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Happy Saint Paddy’s day, everybody!
Sneak peek: Dell’s Adamo notebook.
Macworld’s iPhone 3.0 wish list.
Three More HTC Android phones.
Comcast passwords exposed on Web.
Super-fast game download service.
Boxee does an iPhone remote control.
Rough February for Macs, iPods.
By Harry McCracken | Posted at 7:23 am on Thursday, February 5, 2009
What’s transpiring this fine morning?
Hey, Woz is gainfully employed!
Fake parking tickets install malware.
Lenovo struggles, dumps American CEO.
GoDaddy’s cheesy ads work, alas.
Bill Gates bugs conference attendees.
The new Macbook’s running late.
Microsoft joins celebrity gossip race.
Facebookers compile “25 Things” lists.
By David Worthington | Posted at 5:11 pm on Tuesday, January 6, 2009
HP is showcasing its new Pavilion dv2 ultraportable notebook at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this week. It is the first PC manufacturer to utilize AMD’s value-priced Neo processor, which it is selling for under $1000, and looks like a sensible option for buyers that want to purchase a lightweight–but not bleeding-edge-machine.
The Pavilion is stylish and packs some decently robust hardware. The Neo processor, formerly codenamed “Huron” has a clockspeed of 1.6GHz and is comparable to Intel’s Ultra Low voltage Chips in its power consumption. The notebook offers hard-drive options as large as 500GB, it has AMD-ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3410 graphics, a 12.1-inch LCD screen, and Blu-Ray. Pricing starts at $699; higher-end models cost nearly $900.
Consumers that pay less than $700 for an ultra-portable should not expect every bell and whistle. AMD’s Neo processor has scant cache memory (512K), and is a single-core processor. However, people who are in market for the Pavillion probably will not be using the kinds of applications that take advantage of many-core processors. There isn’t much commercial ‘parallelized’ software on the market anyway. The Pavilion will pack more than enough of computing power for people to surf the Web and type reports.
AMD will release a dual-core portable chip code-named Conesus in the second half of the year, News.com is reporting. In the meantime, I see no reason why the average person should hold off their PC purchases other than Windows 7 compatibility (although it would seem unlikely that a relatively new machine would not be upgradable).
By David Worthington | Posted at 6:16 pm on Monday, December 29, 2008
HP has received favorable reviews for its new 1.5TB MediaSmart Server ex487, a Mac-compatible Windows Home Server that serves as a centralized hub for digital media libraries and connects to social Web services. And its launch has revived rumors that Apple could be improving its Time Capsule network storage device to perform many of the same functions..
Surprisingly, much of the praise centers on HP’s successful integration of its middleware on top of Windows Home Server. (Anyone with a memory as short as a matchstick can recall lousy software being preloaded onto HP machines in the past.) Two other variations of the server that have lower storage capacities are available; the product family’s shared specs are as follows:
· HP Media Collector: conveniently schedules the MediaSmart Server to copy and centralize digital files and libraries from networked PCs
· Media Streaming: remotely streams photos and music to any Internet-connected PC or Mac
· Server for iTunes: centralizes iTunes music libraries on the server for playback to any networked Mac or PC running iTunes
· HP Photo Publisher: easily upload photos to Facebook®, PicasaTM Web Albums and Snapfish(3)
· HP Photo Viewer: allows easy sharing of photos with friends and family
· PC Hard Drive Backup: backs up networked PCs via the Windows Home Server backup feature
· Mac Hard Drive Backup: backs up Macs running Leopard using Apple Time Machine software
· Server Backup: duplicates designated shared folders to a separate hard disk drive
· Online Backup: duplicates designated folders to Amazon’s S3 online backup service for an additional layer of protection
· Smart Power Management: can schedule times for server to go to “sleep” and “wake up,” saving on energy costs
· Processor: Intel Celeron, 2.0 GHz 64-bit. Two gigabytes (GB) of 800-MHz DDR2 DRAM now standard on MediaSmart Server
The drive bays are expandable to over 9TB. With storage being as affordable as it is, I can’t imagine why HP is not providing more storage from the get-go. My old reliable Windows XP Pro desktop has over a terabyte of storage. Then again, I built it, and am more of an early adopter than the average consumer.
The average consumer is also very likely to associate Apple with all things media. Frankly, Apple has needed to make the Time Capsule a more attractive product. Customers that are savvy enough to back up their data are likewise savy enough to know that there are some pretty cool storage alternatives. Rumored new Time Capsule features such as MobileMe support woud differentiate it from HP’s offering.
Other rumored upcoming Time Capsule features include a shared iTunes library databases for music and video, facilities to share media among Apple devices both at home and over the Internet, file-sharing, and back ups that can be remotely initiated. It may also provide for multiple hard drive configurations.
If I were an Apple customer, I would not switch back. If I was thinking about making the jump from PC to the Mac, it would probably take more than HP’s media server to stop me. In that scenario, the only other element that work really in HP’s favor would be price: The HP servers are relatively inexpensive, with the ex487 starting at $749.
That said, Apple could throw PC manufacturers a real curve ball by shipping souped up Time Capsules with Macs for a reasonable price–if not free with some higher-end models. With HP upping the ante, Apple will have to polish its products that much harder.
By Harry McCracken | Posted at 7:41 am on Wednesday, December 10, 2008
I woke up this morning, started to scan the news on Techmeme, and spotted an InfoWorld headline from a story about a new HP battery that very briefly got me very excited (hey, I was still a little drowsy):
A 3-year battery! That would be 26,280 hours of power between charges if I have my math right–26,304 if we’re talking a leap year. And it was just three months ago that HP was trumpeting its also-impressive-sounding 24-hour battery:
Okay, okay–the new battery doesn’t run for three years. (I think–actually, the story on InfoWorld doesn’t state how long it’ll run.) But it’s still interesting.
The battery in question is a lithium-ion model was developed by Boston Power, and the three years (or 1,000 charges) are how long it takes before the power it provides on a charge begins to degrade. (Typical battery start to weaken after 300 charges, according to the article.) It’ll also charge to 80 percent of its full capacity in a zippy 30 minutes.
HP is calling these Enviro batteries, and will sell them as a custom-configuration option for $20-$30 with certain consumer notebooks starting early next year. I’d certainly upgrade to one if I were buying an HP laptop.
But I still hope to live to see a laptop battery that just keeps going and going for three years or more…
By Harry McCracken | Posted at 5:03 pm on Wednesday, October 8, 2008
The experiment known as Operation Foxbook–in which I dumped my fancy MacBook Pro and desktop apps like Microsoft Office and Photoshop for an HP Mini-Note netbook and Web apps running in Foxbook–is officially over. Actually, I wrapped it up about a week ago, but I thought it made sense to take the time to reflect a bit about what went right, what went wrong, and what I learned.
Here are previous installments of this series, in case you want some background:
Introducing Operation Foxbook
Operation Foxbook: Life Inside the Browser, So Far
Operation Foxbook: Livin’ Small With the HP Mini-Note
Operation Foxbook: More Fun With Web Apps
And here (after the jump) are some overall lessons…
By Harry McCracken | Posted at 7:21 pm on Friday, September 26, 2008
Operation Foxbook–my experiment of dumping my MacBook Pro and desktop apps for an HP Mini-Note netbook and Web-based apps within Firefox–continues apace. And the hardware side of things is turning out to have as big an impact on the experience as the software aspect.
The MacBook Pro I use most of the time is relatively thin and light given how powerful it is, but it’s no subnotebook. And it’s the largest, heaviest machine I’ve carried in years. I used to be addicted to subnotebooks like the Fujitsu Lifebook B112 and Fujitsu P-1000, but in 2004 I had an epiphany and bought my first Mac in years–the 12-inch PowerBook, which was a bit larger and heavier. Then I replaced that with the even larger, heavier 13-inch MacBook. And when I started Technologizer, I decided I wanted more screen space and resolution, and bought the MacBook Pro.
By Harry McCracken | Posted at 6:29 pm on Monday, September 22, 2008
I do most of my Technologizer work these days on a 15-inch MacBook Pro laptop that runs three operating systems (OS X, Windows Vista, and Windows XP) and a full complement of applications for wrangling words, pictures, and Web sites (Microsoft Office, Photoshop, CorelDraw, Dreamweaver, and whatever else I need at any given moment). It’s a great tool for the job.
But tomorrow I’m going to set it aside for a few days and launch what I’m calling Operation Foxbook–an experiment that involves doing as much of my work on the Web and inside the browser (a specific browser–Firefox) as I possibly can. I’ve wanted to try this for a while–I wrote about the idea of a “Firefox PC” back in this post. But when I was at PC World, I couldn’t truly go cold turkey from desktop software, since we used Adobe InDesign, a decidedly local application, to crank out the magazine.
Technologizer, however, is all Web all the time–and I know of nothing I do for the site that simply can’t be done with a Web app. And the notion of computers that serve largely as containers for a Web browser has hit the big time–there’s a whole class of inexpensive, small notebook known as netbooks. So I’ll use one such machine, HP’s Mini-Note, to do my Technologizer stuff, and will blog about the experience. I know some of the browser-based apps I’ll use: parts of both Google Docs and Zoho, for sure, and the excellent Picnik photo editor. And Gmail, too, even though I continue to both love it and hate it. I’m sure I’ll need to seek out other apps as I need them, too.
Stay tuned–I may need your advice and patience to get through to the weekend without grabbing the MacBook…
By Harry McCracken | Posted at 12:00 am on Monday, August 25, 2008
Pity the poor Mac Mini. After being unveiled with plenty of hoopla in January 2005 as “the most affordable Mac ever,” it departed the limelight with surprising swifness. The glossy white micro-Mac has received only minor updates such as CPU upgrades and actually got less affordable when the base model went from $499 to $599. Last year, there were even premature reports of the Mini’s imminent death, and most Mac enthusiasts didn’t seem too griefstricken at the prospect of its demise.
But the Mini lives–and even though $599 is no longer anywhere near a dirt-cheap price for a computer, it remains the cheapest Mac. It also comes in a super-small package that’s still fun and distinctive. So it’s the subject of my fourth excessively in-depth Mac-vs.-PC price comparison. My goal, as always, is to gauge whether you pay a “Mac Tax” when you buy a Mini instead of a roughly comparable Windows PC.
Before we get started, here are links to earlier comparisons in this series, just in case you missed ‘em:
Round one: A mid-range MacBook vs. custom-configured Windows laptops.
Round two: The cheapest MacBook vs. cheap Windows laptops.
Round three: The iMac vs. Windows all-in-ones
By Harry McCracken | Posted at 2:25 pm on Saturday, August 16, 2008
On Thursday, I began my multiple-part look at the cost of Macintoshes by comparing a mid-range MacBook to some Windows laptops which I’d configured to be as similar to the MacBook as possible. Compared to those machine, I concluded that the MacBook was in the zone in terms of price and power, or, in other words, “not expensive.”
I also managed to stir up lots of controversy, in the form of dozens of comments and discussion elsewhere on the Web. So as promised, I’m back with another round of price comparisons, and based in part on comments to my original post by a reader named Michael, I’ve decided to stick with the MacBook and compare it to Windows laptops that happen to be on sale at Best Buy at the moment.
By Harry McCracken | Posted at 10:50 pm on Thursday, August 14, 2008
[UPDATE: This is one of the most popular stories we've ever published, but with the arrival of the new MacBook on October 14th, it's also obsolete. Read it if you like--but this new article compares the new MacBook to comparable Windows computers.]
It’s of those eternal questions of the computing world that never seems to get answered definitively: Does the “Mac Tax” really exist? Some folks are positive that Macs are overpriced compared to Windows computers; others deny it steadfastly. Almost nobody, however, bothers to do the math in any serious detail.
So that’s what I’m going to do. And since Apple manufactures multiple models, I’m going to do it one computer at a time, starting with the MacBook, the company’s consumer notebook.
By Harry McCracken | Posted at 6:53 am on Tuesday, March 17, 2009
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