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A little bit of IT history goes with Amstrad
News that Alan Sugar has sold Amstrad to BSkyB will trigger a frisson of nostalgia among older British computer users. The company was never technically innovative - in fact, it seemed to have a policy of using technology that was slightly behind the curve, perhaps because it was cheaper to do so. But it produced two designs that were seminal for UK computing.
One was the PC 1512, the first PC cheap enough to get mass sales among UK home users. By PC, of course, I mean IBM-compatible. I bought a PC 1512 with 640Kbyte of Ram, and a luxurious 10Mbyte hard disk, plus an Epson dot-matrix printer for less than £1000, which was a very good deal for the time.
Like most IBM-compatibles of those days, it was not quite pukka. The monitor drew its power from the computer, so that you could not simply swap in a new one, and the keyboard used a non-standard connector. But it ran IBM-compatible software, which is what counted.
The 1512 was for techies, but the Amstrad PCW 8256 wordprocessor got the technophobes using computers. It was clunky, and hard to use, but it cost little more than an electric typewriter and was a hundred times better than one.
It fulfilled a prediction that I had seen some years earlier, in the first article I read describing a word processor. For a journalist like myself, the idea sounded wonderful almost beyond belief. Even more incredible was the forecast that such a device would be available within ten years for around £300. The PCW 8256 cost £300 complete (as I recall) with printer,
These were inspired bundles rather than advanced technology and Amstrad never managed to repeat their success, despite a succession of eccentric forays into the market. About ten years ago it stopped stopped trying, and moved to contract manufacture of devices such as set-top boxes.
Will Cisco regret dropping Linksys brand?
I find it odd Cisco has chosen to ditch the Linksys brand after buying the consumer networking company in 2003.
Whenever someone mentions Cisco to me, I immediately think of servers, corporate networks and difficult certification exams. Linksys, however, sat nicely with the other big-name consumer brands such as Netgear and D-Link.
No doubt Cisco wants people to think industrial-level quality when buying their wireless router for the home, but unless they spend a fortune on marketing I suspect consumers will end up plumping for more recognised home-user brands.
ShrinkMyTunes does wobbly magic
A new piece of software promises to cut mp3 file size in quarter without a noticeable hit in quality.
The software's called ShrinkMyTunes and is being sold for £20 by compression experts Zgroup, who also sell Onspeed, the software that compresses websites for faster browsing, in particular across dial-up connections.
Like Onspeed, Zgroup claims ShrinkMyTunes was developed by Nasa scientists. Mp3s are blown up to a large (50MBish) file size before being analysed and certain bits of the music being stripped out.
The resulting file size is reduced to as much as a quarter of the size of the original mp3, letting you store more tracks on an mp3 player like the iPod Shuffle. Additionally any tags the mp3 has remain the same and there's a setting to replace the original mp3 so that Itunes' playlists and the like don't change.
When it came to crunch time though, ShrinkMyTunes faltered. Jamie True, joint CEO for Zgroup, claimed another journalist and I wouldn't be able to hear the difference between a ShrinkMyTunes encoded track and the original mp3.
True was confident because he claimed the editor of a rival publication was unable to tell the two apart, despite using a set of £300 headphones. Using a less expensive, but still seriously good, £80 pair from Bang and Olufsen, both of us could tell which the ShrinkMyTunes track was.
Without a shadow of a doubt the sound is duller and with less treble definition. However, it's quite possible that this type of compression is much better than regular 32Kbit/sec and 64Kbit/sec audio tracks, which are of a similar size to the variable bitrate mp3s produced by ShrinkMyTunes.
Death of mobile TV is exaggerated
News that BT is closing its Movio mobile TV service, which is sold through Virgin Media, broke late yesterday and followed quickly on the EC's endorsement of DVB-H technology for this type of work. Movio uses DAB-IP, a variant of the same technology the UK uses for digital radio.
There is some sense in the EC's decision, in that it is important to get critical mass around one technology and if possible to get it accepted through Europe to get economies of scale and wide interoperability of devices. The EC cites how focussing on GSM helped Europe leap ahead of US on mobile-phone infrastructure, while operators across the pond got bogged down in competing technologies.
There does not seem much to choose between DVB-H and DAB-IP technically, though proponents of each might argue that there is. The EC's move does mean Britain may not be able to make optimum use of its national DAB infrastructure.
But DVD-H was not the only reason Movio services are to cease. There were simply not enough users, and they had a very narrow choice of handsets. Also mobile operators were not keen because they wanted to deliver similar services uses their own spectrum.
Some will no doubt argue that the demise of Movio proves mobile TV has no future. This would be a mistake – or, rather, half a mistake.
Content providers have tended to regard mobile TV as a small version of living-room TV, with a few extras such as downloadable clips of goals and celebrities and (it has to be said) porn.
My hunch is that it will develop into what is virtually a new medium in its own right: a mix of radio, TV, newspapers, magazines and the internet. Mobile TV in the traditional sense is dead, but mobile multimedia will live and flourish.
And that has a long way to go yet before it can hit the mainstream. The gadgets (like the iPhone) are the wrong size, and the technology is not there yet – though it is getting close enough for us to see what is going to be possible.
BT and Virgin Media did us all a favour by giving it a try. But we must be careful not to draw the wrong lessons.
Barcelona will rule data centres
Barcelona will double the number of cores in rack servers without changing the power budget if server managers choose it rather than Intel's quad core chips, AMD announced at its latest press confidence in London yesterday.
The claims join AMD's change in emphasis from performance advantages, to the power savings Barcelona offers compared to Intel's quad cores.
"We were guilty of talking too much about native quad core designs versus multi-chip. Now we've changed the language a little bit to speak about the benefits of native design" said EMEA channel market development manager Felipe Payet.
His colleague Steve Demski, Opteron Product Manager, then went on to hype up power-savings offered by native design. Firstly he said comparing AMD's and Intel's Thermal Design Power (TDP) wasn't an apples to apples comparison, since AMD's TDP takes into account the memory controller, whereas Intel's memory controller resides in the Northbridge.
Demski also made some interesting observations regarding AMD's use of DDR2 memory, since it consumes far less power than Intel's FBDimms.
The difference in power is around 60 Watts for eight Dimms and is AMD's trump card in the server space.
The change in emphasis has also led to AMD only comparing Barcelona performance to Rev F (the latest dual-core) Opterons explicitly. AMD will no longer state that Barcelona will be faster than Intel, instead just stating it will be "competitive".
While this doesn't mean much in the server space (where performance per watt is king), it could be a sign that upcoming consumer quad-core chips won't be significantly faster.
The fastest Barcelona quad-cores will leave AMD at 2GHz, going to manufacturers in August and hitting retail in September. Higher-clocked quad cores will arrive in late 2007. Look out for a review soon.
Commodore just misses out on Microsoft fix
We've just reviewed the first Commodore system we've seen for several years, the high end XX. You can also see a video review here and admire its high quality paint job.
It's the fastest system we've seen so far but SLI performance still disappointed in many areas. We thought the problem lay with Nvidia's Vista drivers, however it turns out Microsoft is also part, if not all, of the problem.
The software giant has just released a patch to solve some of the problems associated with dual-GPU systems, claiming poor performance is because Vista "does not forward driver-render requests to the secondary GPU." We're currently testing with the new patch and hope to post results soon.
Until then you get the patch from Microsoft, here. Microsoft makes you jump through several hoops to get it; it will only email the patch rather than make it a freely available download.
£77 laptop is scam
A £78 Linux-based notebook with a 1.5GHz Celeron processor that turned heads across the internet looks to be a scam.
Swedish company Medison claimed to be behind the feat, but there is now evidence that customers who bought the notebook at a higher price six months ago have still not received the product.
Cue a flurry of media retraction from myself and Scandinavian site Ingeniøren who originally broke the story.
It just goes to show you should always read a review of a notebook from a trusted website or magazine, to prove the offer is genuine.
Free backup software with a twist
Paragon has created some backup software which is free to use until you need to restore a partition.
This essentially means it's free until something goes wrong on your PC. Customers will be able to get some peace of mind knowing they have a backup though and it's a great way to get hordes of people using it.
I wonder if a similar possibility could arise in the anti-virus market, where a company offers a free product until you get a virus. Then to clear up the infection, you'll have to pay for the full product.
No word on its release date, but Drive Backup Express will be available here if you want to backup you system in one fell, free swoop.
24Mb broadband from Newnet (if you live in Portsmouth)
Newnet has announced its 24Mb broadband package will be debut in Portsmouth next month.
Of course, unless you're transferring a hell of a lot of data the actual usefulness of anything above 8Mb is questionable. What's more interesting is the 1Mb upload speed - allowing devices such as home network cameras to provide smooth video feeds etc.
If you're confused why the folk in Portsmouth are getting special treatment, Newnet is giving priority to areas where it has the most customers - which makes sense.
Sign up for a year, and the cheapest package is just £11.49/month - however this really is just a headline grabbing rate.
You can buy pre-paid additional gigabytes if you think you might go over the cap (and surely anyone requiring a 24Mb service would do so in a day or two) at a cost of 70p for 1GB. However, these come in 10GB blocks, so you'll have to splash out at least £7.
If you go over the cap without having pre-paid for extra gigabytes you'll be charged £1.30 per GB in 3GB blocks - so that's £3.90 each time you go over the cap.
Still, the Home M 24 rate seems good value at £18.49/month with a 12GB cap.
First consumer Wireless USB products certified
The USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) yesterday announced the first six consumer products to gain Wireless USB certification. They are:
Dell Inspiron 1720 notebook
D-Link Wireless USB adapter (DUB-1210) & 4-port Wireless USB Hub (DUB-2240)
Iogear Wireless USB Hub & Adapter kit
Lenovo Thinkpad T61/T61p 15.4in widescreen notebook
Wireless USB uses ultra-wideband (UWB) radio technology to give fast short range wireless data transfers - up to 480Mbits/sec at 3m and 110Mbits/sec at 10 meters, making it roughly equivalent to wired USB2 speeds. 
Tom Tom drums up cash for map maker
According to several news reports, Dutch sat nav company Tom Tom is offering around $2.5bn to buy struggling map maker Tele Atlas, the company that supplies Tom Tom's digital base maps for its popular GPS devices.
Tele Atlas is the number two digital map provider after its chief rival Navteq. Both companies have over the years created massive street-level databases using teams of field researchers pounding the highways and byways of the US and Europe. This has helped them avoid the tricky and expensive problems of licensing government map data. Tom Tom's new Mapshare service that lets users update and correct errors they find will be a handy tool to reduce some of Tele Atlas' shoe leather costs.
Skype humbled on Radio 4
Bad publicity for Skype on BBC 4's Today programme this morning during a John Humphrys interview with Sir Michael Lyons, chairman of the BBC Trust, about the latest phone-in scandal. Lyons, speaking from New Zealand, sounded as if he was at the other end of a tunnel bored through the earth. Then the connection cut off altogether. "Something called Skype has broken," said Humphrys, evidently thinking it was some species of machine. Nice to see that the BBC is trying to keep its phone bills down, though.
Santa's best present can help you keep tabs on your home
With just five-and-a-bit months to go to Christmas, vendors are already plugging their product ranges for the annual spendathon. There have been no less than three press events events over the past few days showing products that vendors hope will be filling stockings on December 24.
Meccano is still a name to be reckoned with, for those of us of a certain age, and I am pleased to report that the brand is on my favourite gadgets among this year's Christmas crop … a little robot called Spyke.
He has a video camera, microphone, loudspeaker and two motors and can scurry about the house on his tracked wheels. You can control him from a Wifi network, and even over the internet, so you can check whether the house is on fire or the wife is in bed with the milkman.
Spyke is a little sinister, I have to admit, but it sounds great fun and could be useful if it works as well as promised. It comes in kit form for £199.95, but sadly it does not use the old-style Meccano metal parts, with their proper nuts and bolts - a retro design surely long overdue for coming back in fashion. It's being sold by Firebox.
Firebox also has what looks like a reasonable kit for podcasting. It costs £89.95, including software, a mixer, and a microphone. No details on the type of mike but we hope to review the product soon.
Archos was showing off its latest portable media players (PMPs), including the Archos 605. This has a 
4.3in 800 x 480 touch screen, with a choice of hard disks ranging from 4Gb to 160Gbytes, and prices starting at around £200. You can browse the web over Wifi, and like the iPhone (and Nokia's N800) flick through pages with your finger.
By contrast, the iPhone's 3.5in screen has a resolution of 480 x 320 pixels. Of course the Archos 605 does not carry a phone, but no doubt its owners will. PMP vendors appear confident that the iPhone hype will boost their own sales and I think they may be right.
Good news and bad news as gossip has Samsung eying AMD
There was mixed news from Samsung today with profits for the second quarter hitting a four-year low, and talk of the company being ripe for a takeover.
Yet Datamonitor reported that the company has overtaken Motorola as the world's second largest mobile phone vendor. And intriguingly our sister site The Inquirer reports a rumour that Samsung, far from being taken over, is thinking of buying US chip giant AMD.
Even the Inquirer suggests that the story be taken with a pinch of salt but the very idea could start to ring alarm bells in the US. Samsung's semiconductor sales may be down 4 percent but it remains one of the world's leading semiconductor vendors.
Taiwan's brave Via is the only non-US company offering processors using the overwhelming dominant x86 architecture, as used in PCs. If giant Samsung got in on the act via AMD it could present a formidable challenge to Intel, and shift computing's centre of gravity even further eastwards.
Who needs fantasy bombers?
Tactless announcement from Microsoft about a new game for the Xbox 360 games console. Bomberman Live is said to deliver unparalleled excitement in a grid-like arena avoiding opponents and their bombs. Those of us who run the gauntlet of demented suicide cultists on the grid-like London Tube each morning and evening might be forgiven for feeling than we already have excitement enough.
Webpad gives affordable mobile access but is let down by keyboard
Demonstrations of the accelerated GPRS web access at last night's launch of the PocketSurfer 2 webpad were impressive but its true speed will be hard to judge until we try it out in practice.
Developer Datawind claims speed-ups of up to 30 times but you would not get that when downloading a Zip file or an image in a format incorporating compression.
Datawind chief executive Suneet Tuli showed a video of Pocketsurfer 2 pulling in eBay pages actually minutes faster than an Iphone. But the speed-up would not help if you want to watch streamed video, for instance.
Still, for the sort of information you really need on the move – traffic, train timetables, weather, street maps, headlines, email, calendar – the Pocketsurfer 2 looks good. And GPRS access, unlike HSDPA or Wifi, is available more or less anywhere in the UK and most of Europe (though it's unclear what the arrangements are for roaming).
Tuli admitted that he could have included Wifi access for less than $10 on build cost. It may have been a mistake not to do so, because Wifi would be better in some circumstances and would help cut Datawind's own GPRS bill – it is essentially reselling bulk-purchased airtime.
The device weighs 174g and measures 15.2 x 7.5 x 1.5cm, which means it is small and light enough to fit in a pocket. The 640 x 240 transflective screen allows for fair easy reading of web pages.
No on-board storage or organiser apps are mentioned in specifications, but the device is designed to use online storage and applications.
The biggest drawback is the keyboard, which has plasticated keys and feels as if you are typing on a screen. It is backlit, but crucial function keys are so small I could hardly distinguish one from the other.
This is a little odd, because Datawind is closely associated with Widget, which itself has close links with Psion. If the Pocketsurfer 2 had been able to use the old Psion 5 keyboard – still the best ever on a pocket device – Datawind would have itself a classic design.
As it stands, it does at first sight stand up Datawind's claims that it is the first mobile device to offer truly affordable, ubiquitous and usable mobile web access.
Artifical Intelligence forces engineers to face the Big Questions
There has been so much happening at PCW Towers over the past couple of days that I have hardly had time to write anything up. But I should mention a wonderful afternoon yesterday at a Royal Academy of Engineering seminar called AI and IT: where engineering and philosophy meet.
The title says it all: engineers talking about philosophy. Of course, science as a whole has never really divorced the subject - it used to be called "natural philosophy". Darwin, in spite of himself, sent Christianity into a spin; cosmology found itself crashing into theology; but engineering was supposed to be about nuts, bolts, and applied mathematics.
Computing changed all that, and in my humble it has yet to have the impact it deserves on public discourse on the great questions about who and what we are. Darwinism, after a sensational start, took the best part of a century to filter through into the mainstream and then only with the help of brilliant evangelists like Richard Dawkins. I suspect that the implications of computing are similarly too broad and challenging for a single human generation to take in.
Anyway much of the afternoon was about the possibility (ot not) of machine consciousness, and I'll be writing more about it in our next edition.
First iPhone impressions and how the thin client is to marry the TV
Finally got my paws on a iPhone today, courtesy of Stephen Dukker, chairman of a company called NComputing, who had bought one over from the US. International roaming for the machine had yet to be set up, so I could not try it out as a phone. But the interface is every bit as good as it has been cracked to be.
The gesture navigation is intuitive and effective, allowing you to flick your way through pages, or expand or contract an image by closing or opening your thumb and first finger. The screen quickly gets fingerprints all over it, and we will have to wait to see how well it stands up to long use.
The interface may prove seminal but I stand by my earlier blog that the machine as a whole is a dead-end. We need a proper truly mobile working platform, with a screen large enough to avoid eyestrain, and I wish Apple would apply its undoubted design skills to developing one.
Dukker, perhaps best known here as former head of the cut-price PC vendor eMachines, was in London to promote his new thin-client products - not to mention his old ones, which he says have sold 300,000 worldwide.
These basically allow one machine to be used by several people simultaneously. It is an old idea, but Dukker rightly points out that it is far more viable these days with even entry-level PCs having dual-core processors will capable of multi-tasking.
One product uses a PCI card with what three standard ethernet sockets; these uses standard Cat5 cabling and plugs for a proprietary link to a box, little bigger than a c igarette packet. into which you can plug a monitor, keyboard, mouse and headphones. The host PC can run XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000 or anyt of three flavours of Linux. NComputing provides software to allow it to act as four PCs at once (including one user at the PC itself).
Prices start at £35 a seat which Dukker says includes a good margin for installers, and schools and call centres are a big market, particularly in developing countries. A new version of the PCI system with support seven users per host.
NComputing also offers an Ethernet version, with slightly larger client boxes. Dukker says the build costs of these boxes can be very low, because the host PC is doing all the work, and he agrees that there could be a market for something similar in the home.
Microsoft's Smart Display did something over a wireless link - though of course they packed they own pen-driven monitor. The difference is that the smart display took over the host computer using the Remote Desktop Protocol, originally designed to allow help desks to troubleshoot a PC over the network.
NComputing's software by contrast allows clients to share a PC, with considerable potential savings for schools and other organisations (not to mention the other well-rehearsed advantages of thin clients, such as ease of maintenance and administration).
Schools can get Windows or Office software licences for around $1-3 per seat, according to Dukker, but Microsoft would take a dim view of several home or small-business users using its products simultaneously on a single-user licence.
But this kind of set-up is bound to get into the home. Dukker says current systems uses comparatively sluggish Field Programmable Gate Array chips, but he is about to move to faster custom-built silicon (ASICs). He reckons he could pack a thin client into a TV for as little as £10 per unit - and he is talking to Far Eastern manufacturers about doing it.
Enter hosts of angels singing 'Hail Steve Jobs, Lord of the iPhone'
Call us prejudiced, but we seriously considered making next month's magazine an iPhone-free zone. Of course the iPhone is a brilliant design, and too good to ignore, but so are a lot of other products and it has been hyped out of all proportion.
Forget the fact that, unlike just about any other mobile phone ever made, the iPhone requires you to send it back for a battery replacement; forget the fact that Apple, from the goodness of its heart, will "loan" you an iPhone for around £15 while this is being done; forget the fact that the iPhone does not support 3g, and that it does no more than what a lot of other devices do, and a lot less than some.
Apple has become a religion, to the extent that anyone who writes of it or its chairman Steve Jobs in a tone other than awe is consigned to the flames of obsessive Mac groupies.
Evesham's HD Santa Rosa notebook hits the shelves
Evesham might be on the brink of a sale, but that hasn't stopped it launching the new Zieo NX600-HD.
As you might guess from the name, HD plays a big part and the notebook ships with a 17in 1,920x1,200 resolution screen. Nvidia's latest DirectX 10 8700M GT, complete with 512MB of Ram, takes care of the graphics, while a Core 2 Duo T7500 (2.2GHz, 4MB cache, 800MHz FSB) provides the grunt.
Other specs include Intel's new Draft-N wireless card, 2GB Ram and a 120GB hard drive.
The system will set you back £1,399, alternatively for an extra £200 you'll get a faster Core 2 Duo T7700 and 160GB drive.
Weighing just a smidgen shy of 4kg, it's not something to drag on your daily commute, but the specs indicate it will handle gaming with aplomb.
The NX600-HD is available from Evesham now.
Wireless speakers
Considering the tangled of wires engendered by most speaker systems, it's curious how few of them are equipped with wireless links. Grundig's GUPSW5000 wireless speaker is described as "360° surround sound" and it pushes out a 20 watts.
Connection is as simple as plugging in a tiny transmitter into the line-one socket of any audio system. The £99.97 speakers can run off the mains of eight D-batteries. There are more details here
Tomtom Go 720 finds its way to PCW
We've just got our hands on Tomtom's new Go 720 in-car sat nav device, which includes Tomtom's unique Map Share technology. This lets users correct and modify map information when out and about, and share this information with other Tomtom users via the Tomtom Home PC software.
On the correction menu on the device you can choose between (U)nblock Street, Reverse traffic direction, Edit street name, Add missiong POI, Edit POI and Report other error. This last option gives you choices such as reporting missing streets and cities (!), roundabouts and other assorted features. It's a neat way to get around the fact that GPS base maps don't get updated that often, as they all have to be checked by real people pounding the streets. It's a sort of social networking meets sat nav concept. We hope that someone's carefully vetting the submitted corrections to prevent the pranksters having a field day, though...
With a 4.3in widescreen TFT display, the 720 costs around £329.99. It also features voice recognition input, TMC-RDS traffic info capability (optional service) and an FM transmitter to play stored music over your car radio. There's also a Bluetooth hands-free phone connection built in.
We'll have a full review up on the main site just as soon as we've taken it for a few test spins. In the meantime, why not check out our feature on the new breed of 'lifestyle' GPS devices.
Old wine meets new technology as femtocells hit the cellars
A few more details of femtocell technology became clear at today's Ip.access demonstration at Berry Bro and Rudd, wine merchants of St James (pictured left for the benefit of US readers who may never have seen an old shop – it was established nearly a century before the US).
Amid the dusty bottles (I spotted an 1878 cognac) were some first-generation femtocells, looking little different from Wifi access points.
It seems each femotocell can handle four simultaneous calls, and they will be limited to one operator. In the basic closed configuration visitors to a femocelled building will not be able to take calls unless registered as a local user.
At the International Conference on Home Access Points and Femtocells this week it was said categorically that open access – in which a femtocell doubles as a public 3g station - will not be available in Europe. But IP.access chief technology officer Nick Johnson said it may be available in some areas.
And it seems that operators may not charge for in-house data links – for instance, if you wish to use your mobile phone to access the internet. This would be a smart move, in my opinion, because people would otherwise simply use a free technology like Wifi and it would be bound to encourage paid-for 3g web access outside the home.
Johnson said HSDPA links would offer around 7Mbits/sec initially, with the uplink (HSUPA) maxing at 5Mbits/sec. These speeds could be doubled in later versions.
They may sound slow by Wifi standards but they are faster than most current DSL links – especially in the uplink.
Most impressive about the set-up is the power management, which I wrote about a couple of days ago. Johnson reckons the most a handset will radiate is 5 milliwatts, an order of magnitude lower than Wifi.
Curiously this was hardly mentioned during the day I spent at this week's conference, even though there was much talk of how to counter fears (justified or not) about radiation. Yet it could be big selling point.
IP.access marketing manager Chris Cox said: "We are still trying to figure out a way of getting the message over."
Microsoft caves in and extends Xbox 360 warranty
Faced with increasing numbers of '3 flashing red lights' failures on its Xbox 360 games consoles worldwide, Microsoft today extended the warranty for all Xboxes that fail for this reason to 3 years from the date of purchase. Any that fail for this reason will be repaired free of charge, including shipping costs. This will cost the software giant over $1bn. Ouch.
Even better, anyone who's already out of pocket for any such repairs will be reimbursed by Microsoft.
Beware fried kid's brains as mobile operators target the home
The International Conference on Home Access Points and Femtocells was remarkable, perhaps unique, yesterday in highlighting the problems of the technology it was discussing as much or even more than the advantages.
The advantages to operators, outlined in our story today, are clear; the advantages to subscribers are less so. They will enjoy better-quality in-house calls but operators are hoping they will also download music and movies. And no-one at the conference, to my mind, gave a compelling case why people would pay mobile operators to do this when they can do it faster for free using Wifi or one of the emerging short-range technologies. (There's a lot on those in the next edition of PCW magazine and we'll post it online soon).
EQO mobile does mobile phone VoIP without Wi-Fi
Eqo mobile is offering a slightly different way for mobile phone uses to call abroad cheaply.
It first launched its VoIP service in 2006 but it's been refined and changed and now works on all java enabled mobile phones.
To use the service you make a national phone call. In the UK's case it's an 0208-London number but this is, of course, different for different countries. The recipient of the phone call also (but unknowingly) calls an exchange in his/her country.
This all sounds complicated, but the magic bit is that it's easy as pie because it's all done in software.
Eqo's software negotiates between the caller and the recipient so that there are no numbers involved and it works like a normal mobile phone conversation would do.
The magic bit is Eqo's software that looks like instant messaging software, with a contacts list you can call. It'll also let you speak to your msn messenger and aim contacts too.
Eqo mobile won't charge you for Eqo – Eqo calls, but it does charge you for calls from an Eqo enabled phone to a non Eqo mobile phone or landline. Users are also billed for national telephone charges by their mobile phone operator separately.
The problems with this service are obvious though; it's not for landline phones, it won't work for national calls and an Eqo-enabled mobile phone must pay national rate telephone charges even if they are the recipient of a conversation.
Paying to receive a call is never popular with anyone and is likely to confuse people.
Windows Mobile support will come in the next two months and Eqo is looking to expand to 40 support countries. Every county needs to be specifically enabled with a VoIP-analogue converter before it can be used for Eqo calls.
Moduslink defends record on Vista Express upgrades
Here is the full statement from Moduslink about the latest hassles over Vista Express upgrades:
The online Upgrade program officially ended [...on] May 31st, but we did extend the phone and email support past that date to support customer inquiries. Just about all customer orders have now been shipped and for the most part, the only remaining shipments are for bulk order customers that were handled a little differently.
Intel to stick the boot in as AMD launches slow-clocking Barcelona
News that AMD is to launch its much-anticipated quad-core Opterons, codenamed Barcelona, in August seem to confound rumours of a major delay in the launch. But the picture is more complicated than that. AMD has been claiming that Barcelona would beat Intel's quad-core Xeons on both performance and power efficiency.
The first Barcelona chips will clock a modest 1.9GHz and 2.0GHz, with faster clock rates coming only later this year. Of course, as AMD has itself demonstrated over the past few years, clock rates are no longer a good measure of performance. AMD's design has an edge over Intel's in that it is true quad core, with the processors able to share cache, rather than being two dual-cores in one module. Still AMD is likely to be relying on faster clock rates to justify its early Barcelona hype.
Meanwhile Intel is not standing still, and has been expected to release a "spoiler" Xeon quad-core when Barcelona comes out. According to The Register, this will be a four-core Clovertown Xeon clocking 2.0GHz, and using at most 50 watts. It will also use a fastest-yet 1.333GHz front side bus.
