Absolutely useless

Engadget did a write-up on a supposed new Dell product, a 9 pound laptop with a 20.1" screen.

I'm sorry but this thing seems to be as practical as the 1989 Macintosh Portable. Those who never had the pleasure on working on one of these should consider themselves very lucky...

B&O goes wireless

Bang and Olufsen was one of the first companies out there with a media networking system: Beolink. Beolink used to be a wired solution with cabling running from room to room, allowing you to pipe music from a CD playing in your living room to speakers elsewhere in your house.

B&O's now come into the modern age with the release of the Beolink Wireless 1.



The only surprising thing is that they have chosen not to use WiFi to transfer data, prefering to use Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum in the 2.4 Ghz spectrum. Now the interesting thing is that this doesn't tell us what the transmission layer/technology is that they're using, it's just saying how they're broadcasting. Am curious about the details here and am also curious about the reasons for this choice.

Is Apple preparing a new 'Switch!' campaign?

Apples will finally run Windows. Apple has released a boot manager that allows users to load Windows XP on their Macs.

Anyone wanting to be malicious could easily guess that Apple's preparing to concentrate on industrial design for standard pc's - something that would mean ditching their OS efforts...

Integration continues

The Register's reporting on new screens from Hitachi.

While 32", 37"and 42" LCD/Plasma screens are not particularily impressive, Hitachi's pushing the envelope with integration. The systems come with 4 integrated tuners and with harddrive based video recording (PVR) as an option.

While DVD integration has remained limited to small yet bulky CRT's (or otherwise high end Bang and Olufsen hardware), I'm betting that PVR's going to find it's way into an increasing number of LCD's. Look at it this way: the marginal costs of putting a drive pased PVR into a flat panel display are pretty small (let's say, less than 5% of the selling price, if that). On top of that, I'm sure there are companies in Taiwan that will supply manufacturers with packages for easy integration into their flat screens. My take is that the chances are pretty good that within 12 months atleast a quarter of all flat panel displays will sport an integrated PVR functionality. Now my question is: what's the OS they will be using for them?

(On another note, the good people at Hitachi really need to do something about the info management on their site - as I'm writing this, it's impossible to find proper information on these new Wooo displays)

A whopper...

While on the one hand, LaCie is pushing the hard drive desktop storage gauntlet with its 1 TB drives, Buslink is pushing the gauntlet on the other side of the desktop storage market with its 16 GB USB stick.

I still have a Dell Latitude lying around, which, when I ordered it in 1999, was considered tricked out. The system came with a whopping 6 GB hard drive. Now with solid state memory (i.e. flash memory) coming in ever higher densities, it looks like flash is going to become the new personal storage medium of choice. Honestly, how much (truly) personal storage do you need? With IMAP mailboxes, flickr, and other online storage options, how much physical storage space do you really need to have? Okay, there are always those big media files (some of which are not necessarily intended to be visible to the rest of the world) but those can always be stored on a local network drive.



I'm guessing we're not too far from the day when you'll be able to keep your personal documents and OS settings and preferences stored on flash memory a device you cary around with you, that will enable you to sit down at any terminal and boot up 'your' desktop and OS. My choice? How's about a Sony Ericsson W950i? Only thing I'd like to see added to it is an external SATA connector and you'd almost be there...

Dvorak's off to France

For once, not a gadget story. Although I don't have a high opinion of either PCMag or John Dvorak, I loved his story on U.S. overreaction to 'digital crime'. Bottom line: Dvorak (who's always been quite the 'U.S. patriot') has decided to move to France, a country where you're not likely to be thrown into bankruptcy for downloading movies off of P2P networks and where you don't run the risk of getting shot for using an unsecured WiFi network to check your mail. Go figure...

vIPod and other Apple stuff

The register's reporting that Quanta has been signed up to make the new video iPod and that the likely announcement date for the puppy is April 1st (Apple's 30th birthday). Another rumoured Apple product is an Apple phone. The guys at the Register don't think it's likely because that would require Apple to enter a whole new business. I don't agree.

A great example of how an outsider can enter the mobile phone market is Bang and Olufsen. Their Serene mobile phone was developed in a joint venture with Samsung. Basically, B&O designed the phone, samsung produced it and B&O's doing the distribution. I've seen the phone and love it. What's more important, the phone was released for christmas and even the biggest B&O stores have a backlog of orders for the phone that they don't expect to clear until the summer. (Having played with the phone for a short while, I can say I understand why... no phone since the Nokia 7110 has had a better opening mechanism - you nudge the phone to activate it and it then opens itself).

Apple could pull this off together with Motorola but... the problem that Apple will face is that they have gotten used to mass marketing with the iPod while an iPhone would never have the immediate market appeal of the iPod. This means that the sales figures of the phone would always seem like a dissapointment.

Apple would also need to think long and hard about how they could differentiate themselves. I guess their best shot would be a media phone with a few gigs of storage space, wifi and a big screen, maybe as wide and long as a Sony-Ericsson P910. A device like that would have a good shot at competing with the media phones put out by Samsung and Nokia.

The 'intermediate device' battlefield shapes up

Engadget is reporting that Philips has released its own reader device

The Philips release rounds out a newly formed submarket: that for the 'intermediate' device. As far as I know, noone's come out and named this market segment but there's a variety of poducts and form factors already competing in this market.


Let's start off with the market characteristics. First of all intermediate devices are characterised by their for factor. They're bigger than PDA's but smaller than tablets. As things stand, they lack an input device other than a stylus although some have on-screen keyboards. Most (not all) have some for of network capability. All the devices are geared towards information consumption and a small amount of information management.

The striking thing about this segment is that it's being approached from three directions. On the one hand you have Microsoft pushing its Ultra Mobile PC platform trying to extend the desktop to a new part of the market. On the other hand you have Philips with the Irex Iliad and Sony with the Reader coming into the market with a consumer electronics approach, basically making a text display device. And then you have Nokia with the 770 internet tablet with a web browsing tablet.

It's strange to see that you have three different (groups of ) companies approaching an (as yet) unidentified market segment. My guess is that all three feel that users need to have a device more capable than a phone or PDA to view text/media. My major problem with the idea is that it's one more gadget to lug along. On the one hand the non-microsoft devices have a head start because they have far better power characteristics (the Sony and Philips devices can work for a week between charges) and are 'instant-on'. Microsoft on the other hand has the advantage of being able to run all your standard desktop software, like skype. On the other hand, the devices are expensive, boot at the same rate as XP and don't have overly extended battery lives.

My take is that the Philips product has the best shot at creating some new space - with the device's network connectivity giving it an advantage over the Sony device.

The device that will change the world

The Wall Street Joural Online has an article on the $100 laptop, a device currently being developed under the auspices of MIT. The device can bring two major changes with it. First of all, despite attempts by Apple to prevent it, the laptop will be running a version of Red Hat Linux. This means that as the device is supposed to get rolled out in millions of units it will, for the first time, give Linux a shot at disrupting the installed user base for desktop OSes. The other major shift the device could bring is in the telecoms market. I suppose that it will be possible to install a VoIP client on the machine. Couple that with built-in wireless networking capabilities in the machine and all of a sudden you get a situation where hundreds of millions of people who don't have access to a phone all of a sudden will be able to conduct voice conversations through IP technology.

If this device really does make it to the market and is adopted by the governments of states like Brazil, India and China, the world could find itself facing a tectonic shift within the space of a single generation.

N91 - engineering v. marketing

It seems that Nokia has been making good use of the etra time they've given themselves before releasing their N91 phone: they have been subjecting it to drop tests to see how much abuse the device can take. Their benchmark device was the Ipod mini and the results are as follows: Ipod mini: dead after 12 drops; Nokia N91: dead after 300. It's good to see that someone out there is actually engineering their products.

On the other hand, I do know that the inards of the nao can withstand much greater abuse since the nano is flash based. On the other hand, are there any proud Ipod owners willing to risk the outside of their nano on a single drop?