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With DELL brand value, which is a trusted brand of the United States can be dell vostro 1200 notebook is very good quality. DELL is a trademark so that the market does not provide value for its users ekslusivitas.
Dell vostro notebook 1200 we offer to you with a very affordable price. Because as we know, notebook DELL notebook is one of the dibandrol with a high price.
So, what are you waiting for. Please contact Bali Notebook Store because stock Notebook DELL vostro 1200 is very limited.
Following detail specification dell vostro 1200 notebook:
* Intel Core 2 Duo T5270 - 1400MHz (2MB L2 Cache, FSB 800MHz, Core 2 Duo Processor)
* 512MB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM
120GB * SATA Hard Drive
* 12.1 "tft Wide XGA 1280x800 with Truelife (crystal)
* Graphics Intel Integrated Graphics Media Accelerator X3100
* 8X Max DVD +-RW Combination Drive with Dual Layer Internal Drive
* Internal 56k modem
* Integrated 100Mbps Fast Ethernet
* 3bh USB Port Ver 2.0
* Microphone Jack
* Headphone Jack
* RGB VGA Port1bh
* Express Card Slot
* Security Cable Slot
* 8 in 1 Media Card Reader: SD-SDIO-MMC-MS-MS Pro-xD Picture Card Hi-Speed SD-Hi Density SD
* Wireless LAN Intel PRO 4965AGN Wireless-N Mini card - Built in
* Battery 6 Cell - 56Whr Lithium Ion
* Palmrest with FingerPrint reader
* Integrated 2.0 Mega Pixel WEB CAM
* 65W AC Adapter Charger with cable cord
* Windows Vista Home Basic 32 bit (English) with DVD Media Included.
* Free: Taffware Softcase Velcro 12 "Wide
* Included: Dell PC-Restore Software, Roxio Creator 9.0, Microsoft Works 8.5 (Not Included software Office 2003-2007), RJ-11 USB Modem, vostro Owner's Manual, Contacting Dell Book, Product Information Guide.
Selasa, 02 Juni 2009
Notebook DELL VOSTRO 1200 Plus
Senin, 25 Mei 2009
Lenovo has launch Atom-based All-in-One
Lenovo has moved to the other hats in the ring with the release nettop from IdeaCentre C300 all-in-one desktop.Billed as the budget all-in-one PC, the C300 is compact for users looking for value in the PC price. C300 which is based on Intel Atom platform, which is touted for energy efficiency and is usually seen increasingly ubiquitous in the netbook market and the other as nettops MSI Wind CS120.C300 with a 20-inch screen with 16:9 aspect ratio, the fold-away stand, and built-in Web cam. There are six USB 2.0 ports, and 6-in-1 media card reader that is located on the back of the unit. In the area directly under the curved screen, is suspected to clasp the better, and comes with patterned Mylar cover.
C300 system, which will be available in three configurations. Basic model ($ 449.99 list) comes with 2 gigabytes of DDR2 memory, a 160-GByte hard drive, and comes with Windows XP Home. Configuring the second ($ 499.99) offers 3 GB DDR2 memory, 300 GB hard drive, and Windows Vista Basic. The top-of-the-line model has a 4 GB memory, a 500-GB hard drive, and Windows Vista Home Premium, and will retail for $ 579.99. All three come with the Intel Atom 230 processor, integrated graphics, 802.11g wireless capability, and DVD burner. C300 Series is also equipped with Veriface technology, which uses the face as an alternative to using a password, and one key save and re-covery system.
all three models will be available in June 2009.Menurut Lenovo
Minggu, 17 Mei 2009
In hand grip with Verizon LG Versa Game Pad
Verizon's Game Pad
The Versa LG VX9600 for Verizon Wireless phone can be used to switch from the usual back to the keyboard and various controllers. Mobile phones equipped with QWERTY keyboard, and early this month into the game pad is available. Versa game pad can make one of the top mobile phone gaming in the world, if he can compete dancukup support the game.
Versa the game pad is sliding back that, when closed, the Versa as a thick candy-bar-style touch screen phone. Slide the bottom of the pad, though, and you get some school-Nintendo-style control: eight-way rocker with a start, select, A, B, X and Y buttons. Phone's UI to rotate in landscape mode when you open the sliding pad, home phone and get a special screen mode with large buttons to start the game from you. This gadget requires no batteries, and you can replace them with plain or QWERTY keyboard back whenever you want.
I spent a morning with the Versa's gamepad, download games off of Verizon's deck and try to play. 10 games that I download, only three worked well with the game pad: Need for Speed Undercover, Pac-Man and Monopoly Here & Now.
Play Need for Speed with the game pad was the best driving game-experience I've ever had on the phone. There is no confusion when a small action that you usually get to play games on a mobile phone - driving a smooth and easy. I am disappointed to find that the game does not make any use of the A / B / X / Y buttons, though.
One other game, Galaga, I use my game pad to move to the sky but does not fire the laser. Six other games I choose: Build-a-Lot, Sims 2 Castaways, Star Trek, Prince of Persia, Dirt Off Road Racing Deluxe BlockBreaker and not even to play in landscape mode, game pad make totally useless. Annoyingly, there's no way to know if the game work with the pad before you buy.
Verizon spokeswoman Brenda Raney said that more games will be available soon. I hope so; controller even in the world will be useless if there is no game to play with it! The LG Versa Game Controller costs $ 29.99 on the Verizon Wireless Web site.
Slimmer with the Eee PC 1008HA in hand
Slabs that are less interesting as a plastic mass formed in the netbook market, and also the design-thinking outside more often in the name of fresh-beat price basis. Not so with the new Asus EeePC 1008HA.
In appearance, all of which is the 1008HA that EeePC 1000HE not. although still with a frame made of plastic, it looks thinner and lighter than the 1000HE maintain 10-inches wide and 92-percent keyboard.At first glance, the 1008HA is quite interesting and beautiful. Beda with 1000HE, there is less bulk in the middle of the frame, and shiny white plastic to create more uniformity along the edges (where the lid meets the bottom). With the easy steps below and inch thick weighs only 2.4 pounds, making them the lightest the 10-inch netbook, the 1000HE tips the scale at 3.2 pounds. At launch, the 1008HA will be available in black, pink and blue while the model will ship later in the day.
While slimming down yourself, 1008HA managed to maintain 10-inch widescreen (shared with drab 1024-by-600 resolution) and 92-percent keyboard. Keyboard is very convenient for this type, although not as big a mouse button (or responsive) as those in 1000HE. With a focus on the design, though, Asus needs to pay more attention to the size of the keyboard. Netbooks such as the Samsung N120, the Samsung NC20, and Acer to come from the 11.6-inch netbook is equipped with full size keyboard. And as a 10-inch widescreen, it's just a matter of time before the 92-percent keyboard will be something of the past.
Although 10008HA not use the new features are useful, do it with the existing position with a different way to slim down on the chassis. VGA port is now a mini-USB port, you need to connect an external VGA dongle. Dongle is tucked away in the bottom of the laptop and can be easily retrieved to use this feature. Ethernet port that will be moved to the back of the right of the laptop, where the thick of the few rather than the rest of the frame. If not, you'll find two USB ports (one less than the 1000HE), a 160GB HDD (2.5 inches), headphone and microphone jack, and built-in 802.11n WiFi and Bluetooth.
Part identical with 1000HE's. It is rarely used to run 1.66-GHz Intel Atom N280 that on paper, slightly faster than the more popular 1.6Ghz Intel Atom N270. In real-world tests, however, differences in performance that is almost invisible. It comes with 1 GByte of DDR2 RAM, even upgrade to 2 GB will need to delete the entire back panel, which are held together by four screws (1000HE has a small, 1-screw panel that leads directly to a memory slot).
10008HA that Asus will be the first netbook to use non-removable battery. It's a 2-cell Lithium Polymer battery, the same type of technology used in Apple MacBook Air. Asus claims that up to 6 hours of battery life, but from experience I have to get much less than that. I'd say the lack of a 6-cell battery that only knock against EeePC 1008HA, and I am sure you will know how much longer the battery will get with you once I review the 1000HE unit arrived. Asus EeePC 1008HA starting from $ 429.
With hands on Fennec, Firefox for Windows Mobile
Fennec, the Firefox browser for Windows Mobile application, is the first mobile browser to embrace the idea of a strong third-party add-ons. But the browser itself is too slow than in the use of experimental
I loaded the CAB file to 9.1MB a Sprint HTC Touch Pro. Touch Pro, which is the only model of Windows Mobile Mozilla has been approved for use with Fennec for now, although the version of the browser running on the Nokia N810 Linux-based tablet computer.I found Fennec's user interface is confusing and difficult. The browser opens to the home page, with the address above, several key actions (back, forward, bookmark, and tools) on the right side, and the miniature image tab on the left side.
But each browser is different in the universe, that the "chrome" does not remain on-screen is only attached on the page edges, and you can scroll away from it. That means if you want to switch tabs, you have to scroll all the way to the top and left to do before. That is difficult.
Along with the tab, is the main innovation of Fennec add-ons, such as in Firefox. With the move to the Tools menu, you can choose from a variety of add-ons, add-ons that four recommended menu. They do useful things such as improving one type in the URL and let you tweet from your browser.
Fennec brings Firefox's Awesome Bar to your mobile phone, with a few bugs. When you start typing the URL into the address bar, the browser will try to suggest popular sites you may want to go to. He also appeared five search button at the bottom of the screen, which will let you search with Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Answers.com, and Creative Commons. Search field does not seem they can be adjusted, and some built-in Windows Mobile UI is actually overwrote the search button. Rough.
The browser seems to really make a relatively page using Firefox's Gecko engine, although some mangled fonts and spacing does not offer viewing options. I can not find a way to get the columns of the full screen view, for example, or switch between phone and PC-format-format version of the page. I can not even find out how to fit the page to display, even though twice tapping me on the move between two levels of zoom.
Fennec also painfully, unusably slow. You should be able to pan around pages with your finger, but more like stealing, wait five seconds, the pan. To be fair, Mozilla admitted that the browser is too slow to use right now-this is a technical preview.
Fennec's plug-in architecture is very interesting. But to be more quick and easy to use, there is no threat to Opera Mobile on Windows Mobile.
Fennec,
Rabu, 13 Mei 2009
Intel Investing $12M in Graphics, Visual Computing Center
Intel is planning to invest up to $12 million in a new European research center dedicated to researching visual computing and graphics technology. The center will focus on projects ranging from games to medical imaging to how graphics can help accelerate financial transactions. Intel is also expected to soon release its graphics processors code-named Larrabee that will help Intel compete against Nvidia and AMD's ATI products.
Intel is investing up to $12 million to create a research center that will focus on developing new graphics and visual computing technology at a time when the entire PC industry is trying to create new types of graphics-intense applications.Intel Senior Fellow and CTO Justin Rattner announced the $12 million investment May 12. Intel plans to invest the money during the next five years to help build the Intel Visual Computing Institute, which will be located at Saarland University in Saarbrucken, Germany.
The goal of the center is to develop new types of PC hardware and software that will not only help in developing games but also help create other types of applications for fields such as health care and financial services.
While the announcement lacked specifics, Intel expressed particular interest in what it calls terascale research and technology. For Intel, this means using dozen and even hundreds of processing cores within a chip to improve the graphics and visual abilities of PCs.
This type of chip technology can also be used to create supercomputers and massive HPC (high-performance computing) systems that use multicore technology to solve problems in parallel instead of using older methods to simply crank up the clock speed of single-core processors.
"Given the growing importance of visual computing technology, it made perfect sense to expand our relationship and form this new institute," Rattner said in a statement. "We are confident that it will become an internationally recognized center and a driver for European leadership in the visual computing field."
If this approach to computing seems familiar, it's because Intel and its two main rivals in this area—Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices—have been pushing this technology as an alternative to classic chip technology.
Later this year or in early 2010, Intel plans to finally unveil its "Larrabee" graphics processor, which will use multiple x86 cores and allow Intel and software developers to take advantage of new types of parallel computing.
Nvidia is also interested in this type of multicore approach and using parallel computing. In the last few years, Nvidia has pushed its own Tesla GPUs (graphics processing units) for this type of computing. In addition, Nvidia has developed a programming language called CUDA, which works as a parallel computing engine for Nvidia's GPUs. AMD, through its ATI graphics division, is at work on similar technology.
Intel's investment in the new facility in Germany, which the company says is now its largest investment ever in a European university, comes at a time when Intel is facing ongoing scrutiny concerning its business practices within the European Union. Later the week of May 11, the EU is expected to fine Intel millions, if not billions, of dollars, claiming the company unfairly used its position to push competition out of Europe's PC market.
Intel is hoping to employ dozens of workers at the new facility by the end of 2009, including its own researchers, as well as individuals from Saarland University, Max Planck Institute for Informatics, Max Planck Institute for
Mio Is Alive, Well, And Shipping New GPSes
We haven't seen anything new from Mio in the U.S. since parent company MiTAC purchased Magellan in December, 2008.
Last we heard, in fact, was in April, when the company responded to a GPS Business News article that it was leaving the U.S. market by insisting that no, it wasn't. Today we see proof of that, as Mio releases two new navigators for North America.
The Mio Moov S401 will offer a 4.3-inch screen, a 4 million POI database, and list for $179.99; the Mio Moov S501 will have a 4.7-inch screen, a 12 million POI database, and go for $199.99. Both will offer the company's new Spirit software which is designed to make search and navigation simple. These two can navigate to geo-tagged photos and will support keyword POI search, for when you don't know a destination's exact name.These look like smart additions to the lineup, offering big screens and useful features at bargain prices. Buyers have shown they're mostly interested in low-cost GPS navigators. While the U.S. market has grown increasingly competitive (Navigon just pulled out of the U.S. due to shrinking margins) we predict these units will find plenty of buyers when they're released in June.
Intel Fined $1.45 Billion in EU for Antitrust Violations
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission fined Intel Corp a record 1.06 billion euros ($1.45 billion) on Wednesday and ordered it to halt illegal rebates and other practices it used to squeeze out its rival, AMD.
The world's biggest chipmaker paid computer makers to postpone or scrap plans to launch products using AMD chips, paid illegal rebates to encourage them to use Intel chips and paid a retailer to stock computers with its chips, the Commission said.
The antitrust fine, imposed after an eight-year investigation, is the biggest the European Union's executive arm has imposed on an individual company. David Anderson, a lawyer at Berwin Leighton Paisner, said Intel was "facing a wall of regulatory resistance to its business practices around the world" with antitrust infringement decisions against it now in Japan, South Korea and the EU.
U.S. authorities are also investigating Intel, whose microprocessors power eight out of every 10 personal computers.
Financial analysts said U.S.-based Intel would be able to maintain its market dominance but the EU's decision could help Advanced Micro Devices boost its market share.
"Intel has harmed millions of European consumers by deliberately acting to keep competitors out of the market for computer chips for many years," European Union Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said.
The Commission said Intel must cease all illegal practices immediately but Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini said the company would appeal at the Court of First Instance, the EU's second-highest court.
"Intel takes exception to this decision. We believe the decision is wrong and ignores the reality of a highly competitive microprocessor market," he said in a statement.
Kroes said the EU antitrust sanctions would be carried out immediately. In a previous antitrust case against software giant Microsoft, the Commission froze its remedies during part of an appeal filed by that company.
Bruce Sewell, a lawyer for Intel, said the firm had not yet begun talks with the Commission on how to comply with its ruling and said: "We will try to be compliant with the order."
The fine offset earlier optimism after Intel said late on Tuesday its orders and billing patterns had been slightly better than expected so far in the second quarter. Shares of Intel rose 1.3 percent in premarket trade.
INTEL TO REMAIN DOMINANT
Some analysts said the decision would have little strategic impact and would not change the way Intel operates.
Others said it was a historic decision that showed the extent of the EU's determination to ensure dominant companies do not shut rivals out of the market and would have a big impact on the global IT industry.
"Intel's competitive advantage is not that they cheated or anything like that. It's that they are much larger than their smaller rival AMD. As far as long-term competitive advantage (goes), Intel still has it," said Andy Ng, an analyst at investment research firm Morningstar.
The Commission investigated practices dating to 2002, and said Europe accounted for 30 percent of Intel's current worldwide 22 billion euro market.
The Commission said Intel must pay the fine, which represents 4.15 percent of the company's 2008 turnover, within three months of being notified of the decision.
It could have fined Intel 10 percent of annual revenue.
The penalty surpassed the 896 million euro fine last year on glass maker Saint-Gobain for price fixing, and a 497 million euro penalty in 2004 on Microsoft for abuse of dominance.
Intel posted first-quarter sales of $7.1 billion. Analysts estimated the company enjoys a sizeable cash balance, generating close to $10 billion in cash last year.
Craigslist Removes 'Erotic Services' Section
If Lisa Madigan is to believed, you might have to get your online erotic kicks elsewhere, starting very soon.
Madigan, the Illinois Attorney General, told AP that Craigslist has agreed to remove its "Erotic Services" section. It will be replaced by an adult category that will feature ads reviewed and approved by Craigslist staff.
Current Erotic Services ads will expire in 7 days.The section made headlines recently after a man was arrested for killing a girl he met through Erotic Services. Madigan last month called for Craigslist to remove it from its Web site, as did several other AGs. Craigslist officials met with the AG in New York City recently and pledged to tweak the section, but made no promises at the time to remove it completely.
Craigslist did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but at this point, there is no longer an option to post to "erotic services." Instead, Craigslist has a link to an adult section, which costs $10 per post.
"New 'adult services' ads will be reviewed in the order received for compliance with posting guidelines and the craigslist Terms of Use," according to a note on the site.
Once submitted, the ads cannot be edited. In the future, Craigslist will add the ability to re-post the same ad for $5.
Seagate to Cut 1,100 Jobs in Cost Cuts
NEW YORK, May 13 (Reuters) - Seagate Technology said on Wednesday it plans to cut about 1,100 jobs from its workforce in a move the computer storage maker expects will reduce costs by about $125 million a year.
The job-cutting move, which affects about 2.5 percent of Seagate's workforce, is aimed at helping the company stay on track toward being cash-flow and earnings positive within its fiscal year 2010.As a result of the plan, Seagate, which competes with storage company Western Digital, expects to take restructuring charges of about $72 million, primarily in the quarter ending in June.
About one month ago, Seagate reported disappointing quarterly gross margins and eliminated its dividend, reflecting weak demand from corporate customers and stronger sales of lower-priced products.
The elimination of the quarterly dividend is expected to trim costs by about $60 million annually, the company said.
Microsoft Preps for Office 2010 Launch
Attendees at Microsoft's annual TechEd event will be the first to get their hands on Office 2010, the company announced Monday.
Starting in July, the select group will be given access to a technical preview, which is considered a pre-release to manufacturers (RTM) edition.
"While we aren't ready to start demoing and sharing all of the features quite yet, we have heard the feedback loud and clear that requirements for running our software needs to be available ASAP," the company wrote in a blog post. What other details were provided? Not many, but Microsoft did say that Office 2010 will be available in 32-bit and 64-bit versions. It will run on Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.
"Office 2010 Suite products are offered in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions so customers will not be required to upgrade 32-bit PC's and Laptops to 64-bit hardware to run Office 2010 Suite Products," the blog post said. "Certain hardware configurations and operating system versions customers currently have deployed may require an upgrade to run server and client products."
Microsoft is promoting the latest iteration of its Office suite with a movie trailer spoof at the office2010themovie.com Web site. It includes a 30-second video likening Office 2010 to an action movie, and a "countdown to awesome" emblazoned across the top of the Web site. Only 49 more days to go.
Microsoft also announced yesterday that its Windows 7 operating system is expected to be ready for final release by this year's holiday season.
Google Unveils New Search Products
Days before the planned launch of the Wolfram Alpha search engine, Google on Tuesday announced a series of new search products intended to provide more relevant results.
The new offerings include Google Search Options, Google Squared, Rich Snippets, and an astrology-related Android app.
Google Search Options is a "rich set of tools that let you slice and dice your results," Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience, said during a presentation at Google's Mountain View headquarters.Specifically, once you conduct a normal Web search, you can drill down with different genres, including elements of time, visualization tools, recently added, blogs, or images, combining a variety of Google search products into one.
The idea is to combine relevancy and "recentcy", she said.
Doing a normal search for "shuttle launch" could turn up results from any number of shuttle launches in countries around the world. Using Search Options, you can choose to search Web sites or blogs that were updated in the past 24 hours or week, increasing the chance that it will include results pertinent to this week's launch.
Choosing "images from the page", meanwhile, will display pictures pulled from the site alongside search results.
During the demo, Mayer and her team also searched for "solar oven" to demonstrate another feature of Search Options, dubbed sentiment analysis. If you are searching for reviews of solar ovens, for example, the program will try to determine if a particular review is positive, negative, or neutral and display that in the search results.
Search Options also includes a timeline that displays the popularity of the topic searched over time.
Search Options also includes a feature known as the Wonder Wheel. The term "solar oven" would be displayed in the middle of this wheel, with related searches branching out from it in a circle. In the same way that you might weave your way from a Wikipedia page on Google to a page about tropical fish thanks to the hundreds of links within Wikipedia posts, you can click on the various Wonder Wheel "arms" and crawl into a nice little search wormhole.
Next up was Google Squared, a Labs project set to debut later this month. It is similar to Search Options in that you can drill down your search results, but Squared lets you add or delete results to produce the most useful "square" of information that you can save to your Google account and refer back to later.
Rich Snippets, meanwhile, is intended to provide you with more useful information in the blurbs that sit below the URL on the search results page. Searching for a restaurant, for example, could produce a Yelp review with a snippet that shows its average rating is 4 stars based on 17 reviews – a more useful return than a line with its name and address.
Google updated snippets in March to increase the number of lines in the snippet for longer searches, but Tuesday's announcement was geared more toward webmasters.
Starting today, Google will be supporting open HTML standards not just for formatting, but for the meaning as well. Those who want to participate in Rich Snippets can add quick tags to give Google a better understanding of what on their pages, Mayer said.
Google also announced an update to the Sky Map Android app, which uses GPS and the compass sensors in G1 phones to produce constellation maps.
"Not only does it know where on the planet [your phone] is, it also knows which direction you're holding the phone," said creator John Taylor.
Google made improvements in performance, redesigned the user-interface, and made it an official Google app. Users can now search for specific stars or constellations. Hold the phone in the air and a circular arrow will direct the user to the spot in the sky where that constellation is – changing from blue to red as you get closer.
It is available in the Android Market starting today.
Mathematica founder Stephen Wolfram next week is expected to launch Wolfram Alpha, an upcoming search engine that aims to more thoroughly answer Web users' questions rather than just serve up existing data.
Udi Manber, vice president of engineering at Google, said that he and Google co-founder Sergey Brin were given a demo of Wolfram Alpha "early on, but we were asked to be confidential about it and we respect that."
Intel to Push 'Thin Is In' Notebook Refresh
Intel's chief marketing officer pledged that the company will go through "a major refresh" of its volume notebook line, pushing consumer-class ultra-low-voltage processors into notebooks to create a new tier of consumer computing.
The disclosures were made at Intel's investor conference at its Santa Clara, Calif. headquarters, where executives presented both a product and financial update.
Intel has been closely watched as both a bellwether and a company that has spoken frankly and optimistically about industry conditions. Intel chief executive Paul Otellini did not disappoint. Otellini said he was "increasingly comfortable" with the belief that the PC market will not dip as far down as some analysts believe. Gartner, for example, expects PC sales to drop 9 percent in 2009; the actual drop "might not be as bad," he said.
A shift to 32-nm technology, growth in software, and the scaling of Intel's products into new markets will help Intel continue to grow, Otellini added.
Intel's investors conference was scheduled roughly a week before its shareholder meeting and a day before the European Union is expected to levy fines and/or sanctions against the chipmaker for anti-competitive practices. Executives disclosed little news during the afternoon's sessions, instead trying to paint a comprehensive view of a company whose products have become increasingly complex as Intel has wormed its way into more and more sectors of the market.
On Tuesday, IDC also reported that Intel's market share in dropped 4.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008 to 77.3 percent during the first quarter, while AMD increased its share to 22.7 percent by roughly the same amount. Worldwide PC processor unit sales dropped by 10.9 percent, while revenue dropped 11 percent. Year-over year, units dropped 13 percent, while revenue plunged by a quarter. IDC did not report actual revenue and unit numbers.
Traditionally, Intel has manufactured microprocessors for notebooks, PCs, and servers, all using variations of the same technology. That same strategy is largely in place, but Otellini said that Intel sees roughly a $10 billion opportunity in the consumer electronics industry, the embedded market, handhelds, and low-cost PCs. Combined with Intel's existing business, the total is potentially a billion units per year; Intel serves a third of that. Next year, that opportunity could double, he said.
Thin is in
The same segmentation that is evolving the desktop PC away from "big, boring and beige," in Otellini's words, is also affecting the notebook market, where Intel has tried to capitalize on the shift toward notebooks. The problem of late has been that the recession has encouraged buyers to move toward lower-cost consumer notebooks and netbooks: a prop for unit sales, but challenging for profits.
The bright spot, however, came with the MacBook Air and its rivals: suddenly, "thin became in." said Sean Maloney, Intel's chief marketing officer.
From the middle of the year onwards, Maloney said, Intel plans to introduce a major refresh oriented around its Penryn ULV and Cantiga GS/ICH9-M SFF platform, designed to reduce the footprints within the notebooks from an average of 3342 sq. mm to 1415 sq. mm, without doing the same to their profit margin.
"We think it's going to be a big deal, a big deal for consumers, with lots of exciting products coming out," Maloney said. The new chips will also provide an opportunity for upselling consumers: "we can reach a new price point and be paid for it," he said.
For a long time, Intel and others treated ultra-low-voltage parts as a premium option: "you could go fast, or you could go thin and light," said Dean McCarron, principal analyst with Mercury Research. Atom, however, is a low-cost thin-and-light processor.
There's been pressure to creep up the 10-inch screen size to something akin to a 12-inch ultraportable, something that Intel doesn't want to happen, McCarron added. A CULV part can run fast at a lower voltage, and raise the price of the laptop; McCarron said an $800 price point would stimulate demand.
Meanwhile, the Atom continues to move down into the embedded space, said David "Dadi" Perlmutter, the general manager of Intel's Mobility Group. Intel has begun 1,500 design engagements, with 300 design wins and 100 more in actual production, most with new customers that have never engaged with Intel before, he said.
Intel's shipments of Atom processors for mini-notebook PCs declined 33 percent in the first quarter of 2009, indicative that OEMs held inventory, IDC found.
Intel also continues to push its processors into system-on-a-chip designs, Otellini said. In one intriguing aside, Otellini said four major games had been ported to "Canmore," a system-on-a-chip for a set-top box or TV, within a matter of days. Later Tuesday night, Intel will demonstrate those games running on the hardware inside a Canmore TV, and not a set-top box, he said.
Intel also continues to push harder into advanced manufacturing, having announced the beginning of the shift to 32-nm manufacturing at the end of 2008, a transition that should be completed by the end of 2009. According to data Otellini presented by IBS, only four other companies will join Intel with its own 32-nm fabs: IBM, Samsung, ST Micro, and Toshiba. IBS predicts that Toshiba and IBM will drop out by the 22-nm generation; however, GlobalFoundries, the spinoff of AMD's manufacturing division, was not listed at all.
The final pillar of Intel's success? Software. Intel executives showed off what they could expect from Larrabee, Intel's first discrete graphics chip in years. Intel also expects to release the beta of Moblin 2.0, a Linux based platform for netbooks, next week, said Renee James, the general manager of Intel's software and services group.
New Dell Inspiron Mini 10v Offers the Same, For Less
Don't expect many differences from the new Inspiron Mini 10v netbook, Inspiron 15 laptop, and Inspiron 537 and 537s desktops from Dell. The parts are pretty much the same, but Dell's real achievement is producing them for less.
Our biggest complaint about the otherwise capable Dell Inspiron Mini 12 was its high price relative to other netbooks. The new Mini 10v comes in at an impressively low $299.
For your money, you get a lot of the same parts, including 1GB of RAM, a built-in webcam, and plenty of storage options (120GB or 160GB spinning drives, or 8GB or 16GB solid-state drives). The Mini 10v comes with Windows XP or Ubuntu Linux, optional Bluetooth, and seven color options including Cherry Red, Jade Green, and Passion Purple. Dell is also expanding its design options on the Inspiron 15 model. This HD-capable laptop now comes in six new color options including Pacific Blue, Alpine White, and Promise Pink. The Inspiron 15 starts at $399.
We'll have more details on the newest Inspiron towers later today but additions include eight color options for the slim and mini-tower configurations including Tangerine Orange and Spring Green. The desktops will start at $299 and should be available by the end of the summer.
Wolfram Alpha to Run On Supercomputers
Wolfram Research said Tuesday that it plans to launch its Wolfram Alpha technology on five different locations, including the world's 44th largest supercomputer.
The reason? The company can't anticipate how much traffic the site will receive, and Wolfram said it wants to be prepared.
Wolfram Alpha is a hybrid of a search engine and an encyclopedia, designed to generate the answer to a search query, rather than the most relevant information. The Wolfram Alpha site goes live on May 18.
"What computing power have we gathered in these facilities for launch day? Two supercomputers, just about 10,000 processor cores, hundreds of terabytes of disks, a heck of a lot of bandwidth, and what seems like enough air conditioning for the Sahara to host a ski resort," Wolfram added.
One of those sites will be a supercomputer designed by R Systems, dubbed the "R Smarr," ranked the 44th most powerful in the world as measured by the TOP500 list. The system uses a Dell Cloud Computing DCS CS23-SH system, powered by an unknown number of Intel E54xx "Harpertown" processors.
The other sites will also be powered by Dell.
Wolfram co-founder Theodore Gray said in an interview that the company frankly had no idea how much traffic to expect. "Our plans are simultaneously open the site to everyone; that plan is kind of evolving," he said. "We don't have any idea how much traffic to expect, whether we're going to be off by a factor of 10 or a factor of 100."
Selasa, 12 Mei 2009
Root Bug Hits Windows 7; Microsoft Advises Reinstall
Microsoft has issued a hotfix for a security permissions bug that can affect the root folder under the Windows 7 release candidate released last week. Microsoft also recommends that affected users reinstall the Windows 7 operating system.
Only the 32-bit versions of Windows 7 Release Candidate Ultimate (Build 7100) are affected, Microsoft said.
Microsoft's Knowledge Base article 970789 details the problem, described as an issue with the root folder of the system drive. That root folder contains incorrect access control lists.
"One effect of this problem is that standard users such as non-administrators cannot perform all operations to subfolders that are created directly under the root," the article states. "Therefore, applications that reference folders under the root may not install successfully or may not uninstall successfully. Additionally, operations or applications that reference these folders may fail. "For example, if a folder is created under the root of the system drive from an elevated command prompt, this folder will not correctly inherit permissions from the root of the drive," the article adds. "Therefore, some specific operations, such as deleting the folder, will fail when they are performed from a non-elevated command prompt.
In turn, users will receive an "access is denied" error.
The fix is available via Windows Update, which will push a Cleanwin7rcroot.exe version 6.1.7100.15 tool to a user's PC.
But to "make sure that this update does not affect your user experience," Microsoft recommends reinstalling Windows 7 from a clean, formatted partition, then immediately running the Cleanwin7 tool, apparently because the newly created folder do not inherit the proper security descriptors. Even after the tool is run, Microsoft says, the permissions/descriptors will not be propagated to any subdirectories.
The Knowledge Base story was first reported by ZDNet.
Epson Offers Affordable All-In-One Printer
Epson on Tuesday announced the WorkForce 310, an affordable inkjet all-in-one (AIO) geared to small businesses. The WorkForce 310 has built-in Ethernet networking and can be used wirelessly when connected by Ethernet cable to a wireless router. It offers a 30-page automatic document feeder (ADF) for copying, scanning, or faxing multipage documents. With a resolution of 5,760 by 1,440 for printing and 1,200 by 2,400 dpi for scanning, the WorkForce 310 has a print speed of 16 pages per minute (ppm) in black and white and 5.5 ppm in color in "laser-quality" mode; in draft mode, its print speeds are 36 ppm in black and white and 20 ppm. The WorkForce 310 provides one-touch copying of black-and-white or color documents; the ability to copy up to 99 pages at a time; reduction and enlargement range of 25 to 400 percent for copies; the ability to scan to PDF; and scan files over a network. With its PC fax feature, it can fax directly from a computer. It stores up to 60 speed-dial numbers, can receive up to 180 pages in memory, and has features such as auto redial, auto answer, and delay send.
The WorkForce 310 should be available in June, for an estimated street price of $130.
'Thief 4' Adds Sequel to Iconic PC Game Series
Eidos Montreal has announced the fourth title in the "Thief" series, allowing gamers to slip into Garrett's shoes once again as the scourge of The City.
"Eidos-Montréal is excited to unveil, our previously secret second title in development at the studio, as Thief 4, the next installment in the legendary series!" Stephane D'Astous, the game's general manager, announced on the Eidos site.
"Were in the early development stages for Thief 4, but this is an incredibly ambitious project and a very exciting one," D'Astous wrote. "It's too early for us to offer any specific game details, right now we are focused on recruiting the very best talent to join the core team at the studio and help us make, what we believe will be one of the most exciting games on the market."The "Thief" series commands a special place in the heart of PC gamers. Released just a few months after id's "Quake 2," "Thief: The Dark Project" launched an alternative mindset in the minds of first-person shooters: that obstacles could be stealthily approached, ambushed, and even avoided. "Thief" was the first "first-person sneaker," actively encouraging players to incapacitate, rather than kill, enemies. That, combined with an engaging story and its own mythos, drew players in.
"Thief" was also designed by Looking Glass Studios, which commands the same reverence that a company like Apple does, with one difference: Apple is still around, and Looking Glass went out of business in 2000, giving any subsequent games the tinge of nostalgia. The intellectual property, however, has been passed around between develop Ion Storm and Eidos, and has now gone "in house".
Eidos is also developing "Deus Ex 3," another former Looking Glass property, that was one of the first to introduce RPG elements into a first-person action title, and also to present alternative methods of overcoming obstacles and enemies.
The problem with both the evolution of the "Deus Ex" and "Thief" series, to some, has been the simultaneous devleopment of "Deus Ex 2" and "Thief 3" for the Xbox console as well as the PC. That had notable effects on gameplay, including small levels that were broken up by load screens, which broke the illusion of seamless gameplay.
Facebook Yanks Two Holocaust Hate Groups
Two Facebook groups dedicated to Holocaust denial have been removed from the social networking site because their members were using the groups as a forum to promote hate, Facebook said Monday.
"The group description didn't promote hate but the members were beginning to use it as a forum to promote hate through their wall posts," Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt said in an e-mail.
Links to the groups in question – titled "Based on the facts … There was no Holocaust" and "Holocaust is a Holohoax" – now simply redirect to the Facebook main page. Three other Holocaust denial groups, however, remain on the site.
"We are monitoring these groups and if the discussion among members degrades to the point of promoting hate or violence, despite whatever disclaimer the group description provides, we will take them down," Schnitt said "This has happened in the past, especially when controversial groups are publicized."
The issue made headlines last week when attorney Brian Cuban, brother of tech entrepreneur Mark Cuban, wrote a blog post that challenged Facebook to remove the groups. He argued, in part, that since Holocaust denial is illegal in some of the countries in which Facebook has a presence, these groups should be banned.
Last week, Facebook responded that it already bans these groups in countries where Holocaust denial laws exist. The site removes content that threatens violence towards people but does not remove content that speaks out against countries, political entities, or ideas. Holocaust denial falls into the latter category, Facebook said.
TechCrunch posted a scathing critique of Facebook's policy this morning, taking the site to task for allowing the denial groups while cracking down on photos of women breastfeeding. "Jew Haters Welcome at Facebook, as Long as They Aren't Lactating," the headline reads. He slammed Facebook for allowing denial groups to post photos of naked children used in Nazi medical experiments, likening them to child porn, and called the site creators cowards.
Schnitt responded to the TechCrunch story in its comments section, reiterating that while Facebook finds Holocaust denial to be "repugnant and ignorant" it is not a violation of its terms of service.
"We believe in Facebook's mission that giving people tools to make the world more open is a better way to combat ignorance or deception than censorship, though we recognize that others — including those at the company, disagree. We may be fools for doing the former but not 'cowards,'" Schnitt wrote.
In regards to the breastfeeding photos, Schnitt said Facebook only bans photos of naked women who happen to be breastfeeding, not every single breastfeeding photo.
Cuban, meanwhile, wrote another blog entry this time addressing Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg directly.
His original argument regarding countries that ban Holocaust denial, he wrote, was "short-sighted [and a] back door lawyer's approach" to the debate.
"By claiming open discussion as the rationale for allowing these groups to exist, Facebook is playing games with semantics," Cuban wrote. "Facebook is taking form over substance to protect their imaginary subjective corporate line in the sand they have drawn."
Cuban asked Zuckerberg to define "open discussion" and to reveal if it consulted any experts before coming up with its policy.
Lenovo Announces Netbook with 3G
Lenovo on Monday announced the newest incarnation of its netbook line, the S10-2. The S10-2 has slimmed down to a mere .71 inches thick and a starting weight of 2.2 pounds. The new model also comes equipped with Dolby speakers and a new chassis design that comes in black, white, pink, or gray.
Like our recent Editors' Choice budget laptop, the Acer Aspire 3935, the S10-2 employs a multitouch touchpad (hopefully to better effect). For extra protection, the laptop incorporates VeriFace face-recognition software, as well as OneKey Rescue System for data recovery.The S10-2 will likely be a good candidate for our GreenTech certification. It's RoHS and Energy Star compliant, and even comes with energy-management software.
Otherwise, the S10-2 is pretty similar to its predecessors, incorporating three USB ports, a 4-in-1 card reader, and an 89 percent keyboard (this time with an enlarged right shift key). The laptop sports a 10.1-inch LED screen and offers 1GB of RAM and 160GB of storage space. Lenovo promises as much as 6 hours of battery life with the S10-2's 6-cell battery.
The S10-2 should be available later this month for $349. A 3G-equipped version is slated for release this summer.
Kamis, 07 Mei 2009
AMD Shakes Up Organization, Promotes Executives
Advanced Micro Devices Inc merged its microprocessor and graphics chip businesses on Wednesday, its latest effort to adjust its structure and claw back market share lost to larger rival Intel Corp.
The newly merged division will be spearheaded by graphics chip executive Rick Bergman.
The company also announced that Randy Allen, who was in charge of the pivotal business of producing chips for servers and workstation PCs, has left the company.The shake-up marks AMD latest move to revamp is operations and better compete with Intel Corp, the world's No.1 microprocessor maker, in the wake of AMD's bungled introduction of the Barcelona chip in 2007.
The Barcelona chip was delayed for months due to a technical bug, causing AMD to give back hard-won market share to Intel and resulting in massive losses.
Last year, AMD's Dirk Meyer replaced Hector Ruiz as CEO. This year, the corporation spun off its chip manufacturing assets into a separate company.
Bergman was previously Senior Vice President of AMD's graphics products group and joined AMD through the company's $5.4 billion acquisition of Canadian graphics chip firm ATI in 2006.
While AMD has written off nearly more than $2 billion related to that acquisition, recent versions of graphics chips produced by AMD have received positive reviews and helped AMD compete against graphics rival Nvidia Corp, said Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Patrick Wang.
Wednesday's reorganization is "just putting fresh blood up front and hopefully replicating the success they've had in graphics," Wang said.
AMD said the new products group will be responsible for aligning the graphics and microprocessor development groups into a single unified organization.
The company also announced an Advanced Technology group focused on developing future technology, a marketing group, and a customer group responsible for expanding AMD's customer relationships globally, as part of its new organizational structure.
AMD did not provide a reason for Allen's departure, but said in a statement he has been an important engineering and business leader "who has played a key role in many of AMD's most significant achievements in recent years."
AMD shares, which have more than doubled since March, were down 1 cent at $4.30 in after hours trading on Wednesday.
Verizon Launches MiFi Hotspot Without Subscription
Verizon Wireless is now the first carrier to launch Novatel's MiFi personal hotspot gadget, and there's no subscription required.
Yes, if you want to, you can pay $99.99 for the hotspot and $59.99 a month for 5GB of data. But to me, the killer combination for occasional travelers is $269.99 for the device and $15 for an unlimited use 'day pass' - no commitment required. There's also a 250MB plan for $39.99/month.The MiFi is a Wi-Fi router with a twist: it's battery powered and has a cellular modem built in. So just turn it on anywhere Verizon has a signal, and pow, you're broadcasting Wi-Fi to up to five PCs. The battery lasts for about four hours of use and 40 hours of standby on a charge, according to Verizon Wireless. And the MiFi is pretty tiny: only 3.5" x 2.3" x .4" and 2.05 oz.
All five computers will share one EVDO Rev A connection, so you'll be splitting about a megabit down and 500 kilobits up between whomever's on the hotspot. And they'll all contribute to filling the monthly data quota. But still, this makes getting online with Verizon's network easier than ever.
When we first heard about the MiFi last December, Novatel pointed out that the router is actually a tiny Linux PC, capable of running its own software. The router could check e-mail and store messages on a memory card without a PC, in theory. But Verizon's version looks like it's just a Wi-Fi router - for now, at least.
The MiFi will go on sale May 17.
Top OEMs Form Rival Spec for Wireless Multimedia
Another consortium of top technology firms has banded together to promote a high-speed wireless interface, this time taking on the intersection between wireless video transmission and data.
The Wireless Gigabit Alliance (WiGig) includes chip vendors like Atheros, Broadcom, and Intel; OEMs like NEC, Panasonic, and Samsung, as well as Microsoft and a secretive startup, known as Wilocity.
On the surface, the alliance seems very similar to WirelessHD, a group of companies, some of them sharing membership in both groups, that also are targeting 60-GHz wireless technology. The advantage of 60-GHz networks is that they are currently unlicensed, and the spectrum is available internationally, in the United States, Japan, Europe and Asia. On the surface, the alliance seems very similar to WirelessHD, a group of companies, some of them sharing membership in both groups, that also are targeting 60-GHz wireless technology. The advantage of 60-GHz networks is that they are currently unlicensed, and the spectrum is available internationally, in the United States, Japan, Europe and Asia.
Both seek to use frequency wireless links to transmit data, and have apparently approached the problem from different directions. WirelessHD was formed to use the technology to replace HDMI cables in the living rooms as a high-speed point-to-point link for audio and visual data. At CES, however, the company showed off wireless transmission via an extension to its specification. Meanwhile, WiGig executives spoke more generally about transmitting data, which could include multimedia components, and also about obtaining HDCP 2.0 certification.
WiGig has its roots in the 802.11VHT working group, which split into the 802.11ac working group to enhance the performance of traditional 2.4- and 5-GHz networks, and 802.11ad, which covers the 60-GHz technology.
In an interview, Bill McFarland, the chief technical officer at Atheros, said that the goal of WiGig was to encourage "co-existence" of the different wireless technologies using the 60-GHz band, and that the group would sponsor interoperability tests similar to the Wi-Fi Alliance.
WiGig's specification will be done by the end of 2009, said Ali Sadri, chairman of the WiGig Alliance and the director of wireless PAN standards at Intel. Testing will begin soon after that. "A lot has been completed already," Sadri said.
The question, to some, is how the standards will co-exist with others already in the market, especially WirelessHD.
Intel has been heavily involved in the work being done in the 802.11VHT groups, with one Intel engineer, Eldad Perahia, listed as the author of both the sub-60-GHz design document as well as the 60-GHz group. But it's also thought that the specifications aren't due for a year or two. If that's true, wondered John Marshall, the chairman of the WirelessHD consortium, there's a question of how an industry group would be able to guide an engineering consortium.
"What has usually happened is that the IEEE publishes a spec and the Wi-Fi Alliance cherry-picks what they want to support and designs interoperability testing" and logo certifications," Marshall said. "If I understand this right, this would be the opposite."
If special-interest groups differentiate with one another, then there's an opportunity for co-existence, Marshall added. "Hypothetically speaking, if they're saying the same thing as WirelessHD does, then they're trying to pick a fight with WirelessHD."
When asked about competition, WiGig's Sadri said that the alliance had no intention of competing with WirelessHD, a sentiment Marshall shared. "We have no intention of competing with any other 60-GHz technology," Sadri said. "I'm hoping that we can reach out and collaborate in terms of understanding each other."
John LeMoncheck, the chief executive of SiBEAM, which provides the technology behind the WirelessHD technology, said he was pleased that the industry was finally taking notice of the 60-GHz technology. "When we started in 2004, I gotta be honest with you," he said. "We were laughed out of some rooms for talking about 60-GHz technology."
The final differentiator may be products. SiBEAM and Panasonic have already collaborated on a wireless HDTV which is on sale in Japan. But Panasonic also signed on to the WiGig group, as well.
Dell Adds WiMAX Options to Two Notebooks
Dell has added WiMAX as an option to two notebooks, the company said in a blog post on Wednesday.
Specifically, Dell has added an optional WiMAX/802.11n card to the Dell Studio 17 and the Dell Studio XPS 16. The upgrade will only cost $60, according to the blog post by Dell blogger Lionel Menchaca.
By default, both notebooks ship with an 802.11g Wi-Fi card. The Dell Studio 17 starts at $649, while the Dell Studio 16 XPS starts at $1,099As Menchaca noted, however, WiMAX's greatest weakness is its coverage areas: Portland, Ore.; Atlanta, and parts of Baltimore, areas where more conventional 3G technologies already blanket. For his part, Clearwire chairman called those technologies "legacy nonsense".
"Once [WiMAX] is available in more cities, you won't have to spend time looking for hotspots," Menchaca wrote. "Compared to mobile broadband, WiMAX offers flexible service offerings. You can get a day pass or go month-to-month with no long-term contracts required. WiMAX is fast too—it offers peak download rates of about 13Mbps and up to 3Mbps upload speeds."
That's not to say that Dell is betting the farm on WiMAX, however; Dell is also "looking at" LTE, a competing next-gen cellular technology expected to tie together the networks used by AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, and others.
Amazon Officially Launches Widescreen Kindle DX
The DX, the third model in the Kindle line, boasts a 9.7-inch screen, which is 2.5 times the size of the first- and second-generation Kindles, and was designed to display periodicals and textbooks.
The Kindle DX costs a lofty $489, compared with the Kindle 2's $359. The DX is available now for pre-order through Amazon's Kindle DX page and will go on sale this summer.The Kindle DX's E-Ink display now features 16 different shades of gray. The new model has native PDF support for documents that can be imported via USB. And PDF content can be read without scrolling, zooming or panning.
A on the iPhone, auto-rotation automatically switches the DX's display mode when it is flipped by a user. And the DX features 3G wireless access and 3.3 Gbytes of storage, which, according to the company, should hold roughly 3,500 books.
In keeping with the educational focus of the Kindle DX, Amazon has struck deals with three top textbook publishers, including Pearson, Wiley, and Cengage--the three make up 60 percent of the textbook market and include imprints such as Addison-Wesley, Allyn & Bacon, Benjamin Cummings, Longman & Prentice Hall (Pearson); Wadsworth, Brooks/Cole, Course Technology, Delmar, Heinle, Schirmer, South-Western (Cengage); and Wiley Higher Education.
Amazon will also be launching trial programs with a number of universities, including Arizona State University, Case Western Reserve University, Princeton University, Reed College, and Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. The program will make the new device available to students in the fall.
Amazon has also launched deals with two top newspaper publishers, The New York Times Company and Washington Post Company, making subscription content from The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and The Washington Post available at a "reduced price."
Senin, 04 Mei 2009
Adobe Announces Acrobat, Reader Fix
Adobe has announced that they will release an update for a newly-reported vulnerability in Acrobat and Reader on all platforms by May 12th.
The vulnerability was the first of two acknowledged by Adobe on Wednesday. They say the updates will cover Windows versions of Acrobat and Reader 9.x, 8,x and 7.x, and UNIX and Mac versions 9.x and 8.x.Adobe also has confirmed the second vulnerability, but says they have only been able to confirm it as exploitable on UNIX. They are still investigating this issue. The researcher who reported the vulnerability only claimed to have tested on Linux.
In the meantime there are still no reports of exploits in the wild. If you want to mitigate the vulnerability(*) you can do so by disabling JavaScript in Acrobat or Reader. To disable JavaScript in the Reader or Acrobat follow these instructions:
1. Launch Acrobat or Adobe Reader.
2. Select Edit>Preferences
3. Select the JavaScript Category
4. Uncheck the 'Enable Acrobat JavaScript' option
5. Click OK
RIM, HP Announce BlackBerry Print-on-the-Go Tech
Research in Motion and Hewlett-Packard announced a partnership Monday to allow BlackBerry users to print to the nearest physical printer, using cloud services.
Dubbed CloudPrint, the service will be made available to both users of the BlackBerry Enterprise Server, used by business customers, as well as the consumer-focused BlackBerry Internet Service. The service is part of a larger partnership announced Monday between Hewlett-Packard and RIM, which is hosting its Wireless Enterprise Symposium 2009 in Orlando, Flor., this week. Shane Robison, HP's executive vice president and chief strategy and technology officer, will deliver one of the keynote addresses.
As the conference's name suggests, the focus will be on the enterprise. RIM also announced that HP is introducing software to centrally monitor and manage the extended BlackBerry solution ecosystem, including the BlackBerry Enterprise Server software, mail servers, databases, Microsoft Active Directory and server operating systems such as Windows Server. HP also said that its ProLiant servers can be used to run the BES software.
The CloudPrint service will not require an HP printer, or a specialized driver, HP said. It will print documents, photos or Web pages. However, the companies did not provide a timetable for when the service would be made available, and whether it would be provided via RIM's applications store or as an operating-system update.
"RIM and HP are working together to deliver solutions to customers that weave mobility into their daily operations – from innovative new services in the cloud to managed mobile services for the enterprise," said Jim Balsillie, co-chief executive officer, Research In Motion, in a statement. "Through our collaboration with HP, businesses will have access to an expanded set of applications and services for their BlackBerry smartphone deployments."
Rabu, 29 April 2009
Hands On with Office 2007 SP2
The new service pack for Office 2007 adds support for a broader range of file formats and other welcome enhancements.
Microsoft on Tuesday released Service Pack 2 for Microsoft Office 2007, a big update to its productivity suite. With the next major version of the suite—Office 10—not due until early next year, SP2 will be the dominant version of the world's leading productivity software for a while. The most newsworthy capability added by the service pack is support for a broader range of file formats, Open Document Formats (ODF, the open-standard document formats used by OpenOffice) and Adobe PDF in particular. It also allows users to uninstall service pack updates individually, using Microsoft Service Pack Uninstall Tool for the 2007 Microsoft Office Suite. PCMag.com got an early look at the service pack, though not at the uninstall tool.
It's been speculated in the tech press that the support for Adobe's page definition format finally being baked into Office was a result of a court ruling or agreement with Adobe, but since many other third-party products have long included the ability to save to PDF format, the move seems more a sign of Microsoft acknowledging the popularity of the competitor's format. Incidentally, the option for saving as PDF also offers to save the file in Microsoft's competing XPS format.
A representative for Microsoft explained the move as follows: "As far as including PDF, this is not a result of a court ruling or some other agreement. The decision to add PDF, and XPS, support to Office is consistent with our long held belief that customers should be able to choose the document format that best meets their needs in a given situation. This is why Microsoft has supported many formats in Office in the past and is including support for these additional formats in SP2."
Microsoft also claims improved performance with multiple graphics elements present, better printout quality, and as the Office Sustained Engineering blog notes, "Improved interoperability using standard DrawingML markup to describe the visual properties of the SmartArt graphic and Substantial improvements to Forms-based authentication support in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and SPD." Those last won't affect most everyday users, but there are many fixes and app-specific updates that will be welcome productivity adds. Access gets the ability to export reports to Excel spreadsheets, Excel gets improved charting functionality, and Outlook and PowerPoint get improved performance.
Service Pack 2 updates all editions of Office from Basic to Ultimate, and all Office applications. This means not just the biggies—Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint—but also InfoPath, Publisher, OneNote, Groove, Access, SharePoint, Project, Visio, and InterConnect. It also updates shared ancillary programs such as Proofing Tools, Printing Assistant, and Viewers, plus updates for all languages.
Service Pack 2 includes more than 2,000 updates in all. For this reason, the update can take a while if you have a lot of apps that haven't been updated. The Microsoft team warned me that the update could take more than an hour to install, but on a 2GHz dual-core Athlon Vista machine with 2GB RAM, it only about 15 minutes. Of course, the update time depends on how many Office apps are installed on your system, how up-to-date they are, and the speed of the system itself.
When I tried the new Saving to PDF feature, it worked without a hitch, and now the option for that and for OpenDocument Text format appear right in the main Save As choices in Word. In my tests, PDFs saved complete with fonts, formatting, and images.
I did run into a snag on an XP machine: I was unable to install SP2 on an XP system running Office 2007, getting the error "A failure occurred during installation." The error noted a Knowledge Base article I could look up to see what was going on, but the KB article had not yet been posted at the time of my testing. On other test systems, the updater sometimes produced a dialog stating "There are no products affected by this package installed on this system." Despite this message, the Office programs' About dialogs showed that the version was now SP2. My guess is that because the updater consists of two executable program files, the second did not contain new updates for my setup. When the update is released on Microsoft Update and Download Center, this two-step process may not be necessary.
SP2 also includes server product updates: Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP2 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server SP2 include fixes and performance improvements. The servers also support more Web browsers, and will run on Windows Server 2008 R2 at its release. SP2 also improves Groove Server's synchronization reliability, LDAP connectivity, and "robustness."
Microsoft Vine Beta Targets 'Societal Networking'
Is Microsoft learning something from its $240 million investment in Facebook? The software giant this week unveiled Vine, a beta social networking application intended to help families, friends, or neighbors keep in touch.
Vine is a downloadable dashboard accessible with a Windows Live ID, though it can also be accessed via mobile phones and e-mail.
Select your location, the people with whom you want to keep in touch, and start sending alerts or reports to those contacts.
"Microsoft Vine is appropriate for any small group of people who want to stay in touch, informed, and involved – families, neighbors, sports teams, school committees, volunteer groups, or faith-based groups," according to Microsoft.
Vine is currently available only in the U.S. To access it, users must request an invitation by sending in their e-mail address at Vine.net."Microsoft Vine aims to create an inclusive network so that ultimately anyone can participate, through a social networking application such as Twitter or Facebook or using e-mail, any computer connected to the Internet, or a mobile phone, kitchen phone, or special needs device," Microsoft said.
What's included in Vine?
When you specify your city, Vine will alert you when there's a news story or public safety announcement associated with your location via a blue notification. The company will pull from over 20,000 local media sources and public safety information from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Vine lets you specify which types of information you want to receive -- select alerts using the Vitals management area, and who can send alerts to you in the People management area.
Have something you want to share that you can't say on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, in an e-mail, a text message, LinkedIn, or a phone call? Set up "alerts" for quick blasts of information, or write "reports" for more detailed information.
"Check in safe and well to let your family know you are okay, let trusted neighbors know you're headed out of town, keep people informed of situations that matter, or share general information like the team practice schedule for the week," Microsoft said.
Microsoft has dubbed the effort societal networking.
"Over time, the network will provide advanced capabilities to help individuals, communities, and organizations work together to fundamentally improve quality of life and be better prepared for any disaster," the company said. "Microsoft is working toward a new generation of software and services that will enable society to self-organize effectively toward a broad range of goals."
To access Vine, you must have a PC with Windows Vista or XP with SP2, a broadband Internet connection, Internet Explorer 6 or Firefox 3, 100MB of space for the Vine download, and 500MB for the .Net framework version 3.5 with SP1.
Samsung Plans First Android Phone for Europe
Samsung Electronics Co said on Monday that its first phone based on Google Inc's Android operating system would be available in major European countries Europe in June.
The company said its 17500 phone has touchscreen controls and runs on networks based on HSDPA, a high-speed wireless technology popular in Europe.Samsung did not reveal specific plans for selling the phone in the United States where smaller rival Motorola Inc is developing its own range of phones based on Android for release later this year.
Android integrates features such as Gmail and Google maps in the phone and includes a virtual store for software applications, competing with the App Store that helped sales of Apple Inc's iPhone.
South Korea's Samsung follows Taiwan's HTC Corp, the first to launch a phone based on the Android system last year. HTC has an exclusive agreement to sell its next Generation Android phone via Vodafone Group Plc in four countries this Spring.
Samsung said its Android phone will also have a five megapixel camera an memory capacity of up to 40 Gigabytes, including external memory, as well as Internet links based on Wi-Fi, a short range high speed wireless technology often found in cafes and airports
Meet 'Facet,' the RealNetworks DVD Ripper Box
It's not every day that a court case drags a product roadmap out into the light of day. Yet that's what happened with "Facet," a set-top box that RealNetworks hopes will do for DVDs what MP3s did for the home stereo.
Somewhat ironically, Hollywood is positioning Facet and the RealDVD software as just another illegal DVD ripper.
The fate of Facet, of course, rests in the hands of Judge Marilyn Hall Patel, who is expected to rule in a case this week pitting Real versus the top Hollywood studios and its content control association. The product in question is actually known as RealDVD, code-named "Vegas," which launched last year before the studios halted sales with a restraining order; Facet has been in development nearly as long, and uses the same technology.
A spokesman said Facet would be priced at less than $300. If Judge Patel rules for RealNetworks without conditions, then the device could be out by Christmas; if not, the company may have to redesign the box to factor in any additional restrictions, he said. A 500-Gbyte drive could hold between 70 and 75 DVDs, he said.
In court, Real chief executive Rob Glaser showed off what Facet actually is, at the moment: a box about the size of a DVD player, with a glowing blue status light. Real is working with Taiwan ODMs to build the first boxes, the Real spokesman said.
Court rules forbid pictures in Judge Patel's courtroom, and Real representatives declined to allow the box to be photographed.
The box displayed the RealNetworks logo while booting up, then displayed a simple overview screen with images of the front covers of DVDs. One key feature that Real hopes to hype is Facet's ability to load an entire boxed set of DVDs, and then remember on which disc and which episode to resume playback after a user returns.
When a user loads a disc to be copied, the screen displays one of Real's chief defenses against piracy: a nagware screen.
"RealDVD should only be used with discs you own," the screen said. "If you own the disc press play."
Glaser acknowledged that are several, if not tens, of illegal third-party ripper software available that can do more on a PC's hard drive, than either Facet or the RealDVD product. Glaser said that the one of the features that he would have liked to include was a feature to compress the video so that more movies could be stored, a feature that the Content Scrambling System contract governing the copy protections on DVDs prohibited.
But, Glaser said, the RealDVD and Facet technology was designed to appeal to families with small children who would scratch the DVDs, as well as consumers with large video collections. Business travelers hopefully would also gravitate toward the RealDVD product, ripping DVDs for use on a plane via a laptop, Glaser said.
Senin, 27 April 2009
Microsoft Windows 7 Release Candidate: An Early Look
The Release Candidate puts some finishing touches on some new features and adds a good deal of polish to the OS.
The Windows 7 Beta, the next version of Microsoft's flagship operating system, was all about finalizing underlying changes to the system architecture. The Release Candidate, which the company will make available on the TechNet website on April 30th and available for public consumption on May 5th, puts some finishing touches on some new features and adds a good deal of polish to the OS. And that polish is apparent from the first moments you begin installing it: The install routine has been refined, with new icons and a few splash screens ("Checking video performance") with a starburst-type effect. Even the Starting Windows and log-on screens gain a cool, patterned background.The Windows 7 Beta was lauded for its stability. The Release Candidate makes the operating system feel just a touch faster; it's quicker to load and just a bit more responsive. And you'll be happy to hear that it installed in no time, too—as little as 20 minutes in my experience. Compared to the hour it often took to install Windows Vista, this thing flies.
Users will find many welcome additions to personalization options, including substantially more themes, more user icons, and new sound effects. New Aero Themes (they're no longer called Windows Themes) include Architecture, Scenes, and Characters, and you'll find 36 user icons rather than the 12 included in the beta. The aged Device Manager and the Control Panel have gained new icons as well, but more important, if you pin the Control Panel to the Taskbar, you'll note a very versatile new jump list. As you play with these "smart" jump lists, they become more and more useful, learning the most recently or most commonly opened files; how did we live with "dumb" Taskbar icons before?
The Control Panel itself has seen a few minor tweaks. A new "View by" menu appears beneath the Control Panel search box, which defaults to the category view but also lets you see all Control Panel items (rather than clicking the "All Control Panel Items" item, as in the beta). The Windows 7 Beta had a whopping 59 Control Panel items; the Release Candidate whittles that list down to 47. Gone are: Biometric Devices, ClearType Text Tuner, Default Location, Feedback (released just for the beta, this one doesn't really count, I suppose), Game Controllers, iSCSI Initiator, Offline Files, Pen and Touch, System Icons, Tablet PC Settings, Text to Speech, and Windows SideShow. Many of those features have been swallowed by the Devices and Printers control panel, but a few are surprising. What's happened to SideShow, for example?
On the Internet side, IE8 is out of beta! The Windows 7 beta came with a beta version of IE8, build number 8.0.7000.0. In the Release Candidate, the beta tag is gone, and IE8 is updated to version number 8.0.7100.0. Is this a newer version? Hardly. The build string of Internet Explorer is tied to the operating system you've got it installed on. The beta was build 7000, and the Release Candidate is build 7100. Install IE8 on an XP system and you'll see a 6001 in that build string.
Windows Media Center has gone through dramatic changes between Windows Vista and Windows 7. Eagle eyed users of the Release Candidate will note that PlayReady, Microsoft's new DRM scheme for protecting recorded television shows, is being updated to version 1.3—no word yet on what changes are included there, or when the scheme will be available for download on Microsoft's Web site. The inclusion of Internet TV in the Guide is a big leap forward, exposing even those without an integrated TV tuner to the fun of IP based TV. This feature was in the Beta, however, and despite the recent efforts to alphabetize items listed under the Movies, News, Sports, and other categories, the hoped for integration of Hulu, TV.com, and other IP-based TV doesn't exist. Yet.
Conficker Virus Starts to Attack PCs, Experts Say
A malicious software program known as Conficker that many feared would wreak havoc on April 1 is slowly being activated, weeks after being dismissed as a false alarm, security experts said.
BOSTON - A malicious software program known as Conficker that many feared would wreak havoc on April 1 is slowly being activated, weeks after being dismissed as a false alarm, security experts said.Conficker, also known as Downadup or Kido, is quietly turning an unknown number of personal computers into servers of e-mail spam, they added.
The worm started spreading late last year, infecting millions of computers and turning them into "slaves" that respond to commands sent from a remote server that effectively controls an army of computers known as a botnet.
Its unidentified creators started using those machines for criminal purposes in recent weeks by loading more malicious software onto a small percentage of computers under their control, said Vincent Weafer, a vice president with Symantec Security Response, the research arm of the world's largest security software maker, Symantec Corp.
Conficker installs a second virus, known as Waledac, that sends out e-mail spam without knowledge of the PC's owner, along with a fake anti-spyware program, Weafer said.
The Waledac virus recruits the PCs into a second botnet that has existed for several years and specializes in distributing e-mail spam.
Conficker also carries a third virus that warns users their PCs are infected and offers them a fake anti-virus program, Spyware Protect 2009 for $49.95, according to Russian-based security researcher Kaspersky Lab. If they buy it, their credit card information is stolen and the virus downloads even more malicious software.
Weafer said that while he believes the number of infected machines that have become active is relatively small, he expects a consistent stream of attacks to follow, with other types of malware distributed by Conficker's authors.
"Expect this to be long-term, slowly changing," he said of the worm. "It's not going to be fast, aggressive."
Researchers feared the network controlled by the Conficker worm might be deployed on April 1 for the first time since the worm surfaced last year because it was programed to increase communication attempts from that date.
The security industry formed a task force to fight the worm, bringing widespread attention that experts said probably scared off the criminals who command the slave computers.
That task force thwarted the worm partially by using the Internet's traffic control system to block access to servers that control the slave computers.
Viruses that turn PCs into slaves exploit weaknesses in Microsoft's Windows operating system. The Conficker worm is especially tricky because it can evade corporate firewalls by passing from an infected machine onto a USB memory stick, then onto another PC.
The Conficker botnet is one of many such networks controlled by syndicates that authorities believe are based in eastern Europe, southeast Asia, China and Latin America.
Obama To Ditch Sectera Edge for BlackBerry?
President Obama has been carrying two smartphones: a BlackBerry 8830 that he uses for personal calls, and a General Dynamics Sectera Edge that he uses for secret government business.
Until now.
Those two devices will soon become one, once Obama's BlackBerry gets a SecurVoice software package from Genesis Key, according to The Washington Times. Obama will then be able to use his BlackBerry for "Top Secret" communicationsGeneral Dynamics told us back in January that standard government-issue BlackBerries can be used for "sensitive, but unclassified" calls, a few notches short of Top Secret.v
According to Genesis Key, SecurVoice uses Type 1 encryption algorithms, the same NSA-developed spy-movie stuff used by the Sectera Edge.
The Times story says that right now, the General Dynamics Corp.-made Sectera must be plugged into the presidential BlackBerry, which makes no sense. They also say BlackBerry makers Research in Motion are based in Toronto, which they aren't. But we'll let that pass. There's no reason that the rest of the story couldn't be true.
Microsoft Still Sees Potential in Yahoo Partnership
U.S. software company Microsoft still sees value in a potential partnership with Yahoo.
COLOGNE, Germany - U.S. software company Microsoft still sees value in a potential partnership with Yahoo.
even though it is no longer wants to buy it, chief executive Steve Ballmer said on Friday.
"I have said many times that we no longer are interested in acquiring Yahoo, but we'd see the potential to create real value by partnering with Yahoo," he said at an industry event in Germany."I have said many times that when the time is right I'm sure we will have such discussions and I've said many times I'm not going to tell you when the time is right."
Technology blog All Things Digital reported this month the chief executives of Microsoft and Yahoo had met to discuss potential partnerships between the companies' Internet search and advertising operations. At the time, both companies declined to comment on the report.
Earlier this week, Ballmer said Microsoft was not interested in buying a hardware company following Oracle Corp's proposed takeover of Sun Microsystems.
Kamis, 23 April 2009
AMD Upgrades 'Dragon' With New Phenom II BE
AMD has added a second "Black Edition" microprocessor to its Phenom II X4 lineup, pairing it with three new utilities to improve the overall system performance.
The 3.2-GHz Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition is 200 MHz faster than the existing Phenom II X4 945 Black Edition. The 955 is priced at $245, which AMD executives claimed gave them price/performance leadership in the enthusiast category. The addition of the 955 represents a slight shift in strategy for AMD; usually, the chip maker has only offered one Black Edition processor at a time. Both the 955 and the 945 are identical, save for the difference in speed. However, the market still has pent-up demand for the older 945, and AMD intends to keep the slightly older processor as long as customers keep asking for it, said Brent Barry, a desktop gaming strategist for AMD.
AMD claims that the 955 is, on average, about 30 to 48 percent faster than last year's "Spider" platform, and that the refreshed Dragon platform with the 955 is about 10 to 15 percent faster than the older 945-based Dragon platform. The bulk of the gains have come from the 4890 graphics enhancement, Barry said.
AMD also launched enhancements to both its OverDrive and Cool'N'Quiet technologies, offering fine-tuned performance enhancements for overclocking, and improved power management, respectively. Barry said the new 955 eliminates many of the "freezing bugs" that can cause a chip cooled to under 80 degrees Celsius to basically shut down.
The OverDrive 3.0 software utility features include AMD Black Edition memory profiles, with pre-tuned memory profiles for the Black Edition and DDR-2 and DDR-3 memory; AMD Smart Profiles, with custom performance tuning on an application-by-application basis, and customized autoclock and fan control enhancements. The utility has also been tuned to work with Windows 7.
"We're trying to help develop more of the overall platform experience," Barry said. As the only silicon manufacturer with a high-performance graphics and CPU line, "there are all the different pieces of the platform stuff that we can do and other people can't…software is an easy, quick way to do that," he said.
AMD's Cool'N'Quiet was the first effort by a manufacturer to optimize a PC's microprocessor for low power, and the company's third update to the technology builds on that premise. An enhanced CoolCore version shares the same technology as is found in AMD's new Opteron EE chips, introduced Wednesday; parts of the cache can be turned off when not in use. SmartFetch writes data stored in the level-1 and -2 caches to the shared level-3 cache when a core shuts off, allowing the other cores to access the data without waking up the original core. Finally, an advanced version of AMD's PowerNow! Technology can double the number of available power states, allowing finer granularity in the tradeoff between lowering power consumption and increasing performance.
AMD's ATI Radeon HD 4890 graphics card, part of the Dragon platform, also has a similar capability, throttling its power in response to low activity.
Symantec to Release New Parental-Control System
OnlineFamily.Norton is an Internet-based service that protects and manages each child's Internet access on all Windows PCs and Macs in the home. Until January 2010, the service will be completely free for parents.
Symantec is releasing a new parental-control system that isn't just focused on restricting and controlling a child's access to the Internet, but also to foster dialog between parents and kids about online safety. OnlineFamily.Norton (formerly known as Norton Online Family) is an Internet-based service that can protect and manage each child's Internet access on all Windows PCs or Macs in the home. While normally priced at $60 per year, the service will be completely free until January 2010.
OnlineFamily.Norton includes all the expected features of a parental-control program, but adds its own twist: It can block sites in specific categories, or just warn kids to stay away from them. Parents can set a weekly schedule of times when Internet access is permitted as well as a daily or weekly cap. But it doesn't necessarily cut off access outside these limits. Instead, it can give the child a warning and send a notification to the parent.
Parents can choose to monitor their kids' IM traffic and Web surfing, or back off and only monitor seeming violations. It's also possible to view just what your kids are searching for on popular search engines, and to force "safe search." And as long as your kids access their social-networking profiles from home computers, it can track their presence in different social-networking sites and even send a notification if they supply a false age.
The program's settings are automatically boiled down into a set of "house rules" for each child. The OnlineFamily.Norton Web site even includes suggestions on initiating "the talk" about online safety with your kids.
To ensure that the product conveys the right message, Symantec has assembled an advisory board of experts, among them former PCMag Editor Robin Raskin, to discuss children and technology.
iPhone Dominates Mobile Ad Share; Android Rising
AdMob has released its March 2009 Mobile Metrics Report, which this time around focuses on Google Android smartphones--meaning, essentially, the T-Mobile G1, since new Android handsets are MIA lately. The AdMob report said Android is actually doing pretty well, with two percent of all U.S. requests. That puts it in the fourth spot behind the iPhone, the BlackBerry Curve, and the BlackBerry Pearl.However, "fourth place" doesn't mean a whole lot here when you compare it to the iPhone. "Both grew more quickly than the market, but iPhone growth was much faster than Android," the report said. "To put some numbers to this, we found that Android traffic in the US grew an average of 47% per month since it launched five months ago while iPhone traffic in the US grew an average of 88% per month in the five months following the launch of their App Store."
Interestingly, Android has now caught Palm OS in overall smartphone OS market share; each company has six percent of the market. The iPhone leads with 50 percent, while RIM plays second fiddle at 22 percent. Meanwhile, Windows Mobile is sitting in third place at 11 percent.
Kindle Helps Boost Amazon Sales 18 Percent
Amazon reported an increase in sales of 18 percent for the first quarter, buoyed by sales of its second generation e-book, the Kindle 2.
"We're grateful and excited that Kindle sales have exceeded our most optimistic expectations," Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com, said in a statement.
Total revenue came in at $4.89 billion, up 18 percent from $4.13 billion during the same period last year. Net income was $177 million, up 24 percent from $143 million last year.Amazon did not provide any additional details on number of Kindle 2 sales. The device made its debut in February, several months after Oprah Winfrey endorsed the original Kindle on her talk show.
Sales in North America and Canada were up 21 percent to $2.58 billion from last year. Global sales of electronics and other general merchandise sales were up 38 percent to $2.05 billion.
Many users were taking advantage of the third-party sellers on the site. Items shipped on behalf of that program were up more than 300 percent from last year, Amazon said.
Bezos and chief financial officer Thomas Szkutak acknowledged during a conference call with analysts that sales for big ticket items were growing, but not as fast as they were in previous years.
Yahoo Shutting Down Geocities
Carol Bartz does not mess around. Ever since taking the helm from the company's long-demonized Jerry Yang, the new Yahoo CEO has made it very clear that her primary objective is streamlining the struggling search giant. The latest casualty of the company's cuts is Geocities. Yes, Geocities is still around--or it was, until now.
Yahoo, which purchased the site building operation back in 1999, quietly closed it down this week--barring new users from signing up with the service. People visiting the site are greeted with the simple message, "Sorry, new GeoCities accounts are no longer availavle." Existing users can still access their accounts, but Yahoo has begun aggressively pushing them to its premium Web Hosting. Once the cream of the Webhosting crop, Geocities (which cost Yahoo a cool $2.87 billion) had been floundering in recent year, likely due in no small part to the success of free blogging apps like Blogger and Wordpress.com.
While it's understandable that Yahoo would want to pull its resources away from the site, I can't help but get a little sentimental on this one. The first Website I ever created was hosted on Geocities--actually, the first several were. I know I'm not alone on this one. Any other fellow Geocities ex-pats out there want to chime in?
