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New touchpad gestures
Here are pictures (click to enlarge) of the two new gestures available for produces from Synaptics, which provides the touchpads in around seven out of ten notebooks worldwide. They will be available as a firmware update, probably next month.
Synaptics has specified larger touchpads accommodate the two-finger gestures, a phrase that does no appear to have the same rude connotations in the US that it does in England.
Pictured left is the pinch gesture, introduced earlier this year, which can be used to shrink and enlarge images. It is being used on one of the larger touchpads on a Voodoo Envy notebook. The new sizes are 5.8cm diameter for mapping 16:9 screens and 5.6cm for 4:3 screens.
64GB SSD for £99
Solid-state disk prices arte beginning to fall to a level where they can more easily compete with hard disks, as we observed earlier this month. Today comes news that California-based Super Talent Technology is offering 64GB and 128GB SSDs for $179 and $299. respectively. That's around £98 and £165 at the most recent exchange rate (sign of the times that we have to add that caveat).
The MasterDrive LX 2.5in SATA drives use multi-level-cell (MLC) technology, which is not as fast or reliable as single level, but they come with a one-year guarantee and boast read/write speeds of 100/40 MB/sec after formatting.
Use your TV or DVD remote control over a network
A new product allows you to control your TV, DVD recorder, or other devices over your home network or the web.
The Keene IR Anywhere system will work with almost any device controlled by an infra-red remote.
The base module costs £59.99, or £99.99 for a pair. It can pick up the IR signals from your handheld remote control and pump the control codes to a PC, which sends them over the web or local network to a second module pointing at the devices you wish to control.
Alternatively, you can use just one module and control it directly from your PC.
The idea is not new. PC-based TV recording or relaying systems from companies like Pinnacle allow you, for instance, to switch channels remotely using remote-controlled IR.
What is interesting in this system is that it sounds like you could use it to set your notebook up to control your TV. My hunch is that home control of this kind will become a major application for the emerging class of low-cost ultra-mobiles.
Infra-red seems to have gone out of fashion even though it has clear advantages over radio: it is more secure and does not pollute the airwaves.
TV remote control does not use IRDA, the standard for swapping data over IR between computers. But the hardware is much the same and some PDAs have been set up for remote-control.
It is surely absurd to spend a fortune on a universal remote control when you have all the elements of one in an IR-equipped portable computer.
Can £159 Cuol be cool?
After years of offering small notebooks only at inflated prices, vendors now seem to be engaged in a price war. After the £169 non-x86 Neo from Maplins comes a Windows CE 5.0 device called the Cuol that, of all people, high-street household goods vendor Robert Dyas has been selling for £159, though it is now listed as sold out.
Actually low-cost Windows CE devices have been available for four or five years but not as cheaply as that. This one, from a Hong Kong vendor, is powered by an unspecified 533MHz ARM-based Samsung processor and has a 7in VGA screen.
It has 11b Wifi, 2 USB ports (version not specified, one used for mouse), 1GB of ROM with the operating system and Word, Excel (presumably pocket versions) and a PDF and picture view plus the operating sustem in 1GB of ROM, with just 68MB of RAM.
It also has a mini-USB port for connecting to a PC; a big plus of Windows CE is its ability to sync easily with a PC.
We have not seen the machine (though was have asked to do so) but it's the kind of spec that has been used for specialist applications such as stock checking in warehouses. This is not to say it could not be used as a portable writing pad, email machine, and web access device.
But more recent machines in the Netbook class will have raised people's expectations and it would be a pity if a rash of underpowered cheapos devalues this format and the ARM platform.
Speaking of which, ARM has released this Top Ten list of priorities for mobile designers, clearly positioning itself and its licensees in respect to Intel:
- Uncompromised internet experience, able to connect anytime anywhere
- A choice of platforms. One size does not necessarily fit all; such as features, form factor...
- Long battery life and low power
- A cool device - no fans required
- Full-day use. Defined as web browsing or email use for ten hours, or playing three HD movies with needing to recharge,
- Lots of connectivity including HSUPA, WiFi, Bluetooth, HDMI and USB
- Location-based services to know where you are and display what you want
- Secure eCommerce transactions
- Instant on rather than prolonged boot-time A device incorporating the same architecture as 12 billion others alrteady sold.
The Cuol claims to have a battery life of five hours,
Wicked Rose and China's information war
Both Russia and China nurture hackers who can wage cyberwar on other companies and organisations, according to security analyst Rick Howard, who was in London today to promote his company iDefense.
He said Russia has the most skilled cybercriminals in the world, and its government regards hackers as an asset though it does not necessarily control what they do.
Hackers launched Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) in Estonia and Georgia when those countries were confronting Russia. But this sort of attack was often the case of pro-Russian hackers getting together on the web and decided on some form of action, Howard said.
The Chinese government denies hacking activities but otherwise does not seem to care whether anyone knows that it is involved.
"The government sort of officially sanctions [hacking]. They run competitions to find out who the amateurs are who are pretty good. And then they train them on the latest information warfare tactics.
"We tracked one group in 2006 - which is still active, by the way - the NCPH... Network Crack Program Hacker group. They were students when they started and the hacker name of the leader is Wicked Rose.
"He was a pretty good hacker. On his own he was hacking into Taiwanese government places and doing some mischief. He got noticed by the government and got invited to enter one of these local competitions. He got put into a four-man team and won. He then got put in a four-man team in a national competition and won that. And because of that he got put on the 30-day information warfare training programme that the Chinese put together.
"Six months later his group was hacking into all the US government institutions. They were siphoning off thousands, if not millions, of documents from unclassified systems."
The information may not have been top-secret but cumulatively it could have provided a lot of valuable intelligence, Howard said.
Howard said the information warfare programme in China dates back to 1998 when "a couple of colonels" thought that they would have to go up against the US at some point.
"In their early documents they said that by 2025 they would be ready to take the US on, not with tanks but with asymmetric warfare...the information war. They have been practicing that philosophy since then."
The US government gave the code name Titan Rain to a wave of co-ordinated hacking attacks on its institutions. UK government departments have also been targeted, according to a Guardian report.
G1 Android phone pictures - and LiMo's barbed reaction
Slightly handicapped today trying to cover the Google-phone launch off a livecast because the names of the speakers were announced without being spelled out. The interface of the T-Mobile G1's Android platform looked good, judging from the video, and certainly faster than the prototype I saw at Mobile World Congress earlier this year. It apparently lacks some of the multi-touch gestures on the iPhone, but allows you to flick through pages and choices in much the same way.
Google's man was making much of the fact that ithe platform is open-source. "This is great for third-party developers. We really believe Open is going to drive the mobile Internet," he said.
Speakers also claimed that mobile web use has not yet taken off because of a lack of devices. This is, of course, nonsense. The mobile web was slow to take off because it was too expensive, and the charging was opaque, so that you never knew of much you would have to pay. Much the same reason, in fact, why people are reluctant to use their mobiles abroad.
Fixed web access never took off until prices became affordable on a flat rate and this is beginning to happen on mobile. T-Mobile's £40-a-month for a 'free' G1 is not much for a business user but at £480 a year it will look a lot to many private users.
The G1 phone got a barbed welcome from the LiMo Foundation, which was established to promote the use of a mobile Linux platform.
LiMo executive director Morgan Gillis said in a statement that the launch, following that of 23 Limo phones from various vendors, provided "further support to the widely held view that Linux is now positioned to become the most widely deployed [operating system] within open mobile handsets."
He went on caustically that he expected Google to answer "important questions outstanding" since the Google Android platform was announced .last year ago.
These included the question of why Google had elected to build its own platform "rather than working collaboratively with the mobile industry on the available alternatives".
He also wanted to know which services would be available on Android handsets but not on other open products, and whether G1 users would have have an open and free choice about whether or not they subscribed to Google's services.
HD cameras tax flash cards
The distinction between digital and stills cameras became further blurred last week with the release of the Canon EOS 5D Mark ll digital single-lens reflex camera. It packs a 21-megapixel sensor and can capture HD video at full 1920 x 1080 up to 12 mins at a time, with a maximum file size of 4GB.
The latter limit is presumably down to the buffer size (Canon mouthpieces are at the Photokina show in Germany, so we couldn't check) because files are saved to Compact Flash cards for which 64GB capacities are commonly available. A company called Pretec announced a 100GB CF card at Photokina with a claimed access speed of 35MB/sec.
Sandisk reckons its 32GB Extreme lll CF card can store 90 minutes of HD video and transfer it to a PC in 15 minutes. It has a write speed of 30MB/sec, and has a US price of $299. The company points out that images in RAW format use up to 10 times the space of a jpg, so that even still photographers can be pushed for space at 21 megapixels resolution.
Sandisk also announced that it has boosted the of its Extreme lV CF cards by 12 percent to 45MB/sec. They come in 4GB, 8GB and 16GB capacities at €84.5, €169 and €281 ex Vat respectively.
Oh, and if you are drooling over that new Canon, you had better start counting your pennies. It is due to ship on November 30 at £2,299.99 ex Vat for the body alone.
Webless in Budapest, IT's shifting Top 10, Acer on brands and ARM
BUDAPEST, Hungary, Friday. It's more than a little frustrating to be in this beautiful city and have no time to see anything properly. The view over the Danube from our hotel is spectacular and inviting but we are here to talk about computers, brands and marketing.
Acer's annual global conference, like a similar HP event in Germany a couple of months ago, shows how commoditised computing has become. Almost all the talk is about market sectors and case design and the technology hardly gets a mention.
The term Netbook now seems to have replaced ultra-mobile for the mini notebooks pioneered by Asus with its Eee PC. I suspect that this is partly due to marketeers trying to reassure their bosses that these machines are not going to undercut the market for larger notebooks; but there is some sense in the term in that they are designed as second or third machines, to complement rather than replace larger models.
The trend for notebooks replacing desktop models is becoming more pronounced. Notebooks now account for 48 percent of sales and are likely to top 50 percent next year, said Acer chief executive Gianfranco Lanci.
Acer sees the smallest category, Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs), as being "application based" - that is, not general purpose machines - and designed for operating with one hand.
I asked Jim Wong, president of IT products, global operations, how he sees ARM-based devices positioning themselves against Atoms, given that ARMs draw much less standby power. He did not see ARMs competing in the Netbook category and said the advantage of the x86 architecture was that Acer already had the drivers and there was a greater choice of operating system.
"With ARM you basically have Windows Mobile and Linux," he said. But he added: "I am not ruling out using ARM."
Acer's purchase of Taiwanese smartphone maker E-ten, which we were told is very significant, means that it is buying in ARM-based products. E-ten's current flagship Windows Mobile smartphone uses an ARM-based Samsung SC3 2442 system on a chip. Acer will use this company to get into the MID market, apparently under its own rather than E-ten's brand.
There was a lot of talk about brands because Acer has just bought three of them: Gateway, Packard Bell, and E-Machines and is targeting them at what it sees as the market sector that fits them best.
Acer places a lot of store by brands, because that is essentially what the company is. Acer does not make notebooks; it gets them made, and then sells them, though it has a lot of design input. It seems that Packard Bell will continue almost as a separate unit, taking machine's innards from Acer but using its own styling for the cases. This is typified by Packard Bell's netbook, which is the same as Acer's Aspire One but with a different styling.
Packard Bell, as I report today, is supposed to be the stylish end of the Acer line. Graham Hopper, PB's UK managing director, looked hurt when I said that I did not associate his company with style and pointed to an array of new models, mostly with the shiny black look fashionable among manufacturers.
They were designed to look good in the living room, he said, and I had to admit that they were an advance on the standard beige and battleship grey boxes of (I hope) the past.
Talking of the past, Acer listed the top 10 global PC vendors for 1979, 1994 and the first half of 2008. PCs in the sense we mean today (x86 machines running Windows) did not of course exist in 1979. Whatever, Acer gave the 1979 list from the top as: Tandy, Commodore, HP, Apple, IBM, Tektronix, Wang, Processor Technology, Intelligent Systems, and North Star Computers.
The 1994 Top 10 were: Compaq, NEC, IBM, Apple, AST, Dell, HP, Acer, Gateway, Toshiba.
The leaders for the first half of this year, according to Acer, were: HP, Dell, Acer, Lenovo, Toshiba, Apple, Fujitsu, Asus, Sony, and NEC.
HP, Apple and IBM have all survived as big players after nearly thirty years, though IBM sold its PC business to Lenovo. But Acer, which completely changed tack half a decade ago by ceasing to manufacture goods itself, has good reason to boast that it has clawed it way up the list while other giants have fallen at the wayside.
I had intended to try Tesco's new mobile TalkWifi serve from Budapest but I couldn't find a hotspot that worked when I needed it. My hotel room had only a wired link, which meant I could not get the net. This of course was my fault for forgetting my MacBook Air's USB-Ethernet adaptor, and not the uncriticisable Apple designers' foolishness in not packing one into the machine, which is in so many other ways excellent.
Buffalo updates Linkstation range
Buffalo has released a new version of its Linkstation Live.
Borrowing a few style tips from Microsoft's Xbox 360 Elite, this network attached storage (NAS) device includes a few new features.
Perhaps most useful is the ability to access the drive via a web browser from any internet-connected PC; on previous versions of the Linkstation, remote access could only be achieved via FTP.
It also now includes a built-in BitTorrent client, so you can download all manner of music, movies and other (legal) files without your PC needing to be switched on. You can also schedule torrent downloads remotely.
The Linkstation Live is available now in 500GB and 1TB models, costing £124.99 and £169.99 respectively.
Maplin replies to criticism of £169 Neo mini laptop
Maplin has replied to a number of criticisms we received about the Neo mini laptop it is selling for £169.99. Here is an edited version of the replies it received from its supplier CNM, with complaints in italics:
Could not get the machine to write to a USB memory stick This may be due to the memory stick being over the 4GB Limit.
Got an ''IP address not recognised' message when trying to connect to the internet.
This message occurs when the machine isn't able to complete the set up of a wireless connection, usually because it has timed out waiting for an IP address to be issued.
Couldn't print via the USB.
The printer driver can be downloaded from our web site www.cnmlifestyle.com.
Hard drive capacity limit to 4GB
This limit is on any single storage device, so technically you could have 17GB of storage (1x 4GB SD Card, 3x 4GB USB drives, 1GB Free Space on internal card. The 4GB limit is an addressing limitation, the same one that 32bit Windows has& the same limit to a maximum 4GB system memory. This storage limitation shouldn't be an issue because the device isn't designed to have many more software packages installed and videos which take up the most storage space could be stored on multiple SD Cards / Memory Sticks.
The Linux operating system is locked down.
It is designed to be locked down. While this has obvious disadvantages for the adventurous computer user, it also has many advantages for the most targeted market areas: immunity from virus, trojan and spyware infections; there is no way to corrupt the operating system code; he machines performance doesn't degrade with time as new programs aren't installed. A growing Linux development community has bought the machine and found ways to open up the operating system or install another version to allow them to configure the machine the way they would like. There are also packages being compiled specifically to run on the machine.
Error mesages in Chinese.
The messages aren't in Chinese, but the use of English in some error messages is a direct translation from Chinese and may not read correctly. Unfortunately this is a side effect of having a machine produced in China and this happens with lots of lower priced appliances that are manufactured there. Fortunately it shouldn't affect the usage of the machine because the actual meaning of any communication boxes should still be easily understood.
Poor Wifi connectivity.
The machine has issues connecting to a WAP or Wireless Router if there are other wireless networks in the vicinity which are on the same channel (frequency). It is also affected by DECT base stations which run on the 2.4GHz frequency [they don't in the UK -Ed]. Basically if multiple networks are running on the same channel, the interference degrades the performance of the wireless network to such an extent that the machine times out waiting for the connection to be completed. A fix for this which will increase the time out period is currently being tested, but as an interim measure we are recommending that any users which have an issue with this, change the channel that there WAP or Wireless Router is running on to one which is free to alleviate this interference problem and also give the added benefit of increasing the networks performance.
No ability to change default font etc in word processor.
There isn't a way to do this, the file where this setting is stored is not able to be written too, this has the obvious disadvantage that the default font can't be changed. But it has the advantage that another program can't change the file and it also can't be corrupted.
Scansnap scanners get new software bundle
Fujitsu's little Scansnap desktop scanners have gained a lot of fans for their ease of use and ability to process quickly a lot of documents despite their small size. But they were let down by document-management system that seemed cumbersome besides products such as Nuance's Paperport.
So when Kodak brought out a me-too product, the Scanmate i1120 (see review), earlier this year, the fact that it was bundled with Paperport seemed a big plus.
Now Fujitsu has announced a new software bundle with its Scansnap S300, and larger S500, scanners. Rack 2.0 Version 4.0 allows documents to be scanned into PDF and organise the images into graphical binders and cabinets. Optical Character Recognition is bundled. The S300 bundle costs €281 and the S500 is €579
Falling SSD prices mean hard reign is going to fall
Yet another piece of news held over from IFA. Going through my notes and literature for our print edition I find a handout from a Korean company called MCody about its range of ExpressCard solid-state disks. It had no
That is around £72 before markups for a 32GB SSD, well big enough for a mobile. Dabs is offering a 2.5in 32GB MLC drive for £122.86 inc Vat. These prices won't have much further to go before they present a serious challenge to hard disks on cost as well as robustness and performance.
Incidentally MCody claims its SLC disks will last at least 140 years, at a write rate of 50GB a day; the MLC ones are said to last 28 years.
Faster not necessarily better on mobiles, says ARM
A video posted by chip designer ARM on YouTube pits a 1.6GHz Atom N270 against a Texas Instruments OMAP 3430 system on a chip that uses an ARM Cortex A8 core in a test of how fast each can load web pages.
The Atom, in an Acer Aspire notebook, is clocked down to 800MHz whereas the OMPA is clocking 550MHz. The OMAP average 9.37 seconds per page, compared to Atom's average 8.05 seconds. This makes the OMAP 14 percent slower; but ARM consulting engineer Nigel Paver points out that that is when the Atom is clocking 31 percent faster.
If you adjust for clock rate the notional load time of the OMAP page would be just 6.44 seconds.
The argument seems spurious on the face of it, because the Atom is running at half speed. But ARM argues that you have to look at the context in which these processors will be used: the OMAP is offering acceptable load times while using a fraction of the power drawn by the Atom.
Bob Morris, head of mobile marketing at ARM, said the OMAP could run three HD movies between charges whereas the Atom would struggle to screen a full-length standard definition movie.
And the OMAP is not using the latest Cortex A9 core, which Paver says should be about 20 percent more efficient. The A9 also has a multi-core variant.
Apple uses ARM cores in its iPhone and iTouch but larger, general purpose ARM-based devices that might compete with Intel-based MIDs or ultra-mobile PCs are thin on the ground.
Morris said there will be some on show at the Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas in January, and larger ones should appear later in the year. He predicted that screen sizes would go up to 10in.
Much of the interest in ARM assumes the use of Linux but Windows CE runs on the platform. Microsoft has been selling XP for use in tightly-specced x86 ultra-mobiles; Morris could not or would not say if a ARM version is being prepared. But he said: "Don't overlook Microsoft. It is doing a lot of work in this space."
Sennheiser joins the wireless audio dance
Sennheiser has stepped into the Bluetooth headset arena with its rather stylish MM 200.
It will happily link up to any A2DP-compatible device (a mobile phone being the obvious choice), providing you with wireless stereo enjoyment.
But why would anyone want a set of Bluetooth headphones such as these for their mobile? You've still got wires to unravel when you pull them out of your pocket, along with the added drawback of yet another battery to recharge - the MM 200s are quoted to last up to 11 hours.
In some circumstances Bluetooth headphones such as these might be useful - for example when you've got your phone tucked away in a bag - but we reckon most people would be better off buying a standard, non-powered set of buds.
One feature we expect to be top-notch is sound quality, though. Sennheiser very rarely gets this wrong. Its CX 300 buds are exceptional, as is the PC 350 gaming headset we've got on test at the moment.
Sennheiser's MM 200 is priced at £99.99.
Could quick-charge batteries be suitable for laptops?
Still digesting stuff picked up at IFA in Berlin, including details of the SCiB battery Toshiba announced late last year.
It is said to lose only 10 percent of its capacity after 3000 charge-discharge cycles and has a useful life of 6000 cycles, which means that it should last as long as your machine, according to Toshiba. It is more stable than Li-ion batteries, which have a tendency to explode. Best of all it will charge to 90 percent capacity in less than five minutes.
Toshiba lists applications as electric vehicles of various types, including bicycles, household cordless appliances, UPS systems, and storage for wind and solar generators. Notably absent from this list are notebooks and PDAs, and a glance at the specs shows why.
The basic 2.4v 4200maH SCiB cell measures 6.2 x 9.5 x 1.3 cm and weighs 155g. It could presumably be made smaller and stacked up to be suitable for laptops, but that would reduce its capacity.
I work the power density out at around 65mwH/g. Li-ion batteries from a laptop and camera, picked out at random in our labs, had a nominal power density of around 155mwH/g, This means an SCiB battery would have to be around two-and-a-half times heavier to pack the same power.
However Toshiba's man on the stand said he hoped the batteries would be sold into the laptop market. You could see scenarios in which smaller, less capacious versions could be useful.
Untethered devices in the home would not require huge capacities if they topped up shortly after you docked them; similarly some laptop users might prefer a battery that tops up quickly, even if it does not last so long.
Fancy a trek in Ethiopia?
Computer Aid International, which refurbishes PCs for use in developing countries, is inviting IT professionals and PC enthusiasts to join a fundraising expedition across the remote Simien Mountains in Ethiopia.
Everyone who takes part will kit out an Ethiopian school with 20 PCs, providing around 1,000 children with IT skills to help them find work, access higher education, or start a business.
The nine-day expedition, starting next February 28, will include a five-day trek off the beaten track, plus sight-seeing in Addis Ababa and historic Gonder.
It's open to anyone of "average fitness" for just £199, plus "minimum sponsorship".
See here for details; or email ethiopia@computeraid.org or call Stephen Campbell on 020 8361 5540 for an information pack.
Screen snapped by Dragon
I've just finished a review of Dragon Naturally Speaking 10, the latest version of the dictation product (watch out for it on this site or in nbext month's mag) but I didn't have space to include in the review a good illustration of the point I made in a blog last month, about how command interfaces are actually far more natural than point-and-click and that they are coming back with speech recognition.
It happened that I needed to get a couple of screenshots. I had loaded the software onto my MacBook Air, which I have set up to run either the MacOS or Windows. The Mac keyboard does not have a dedicated Print Screen key, and according to the manual you can use Command-Shift-3 instead. I could not get this to work and after about 15 or 20 minutes messing about I suddenly realised that I had not tried Dragon. I switched on the mic, said "Press Alt-Print Screen", and the job was done.
Toshiba plans 512GB SSDs and takes to the WirelessHD air
Toshiba plans to introduce 256GB and 512GB solid-state SATA II drives next year, with a SATA lll 512GB model following in 2010,according to this roadmap posted at the IFA consumer electronics show in Germany.
PCIe mini card drives will hit 128GB by 2010, with PCIe half-crds hitting 256GB,
The company was also demonstrating WirelessHD links capable of bouncing signals off walls, getting round the fact that the connection is directional. The WirelessHD module, like Panasonic's looks on the large side but it has an elegant silvered antennae unit(above right).
