With the day winding down, impulse buys having already taken place and even Microsoft stock even getting low (more on that in a bit), we want to know…did you pre-order the Surface RT?

(Personally speaking, I’m waiting to buy on in a Microsoft Store because of my lucky geographical location. But if there weren’t one near me, I certainly would have pre-ordered. One caveat though: I’m not too thrilled with the “just black” option for the 64GB, something for which I hope to avoid in-store. You?)

Microsoft is still putting out its promotional material for the new Surface RT—a device that seems to be piquing much interest.

The latest video is more to the point, actually highlighting and discussing features of the new tablet as opposed to showing people dancing around. In our opinion, the video does a great job of showing why the Surface is a compelling device for those who are considering a new tablet. It certainly has the look so we’ll just have to wait till see if it catches on. Thanks, Jofre, for the link

The NAVIGON series of navigation apps for your Windows Phone was recently updated and to celebrate things, they are also on sale through October 31, 2012.

Along with the customary performance tweaks, the version 4.3 update brings route planning to both NAVIGON USA and NAVIGON Europe. It's a nice feature to allow you to plan a multi-stop trip ahead of time and avoid having to re-enter your destination after every stop.

Both versions of NAVIGON makes use of downloadable, offline maps to reduce the dependency on data while traveling. If you wander off into an area with poor reception, you won't have to worry about maps or routes being lost.  Adding route planning only enhances the navigation app's capabilities.

For those of you who weren't lucky enough to land a spot in the public beta test of the new Xbox 360 dashboard, fear not. The official version has begun rolling out to about 3 million consoles around the world and will continue for the next week. Once that first batch is finished, more and more LIVE subscribers will be added to the rollout over the next couple of weeks. Much like Windows Phone updates, the deployment was spread out over time and across different regions to make it go as smoothly as possible.

Today has been a rather busy day with the unveiling of the Microsoft Surface RT tablet pricing and availability. Pre-ordering went live earlier in the US, while other markets followed behind. We've been bombarded with international Microsoft Store links from readers who are excited to get their orders in - so who can currently pre-order a Surface RT tablet?

Ready for a little racing? This week’s Xbox Windows Phone release, Cracking Sands comes from Polarbit, the Swedish developers also responsible for Windows 8 launch game Reckless Racing.

Head past the break for our first impressions.

We haven’t received word on this week’s Xbox Windows Phone release just yet, but the Deal of the Week seems to have popped up for some people already. Prepare for some good news: Civilization Revolution from 2K Games is the new sale title, marked down from $2.99 to $1.99.

Microsoft is now sending out emails alerting people to the pre-order time for the Surface RT, which was just announced this morning for pricing and details.

Starting at 9AM Pacific and 12PM Eastern time, if you head to the Surface.com you should be able to place your pre-order today for a guaranteed delivery on October 26^th. [Edit: And we just checked, preorders are now live and happening]

We told you that you have to get used to seeing these side-by-side videos of the Nokia Lumia 920’s video camera in action. That’s because optical image stabilization in a smartphone is kind of a big deal for camera technology—it’s really a big step forward and one of the first real innovations since BSI hit the scene.

The video above, hailing from Russia we presume, shows the Lumia 920 mounted to the inside windshield of a car as it drives over train tracks and some bumpy terrain. It’s compared to…well, we’re not sure, as our Cyrillic translator is a bit off today. But the point should be clear that when OIS is used for video, it actually makes a huge difference in terms of quality. Needless to say, we can’t wait to try it.

Source: YouTube; via Reddit

Ever since the Microsoft Surface was announced there has been some discussion about its power adapter. That may seem like an topic to focus on but it is only because Microsoft appears to be borrowing a great feature from Apple: its magnetic power plug.

For those of you who don’t use Apple products, their laptops have a plug that “magically” sticks to the computer and charges via a tiny magnetic port. The benefit here is less wear and tear on the connector and if you accidently pull the plug or trip on the wire, it just pops off instead of dragging the laptop to the floor. It’s actually really nice.

With the Surface you’re going to have the same experience. In fact, the plug looks remarkably like Apple’s (they both have 5 prongs), which makes us wonder if Microsoft is licensing the technology from Cupertino [Edit: Turns out Microsoft has a patent on it]. Personally, we see this as a big selling point as once you go magnetic, you won’t ever want to fiddle with standard laptop power adapters again.

Source: Suning; via WPDang