He hopes Seagate will be able to expand beyond its technology-savvy demographic into a user base currently afraid of incompatible or hard-to-use devices.

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Until recently, incompatible legacy systems made it very hard to use common computer systems across different countries.

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It said the increased use of the crossing as a result of the extra housing would make it "incompatible with the current level of protection provided".

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Microsoft says the policy switch isn't meant to "encourage partners to regularly use a lower screen resolution", and it warns that such dimensions will be incompatible with Windows 8's split-screen feature, known as "snap".

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