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Xbox 360’s Netflix Feature Passes One Million Installs in Three Months
Back in May of 2005, Time magazine published a wonderful article on the just announced, not-yet-released, Xbox 360. In the article, the author was able to sit down with Bill Gates and go behind the scenes of the 360 before it was launched later that year. One of the primary goals that Microsoft had for the 360, other than turn a profit this time around, was to use the console as an all in one media platform at the center of the family’s entertainment center.
With Netflix’s announcement yesterday of one million installations by Gold Live subscribers in just three months time, it would appear that Microsoft is one step closer to becoming the “all-in-one” media hub that they envisioned the 360 being many years ago. That’s a lot of users in not too long of time. Not only is this quite the cash cow for Netflix, but Microsoft has given users a very nice capability for free (subscription fee excluded).
If your like me, you signed up, grabbed a few shows and have since let your subscription either sit idle or you cancelled it. We don’t have any numbers stating the amount of users who signed up simply because there was a free trial, but even if half of the one million users still use the service on a monthly basis, this is a health stream of income coming in for Netflix and one more reason why the 360 has the edge on becoming the true center of family entertainment.
Netflix Chief Marketing Officer Leslie Kilgore said in a statement, “Netflix continues to provide its 9.4 million subscribers unprecedented convenience, selection, and value. With more than 100,000 titles on DVD and 12,000 movies and TV episodes available to watch instantly, there’s no better way to enjoy movies than Netflix. As these strong results on Xbox demonstrate, Xbox LIVE is a terrific way for Netflix members to enjoy watching movies instantly on their TVs.”
Is Microsoft Rushing Windows 7?
That’s the important question being asked, and after taking a look at all the facts, it’s a hard one to answer. With Windows Vista, Microsoft wasn’t too shy about getting information out long before its release. It was also the first version of Windows that had a rather intensive beta-testing period, although as we found out, that didn’t seem to help out too much with the final launch of the product (or it did, and Vista’s launch could have been even worse… but I’d rather not picture that).
Windows XP came out in 2001, though, and then Vista followed in 2007. That’s a span of six years… so how on earth is Microsoft going to manage pumping out another OS after just ~2.5 years and avoid a major snag? Well, as Ars Technica explores, this release of Windows is unlike any other before it. Microsoft has done well to learn from their lessons with the Vista launch, and as a result, surveys, tools, error reports, et cetera, have all been vastly improved to prevent the Vista debacle from reoccurring with 7.
Personally, I think Microsoft has done a great job with their renewed development practises. After all, although I haven’t tested Windows 7 to any degree yet, the general consensus is that it’s good… and that for an OS five or six months before its projected launch date. Microsoft clearly has many more bugs to tackle before a final launch, but given how stable it is right now (Kougar from our forums is even running it as his main OS!), we can probably have much, much higher hopes for 7’s launch.
It’s not Windows that people don’t like; it’s merely Vista. Many of the Vista haters are quite happy with Windows, just as long as it’s Windows XP (a situation that, in many ways, mirrors the first few years of Windows XP’s life, where many expressed a preference for Windows 98SE or Windows 2000, and vowed to switch to XP only when they had no choice).
Have Simpler Product Lines Lead to Apple’s Success?
Think back to about ten years ago. How many people did you know that owned a Mac? Chances are, despite that they were still well-designed computers, probably not too many. Since then, though, things have changed dramatically. Apple now holds a good percentage of PC sales (mostly on the notebook side), so what exactly caused such a surge for a computer that doesn’t even run Windows? Well, according to news site Edible Apple, it all boils down to the company’s desire to keep their lines slim, and simple.
There are a few good points made here, my favorite being the fact that Apple doesn’t go all retarded with their naming schemes. If you had no idea what a MacBook Air was, you could probably take a guess that it was a lightweight machine, and then there’s the MacBook and MacBook Pro. Again, those are pretty easy to differentiate based on their names alone. Compare that to something like a Dell notebook. It’s difficult to tell right off what the difference between an Inspiron 1420 and Inspiron 1525 is. Plus, it just doesn’t read as well.
That’s of course not to say that the simplified approach is for everyone, and certainly, it’s probably of little interest to most readers of our website. But, it’s still a good point to consider. The majority of consumers are not tech-geeks, so how exactly are they supposed to differentiate various notebook models? Steve Jobs likes to keep things simple, and it sure looks like that practice played a significant role in Apple’s most recent success.
When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he himself found Apple’s product lineup to be convoluted and ultimately too confusing. He even quipped that if he couldn’t figure out the difference between a multitude of hardware models, how could Apple expect consumers to do so? Naturally, one of his first orders of business was putting the squeeze on Apple’s product lineup and focusing instead on only a few products that were to be marketed at either consumers or professionals.
Digital Transition Delay Passes, Feb 17 Becomes June 12
Last Tuesday, we posted about the potential delay for the digital transition, which was passed by the Senate but denied by the House the very next day. Well, it seemed unlikely that the House would have a change of heart, but that’s exactly what seemed to happen. The bill to delay the transition was passed with a 264-158 vote, effectively pushing the transition changeover to June 12, 115 days after the original date.
Alright… I don’t like to rant that often (who am I trying to kid here?), but something has to be said about how ridiculous this move is. As I mentioned in last weeks post, there shouldn’t be a single person out there not aware of the transition, as it’s been known for at least two years. It’s also been heavily advertised on many stations for well over a year, and lately, it’s gotten so bad, that you can hardly go a single commercial break without seeing one. If you happen to be prepared, like you should be, then these are nothing more than a nuisance.
My question is, if people couldn’t care less to upgrade with all of the time they had, then what’s another four months going to do? Not much, likely, and chances are, once we get closer to June, they’ll want to propose another bill to push it back even further. This is ridiculous. February 17, 2009 has been a date stamped in our minds for far too long, so to just change things up is going to complicate things even further. It’s as simple as that.
Since the main issue seems to be the fact that the Government exceeded their original budget for the converter boxes, one common idea to fix the entire issue would be to just give people a tax break if they need to buy one or two. It makes no sense to push the date back, when a simple tax break for the same value of the coupon could be given. That would speed up the entire process, and put these boxes in consumer’s hands a whole lot faster. Oh well, let’s gear up for another four months of seeing these same boring DTV commercials…
Floor debate preceding the bill saw the now-familiar arguments on both sides rehearsed: delay proponents stressed that pressing ahead would leave some 6 million households at risk of being cut off from television service thanks to an ill-managed subsidy program for digital converter boxes that had run out of funding.
Intercepting Video-On-Demand with a QAM Tuner
By now, you probably all know about the porn that aired for up to thirty seconds during the Super Bowl this past Sunday. It apparently only affected Comcast subscribers in Tuscon, Arizona, but it was clearly hilarious enough to become the most popular story on pretty-well every news outlet out there. It doesn’t seem like the authorities or Comcast have figured out who pulled the prank, but I’m looking forward to seeing what kind of punishment something like that entails.
So the story is that people who weren’t expecting pornography ended up seeing it, but did you know that with the proper equipment, you could tap into other cable customer’s video-on-demand shows, which sometimes also involves such programming? The Super Bowl incident reminded Slate writer Josh Levin about an article he wrote a few years ago about just that, so he re-posted it since it seemed relevant.
It’s an interesting article, to say the least. If you are equipped with a QAM Tuner and have the ability to program oddly-numbered channels, you might just be able to see what other customers are watching at that exact moment via VoD. This could range from anything, from Sopranos to The Office to an old comedy, but half the fun is stumbling on it all. Though this practice seems illegal, it isn’t, and the writer’s cable provider (Comcast) doesn’t seem too concerned. They claim it’s impossible to see who ordered which program, but it would have to be someone in your “node” (or cluster of neighborhoods).
Though it seems like far too much work to try, the article proves to be an entertaining read regardless. If you just so happen to own a QAM Tuner, you might as well give it a try on your own cable provider. Seems like a neat hobby to pass the time away.
If you don’t have a cable box but do subscribe to cable, you can usually receive some digital cable if your television or TV receiver has built-in QAM support. A standalone QAM tuner, however, will let you tune in only unencrypted digital channels. Which digital channels are unencrypted? Most cable companies don’t encrypt the digital signals that they pick up from local broadcasters. That explains why I get the HD versions of Fox, CBS, ABC, NBC, CW, and PBS.
Despite iTunes’ Dominance, Record Companies Not Too Pleased
It’s no doubt clear to almost everyone just what kind of power Apple has over the music industry, but thinking about it, it does seem a little odd for a company that a) isn’t a record company and b) didn’t have anything to do with music before 2000. Yet, thanks to their iTunes store, they’ve been able to grasp the entire industry and wind up the ultimate decider in various decisions, such as individual track prices.
You can imagine that with Apple having such a huge role in the industry, the record companies can’t be too pleased, and that seems to be true. It’s been discovered that Apple CEO Steve Jobs and the Chairman of Sony Music, Rolf Schmidt-Holtz, had a rather heated conversation on Christmas Eve that saw Apple come out the victor. That’s the kind of power Apple has, and it’s impressive.
That’s not to say that it’s a good thing though, because in my opinion, it isn’t. With Apple remaining the dominant digital music seller, there’s little competition, and with the recent DRM drop and variable pricing, it’s going to be extremely difficult for others to compete. We need to see it happen though, for the good of the industry.
I don’t want to see music prices increase, and I really can’t see that happening soon, if ever, but I do feel we need more competition. It can’t really be a good thing all-around if the music industry is constantly holding angst towards a certain company… although, I admit it sure doesn’t feel too bad to see them in a helpless situation, given how many needless lawsuits they’ve filed against helpless users over the years.
Even Charlie Walk, the former president of Epic Records, a unit of Sony Music, acknowledges, “Whether the industry likes it or not, the iTunes chart showing the most popular songs in America is a major influencer of how kids today discover and communicate with their friends what kind of music they like. It’s a very powerful thing right now in American pop culture and immediately validates a hit song.”
Microsoft Officially Announces Windows 7 Editions
Last week, we posted about the numerous editions that Windows 7 would be available in, but today, CNET blog Beyond Binary gives even more details about what to expect. It looks like Windows 7 will drop the “Business” moniker and replace it with “Professional”, a tag that was best known on Windows XP. In addition, the Home Basic will no longer be available on these shores, but rather be exclusive to emerging markets.
Microsoft’s Senior Vice President Bill Veghte notes that the focus in the US will be on the Home Premium and Professional editions, which he claims will account for 80% of Windows 7 sales. The Ultimate edition will still exist, but it doesn’t seem like Microsoft is too confident that it will sell that many copies (and as with Vista Ultimate, it probably won’t even pay off to the consumer, but that’s a personal opinion).
Another aspect taken into account is what each version will include, and thanks to complaints with Vista, you shouldn’t have to upgrade to a larger version to get a feature you feel belongs in the one you bought. Media Center, for example, will come included with Professional, whereas it didn’t for Business with Vista. So, on these shores, we’ll have three main versions to deal with. That’s not so bad. Especially if you consider most people will just pick up Home Premium. If you need Professional or Ultimate, you probably know it already.
Home Basic, which will be sold only in emerging markets, removes the screen size, processor, and open application limits and adds support for Internet connection sharing and the new sensor and location-based features. However, Home Basic lacks such things as multitouch support or the Aero interface. DVD playback and Windows Media Center are also found in the Home Premium and Professional editions, but not in Basic or Starter.
Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection Offers 40+ Games
I don’t post that much console-related news here too often, but this one particular title caught my eye the other day while browsing Amazon, so I felt compelled to talk about it. If you grew up in the early 90’s and loved video games, chances are good that you’ve played either the SNES or Genesis. You probably also have many memories wrapped into a wide variety of games.
Well, if you were a fan of the Genesis in particular, and happened to own basically any of the popular games for the console, then you might be thrilled to see the latest collection to hit. “Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection” includes over 40 classic Genesis hits, including Altered Beast, Columns, Comix Zone, Ecco the Dolphin, Golden Axe, Phantasy Star, Sonic and so on.
Many of the games have been featured on various collections in the past, but this is the first time so many of them have come together to be offered for one price. From a franchise standpoint, almost all of the Sonic titles are here, in addition to Phantasy Star, Golden Axe. Even Vectorman 1 and 2 are included here! For the ~$30 USD SRP, this collection comes off as being an absolute steal.
Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection/Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection is an upcoming compilation of video games being developed by Backbone Entertainment for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles. The compilation features more than 40 Sega games which were previously released for the Genesis/Mega Drive console (including most of the Sonic the Hedgehog titles released for the system), and will feature arcade titles as well.
Intel Encourages Game Devs to Utilize the CPU Over the GPU
It looks as though Intel plans to give an interesting talk at the upcoming Game Developers Conference, which aims to explain to developers just how useful a CPU can be in gaming, over a typical GPU. We’ve been down this debate road time and time again, so there isn’t much more to expect from this talk, but it might be interesting to gain Intel’s latest perspectives on things.
As we mentioned in our “Clearing Up Misconceptions about CUDA and Larrabee” article last summer, both the CPU and GPU offer their own set of benefits to gaming, with the CPU being a natural choice for certain gameplay aspects while the GPU is set aside for more highly-parallel processes. You can’t have one without the other, clearly, and that’s why we’ll likely not see one cancel out the other for quite a while. You simply won’t run an entire 3D-accelerated game off of a CPU, at least not for a while, so the likes of NVIDIA are still safe.
For all we know, this talk might be Intel’s sneaky way of pre-facing their Larrabee graphics solution launch, which could happen at the end of this year, or sometime next. Since Larrabee utilizes many x86 cores, now is no doubt a great time to explain to developers what the benefits are. Of course, it’s too early for any of us to speculate just how successful Intel’s graphics card will be, but the wait shouldn’t be that much longer to find out.
“Not all algorithms and processes map well to a GPU,” said Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Research. “You have to have a problem that is naturally parallel, and except for the rendering of, say, a water surface and subsurface and reflections, the wave motion equations will run just fine on a CPU,” Peddie said. Intel may also be seeking ways to make better use of its quad-core processors, according to Tom R. Halfhill, an analyst at the Microprocessor Report. But, he added: “I need to be convinced that a CPU can do those 3D effects better than a GPU can.”
Google Earth Hits 5.0, Brings Underwater Views and Historical Imagery
Google has unveiled a major upgrade to their popular Google Earth application, bringing it to version 5.0. Like most Earth upgrades, the feature additions to this one are well-worth checking out. One of the coolest features is the addition of being able to go underwater and see things from that perspective. Don’t expect a Street View-type experience, though. You won’t see wildlife, shipwrecks or anything like it.
The goal here is to see what the elevation is like in certain parts of the ocean. There’s a new “Ocean” menu which will fill the ocean with numerous icons to read more information on what went down there, or why it’s particularly interesting. If the ocean isn’t interesting to you, then perhaps the “Historical Imagery” feature will be. Like it sounds, it will allow you to look back in time in certain areas, as long as the imagery exists.
Finally, if you’ve ever wanted to explore Mars, here’s your chance. Exploration works the same as on Earth, so you can zoom in and out to see whatever might catch your eye. The entire planet is also littered with various bits of information, including the Mars Rover path, crater names, path names, et cetera. Overall, this is a great upgrade, and packs even more value into an already great tool.
This controller is pretty handy, as it contains buttons for stepping back through any significant historical changes that Google has on file for a particular location. Using either the buttons or the timeline scrubber, Google Earth will seamlessly pull down past satellite images and any other data Google has to swap into the current view.
If iTunes is Available in Canada, Zune Marketplace Should Be Too
Last week, I posted about my first experience with purchasing music on iTunes, while also calling out the need for an audiophile digital music store (but I’ll keep dreaming). In the post, I admitted that while I never used iTunes in the past, DRM was finally given the boot, so I felt much more compelled to finally check it out. For the most part, I was pleased with the service, but as I began to use it more, I came to realize just how lackluster the application itself actually is. While I appreciate the large selection of music, for an application so popular and hyped, I couldn’t help but feel extremely underwhelmed.
So, I read a review of the Zune Marketplace with great interest, and installed the application later that evening. What intrigued me about the Marketplace is that the GUI is leaps and bounds above iTunes. Aesthetically, it’s fantastic (almost surprising for a Microsoft product), and after using it, the iTunes interface looks even more boring and unimaginative. Sadly though, the GUI doesn’t mean much if the shopping experience is poor, so I immediately searched for a track and added it to my cart.
Trying to finalize the purchase brought about a nonsensical error, however. “The offer that you are trying to redeem is invalid.” So like always, I hopped onto a search engine, to see if any help could be had. I was surprised to find an absolute lack of results, which only complicated the situation even more. I knew that finding the real reason for issue wasn’t going to be too easy. After all, I was able to log in and add a track to the cart without issue, and I even had spare credit available to take care of it, thanks to the fact that my Zune and Xbox Live account are one and the same.
For the next half-hour, I checked the Zune.net FAQ pages and also spent more time in search engines to see if anyone else had experienced similar issues, and for the most part, I had little luck. However, I did finally manage to stumble on one forum thread that discussed how the Zune Marketplace was still not available in Canada, and that’s when the light bulb went off in my head and the “Doh!” came out of my mouth.
Alright. So, I’m Canadian. For whatever reason, I had thought that the Zune Marketplace was available to Canucks, but I was wrong. I guess I had figured that if iTunes, Napster and a few others were available outside of the US, then surely the Zune Marketplace would be also. The biggest issue to me at this point isn’t so much the fact that Canadians can’t purchase from the store though, but rather that I had to spend so much time to actually find that out.
It mentions nowhere on the official website or inside of the application that Canadian’s (or other countries for that matter) can’t purchase music from the store. It does mention that the “Zune Marketplace is not available in all regions.“, but what it should say is that it’s not available to anyone outside of the United States. Podcasts are an exception, but that’s not the main reason people will ever use the Zune Marketplace.
The fact is, there’s no reason the Marketplace or the FAQ can’t be a little more clear-cut. After all, I signed into the Zune Marketplace with an account that tells them that I reside in Canada. Yet, I was still able to sign in without issue, and also add music to my cart. Why not have it disallow that action if you live outside the US? It seems like a no-brainer to me. Or, at least provide an error that’s relevant to the issue. If iTunes and others can cater to countries other than just the USA, then there’s no reason the Zune Marketplace can’t. Until this changes, it’s going to forever remain an inferior product.
ASUS Announces Atom N280-Equipped Eee PC 1000HE
Despite the fact that Intel hasn’t yet announced their Atom N280, ASUS sent out a press release today touting that their Eee PC 1000HE is the first to come equipped with the new processor. Thanks to a general lack of choice, most netbooks on the market right now use the 1.6GHz Atom N270, while the N280 will boost the clocks to 1.66GHz. The FSB will also be bumped, from 533MHz on the N270, to 667MHz on the N280.
Although a performance boost of any sort is welcomed, I’m not too sure such a small bump in clock speeds will reveal much benefit in real-world scenarios. However, given that the performance on netbooks is, to a degree, lackluster, any increase should be a good one. The new CPU isn’t the only thing ASUS is pushing though, as the battery-life has also been increased, to around 9.5 hours.
That figure was achieved by turning off Bluetooth, Wireless and the camera, and also while using the LCD at 40% brightness. Exactly how battery-life directly compares to the 1000H will be up to the reviewers to figure out. In addition, the 1000HE also includes a new Chiclet keyboard (with the right shift key in the proper location), a 160GB hard drive (plus 10GB online storage), Wireless 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth and 1GB of RAM. Price? $399. Not bad for such a full-featured 10″ netbook!
With the extra power of the Intel Atom N280 processor, users will be able to boot faster, get work done quicker, and enjoy higher performance compared to other Atom N270-powered netbooks. The Eee PC 1000HE also features ASUS’ exclusive Super Hybrid Engine (SHE) technology, which can boost CPU speed for extra power or lower it to preserve battery life, all at the touch of a button.
Charter Offers 60Mbps Cable Internet Service
North America has been known to lag behind other countries in terms of Internet speeds, but cable operator Charter is looking to change that. The company has just unveiled a new 60Mbps service, which would equate to well over 6MB/s download speed, for the premium price of $140. If you take downloading seriously though, the premium might not matter.
Alongside this new service, Charter is also being kind to their 16Mbps subscribers by automatically bumping them up to a new 20Mbps tier, which, all things considered, is still quite impressive. I couldn’t find a bandwidth cap mentioned anywhere, because that might make all of the difference. 60Mbps is impressive, but if it carries a low cap, it might mean the world of difference.
I admit that these numbers make me a bit jealous though. Since I live in Canada, the choices are severely limited (maybe not so much in the largest cities), and are offered only by a select few companies who hold a total monopoly on the market. The absolute best offered in my town is 18Mbps/1Mbps, for $99.95. Oh, I forgot to mention the 95GB bandwidth cap. My current package is 10Mbps/1Mbps, same bandwidth cap, and it costs $54.95. The US may be lacking in Internet speeds, but I can attest to the fact that Canada is worse.
The fact that Charter can afford the upgrade, given its financial situation, is a reminder that these DOCSIS upgrades are relatively inexpensive. While Verizon has to drop $20 billion digging trenches, boring under sidewalks, and laying fiber optic cabling and ductwork, the hybrid fiber coax (HFC) systems in place at the major cable operators need only compatible modems and CMTS gear in the cable company headend to enable faster speeds.
Which Notebook Beats Them All for Photographers?
Like most professionals, photographers have an absolute need to have quality hardware when dealing with their photos, the most important being the display. In fact, many professional displays can run at least twice the cost of a regular monitor, and it’s for good reason. When you take your photos seriously, accurate color reproduction and a bright, yet glare-free, screen is important.
But, the mobile photographer has a few factors working against them. There’s no official “photographer” notebook, so it’s a matter of finding one that has a few characteristics that suit your fancy. Well, popular Canadian photographer Rob Galbraith tries to take the hassle of out of finding the best mobile PC for photography use, and the results are a little bit surprising.
Although only four notebooks are compared, one happens to be Dell’s Inspiron Mini 9, a $300 netbook. Odd choice for a photographer, but believe it or not, Rob actually seemed to prefer the display on the netbook than the display on the latest MacBook Pro 15″. The true winner has to be the Lenovo ThinkPad W700 though, because it actually contains features to cater to the professional, including a small Wacom tablet and even a screen calibrator built into the palm-rest. Just don’t expect to toss this one in your camera bag (like you can with the Dell netbook)… it’s huge.
 Photo Credit: Rob Galbraith / Little Guy Media |
If you yearn for a laptop display that rises above acceptable, one whose colour accuracy matches a good desktop display, there’s only one in this test: the ThinkPad W700. In fact, for us, it could just about replace a desktop display for colour critical work and even soft proofing for print in Photoshop (a task that lays bare any weirdnesses in a screen and its monitor profile).
Hard Drive Encryption to Soon Become the Norm
Earlier this week, the biggest disk drive makers in the world completed a specification that paves the way for full-disk encryption in most, and in the future, probably all drives. Select manufacturers, such as Seagate, have been offering encrypted drives for a little while, but this is the first time a standard has been put in place. Thanks to such action, you can expect to see the feature becoming a big part of our computing lives.
It appears that drives can be equipped with either AES 128-bit or AES 256-bit encryption, both of which are incredibly secure. Once a drive is installed, you will need to set a password, and like most passwords, it shouldn’t be forgotten, and it should be rather complex. Even if the drive is encrypted, it means nothing if someone manages to crack your easy password.
The best part about the drive encryption is that it’s all-in-one solution, completely independent of the OS. It also doesn’t matter how many or what type of partitions you have, and best of all, it’s supposed to be completely transparent to the user, and won’t affect the drive’s performance. Luckily, although losing data sucks, if you happen to forget your password, you can wipe the drive and start over. So, data lost, but hard drive retained (and money saved).
“This represents interoperability commitments from every disk drive maker on the planet,” said Robert Thibadeau, chief technologist at Seagate Technology and chairman of the TCG. “We’re protecting data at rest. When a USB drive is unplugged, or when a laptop is powered down, or when an administrator pulls a drive from a server, it can’t be brought back up and read without first giving a cryptographically-strong password. If you don’t have that, it’s a brick. You can’t even sell it on eBay.”
NVIDIA’s CEO Talks Netbooks
With there being so much talk about Netbooks everywhere, care to know what NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang thinks about them, and also about his main competition? Laptop Mag sat down with him to see what was happening with ION in netbooks, and even Tegra (a technology we previewed last summer), to find out when we’ll begin seeing more NVIDIA in our small PCs.
One major complaint Jensen has towards netbooks is that they don’t run popular applications from well-known developers, such as Adobe, that well. My question is, though, who plans on running that kind of application on a netbook anyway? Netbooks are designed to supplement your main PC or other notebook, not replace it. But, I wouldn’t complain if there was more power to be had, even with a 10″ notebook, I can say that much.
This interview goes on to ask how much cost adding an ION to a netbook would cost, and the response is $30 – $40. I have to admit, that’s not too bad, and considering that ION replaces both the Northbridge and Southbridge, the increase probably wouldn’t even look that high. The interview goes into greater detail about Jensen’s thoughts, including whether or not he believes Intel is discouraging vendors from considering ION. It’s worth the read.
I’ve heard all kinds of stories about what Intel is doing. I’ve brushed it off so far as rumors, as I couldn’t understand why Intel would limit great PCs from reaching the market. Great PCs help Intel. Great PCs help humanity. Great PCs are great for the entire industry and entire market. What the industry needs are products that really excite consumers, so that even in these difficult times they’ll come back to buy PCs.
Zune Survives 2008, Might See 2010
After watching their Q4 revenue drop a staggering $100 Million compared to the same quarter last year, Microsoft’s Zune team had to have an uneasy feeling when the announcement of layoffs came last week. While the Entertainment and Devices Division remained quite profitable, the Zune fell squarely on its face.
Things however are not all doom and gloom. The hardware is very solid and their Zune software is, in my honest opinion, far superior to iTunes in almost every way. With that in mind, Zune can’t die, can it? According to Adam Sohn, Microsoft’s director of Zune marketing, updated Zune hardware and software is still on track and they are planning to deliver “progress” in this calendar year… whatever that means.
Having owned offerings from both Apple and Microsoft, I have to admit that I prefer the Zune. Its interface is on a level above that of the iPod and the software is polished to near perfection. Microsoft will never overtake Apple in sales, but they can hit back on an innovative level like they have been so far. As much as I like the Zune, how long can Microsoft continue to hemorrhage money for the device?
“Every time anything comes up, there is a set of people who pull a Chicken Little and say, ‘The Sky is Falling. Zune is dead,’ ” he said. “The fact is we are on track to deliver the next generation of Zune innovation in software and hardware.”
“The planning is fast and furious,” he said. “We will deliver progress this calendar year.”
Digital Transition Delay Request Rejected
To follow-up to a story we posted about yesterday, it looks as though the House denied the measure to delay the digital TV transition by four months. It was a unanimous vote, 258-168, so it’s unlikely that there will be a change of heart before the cut-off date, which remains February 17. So from this point forward, there is less than three weeks before this goes into effect, so the time to take action is now, if you need to.
I’ll jump to conclusions and assume everyone reading our site is well-aware of the change, and has been for quite some time, but even if your household is prepared for the switch, why not make sure your entire family is as well? Chances are that despite the constant warnings on the TV, some people will still choose to either ignore it, or will jump to conclusions and assume it won’t effect them. So, do your family a favor and make sure their up to speed on the switch! If your grandmother misses an episode of Lost, the blame will be shifted to you. We all know this.
Windows 7 to Follow Vista’s Edition Scheme
Oi, not this mess again. Prior to Vista’s launch, one of the biggest complaints with the OS was the number of different versions available. It was such a big complaint, in fact, that we felt compelled enough to write an article about it. Prior to Vista, things were kept simple. It was only with Windows XP when things began to become a little confusing. Although, choosing between Home and Professional is still quite simple compared to having four choices to deal with.
Like Vista, 7 will offer four main editions: Home Basic, Home Premium, Business and Ultimate. There’s also a Starter edition, but like the same edition for Vista, that will be designed for third-world countries, and it will again likely limit the user to a maximum of three running applications at a time. Aside from that, given we had the same editions with Vista, though, I think we can pretty-much assume what each will include in W7.
Personally, I don’t mind all the editions. I figure if people can fine-tune what they want, and not have to pay for what they don’t, then it’s all good. I do have to wonder about the Ultimate edition, however. Needless to say, aside from the extras that came bundled with Vista Ultimate (which I’m betting most people didn’t even use), the extras on the downloadable front were a bit lacking. Hopefully Microsoft can actually deliver an Ultimate edition this time that feels worth it.
Considering that the public beta is clearly labeled as Windows 7 Ultimate, there was little reason to think that Microsoft would back off on the different tiers, despite what sort of difficulties or confusions they cause for consumers. With all the advancements in Windows 7, especially the new taskbar, we can’t help but think that users of the lower-tiered versions of the OS would feel even more left out if such new UI changes were excluded.
OCZ’s Apex SSD’s Offers Great Speeds, Modest Price
Where Solid-State Disks are concerned, we’re in a great place right now. Think back to just one year ago, when SSDs as a whole were becoming much, much more popular. Everything about them was great. Quiet operation, fast speeds, the physical size… not too much to complain about. Well, except the price, of course. That has been the biggest hitch with SSDs ever since their introduction, but even that is greatly improving as each week passes.
Take Intel’s ultra-fast X25-M, for example. The 80 GB model was introduced this past September for around $599, and today, one can be had for under $399. When eyeing facts like that, it makes it impossible to say that “now is the time to go SSD”, because we know very-well that next month we’ll be seeing even better models, for even less money.
But, if you believe you’ve held off long enough and want to plop down some dough for some great SSD drives, OCZ’s new Apex series looks to deliver just what we’re looking for. Our friends at PC Perspective have taken their 250 GB model (~$889) for a spin, and the results are impressive. It doesn’t manage to keep up to Intel’s X25-M in terms of Read performance, but it storms past it where the Write is concerned.
While the 250 GB is the model likely to be skipped over, given its price, the $379 120 GB model seems much easier to stomach. That drive still offers great speeds, but comes in a bit cheaper than Intel’s drive. Plus, it offers faster Write speeds. What’s not to like?
As for pricing, the Apex drives are going to be a bit more expensive than some other similarly-sized drives but should be lower cost than the Intel X25-M drives it is competing with. The 60GB model will retail for $209, the 120GB model for $379 and the 250GB model for $839. Yes, that is a lot of cash for 250GB of storage but the real sweet spot right now is likely the 120GB version that sells for well less than half of the 160GB Intel X25-M price (currently selling for $889 or so). If you have the budget for two then you could theoretically pair up two of those drives for 240GB of capacity at the same price.
Digital Transition Could be Pushed Back Until June 12
Alright. Is there a single person out there who didn’t realize that a “digital transition” was coming? You didn’t have to be a tech-head to know what changes were on the horizon, thanks to the incredible amount of publicity on all of the popular US channels. So, color me surprised when I read today that the Senate unanimously voted for an extension on the changeover.
One report notes that more than 6.5 million US households could be without their television if the previous deadline (Feb 17) holds intact. I still have to ask, “Why?!”. As I mentioned, there have been constant reminders, and even though I don’t watch that much television, I’ve seen these warnings on pretty-much every channel I watch. Also, what will extending the deadline by four months really accomplish?
I might sound like a pessimist, but these warnings have been going on for almost two years now (I remember first hearing about this change at CES 2007), so there’s really little excuse to not have taken the necessary precautions by now. I’m probably in the minority with this thinking, though. But, that aside, this issue hasn’t been fully passed yet, as the House has the final say, but we’ll know for sure soon.
President Barack Obama earlier this month called for the transition date to be postponed after the Commerce Department hit a $1.34 billion funding limit for government coupons that consumers may use to help pay for digital TV converter boxes. The boxes, which generally cost between $40 and $80 each and can be purchased without a coupon, translate digital signals back into analog ones for older TVs.
KDE on Windows is Really Shaping Up
When it comes to a Windows desktop, you pretty much know what to expect. The basic Explorer shell has been around as long as Windows, and since Windows 95, it really hasn’t changed too drastically. On the Linux side, though, it’s typical to see various desktop environments, not just one. With Ubuntu, GNOME seems to be the popular choice, while with distros like OpenSUSE, KDE is what comes pre-installed.
For Windows users who want to spice things up, there is actually quite a bit of choice available in way of new shells, but what if you happen to like KDE on Linux, but don’t actually want to use Linux? Believe it or not, you can, right now, download and install the upcoming KDE 4.2 release on your Windows desktop, and what it will avail you is a pretty robust layer over top your regular Explorer shell. It doesn’t look identical to its Linux counterpart, but it comes quite close.
Ars Technica has taken the latest release for a spin, and for the most part, they’re pretty impressed. There seems to be a lot of customization capabilities here, although some aspects will still need to be configured by hand. Most applications work just fine under Windows though, although a select few run a little sluggish. Still, the development on this project over the past year has definitely produced some notable gains, and I can’t wait until it’s actually considered a stable product. It’s nice to have choice, regardless of what OS you’re running.
The open source KDE desktop environment, which is one of the two most popular Linux desktop stacks, underwent a significant transformation during the transition to version 4. Many parts of the environment were written from scratch and large parts of the underlying development infrastructure were overhauled. One of the major changes that accompanied this transition was the adoption of Qt 4, the next major version of KDE’s underlying toolkit.
Western Digital Launches World’s First 2TB Hard Drives
Western Digital today announced what we new was inevitable, a 2TB hard drive, built using four 500 GB platters, which produce an areal density of 400 GB/in2. The launch model is part of WD’s Caviar Green series, meaning that it’s designed for low noise, low power consumption and for the most part, is better than the rest for being used in smaller PCs, such as HTPCs, WD claims.
The new drive’s SRP is $299, or ~$0.15 per GB, which is a rather healthy boost over the 1 TB’s average cost of ~$0.11 per GB. It’s clear that this drive is designed for those who want to maximize as much of their chassis hard drive bay space as possible, while having an insane amount of storage space to deal with. I admit, I’m not even sure I could completely fill something like this anytime soon. I have 2.25 TB worth of storage in my main computer, and I only have about 60% of it used, plus, a lot of that is backup.
Our friends at Hot Hardware have had an ES drive in their lab for the past week and have been able to put it to a quick test to see how it delivers on the performance front. Once formatted, the drive will offer 1.81 TB for use, and at first glance, you can expect a read speed of around 90.0 MB/s, and Write of 80.3 MB/s. Not too shabby for a low-powered super-large drive! You can expect these to begin popping up on your favorite e-tailers this week.
“While some in the industry wondered if the end consumer would buy a 1 TB drive, already some 10 percent of 3.5-inch hard drive sales are at the 1 TB level or higher, serving demand from video applications and expanding consumer media libraries,” said Mark Geenen, President of Trend Focus. “The 2 TB hard drives will continue to satisfy end user’s insatiable desire to store more data on ever larger hard drives.”
Putting Four Intel X25-E’s Together in RAID 0
Late last week, we linked to Tech Report’s article on ACard’s DDR2-based storage drive, which for the most part, was quite impressive. It was lacking the overall density we’d like to see, but it was fast, even keeping up in many tests to Intel’s X25-E. Speaking of… happen to ever wonder what performance you’d see if you paired four of those together in RAID 0?
Well, Geoff apparently has, and he’s put his ideas to paper and has some results to drool over. The first thing to consider is that Intel’s X25-E is one heck of a drive to begin with. Although it’s available only in a 32GB flavor, it offers 250 MB/s Read and 170 MB/s Write speeds… also known as really freaking fast. Pairing the four together didn’t exactly quadruple the performance, but what was found is still rather impressive.
In the HD Tach synthetic test, the configuration achieved 560 MB/s Read and 515 MB/s Write, which, while not quite 4x, is still rather insane. At that consistent Write speed, you’d be able to fill up the entire 128 GB array in just under ~250 seconds. Real-world tests enjoyed pretty sweet gains in performance as well, over the single drive configuration, but for this kind of eye-popping performance, you’re really, really going to want to have a good reason to part with the near $2,000 required to get the configuration going.
While the X25-E’s dominating single-drive performance would surely satiate most folks, its target market is likely to seek out even greater throughput and higher transaction rates by combining multiple drives in RAID. The performance potential of a RAID 0 array made up of multiple Extremes is bountiful to say the least, and with the drive’s frugal power consumption and subsequently low heat output, such a configuration should cope well in densely populated rack-mount enclosures. Naturally, we had to test this potential ourselves.
Netbooks to Sell 35 Million Units in 2009?
Towards the end of last month, we reported on an industry story that stated that notebooks, for the first time ever, outsold desktop PCs. This occurrence took place during Q3, so chances are good the variances between the two are even more defined for Q4. What’s to thank for such stark increases? Netbooks, and lots of them.
While at Intel’s Developer Forum in 2007, CEO Paul Otellini made a huge claim that notebooks would outsell desktops by, I believe, 2010. He might have been a bit off, but it’s hard to blame him… ASUS’ first netbook was introduced just a month or two after the event. I think we pretty-much all know what happened since then.
But just how much growth can we expect to see this year, and in the future? Analysts at ABI Research have some bold claims for 2009, and I’m having a difficult time disagreeing. They believe that near 35 million netbooks will be sold this year, which, going by last year’s figures, could be close to 25% of all notebook sales. They go on to state that in 2013, that number will balloon up to 139 million, which would no doubt render most full-sized notebooks as a niche product. I certainly don’t want to see the standard notebook get overshadowed by netbooks, but the popularity of the light PCs sure can’t be denied. This might be a very interesting year where they are concerned.
While the advent of low-cost, power stingy x86 and ARM processors were the technical keys to netbooks, Burden argues that industry and consumer expectations also needed to evolve before netbooks would meet market acceptance. “In recent years, the industry still expected the smartphones to be more than they turned out to be, and most recently, MIDs were thought to be the next big mobile devices segment, but an unclear usage model continues to confuse the market. So today, netbooks’ time has come, and ABI research expects them to enjoy very strong market growth.”