Laptops

Sales of subnotebook reach for new heights

Paul Mah — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 09:38:12 -0400

According to market-research firm Gartner, worldwide shipment of subnotebooks is on target to reach 5.2 million this year, with 8 million units expected to be sold in 2009. Gadget site Brighthand estimated that this could well represent a staggering 50 million units by 2012. Numbers aside, the question to ask when approaching this new category of devices is this: Do subnotebooks represent an additional sale for manufacturers? Or rather, do they end up cannibalizing sales from traditional laptops and desktops? Moving ahead, I suppose another pertinent question to ask would be whether some of these devices would find their way into the enterprise.

To more information from the original article:
- check out this Brighthand article

Dell unveils new business laptops

Paul Mah — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 11:01:04 -0400

Dell announced seven new Latitude notebooks earlier this week aimed squarely at business people that prefer to work via a laptop. Under development for the last two years, some features that can be found in these new Latitudes include a dedicated security subsystem to protect data, and longer battery life to the tune of 19 hours on one of the models.

What is interesting is that they also include proprietary technology that allows immediate access to features such as web, email and calendaring, all without having to "boot up the system completely." Additional details are not available at the moment, though it has been reported to involve the use of a separate low-voltage processor that bypasses the main operating system altogether. In this mode, the laptop could apparently run for several days.

For more on the story:
- check out this article from InformationWeek

Student arrested for pictures taken from webcam

Paul Mah — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 07:29:19 -0400

A 23-year-old student, Craig Matthew Feigin, has been arrested and charged with modifying computer data as well as disrupting or denying computer system services. Apparently, a young woman passing through town had problems with her laptop. She was introduced by friends to Feigin and left her laptop with him. Unknown to her, other than fixing her computer problems, Feigin took the opportunity to install a couple of applications on-the-sly--the popular Log Me In remote-access application and a more nefarious one called Web Cam Spy Hacker.

Feigin was busted when the woman got suspicious of a constant "on" light and approached a friend, who uncovered the unauthorized applications. Apparently, the Web Cam Spy Hacker software is available at a Web site registered to Feigin's residential address. Police recovered more than 20,000 photographs, with some showing the young woman in various stages of undress. After his arrest, Feigin admitted to doing the same to other women. A police detective noted that, "We have eight or nine more potential victims that we know of now."

For more details on this case of computer voyeurism:
- check out this Gainesville Sun article

How your mobile phones and laptops lie to you

Paul Mah — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 07:27:58 -0400

Your mobile phone and laptop are constantly lying to you. Referring to the signal strength and battery life displays on such devices, blogger Dan declares,"Neither display is actually telling you what you think it's telling you." For example, four or five bars of reception on your mobile phone does not necessarily equate a high-quality conversation. The reason is because the signal bar does not take into consideration the amount of interference at your current location, or the signal-to-noise ratio. Ditto that for Wifi signal strength.

It gets worse when it comes to battery meters--especially those for mobile phones. Dan highlights how mobile phones seem to spend most of their time showing a full or almost full reading. However, the situation goes downhill--to flat, pretty quickly once the gauge reaches the halfway mark. Dan attributes this to pressure from marketing departments to reflect higher performance than is actually the case.

To check out what Dan has to say:
- check out the blog entry at Dan's Data

UK Ministry of Defense admits to the loss of hundreds of laptops

Paul Mah — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 05:49:57 -0400

The UK Ministry of Defense (MoD) has come clean and admitted to the loss of a staggering 658 laptops and 121 USB flash drives since 2004. Only 32 of these laptops were recovered. This revelation came only after a parliamentary question was tabled, and the final figures are at odds with earlier indications from the MoD. There was no additional information available as to whether the lost laptops and flash drives were encrypted, though the likelihood is that the majority of them were not. Clearly, the issue of lost laptops and flash drives will be one to dog corporations and even governments for some time yet. To make matters worse, the recent development of "cold boot" attacks threatens to render disk encryption less robust than it once was thought to be.

For more information on this story:
- check out the iTnews Australia article

Free laptop-tracking system becomes available

Paul Mah — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 09:29:59 -0400

A joint research project between the University of Washington and the University of California-San Diego bore fruits in the form of Adeona, an open-source service aimed at helping businesses and individuals track the movements of lost or stolen laptops. When installed on laptops, Adeona will set up an encrypted connection to the open source OpenDHT storage servers. Should a laptop become lost, installing Adeona on another computer with the correct password will allow the victim to track his device via IP addresses. Unlike other commercial laptop-tracking products, privacy is maintained as no other users will have access to personal data on the protected laptop.

For more on this new open source service:
- check out this TechNewsWorld article

Samsung starts mass producing 128GB SSD

Paul Mah — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 12:02:46 -0400

Samsung has started mass producing 128GB solid-state drives (SSD) in both 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch versions. A 256GB version is expected to enter production sometime later this year. Prices for the 128GB drives were not available at the moment. On the technical end, the SSDs consume about 0.5 watts in active mode, and just 0.2 watts in standby mode. The attraction here lies in their low power consumption, which paves the way for higher capacity gadgets and laptops that carry a longer battery life.

Samsung claims that its 128GB drive will last 20-times longer than a conventional laptop hard disk. Whatever the case, you can expect the prices of flash drives to drop as more manufacturers switch to full-scale production.

For more on Samsung's SSD:
- check out this article from PC World

Asus shows off prototype laptop with built-in projector

Paul Mah — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 02:41:11 -0400

Riding on the success of the miniature Eee-PC, Asus has managed to incorporate a projector into a full-fledged laptop. Still at the prototype stage, the built-in pico projector is located at the top edge of the LCD screen, replacing the webcam that normally is there.

You can see the picture taken at Computex of the prototype in action over at SlashGear. The observation is that the images don't look that impressive, though that can be attributed to the bright lights of the show floor. Still, such a laptop means one less item to lug around for a busy sales rep. No details are available pertaining to the resolution of the projector, unfortunately.

For more on the built-in projector:
- check out this Tech Gadget article

Intel shows off new Atom processors

Paul Mah — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 02:42:54 -0400

Intel has announced the availability of two Atom processors at the Computex 2008 conference in Taiwan this week. The Atom N270 processor is targeted at low-cost notebooks, while the Atom 230 is aimed at small desktops. Both processors feature 1.6GHz clock speeds and a 533MHz front side bus. Built on Intel's 45-nanometer manufacturing process, they are capable of supporting both Linux and Windows XP operating system.

Intel expects growth of the netbook and nettop market to exceed that of traditional desktops and even laptops. This will come about as households in emerging markets snap-up the cheaper offering, and households in mature markets acquire additional netbooks so that there potentially will be one device per person.

For more on Intel's Atom processors:
- check out this Computerworld article

Via open sources laptop design

Paul Mah — Wed, 28 May 2008 06:09:20 -0400

In an unusual move, Via technologies has released the hardware design for a low-cost laptop under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 license. As can be expected, the design of the OpenBook laptop is based on Via's C7-M processor. It also sports an 8.9-inch screen with basic wireless modules for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

As long as the base design is attributed to Via, and changes to it are made available, the CAD files of the design can be freely downloaded, shared, and modified. The offered rationalization is that this will shorten the design time needed by system makers. However, the cynic cannot help but think that this is but a thinly veiled attempt to promote systems based on the Via-made C7 processor.

For more about Via's open source laptpop:
- check out the Computerworld article