Tag Archives | Laptops

Would You Buy a CrunchPad?

Posted by Harry McCracken on April 10, 2009 at 9:42 am

Lisa and Jackson buy a CrunchPad The history of technology journalists getting into the computer business isn’t full of success stories (remember Adam Osborne?). But TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington and a bunch of co-conspirators have been noodling on the idea of a CrunchPad, a really cheap, simple tablet computer for surfing the Web. Yesterday, a bunch of photos “leaked” out, including some of CrunchPad that looked suspiciously close to final–in fancy boxes, yet. Then Arrington chimed in and gave an update on the project, but said he’s not ready to talk about details on availability. We still don’t know whether the CrunchPad would be a TechCrunch-branded product, or a design that other companies could license, or, for that matter, whether there are any plans to bring it to market at all.

I’m not saying I’m itching to buy a CrunchPad, but I’ve long been interested in the idea of a hunk of hardware that was designed for Web browsing and not much of anything else. I still think I want one with a real keyboard–I’ve yet to meet an on-screen substitute that I can love unreservedly–but I’m open to being convinced that I don’t need one. (I’m also intrigued by the idea of an Apple tablet, but for some mysterious reason, nobody at Apple is talking about whether it’s really working on one.)

So does the CrunchPad, or something like it, interest you?

CrunchPad

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Why Your Notebook Battery Life Never Quite Seems Equal to the Claims

Posted by Patrick Moorhead on April 1, 2009 at 9:06 am

[A NOTE FROM HARRY: Please welcome Patrick Moorhead of AMD to Technologizer’s roster of contributors. He’ll be writing both topics relating to his day job and others that simply stem from his experiences as a gadget enthusiast.]

Do you ever feel like the actual battery life on your notebook never quite equals the information that appears in promotional material? For example, you may see “up to five hours,” but actually get about half that. Well, you aren’t alone. I hear it all the time, and if you do a quick Twitter search on the topic, you’ll see lots of discussion.

I can assure you that no devious plot exists to mislead you. It really comes down to a few simple factors.

#1: Measurements are best case: Like a car’s “highway miles per gallon” which gauges the best case (cruising at a sustained speed for an extended period without stop-and-go driving), notebook battery life is typically based on MobileMark 2007. This benchmark primarily measures battery life while the notebook is doing nothing–not even wirelessly connecting to the Internet. A “city-driving” equivalent of notebook battery life doesn’t exist…yet.

#2: Different strokes for different folks: We all use notebooks differently, and therefore will see different battery durations. Some watch HD web videos on YouTube, some may just do email, and some play more games than others. all of which will mean varying battery life. You can see this data from AMD here that shows the phenomenon. (Disclosure: I work for AMD) This also shows that battery life varies depending on the combination of components inside a machine.

#3: Battery life varies over time: The longer you own your notebook, use it, charge, and recharge, over and over again, the more the battery loses its effectiveness. So theoretically, your longest battery life will be on the first day you crack open the packaging. See all the people selling new batteries for old notebooks? Some even say that battery life is variable with heat.

So what should you do?

Grade battery life on a curve–let’s say, 60% of the claimed performance. If the label says 10 hours, my guess is it’s probably only about 6 hours in real use.
Ask your retailer and systems providers to provide the “city miles per gallon,” or, using the tried and tested cellphone analogy, “talk-time.” They all have Web sites–and when all else fails, you can ask them over Twitter.

I may have not added back 40% of your battery life, but hopefully you know why you only get 60% of it!

Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. You can find him on his AMD blog, Twitter, FriendFeed, and LinkedIn. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions.

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Hey, Lauren! Is Apple's 17-Inch MacBook Pro Expensive?

Posted by Harry McCracken on March 31, 2009 at 12:36 am

There’s something about comparing the prices of Windows PCs and Macs that makes otherwise cool and collected people–Windows and Mac users alike–become profoundly emotional and partisan, until steam shoots out of thefir ears and their eyeballs turn bright red. You can see this passion crop up in some of the comments on Ed Oswald’s two recent posts (here and here) on Microsoft’s new “Lauren” ad comparing 17-inch Windows laptops to the MacBook Pro. I’ve also encountered it every time I’ve tried to do the math on the Windows vs. Mac question–which I started doing within a few weeks of Technologizer’s launch last summer.

I haven’t returned to this issue since last October, but the moment Microsoft put it at the heart of a major national TV commercial last week, the blogosphere started debating it all over again. I continue to think it’s worth trying to answer the question in a very specific and unemotional way. The specific part is important because asking whether Macs are more expensive than Windows PCs is like asking whether Audis are more expensive than General Motors cars: It’s a meaningless question without context, since the answer is entirely contingent on the models you choose. And the unemotional aspect of my research tries to strip out any bias based on anything but the computers at hand. (Note that in the commercial, Lauren sets off a powder keg of controversy the moment she says she’s not “cool enough” to own a Mac–me, I want to judge computers, not people.)

In the end, those comparisons are all about collecting fresh data on the “Mac Tax”–the notion that you pay a premium for Apple computers compared to similar Windows PCs. Or, as Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer recently put it, “Paying an extra $500 for a computer in this environment—same piece of hardware—paying $500 more to get a logo on it?” And since the 17-inch MacBook Pro is the Mac that Lauren nixes in favor of a far cheaper HP Pavilion, it’s the one I’ll look at in this story.

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Microsoft Dives Deeper Into the Laptop Accessory Business

Posted by David Worthington on March 10, 2009 at 6:46 pm

Microsoft Laptop Cooling Base Even Microsoft’s most impassioned critics will concede that it makes a darn good mouse, and with the rising popularity of netbooks, its hardware group is capitalizing on the opportunity to sell even more accessories. The company announced today that it will be introducing a notebook cooling base in July, and delivering more colors for its Arc Mouse later this month.

Microsoft has been a major PC accessory manufacturer for 25+ years, thanks to the Microsoft Mouse, and its move into the notebook accessory category is a logical extension of its hardware business.

Earlier this month, a Gartner Research report projected that notebook PC shipments would increase approximately 9 percent in 2009 from 2008 despite the worldwide economic downturn’s overall negative effect on global PC shipments.

While its hardware business is benefiting, the netbook trend has hurt Windows client licensing revenue. Microsoft’s diversification is filling its coffers, but it will have to sell a lot of Arc Mouses (Mice?) to make up the difference.

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These Speakers Sound Great. And They’re…Invisible!

Posted by Harry McCracken on January 26, 2009 at 9:26 am

Emo Labs I had two hands-down favorites at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. One of them was the one that was everybody’s favorite: Palm’s upcoming Pre phone. The other was a little-known technology which I saw demoed in a private preview. It’s from a Boston-area startup called Emo Labs, and it’s a new technology for loudspeakers that called Edge Motion. Emo says that Edge Motion lets it build “invisible loudspeakers” for incorporation into TVs, computer displays, notebooks, and another devices with screens–and that its technology is the first all-new development in speaker design in decades. Judging from the sneak peek I saw, that isn’t hype.

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A Vaio For Your Pocket

Posted by Harry McCracken on January 8, 2009 at 1:29 am

I haven’t run into a Sony Vaio P notebook here at CES in Las Vegas yet, but judging from Gizmodo’s hands-on report and photos, it’s going to be worth the effort to track it down for some hands-on time. The P is a 1.4-pound pocketable machine that has an 8-inch screen and runs Windows Vista, and while it’s far from the first attempt to cram Windows into such a tiny device–micro-Windows pioneer OQO debuted a new version of its system with an OLED screen today–I like its looks. The keyboard looks like it’s trying to reduce a standard notebook-sized design into a smaller space, which is appealing approach; most of the really, really li’l Windows machines I’ve seen have been undone by oddball keyboards. And the Vaio has a ThinkPad-style pointing nub, which makes sense on a gadget this small and eliminates the need to reserve real estate for a touchpad.

The Vaio P is due to ship in February and starts at $900, making it pricier than a netbook…but maybe a bit cheaper than you’d have guessed a gimzo like this from Sony would have been in years past.

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Is the World Ready For Sealed Notebook Batteries? Are You?

Posted by Harry McCracken on January 7, 2009 at 4:07 pm

When Apple used yesterday’s Macworld Expo keynote to confirm rumors that the new 17-inch MacBook Pro would have a sealed battery, it laid the news on the audience gingerly. The keynote included a rather lengthy video in which Apple engineers discussed the new laptop’s sophisticated battery. In between sound bites on its impressive chemistry, long life, and green characteristics, they explained that battery compartments, doors, and latches take up a lot of room, and that you can put a bigger battery into a notebook if you just seal it in.

The new MacBook Pro is the second Apple notebook with a sealed battery (last year’s MacBook Air being the first). It also joins all iPods and the iPhone. It seems entirely possible that Apple will eventually sell no products with removable batteries, starting whenever it replaces the current 13- and 15-inch MacBook designs.

While Apple’s video didn’t explicitly confront the obvious objections to a notebook design with a battery that can’t be removed, its reasoning is obvious. The primary reasons you’d want to remove a laptop’s battery are to swap in a new one for longer cord-free productivity, and because batteries lose their ability to be fully recharged over time. The company says that the 17-inch MacBook Pro runs for an impressive “up to” 8 hours on a charge, and that it can be fully recharged 1000 times, versus a few hundred times for most laptops. Therefore, historic reservations about sealed batteries are no longer an issue. Right?

Well, maybe. I’m instinctively cautious about the idea of a battery I can’t remove. (I had toted a second one with me when I liveblogged yesterday’s keynote, just in case.) But Apple’s claims about the new battery leave me willing to at least consider the notion of a sealed notebook. (I want, of course, to read what kind of battery life folks other than Apple say the new MacBook Pro has–I’ve never owned any notebook from any manufacturer that consistently came anywhere near the promised “up to” amount of life.)

That’s just me. I’m curious whether Apple’s move will have any influence on the rest of the industry. Offhand, I know of no other company that sells sealed laptops. (HP sells optional batteries based on technology from Boston Power that also promises 1000 recharges, but they’re traditional replaceable models.) One suspects that most other manufacturers will be a lot more cautious–Apple is simply bolder about making seemingly sacrilegious design decisions that other computer companies. Often for good, sometimes for worse. And I’ll bet most IT department staffers within big companies would recoil at the idea of laptops with fixed batteries.

Of course, if the new 17-inch MacBook Pro is a smash hit, all bets are off, and we might see sealed designs catch on really quickly. For now, though, I’m still thinking that a meaningful percentage of people who might otherwise be enthusiastic about a 17-inch Mac notebook will be intimidated, at least, by Apple’s decision.

How about you?

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Laptops Overtake Desktops–This Time For Real

Posted by Harry McCracken on December 24, 2008 at 8:57 am

kinglaptops In the news world, there are things that I think of as Groundhog Day stories–ones that announce a noteworthy event that you could have sworn earlier stories had already made a big deal about having happened. One of those would be the notion that laptops have finally outsold desktop PCs. Every time notebook sales outpace desktops in some specific respect–in U.S. retail stores, for instance–there’s a rash of laptops-overtake-desktops articles. Here’s one from 2003.

There’s another outbreak of such stories today. But this one was prompted by a new report from iSuppli that’s pretty darn definitive: It says that global unit sales of notebooks surpassed desktops for the first time in Q3 2008. Unless you want to wait for the day when there are more laptops on the planet than desktops, this is it–laptops have overtaken desktops. Period. Finally. End of need for future Groundhog Day stories on the matter.

So can I make a modest proposal? If the majority of personal computers being sold everywhere on earth are laptops, they’re not the variant of the PC they were when they first popped up in the 1980s–they are the PC. It’s desktop computers that require qualification, and the time will come when desktops become an endangered species, just like minicomputers were by the 1990s. Which means that it would be perfectly reasonable to redefine the unmodified term PC as meaning a computer that’s portable.

I’m not promising I’ll stick to such a policy here–if I’m the only person who does, I’ll just confuse people–but I kind of like the idea.

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The Wide (and Weird) World of Two-Screen Laptops

Posted by Harry McCracken on December 19, 2008 at 8:28 pm

thinkpad-dual Lenovo’s upcoming ThinkPad W700 mobile workstations are loaded with high-end features, including Intel Core 2 Quad CPUs and Nvidia Quadro Express graphics, RAID storage, and built-in Wacom pen tablets. But one feature is as close to being genuinely jaw-dropping as anything I’ve seen on a laptop in a long time: an optional secondary 10.6-inch LCD display that sits to the side of the main 17-inch screen. (There it is on the left–I’m not entirely clear on where the secondary screen goes when not in use–whether it slides, folds, or detaches.)

My first take on the second screen was that it was wretched, pricey excess. But the W700 is aimed at CAD users and other types who want all the power they can get their hands on, and all the screen real estate, too. Portability is not top-of-mind for these folks, and I’ll bet that a meaningful minority of the people who buy the W700 spring for the second screen.

The W700ds (hey, wonder what the “ds” stands for?) will start at around $3600 and will ship in January.

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HP’s Battery Doesn’t Last for 26,280 Hours, is Still Cool

Posted by Harry McCracken on December 10, 2008 at 7:41 am

hplogo1 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):

infoworldhp

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:

cravehp

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…

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