FeeVoo Laptop Components: 2009

2009年12月30日星期三

Computer Hacker Pleads Guilty

According to authorities, Gonzalez worked as a computer security consultant and was the ringleader of a group that targeted large retailers. Gonzalez had a chance to set his life straight when, in 2003, he was arrested for hacking but not charged because he agreed to become an informant. But over the next five years, authorities say he still hacked into computer systems of retailers, collecting $2.8 million for his illegal efforts.

As part of the plea deal, Gonzalez will forfeit more than $2.7 million in cash, plus several assets, including his condo, his car, a Tiffany ring, and several Rolex watches. "This is a young kid who did some reckless things and he's going to pay a price for it," said Gonzalez's attorney, Martin Weinberg, after his 28-year-old client calmly answered guilty to charges of conspiracy and wire fraud.

At one point in his life, Albert Gonzalez used to serve as a federal informant in Miami. And now? Gonzalez will serve anywhere between 17 and 25 years in prison under terms of separate plea agreements for his role in orchestrating the theft of millions of credit and debit card numbers by hacking into computers of prominent retailers, according to an AP report.

Officials say that the spies – thought to be from Russia, China and other countries – only wanted to take stock of the American electrical infrastructure and intended no immediate harm. "There are intrusions, and they are growing," a former Department of Homeland Security official told the WSJ.

Both the Russians and Chinese have rebuffed the allegations against them. It is difficult to ascertain whether or not these cyber-saboteurs are acting at the behest of a foreign government.

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2009年12月29日星期二

More than 33.3 million netbooks will have shipped by year’s end

The report also suggests that the uptick in ULV sales will likely mean manufacturers will take a revenue hit of only 1% or so. While netbooks will remain big sellers, they probably won’t have another year like 2009.

For as long as netbooks have existed, people have been buying more and more of them. More than 33.3 million netbooks will have shipped by year’s end, amounting to a 103 percent increase over last year. Revenue will be up about 72 percent indicating some price cuts. But according to DisplaySearch, as laptops with ultra low voltage (ULV) CPUs become cheaper, netbook sales will slow considerably.

They project netbook shipments to only grow by about 20 percent next year. Still, the situation can’t be bad when 20 percent growth is a big drop. As ULV laptops creep below $500, consumers will begin purchasing them in larger numbers. ULV computers have similarly good battery life, but better performance than netbooks running Atom chips.

But a spike in netbook shipments doesn’t imply that it would be smooth sailing for Google’s Chrome OS. “Google must counter the high visibility of the Microsoft brand name on countless products in retail outlets, ranging from software, to PCs, to peripherals,” iSuppli advised Google.

Google must be pleased to see the market for 3G netbooks swelling at a time when it is preparing to launch Chrome OS. Market research firm iSuppli anticipates 3G netbooks – those with embedded wireless broadband – to become even more popular in the next few years, as always-on internet becomes an integral part of the whole netbook experience. iSuppli expects 3G netbook shipments to increase by over 70%, as compared to the previous year, to reach 17.8 million units this year.

2009年12月27日星期日

Apple has rented a stage at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

According to The Financial Times, Apple has rented a stage at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco for several days late in January. Citing "people familiar with the plans," TFT says Apple will use the venue to make a major product announcement., which likely will center around the mysterious tablet.

"We believe there is a 75 percent likelihood that Apple will have an event in January and a 50 percent chance that it will be held to launch the Apple Tablet," said Piper Jaffray, an analyst with Gene Munster. "If Apple announced the tablet in January, it would likely ship later in the March quarter."

To be perfectly honest, we're tired of hearing about Apple's tablet, which thus far has consisted of one rumor after another without any confirmation from Apple. That's going to change next month, or so we hope.

It’s almost surreal, the experience surrounding reporting on Apple’s rumored tablet. Firstly, because there is no such device. Apple, in fact, denies it exists. And there is no credible third-party evidence to suggest otherwise. But that doesn’t stop supposed smart guys in technology reporting to maintain otherwise. And, to top it off, conclude it is (not will be) the coolest thing ever.

Also on the Apple tablet bandwagon is Dan Ackerman, a senior editor at CNET. According to Ackerman: “Apple will come out with the tablet and blow everyone away. Instead of taking along a Kindle and an iPod, [it] could become the device you carry with you.”

Not everyone is impressed, however. Zeus Kerravala, an analyst with Yankee Group, says such devices are only good “for ad-hoc purposes, like quick and dirty tasks. There’re not for any prolonged, high-performance use.” It’s not only praise but damnation for a product that doesn’t yet, or may ever, exist.

2009年12月22日星期二

BenQ will join E-Book Market

BenQ will also push out its e-book trading platform in Janaury. This will consist of over one million books available as free downloads, as well as anywhere from 3,000 to 4,000 new titles, 6,000 others in simplified Chinese, and about 30,000 Japanese language books.

Wang says he expects the e-reader market to jump to over three million units in 2009 and up to eight million in 2010. Of those, BenQ is hoping to ship 50,000 nReaders in Taiwan, 200,000 in China, and 300,000 globally, Wang added. No word on when or if BenQ plans on pushing its nReader to the U.S. market.

A few more details have emerged regarding BenQ's upcoming e-book reader, which the company will call the nReader. In addition to launching the nReader in Taiwan next month, BenQ will push its device to China in February and then Japan in the second half of 2010, company president Jerry Wang said.

BenQ will have on display a 6-inch e-reader with a touchscreen EPD (electrophoretic display) panel. According to news and rumor site DigiTimes, BenQ will release its digital reader in January 2010, and then follow up that launch with more models in April, including a 9-inch reader.

For Fujitsu's part, the company plans to show off its 8-inch FELPia e-book reader, and there's talk that it might release the device in Taiwan sometime in 2010.

Not wanting to be left out of in the emerging digital reader scene, both BenQ and Fujitsu will release e-book readers of their own and plan to showcase their devices at the IT Month 2009 consumer trade show in Taiwan, which runs from November 28 to January 1, 2010.

2009年12月20日星期日

Laptop Stolen From the Ministry of Defense

According to Intel stolen laptops cost companies almost $50,000 per year, per machine, so I don’t even want to speculate on what a laptop full of “top secret” government data would fetch. I suppose the only consolation is the fact that so many are stolen, I doubt anything contained on the laptop was still a secret anyway.

Losing a laptop full of travel photos and bookmarks hurts, but losing the laptop and USB decryption key for a high-ranking Royal Air Force officer stings just a tiny bit more. Great Britain authorities are on the hunt for suspects in a high profile laptop theft, but you might be surprised to learn that it is but one of 66 so far this year, bringing the grand total up to 658 machines in the past four years.

I’m not sure whats worse, the fact that top-secret information is contained on mobile computers at all, or that the thief managed to sneak it out of the Ministry of Defense, an ultra secure government facility without anybody noticing. “This has the potential to become one of the most serious security breaches at the Ministry for a very long time” said a spokesman for the MoD. “An investigation by the MoD police is ongoing and it would be inappropriate to comment further”.

Somewhat surprisingly, it's not the CEO's computer that holds the most value, but a director or manager, the study says. Analyzing 138 instances of lost and stolen notebooks, the study values the average senior executive's laptop to be $28,449, whereas a director or manager's laptop is worth twice as much at about $61,000 each.

The well-timed (or strategically-timed) study comes shortly after Intel's "Poison Pill" Anti-Theft PC Protection technology finds its way onto a pair of Asus notebooks.

2009年12月14日星期一

OpenOfficeMouse WarMouse Meta, "18-button Freak" Gets Freakier

What can we say about this peripheral that we didn't say when it was known as the OpenOfficeMouse? It still has more buttons than any mouse has a right to have, but now it's adopted an edgier, darker look, and its eschewed the optical sensor for a 5600 CPI laser. Oh yes, and it has a new name: The WarMouse Meta.
WarMouse today announced that its revolutionary 18-button joystick mouse, rechristened the Meta, will ship with a high-resolution laser sensor instead of an optical sensor. With a patented design featuring 18 buttons, an analog joystick, and a 5600-cpi laser sensor, the Meta provides a radically efficient user interface that has been shown to increase mouse input speeds by an average of 30 percent in comparison with conventional two-button mice utilizing toolbar icons and pull-down menus. Formerly known as the OpenOfficeMouse, the WarMouse Meta will be black with dark gray buttons.
The Meta is one of the first computer mice to incorporate an analog joystick and is the first mouse to permit the use of the joystick as a digital keyboard interface. In the three digital joystick modes, the user can assign up to sixteen different keys or macros to the joystick, which provides faster user input regardless of whether the user is flying through the cells of a large spreadsheet in Calc or on the back of an epic flying mount in World of Warcraft. In analog joystick mode, the player can select between having up to seven joystick buttons available or using all 18 buttons as keyboard and mouse commands instead.
The features of the WarMouse Meta include:
18 programmable mouse buttons with double-click functionality
High-resolution laser sensor with adjustable resolution from 100 to 5,600 DPI/CPI.
Five assignable button modes: Key, Keypress, Macro, Mouse, and Mouse-Key Combo
Analog Xbox 360-style joystick with five analog and digital modes
Clickable scroll wheel
512k of flash memory
63 on-mouse application modes with hardware, software, and autoswitching capability
1024-character macro support.
Meta Modeware for creating, managing, and customizing game and application modes
Import and export of custom modes in XML format
Taskbar notification of active application mode
Optional audio notification of mode switching with customizable wave files
PDF export of application mode button assignments
Graphical pop-up map of application mode button assignments
25 default modes for popular games and applications, including Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird, Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint, OpenOffice.org Writer, Calc, and Impress, 3D Studio Max, Autodesk AutoCAD, Adobe Photoshop, the Gnu Image Manipulation Program, World of Warcraft, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator.

2009年12月9日星期三

PC sales up on Black Friday

Retailers will have to blame their discounting practices, since actual unit sales were way up in many categories: PC sales volume increased 63 percent, Blu-ray players were up 53 percent, and GPS units increased by 15 percent.

The battle over holiday pricing started even earlier than usual this year, with Amazon.com and Wal-Mart targeting the iPod, Nintendo Wii, HDTVs, and Netbooks with steep discounts, and in some cases, drastically lowered shipping charges.

But while retailers so far appear to be having a ho-hum season revenue-wise, there's still several weeks to go before the end of the quarter. And the biggest sellers, like Wal-Mart and Amazon, say that while Black Friday and Cyber Monday are important to their bottom line, their biggest sales days typically come mid-December.

Shoppers were out in force during the week of Black Friday, but price cuts brought in less revenue than last year's recession-mired sales, according to a new report.

Retail analyst firm the NPD Group on Wednesday released its yearly accounting of technology sales during the week of Black Friday. More than $2.7 billion was spent on TVs, PCs, video game consoles, cameras, and more in the first burst of holiday shopping, but it represented a 1.2 percent decline compared to the same period a year ago. Still, it's better than the previous year's 3.4 percent decline.

2009年12月7日星期一

Intel focus on laptop graphics technology

Later this month, Intel will unveil the first product, codenamed "Pine Trail", that puts the graphics function directly onto the same piece of silicon as the main "CPU" processor, a major departure from current technology which puts the graphics in a separate piece of ancillary silicon called the chipset.
This will be followed quickly by a CPU-graphics combination chip for laptops dubbed "Arrandale." Integrating the graphics function onto the CPU is a feat that AMD--despite its purchase of graphics chip giant ATI in 2006--has yet to achieve.
"This is the next logical step in further integration brought to us by Moore's Law," said Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Research, which tracks the graphics chip market.
Intel will focus on next-generation laptop technology that combines graphics functions with the main processor, in the wake of the cancellation of its initial "Larrabee" graphics processor.
Despite the market-rattling news from Intel late on Friday--which pushed rival Nvidia's stock shot up more than 12 percent on Monday--Intel still remains the leader in the high-volume "integrated" graphics market.
And the world's largest chipmaker is about to up the ante in this market for low-cost graphics technology, which many consumers opt for instead of high-performance chips from Nvidia or Advanced Micro Devices's ATI unit.
As a new feature, the chip will be able to accelerate so-called "drag-and-drop transcoding" in Windows 7. Transcoding converts, for instance, a movie on a PC to a format that makes it viewable on an iPhone or iPod. This won't be available immediately, however, Intel said Monday. It will come soon after the introduction of the processor as a "driver update."
The Arrandale chip will not support Microsoft's DirectX-11 mutlimedia acceleration technology for Windows 7. At least not right away. "It's on the roadmap," according to Intel. But this technology is not widely supported across product lines by any graphics chip supplier currently.

2009年12月6日星期日

Apple wants technology from struggling Lala

We saw Ruckus falter and close in January. We saw SpiralFrog flameout spectacularly in March. In August, MySpace picked up iLike, and sources said that MySpace acquired Imeem last month, but the news has not been announced.
What seemed to be different about Lala is that the company had received positive reviews from the music labels for a long time. Executives at some of the biggest recording companies have told me in the past that they respected Lala's management and its focus on the bottom line. This spring, label execs said they saw some encouraging signs after Lala had revamped the service for seemingly the umpteenth time. It initially made a name for itself by trying to enable users to swap CDs over the Internet. It never went anywhere.
Sources with knowledge of the discussion told me Apple is interested in bringing some of Lala's engineers onboard. According to the sources, Apple is impressed by Lala's technology. The 4-year-old Lala scans users' hard drives and creates a duplicate music library that they can access from Web-enabled devices. The company also sells songs for a dime each.
I posted a story on Friday about the acquisition talks. Apple declined to comment on "rumor and speculation" and a Lala spokesman did not respond to an interview request.
Over at The New York Times, Brad Stone posted a report citing sources who also said Apple had a special interest in obtaining Lala's engineering talent. But the Times also added this:
"The talks (between Apple and Lala) originated when Lala executives concluded their prospects for turning a profit in the short term were dim," Stone wrote. "(Lala) initiated discussions about a potential investment with Eddy Cue, Apple's vice president in charge of iTunes."
That Lala was struggling to turn a profit is consistent with the kind of bleak news that has come out of digital music the past year. Many of the newer and experimental business models, such as ad-supported music, have flopped. The only reasonable question now is how much longer will this shakeout continue?

2009年12月3日星期四

Acer is planning to DirectX 11 Notebook

"Monster" in this case can refer to the size. At 18.4 inches, Acer's upcoming laptop probably won't spend much time on your lap. It could also refer to the Core i7-720QM processor stuffed inside, which races along at 1.6GHz. There's hardly an area that isn't beastly, including the 8GB of DDR3 memory, not one but two 640GB hard drives, and even a Blu-ray drive. And of course AMD's Mobility Radeon HD 5850 will bring DriectX 11 graphics to the table, along with 1GB of GDDR5 memory.
Who would have thought Acer would emerge as a front runner to release the first desktop replacement built around AMD's Evergreen graphics? Whether or not Acer will beat Alienware, Asus, and everyone else to the punch remains to be seen, but according to Fudzilla, the company is readying a monster notebook.
Other features of the lamely named Aspire 8942G-728G1280TWN (seriously?) include four USB 2.0 slots, 801.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, HDMI, a 5-in-1 card reader, 8-cell battery, and other odds and ends.
No word yet on price or availability, but if we were to guess, we'd say "soon" and "expensive."
Acer unveiled the 3D-capable laptop during a press conference on Tuesday. The lappy uses a combination of in-house software, a special screen coating, and polarized glasses to achieve the 3D effect.
"The display has been coated with a special 3D film that clings to the panel pixel by pixel, enabling the LCD technology to deliver a 3D visual feast," Acer stated. "Slip on the cool polarized eyeglasses that filter the images and you're ready to dive into an extraordinary 3D adventure."

2009年12月1日星期二

Dell laptop face E6400 and E6500 overheating and underclocking problem

Is it getting hot in here, or is it just your Dell laptop? Many are complaining it's the latter, with what looks to be hundreds of owners of E6400 and E6500 series Dell notebooks complaining of performance issues, including throttling down by as much as 95 percent under normal operating conditions, Engadget reports.
All is not well in the land of the E6400- and E6500-series lappytops. What looks to be hundreds of owners of these machines have been complaining of massive performance issues, throttling themselves down by as much as 95% under what would seem to be normal operating conditions. Whenever the devices get slightly warm the BIOS automatically starts dialing down the performance until they basically crawl to a halt, some indicating that even when cool they won't go over 50% of maximum clock. Users have been reporting this issue since early in the year and Dell has apparently started censoring some posts on its forums, including a link to a PDF created by (now-banned) user Tinkerdude describing the problem in detail.
It's entitled "Performance loss during normal operation in a Dell Latitude E6500 laptop due to processor and bus clock throttling", and if you think that's long wait until you see all 59 pages of analysis (at the read link). As of now there's no official fix provided by Dell, leaving many to call this Throttlegate, and we do love a good Stargate reference.
The problem appears to be due to an oversensitive BIOS prone to dialing down clockspeeds and bringing notebooks to a near screeching halt at the first sign of heat. It's something that's been brought to Dell's attention long ago, but according to Engadget, the OEM has been censoring some posts on its forums rather than fixing the issue.
Update: Ibrahim e-mailed to let us know that these two series aren't the only ones being gimped. The Studio XPS 1645 is said to be having similar (but somewhat less drastic) issues according to this thread, seemingly thanks to an inadequate AC adapter. In this case Dell seems to be shipping replacement adapters to those who call up and complain.
Update 2: Dell's Chief Blogger Lionel Menchaca dropped the following in comments, which is something of a positive step:
We're aware of concerns raised in this post and others like it. At this point, our teams are looking into the details. When we have more information to share, we'll update customers via a post on Dell's blog, Direct2Dell.

2009年11月30日星期一

Dell Releases Mini 10v Netbook with Chrome OS Build

The OS is based on the totally open source “Chromium” arm of the Chrome OS. The image can be loaded onto an 8GB USB drive and booted on the Mini 10v with no tweaking. Though, Anson did point out that the software was being offered with no support or guarantees of any kind.
Dell has said they will evaluate Chrome OS, but there are no firm plans to offer it as an option in the future. Since Google released the source code for Chrome OS earlier this month, various people around the world have had their way with it. The newest tinkerer is a technology strategist for Dell, Doug Anson.
Thanks to Doug, owners of the Dell Mini 10v can now download and use a version of Chrome OS. "I've been doing some tinkering over the last few days working to get our Dell Mini 10v up and running with ChromiumOS. As of late yesterday, I can report success," said Anson in a post to Dell’s community blog.
In the wake of Google’s Chrome OS announcement last week, some have questioned the search giant’s software vision. Cofounder Sergey Brin popped in for a brief appearance at the event and made some interesting statements about the future of Chrome OS and Android. Brin said that Android and Chrome "will likely converge over time," but gave no indication of the form that might take.
Indeed, the Chrome OS will reportedly have support for ARM based CPUs. Brin also talked up the similarity in the products’ code bases. Both are based on Linux and the Webkit browser rendering engine.
Cnet interviewer Molly Wood prodded Schmidt slightly about the possible overlap in the emerging Smartbook category. Schmidt was quick, yet broad in his dismissal saying, “let’s not prejudge what these things are best used for… our end users will ultimately judge.”

2009年11月29日星期日

Dell is among the first to offer semi-informal Wi-Fi driver support on its Mini 10v line of netbooks

Some users have reported early success getting wireless working with the newest line of Asus EEE PC’s, but Dell is among the first to offer semi-informal Wi-Fi driver support on its Mini 10v line of netbooks. To further sweeten the deal for Dell owners, you can pickup a preconfigured USB key image that is ready to rock and roll. The file contains the OS along with functioning support for the Broadcom Wi-Fi adapter.
The list of people who are jonesing to get their netbooks up and running with the alpha version of Google’s ChromiumOS is fairly short, especially given the relatively poor driver support for Wi-Fi. Its hard to hold a grudge against any piece of software with the “alpha” tag, but lets be honest, a netbook OS without Wi-Fi is sure to put a bit of a damper on our enthusiasm.
Before you get too excited however, you should know that Dell describes the image as “highly experimental, untested, and unstable”, so it would be best to keep your expectations in check. If you’re thinking of giving this a try, make sure you check out the Dell blog posting to see the complete list of caveats.
There is something to be said of locally stored files too...which chrome os doesn't really do. For a netbook, this may work for some people, for me, not really. I would be MUCH more interested in a google spin on the destop linux type distros...like a google ubuntu/debain clone, or suse, or fedora or something...
If there is any segment of linux's market that could use big finantial backing, it's the desktop segment... I believe ubuntu netbook remix, moblin, windows7, and probably even android work better for a netbook then does chromeos. Just my oppinion though.

2009年11月26日星期四

Asus is Ready to Fully Embrace Ultra-Thin Notebooks

As the netbook explosion has proven, consumers are willing to pay for portability, and while that also includes ultra-thins, Asus has been focusing most of its attention elsewhere. According to Tony Chen, Asus' VP, ultra-thins will only account for 10 percent of the company's total notebook sales by the end of 2009.
Chen was also quick to point out that Asus has adopted a handful of exclusive technologies in its UL series ultra-thin laptops, including its Turbo33 technology for improved stability and better performance.
Still, Asus, along with MSI, Acer, and Lenovo, all expected ultra-thins to account for around 20-30 percent of notebook shipments in 2009, and all have adjusted their outlook to around the 10 percent mark.
That doesn't mean Asus has no intention of embracing slim notebooks. As Intel tweaks its ultra-thin platform and consumers continue to warm to the market segment, Chen said he expects a much larger proportion in 2010.
As if Asus hadn’t been revealing enough in their notebook line lately, they’re adding one more to the pile with their fancy new U/UX series laptops.
The ultra-thin series of notebooks will feature light-up chicklet keys (with auto-adjusting backlights, a 15.6-inch glossy LCD and a touchpad that uses fading lights to follow the movement of your fingers. Powering it all will be a Core 2 Duo processor, Nvidia’s GeForce G105M GPU, up to 500GB of storage, and Altec Lansing speakers with SRS true surround sound.

2009年11月23日星期一

The "smartbook" aspires to put the smartphone into the laptop

Two companies are hoping that the smartbook will turn out to be more than just another quickly-forgotten device sales pitch. Qualcomm and Freescale, which are both supplying key silicon technology for the devices, are pushing to make smartbooks different enough from laptops--and Netbooks--that consumers will take notice.
So, will the smartphone DNA be enough to make consumers notice? There are skeptics. "You have to step back and say who cares?--asked Jeff Orr, senior analyst, mobile devices, at ABI Research. "Is it meeting different needs in the marketplace? Does it change the price in a way that an audience is going to latch onto?"
Or says that the smartbook, as proposed today, is challenged to really set itself apart, with the exception of battery life. "Devices with ARM processors tend to have better battery life," he said, referring to the basic chip design that Qualcomm and Freescale use, which compares favorably with Intel Atom processor used in Netbooks from companies like Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and Toshiba. But he sees little else that is head-turning enough for consumers to see a striking difference between the smartbook and the Netbook or smaller laptops.
The first tangible evidence of smartbooks to come will be seen at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, where Lenovo, among others, is expected to show, if not roll out, smartbook designs.
One pesky question won't go away, however. Why go out of the way to call it a smartbook? Doesn't Netbook suffice? (And it can potentially be very confusing for consumers since both terms have "book" in them.) On one level, the nomenclature choice is simply to counter the Microsoft-Intel Netbook juggernaut: Another Netbook among dozens already on the market won't draw much attention.
In Japan, Sharp is selling the NetWalker smartbook, which has a five-inch screen and uses a Freescale ARM processor. "When you see it, it looks like a gadget not like a PC, so you don't have that expectation that it's a Window device," Burchers said.
For the most part, however, the first generation of smartbooks, Burchers admits, will be Netbook-like in design. So, Freescale is looking to the second generation of smartbooks to break away from the traditional laptop.

2009年11月15日星期日

Microsoft Downplays Windows XP as Netbook OS

Moving on is something Microsoft probably would have liked to have done with Vista, but it just sucked up too many resources to be a viable alternative to XP. That changes with Windows 7, which looks to become the new standard.
Right from the very beginning, Windows XP has dominated the netbook scene. Vista is just too demanding for a low-power PC, and Linux hasn't been able to win over the mainstream. But even though Windows XP played an important role in the popularizing ultraportable netbooks, Microsoft appears ready to move on.
"We will continue to make Windows XP available for those devices [netbooks], but it doesn't make sense to put marketing effort behind those devices. As much as we make Windows XP available for a year, we won't see it last in the market that long. We will get through the holidays. My gut is we will walk away from the holidays and see that it's not worth keeping on the market," said Don Paterson, director of netbook PCs in Microsoft's Windows client group.
While one can understand Microsoft's wish to move on to its new OS, it does not serve them to completely distance themselves from XP on netbooks. Firstly, that OS on those devices has, over the past to years, kept Microsoft relevant as an OS provider and secondly, they have contrived to make the move from XP to Win7 about as expensive and complicated as they can, and those millions of netbooks already out there on XP will not all make the move to Win7.
Win7 seems to have the usual pro / cons for users and users will either take the chance on the OS or stick with something that may work (and is cheaper) for them. Microsoft shouldn't distance itself from its traditional base, entirely based on an OS that has only been in the retail loop for a month.
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2009年11月10日星期二

Apple Flips the Finger Disables Atom Support

In the meantime, a user on the MyDellMini forum claims to have found a workaround that entails running 10.6.2 with a 10.6.1 kernel. The process involved booting from a backup, mounting the 10.6.2 partition, and punching in a few commands.
"Well, looks like I was right, again," Hackintosh guru StellaRola wrote in a blog post. "The netbook forums are now blowing up with problems of [Snow Leopard] 10.6.2 instant rebooting their Atom-based netbooks. My sources tell me that every time a netbook users installs 10.6.2 an Apple employee gets their wings."
Rumors of an Atom ban turned out to be true, as the Hackintosh community found out with the latest update to Apple's Snow Leopard OS.
While the ban presents a temporary setback, StellaRola reiterated that "this is OSx86 after all," and predicted that a modded kernel is likely just around the kernel.
The video, which gave an exact step-by-step tutorial about how to put OS X onto a netbook, (with trips to The Pirate Bay included) has since been taken down off of Wired’s Tech Lab. However, you can still check it out over at Gizmodo, who’s sticking it to the man hasn’t run them into any evident danger as of yet.
Apple’s exact complaint about the video hasn’t been printed anywhere, so that is something that we might not ever get to find out, but what we do know is that the video is mighty thorough! And it only clocks in at about four minutes, so why not watch it?

2009年11月9日星期一

Apple Mac OS X Snow Leopard update

In addition to fixing a number of security issues, Mac OS X 10.6.2 also addresses 14 problems found in the operating system, including an issue that caused some users to be logged out of their systems unexpectedly.
An important issue that caused data to be deleted when using a guest account has been fixed, according to Apple. While the bug didn't affect all users, it was widespread enough to cause concerns for users over the past couple of weeks.
If you use Exchange contacts, you'll be pleased to know that your Spotlight searches will now show those contacts in the results. Setting up an Exchange server shouldn't cause Apple's Mail app to crash with the new version.
The update also includes what Apple calls "general stability improvements" for iWork, iLife, Aperture, Final Cut Studio, MobileMe, and iDisk.
Apple also updated Mac OS X Leopard Server to version 10.6.2, addressing issues with the company's server product.
The server update fixed problems with adding and removing imported users in Server Preferences, syncing content using a Portable Home Directory, and filtering incoming mail messages.
Other issues fixed with the server version include creating images using Apple's System Image Utility and automating the installation of NetRestore images.
Try booting into your Mac with a Safe Boot, which includes a disk check/repair and directory repair - I haven't had one problem since I started using a Safe Boot once every two weeks. Couple of other standard Mac tips - Repair the Permissions with Disk Utility, and be sure to leave your Mac on over a few Sunday nights so the OS can run its daily/weekly/scripts (or use a utility like Onyx and have it run the scripts for you). My last kernel panic led me to learning a bit more about how to keep my Macs running perfectly - not one problem since.

2009年11月4日星期三

Lenovo IdeaPad U150 gets critiqued

We spotted the IdeaPad U150 sitting pretty as far back as CEATEC, but now it seems the 11.6-inch beaut is finally finding its way out into the wild, wild... wilds. The suave folks over at Netbooked were able to wrap their paws around a retail unit, and aside from just unboxing it on video (which was a nice gesture in its own right), they also ran it through some basic tasks and spit out a few general opinions. Hit the links below if you'd like to follow the journey from undressing to battery life testing, and hop on past the breaks if you're into this hot new thing called "video."
Here are my thoughts for the first couple of days with the 11.6” Lenovo IdeaPad U150 notebook. I talk about size and weight (compared to the Acer Aspire 1410), battery life, noise (maybe), keyboard and touchpad and sound quality).
I’m using the IdeaPad U150 today as a replacement for my desktop and I haven’t experienced any noticeable slowness compared to my desktop for mundane tasks. (web browsing, YouTube, videos and music)
And if you have been following on my Twitter account, I mentioned I was experiencing poor Wi-Fi with both the Acer Aspire 1410 and Lenovo IdeaPad U150. Turns out that a reboot of my router appears to have fixed things.
Here are some battery life scores. All done at 50% brightness (closest to 90cd/m2 brightness). Windows 7 shuts down standard at 5% remaining battery power.
4 hours, 44 mins - Blogging and Web-browsing, Wi-Fi ON, Bluetooth ON. Power Saving mode. dual-monitor setup using HDMI out. (included about 25 mins of HD YouTube and playing MP3s)
4 hours, 30 mins - Looped full-screen 480P video, Wi-Fi OFF, Bluetooth OFF, Sound ON. Super Power Saving mode.
4 hours, 23 mins - Looped full-screen 720P video, Wi-Fi OFF, Bluetooth OFF, Sound ON. Super Power Saving mode.

2009年11月3日星期二

Acer Aspire One AOD250 impressions

We admit, we were pretty stoked when we first saw the Acer Aspire One AOD250 running Android in dual-boot mode. What could possibly be bad about it? Fast start-up, Google apps... other good things that aren't coming to mind at the moment... what could go wrong? Turns out, just about everything. See, the Aspire One AOD250 has an unfortunate lack of Google blessing, so that means no Gmail, which is really Android's killer app, and no Marketplace either -- so no opportunity to track down a different killer app.
You can use your Google account for hooking up with Gcal, Gtalk and Google Contacts, but your Gmail account gets set up as a webmail shortcut to the included Firefox app -- which does an alright, slightly hacked-on job of augmenting the standard Android browser, including support for Flash. Unfortunately, with connection woes over WiFi and Ethernet (as seen on the video), there wasn't much redeemable even there, and perhaps the best news about the device is that it can be fully booted to XP at any time by clicking on the corner of Android's home screen. We still think there's promise for Android on a netbook, but it's going to need some serious TLC (also, Gmail) before it's ready for prime time. Check out our video impressions after the break.
Acer probably had the same issue as Archos in handling high screen resolutions, with early Android releases, and had to customize it, to make it work. This customization likely limited the apps that would run on it.
With Android 2.0, this issue should be resolved, so Acer probably just needs to do an update, to get back into the Android mainstream. Ideally, the update would enable support for the Android Market.

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