep 19th 2020

IN TROUBLED TIMES people take comfort in the familiar. Covid-19 has upended many things, but tech-stock prices have proved impressively invulnerable. The Nasdaq, a tech-heavy stock index, has leapt by 25% since the beginning of 2020, taking its total rise over the past decade to over 400%. Were it not for a handful of tech giants like Apple and Microsoft, the S&P 500, another share-price index, would be down so far this year. Not since the boom of the late 1990s have technology firms inspired such exuberant trading. For punters the comparison should be a sobering one; after a peak in March 2000 the Nasdaq crashed, eventually losing 73% of its value. But the economic differences between the two eras should be more unsettling than any market similarities.

The two booms do share features beyond their stock-price trajectories. Both were sustained by inflows of new money. In the late 1990s discount brokerages and online-trading platforms drew in amateur punters looking to profit off the seemingly one-way market. Today, an army of small-timers trade shares and derivatives on new platforms like Robinhood. In the 1990s raging bulls justified high prices by declaring the dawn of a new economy, built on more powerful computers, fancy software and the internet. Todays optimists cite the potential of everything from cloud computing and artificial intelligence to electric vehicles and blockchain. At first glance the economic performance seems similar too. In the late 1990s the unemployment rate fell to 4% and pay soared. On the eve of the pandemic, Americas jobless rate stood at a half-century low and wage growth, after a dismal decade, had accelerated to its best pace since 2008. According to figures published by the Census Bureau on September 15th, real median household income grew by a very healthy 6.8% in 2019.

Yet in critical ways the two episodes look profoundly different. As the 1990s dawned economists were hunting in vain for the efficiency-enhancing effects of new technology. Robert Solow, a Nobel prize-winning economist, quipped in 1987 that you can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics. By mid-decade that was no longer the case. Output per hour worked in America rose by more than 3% a year in 1998-2000, a feat the economy had not pulled off since the early 1970s. Growth in total factor productivity (a measure of the efficiency with which capital and labour are used, often treated as a proxy for technological progress) rose by about 2% a year from 1995 to 2004, according to Robert Gordon of Northwestern University. That was a sharp pickup from the average pace of 0.5% in 1973-95, and nearly matched the rate achieved during the heady growth years of 1947-73.

Productivity in the 2010s, by contrast, looks pitiful. Annual growth in labour productivity has not risen above 2% since 2010. Growth in total factor productivity, according to data gathered by John Fernald of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, has been more dismal than ever: just 0.3% on average from 2004 to 2019. If you take the 2010s alone, the average falls to just 0.1%.

Strong labour productivity growth in the 1990s enabled wages to rise without squeezing corporate profits. While the dotcom boom is often remembered for the enormous valuations achieved by profitless upstarts with no clear path into the black, after-tax corporate profits during the decade rose from 4.7% of GDP in 1990 to 6.7% in 1997, before closing the decade at 5.6%. Corporate profits actually declined as a share of GDP during the 2010s, albeit from a much higher level than that prevailing in the 1990s: from 10.4% in 2010 to 9.0% in 2019. More telling, however, is the way in which firms responded to profit opportunities during the two decades. Investment in computer equipment, software and R&D leapt during the 1990s, by 1.5 percentage points of GDP over the decade. In the 2010s, despite the much higher level of profits, investment rose by just 0.7 percentage points of GDP.

The exuberance that powered soaring stock prices in the late 1990s, if in some cases irrational, occurred alongside tech-powered structural change. The uptick in productivity was at first driven by advances in computer-making. As prices tumbled and capabilities soared, other firms began investing in new equipment. Productivity gains began to spread across the economy, helping firms streamline manufacturing and transforming critical industries. These persisted, and even accelerated, for some years after the market crashed. Though many dotcom darlings disappeared, the digital infrastructure built during the boom remained. So did a number of firms that came in time to dominate the corporate landscape. In March 2001 The Economist grimly assessed the prospects of Amazon, a struggling retailer that had lost 90% of its market value in the crash, noting that even if such companies survive, they are unlikely to resemble the businesses they once were. (Holding Amazon through the crash proved a smart bet; its stock now trades at about $3,100, up a tad from under $10 in 2001.)

Some of todays high-flyers will in time prove to be good investments. Optimism about the real economy requires a bit more faith. There are grounds for hope. Some economists reckon that hard-to-measure intangible investmentsuch as time spent re-engineering business processestakes up a growing share of firms energies. If so, both investment figures and future economic prospects could be undersold.

Both output per hour and total factor productivity accelerated in 2019. Though it remained well short of the 1990s, this uptick might presage an economic transformation in the making. And the covid-19 pandemic has imposed constraints on business activity, which might in turn accelerate tech-driven restructuring. The possibility has probably contributed to the surge in tech stock prices since March. For now, technology valuations are based, to a far greater degree than in the 1990s, on what could be rather than what is. Invest accordingly.

This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline "Altered vistas"

Originally posted here:
How does todays tech boom compare with the dotcom era? - The Economist

September 22, 2020

LUMBERTON Surveys to determine the official rate of seat belt usage in North Carolina are currently underway in 15 counties, including Robeson.

The North Carolina Governors Highway Safety Program is partnering with researchers from N.C. States Institute for Transportation Research and Education, who will be conducting roadside surveys now through Oct. 3 at randomly selected sites. Robeson County is one of the 15 counties in the state with the most unstable seat belt usage rate that were included in the sample for the annual statewide seat belt use survey. Other counties in the top 15 are Mecklenburg, Pender, Sampson, Columbus, Alamance, Buncombe, Catawba, Cleveland, Durham, Forsyth, Guilford, Nash, Wake and Wilkes.

Results from the surveys are necessary to qualify for federal seat belt incentive grants. The federal money is used to fund initiatives that support the elimination of preventable roadway deaths across North Carolina.

During the survey, researchers will be observing belted and unbelted drivers and passengers at 120 randomly selected sites. Eight of those sites will be in Robeson County, said Daniel J. Findley, senior Research Associate, N.C. States Institute for Transportation Research and Education.

Trained observers are working in pairs, one observer per traffic direction on opposite sides of a controlled intersection, collecting observations on paper forms using a clipboard. Each site is randomly assigned a specific data collection time period during daylight hours and is observed for one hour.

The goal is to generate an accurate and representative seat belt use rate for the state from a sample of observations, Findley said. The observational data and seat belt use rate will be submitted to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the rate becomes the official seat belt use rate for North Carolina for the year.

County-level rates are also calculated from this study, but the overall purpose is to calculate a state-level rate from a sample of observations that is representative of all drivers and right front seat passengers of all passenger vehicles that travel on all roads in the state during daylight hours in all days of the study year, Findley said.

Last years statewide seat belt usage rate was 88.4%, down from 91.3% the previous year. In 2017 the rate was 91.4%.

While this three-year trend is still above the average of many states, a slight decline in numbers reflects thousands of individuals who are simply choosing not to protect themselves and others around them, said Mark Ezzell, NCGHSP director.

Findley said this trend is also reflected in Robeson County. The countys seat belt usage rate in 2017 was 87.3%, increased to 89.5% in 2018, and dropped in 2019 to 84%, showing a decline of more than 5% between 2018 and 2019.

According to the N.C. Department of Transportation, if a motorist is ejected from a vehicle in a crash, the odds are that they will not survive. In 2018, 84% of the people ejected from passenger vehicles in crashes that occurred in North Carolina were killed.

In Robeson County, the number of deaths involving motorists not wearing a seat belt during vehicle crashes has more than doubled from January to July 2020 when compared to the same period in 2019, according to NCDOT. In 2019, there were seven deaths reported as a result of not wearing a seat belt in a crash, and 15 reported during the first half of 2020. Two more deaths were reported in August, according to the NCDOT.

As we approach the month of October, which is by far the deadliest month on our roadways, we need people to start buckling up again and ultimately reduce the injuries and deaths in motor vehicle crashes we are seeing, Ezzell said.

The Saved by the Belt Program is one way Robeson County is addressing this issue. The free course allows people with seat belt violations to attend a two-hour class at Southeastern Health in order to get the first ticket waived.

About 300 people have participated in the class since its inception a year ago, said Phillip Richardson, SeHealth Community Health Services manager.

Classes were halted in March because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Classes resumed June 20 with safety measures put in place, including reducing class sizes to no more than eight participants, having only one instructor per class, temperature screens and health screening questions, mandatory wearing of a face mask, social distancing for seating, and sanitizing before and after class.

The backlog of attendees has been addressed, and we are signing up new participants, Richardson said. The fiscal year 2021 grant has been tentatively approved, and we hope to continue our classes in October.

Saturday will mark the programs 22nd class. Upcoming classes are scheduled for Oct. 10 and Oct. 24. Go to http://www.srmc.org under Calendar of Events to register online.

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Competition set for Thursday designed to test virtual training software - The Robesonian