Fujitsu Siemens Computers has become a member of the Mobile Broadband Initiative, whose goal is to push built-in support for mobile broadband using HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) in laptops.
The initiative was first announced in September, and will use a logo, which looks like a stylized cloud or bird, to signal that a laptop comes with built-in support for mobile broadband. The push is also backed by a US$1 billion marketing budget, to be spent in the next year.
The Mobile Broadband service logo will be used on the entire professional notebook range from Fujitsu Siemens, which comes equipped with the integrated support HSDPA needed to qualify, according a statement from the company.
Other participating companies are a mixture of operators, laptop and chip manufacturers, including 3, Asus, Dell, Ericsson, Lenovo, Microsoft, Orange, Qualcomm, Telefónica Europe, Telecom Italia, TeliaSonera, T-Mobile, Toshiba and Vodafone.
Fujitsu Siemens Computers, Toshiba and ECS are close to releasing the logo, while Lenovo and Dell planning to release it in the first quarter of 2009, according to a statement from Ton Brand, project director at the GSM Association, which manages the initiative.
If a laptop bears the new logo, it supports at least 3.6M bps (bits per second) on paper and 1M bps in real-world capacity. The technical specification states that 3.6M bps is required, and that 7.2M bps is recommended, but the logo will always look the same, according to the GSM Association.
NoteBook | NoteBook | Thursday, December 11th, 2008
For mobile professionals and businesses alike, power consumption plays a pivotal role in the day-to-day activities of mobile warriors. Laptops now exceed desktops in sales in the PC market, so it’s inevitable that businesses are looking to outfit more and more of its employees with laptops when the time comes to upgrade computer systems.
It used to be that businesses were faced with either high performance/non-portability with a desktop system or poor performance/high-portability with laptop systems. Thanks to advances in processing technology, laptops are closing the gap when it comes to performance when compared to their desktop counterparts.
However, there is one area which hasn’t seen much advancement in the laptop industry: battery power/efficiency. Lithium-ion batteries are the lifeblood of laptops when they are away from a power outlet. Businesses rely on their employees to provide timely information when out in the field, so a laptop with little consideration for power consumption is likely not a wise choice.
While few improvements – short of increasing the cell count – have been made to lithium-ion batteries to improve battery life on laptops, chip manufacturers and laptop OEMs have devised ways of their own to improve battery life on machines.
Low-power processors
While quad core processors are becoming more prevalent for business use for CPU-intensive applications, dual core processors are still overwhelmingly favored in the laptop market. Laptop manufacturers like Lenovo and HP often look to Intel’s Core 2 Duo processors to provide a fine balance between performance and power efficiency.
For businesses that don’t require a lot of horsepower, Intel’s ultra-low voltage (ULV) Core 2 Duo processors can be had in speeds ranging from 1.06 GHz to 1.2 GHz and low-voltage (LV) Core 2 Duo processors top out at 1.6GHz. These processors sip power, while at the same time offering up just enough performance to handle most day-to-day tasks required by the average mobile user. Intel’s standard voltage Core 2 Duo mobile processors don’t give up much in terms of performance to their desktop counterparts, but they will cost you a bit more in terms of power efficiency when compared to the ULV and LV offerings.
To read more on power consumption for mobile professionals and other mobile-related topics, head on over to Lenovo’s Ultra-Mobile Enterprise website.
NoteBook | Shopping | Thursday, December 11th, 2008
What a difference a few years make. In 2006 we were impressed to see laptops under $900. Last year, we were impressed to see them under $600. This year the price drops even farther: devices under $300 and if rumors prove true, one may even be under $100.
The new classes of laptops, nicknamed ‘Netbooks’ for their ultra-portable design, have been popping up on store shelves since the beginning of the year. Primarily used for internet services like web browsing, e-mail, and instant messaging, they’re also suitable for running office and educational software. They’re smaller and lighter than their larger cousins though not quite as feature rich.
Most have smaller storage capacity and slower processors and may not run all the latest software. On the plus side, many contain new solid state technology which reduces weight, improves battery life, and reliability since there are fewer moving parts.
3G Acer Aspire for $99
These days most people wouldn’t think of buying a new phone without getting a couple hundies off in exchange for their wireless free will. But netbooks? Internationally such deals aren’t altogether uncommon, but we haven’t seen one here yet. That changes next week if the above image turns out to be legit (and we kinda think it is), with Radio Shack set to offer an Acer Aspire One for just $99 so long as you sign up for a $60/month (or more) data plan through AT&T. (If you squint you can see it’s a rather less enticing $499 without.) That comes to something north of $1,500 over the life of the contract, which is hardly a steal — but then again your average sub-$200 smartphone doesn’t seem like such a bargain after two years of $35/month, either. (Courtesy Gizmodo.com)
Alpha 400
The Alpha 400 for an inexpensive $169 provides multimedia entertainment, broadband internet access and work on the go. It features the Linux Operating System, 400 MHz 32-bit CPU, 128 MB RAM, 1 GB NAND Flash storage, a 10/100 MB Ethernet interface and 802.11b wireless access.
Asus - Eee PC Netbook
At $279, this incredibly compact and lightweight netbook features a solid-state drive for quiet, energy-saving and shock-resistant storage of your data on the go. Features include an Intel® Atom™ Processor N270, 1.6GHz processor speed, 4GB solid state drive, 1GB of Ram, 8.9″ WSVGA widescreen display with 1024 x 600 resolution and offers, built-in wireless connectivity, Linux, and weighs 2.2 lbs.
HP 2133
At $299, the small but mighty, the HP 2133 Mini-Note PC offers you a full-function laptop that weighs around 2.8 pounds. It features an 8.9-inch scratch-resistant display with a WXGA resolution and a nearly full-size keyboard (92 percent). It’s powered by the VIA C7-M ULV processor, which provides a 1.0 GHz clock speed, uses a solid state 4 GB hard drive, 512 MB of installed RAM (2 GB maximum), 54g Wi-Fi connectivity (802.11b/g), lightning quick Gigabit Ethernet, VGA webcam built into the screen’s bezel for video chats, and up to 2.25 hours of battery life. This model comes pre-installed with the SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 operating system.
The $299 Wind features a speedy and energy-efficient Intel Atom 1.6GHz, an 120G / 2.5 SATA hard drive , 10” wide screen (1024X600 resolution), 802.11b/g and Bluetooth, gets around 2.5 hours on battery, measures 7.08 inches wide by 10.23 inches long, and weighing just 2.3 pounds. With the built-in 1.3M webcam and MIC, users can take group photos, film parties, and see friends when chatting online.
NoteBook | Flash Memory | Thursday, December 11th, 2008
SHERMAN BLACK, a senior vice president at Seagate Technology, a leader in hard drive manufacturing, lies awake at night worrying that his teenagers are part of a new generation of computer users who don’t care if their data is stored locally or in the Internet “cloud.”
It matters to the hard drive industry, because a growing number of consumers are eagerly eyeing a new wave of solid-state drives. Made from arrays of Flash memory chips, these new drives are smaller and many times faster than traditional hard drives that read and write magnetic 1s and 0s on a rotating disk or platter. They are also, of course, more expensive. Small 2-, 4- and 16-gigabyte solid-state drives are now already standard components of the so-called netbook laptops being sold by Dell, Hewlett-Packard and others, and a 128-gigabyte drive now sells as a $500 upgrade to the MacBook Air from Apple.
This shift in storage technology is now possible because of the growth in Flash chip usage. They are now ubiquitous in hand-held devices like digital cameras and MP3 players. The other reason the shift is happening now is that these solid-state drives (so called because, unlike magnetic-disk drives, they have no moving parts) are being designed to fit in the same space in laptops currently used by the industry-standard 2.5-inch and 1.8-inch disks used in hard drives.
There are many benefits to this newer technology. Information can be stored permanently in Flash chips even when power is turned off, and the chips can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. They make no noise, give off little heat and consume far less power, while transferring data on average many times faster than rotating hard disks.
Of course, there are caveats. While solid-state drives can read information more quickly than hard drives, some models write information more slowly. That means that, on average, performance comparisons may depend on a particular manufacturer’s design or running a specific application or style of computing. There are also big differences in quality within the solid-state market, and there can be extreme differences among drives in the number of times that 1s and 0s can be stored and erased. Because individual transistors can fail over time, Flash chips come with extra transistors that can be turned on automatically in the event of failure. Perusing the reviews on Web sites like Amazon.com and Buy.com suggest a wide range of consumer satisfaction — from awestruck to angry.
Caveats aside, a properly designed solid-state drive can make a world of difference. Windows can boot in just seconds, and switching to a solid-state disk can add roughly 30 minutes to the battery life of a common laptop computer.
December 9, 2008 (Computerworld) The market for netbooks — small notebook PCs with even tinier prices — exploded in the third quarter of this year, according to market researcher DisplaySearch LLC, as vendors aimed their wares at students during the back-to-school season.
The global market for netbooks, also known as mini-notebooks, was 5.61 million in the third quarter, up 160% from the second quarter, according to a statement today from DisplaySearch, an Austin-based research firm.
Acer Inc. displaced Asustek Computer Inc. (Asus) as the netbook market leader for the first time during the quarter, taking 38.3% of the market, compared to 30.3% for Asus.
DisplaySearch expects sales of netbooks, which are lighter-weight, lower-powered and generally cheaper than regular notebook PCs, to hit 14 million by the end of the year. That’s a sharp rise from 2007, when just 1 million were sold.
“Worldwide demand for these products is forecast to grow rapidly over the next few years, with demand from a variety of sources, including early adopters, consumer and enterprise PC customers seeking a smaller or secondary notebook PC, as well as new PC customers in emerging markets,” DisplaySearch analyst John F. Jacobs wrote in a report. “We expect the mini-note PC market to settle at approximately 16% share of the notebook PC market by 2011.”
Like Gartner Inc., DisplaySearch sees Netbooks as the one bright spot in the overall laptop PC market, which has shown signs of slipping.
Beginning in 2009, Hewlett-Packard will offer a notebook battery upgrade that is guaranteed for three years.
The announcement was made Wednesday by Boston-Power, a supplier of lithium-ion batteries that will sell its Sonata battery to Hewlett-Packard. Representatives from both HP and Boston-Power declined to divulge many details on the relationship, primarily as B-P is a startup company, ramping production to meet the demands of its first customer.
A representative from HP said that the company will make the Sonata battery available on some mainstream consumer notebooks, without specifying which models. HP’s commercial notebook division is “looking at it,” a spokesman said.
The Sonata battery upgrade will cost between $20 and $30, the HP spokesman said. HP will market it as the HP Enviro Series program notebook battery with Sonata technology.
The guarantee will cover the performance of the battery, specifically a certain capacity level, according to the HP spokesman. If the battery’s capacity drops below the guaranteed level — a value less than 100 percent, the HP spokesman said — a user can exchange the battery for another. For its part, Boston-Power markets Sonata as a technology that delivers “like-new performance” for three years, offering the “same, unwavering capacity of a new battery that entire time”.
Although lithium-ion batteries have been plagued with a rash of problems, a Boston-Power spokesman said the company “was fundamentally founded on safety. It’s a non-negotiable issue.”
Boston-Power manufactures its cells in China. On its Web site, Boston-Power has provided links to its U.L., U.N., Nordic Ecolabel and China Environmental United Certification Center (CEC) certifications.
