Everyone has heard about wireless networking and a significant proportion of homes and business are now using wireless networks. The value provided by these networks in terms of flexibility has been enormous but imagine if you are were also able to provide power without having to worry about power cables all over the place?  It would be another step change in usability and flexibility.

Intel amongst others have been doing a fair amount of research and development work recently exploring the possibility of developing wireless power delivered using something called magnetic induction. Using magnetic fields driven by a transmitting resonator an object would have a receiving resonator which is tuned to efficiently absorb energy at is natural frequency from the magnetic field.  Intel have demonstrated the technology powering light bulbs at  a distance of a few feet, the next steps are to make the resonators smaller suitable for being used in things like laptops. Obviously there is a long way to go but there is definitely hope for a wireless powered world as well as the network.

Well we can’t do wireless power yet. But what is available is wired and wireless networks through the power cables which in certain situations and buildings can be an effective way of ensuring an effective network throughout the building.  The Netgear WGXB102 Wall-Plugged Wireless Range Extender allows you to use the power wiring in your home to provide a second access point in a room that might be on the edge of your current wireless network.  I am thinking of trying this in Dubai where the concrete walls and floors mean that our wireless network is weak in certain rooms.

Well to be in tune with the times I thought a back to school type of post might be in order.  I don’t know about your kids but mine seem to go through school bags on an almost monthly basis.  I don’t know how they do it. It may have something to do with always carrying a seemingly massive amount of books around and having the straps as loose as possible so that the bag is very low on their backs.  The bags invariably seem to rip where the carrying straps meet the bag itself.

There would seem to be two approaches to replacing the bags. Firstly to buy a bag (that the kids are willing to wear) as cheaply as possible  on the grounds that the bag is not going to last long anyway. Or secondly to look for a bag which may cost more, but is built to a high enough level of quality that it will survive a lot longer. Having tried both approaches in the recent past we seem to have had fairly inconclusive results, so we lean towards the cheaper bags but look for strength where it matters.

As my two older children are now regularly taking their laptops to school, this means extra weight and a need for padding while still having room for school books. We have started to look around for bags that meet our requirements. One that caught my eye was the HP Sport Backpack which has good reviews and seems to big enough for school books as well.

Do you have the same problems with the longevity of your computer bags?

In recent posts we have talked a lot about Asus and some of the things that it is doing with the Eee PC and its Express Gate instant on technology.  Another vendor that I believe is doing some interesting things is HP.  HP innovation however seems to be more focused on touch technology, the sort of thing that has been in the news a lot over the past year because of the iPhone platform and Microsoft’s Surface technology. This is an area which I think is going to be come increasingly important especially with Microsoft’s next release of Windows slated to include touch and multi-touch integration.

New all-in-one PC

HP  have recently released an update of its iQ range of all-in-one PC’s with the release in the UK of the HP iQ500 which unlike the majority of its competitors features a touchscreen and HP’s TouchSmart application to take advantage of it.  The new version is an improvement in both looks and specification over the current HP iQ790 PC,  with quite stunning good looks that would good on any desk.  While, as you would expect for an all-in-one, the technical specifications will mean it is not the fastest, but perfectly adequate.

Touch capability

Like the current HP iQ790 PC, the iQ500 provides  its touch capabilities from a set of LED’s that are positioned around the screen detecting  the movement of one’s fingers. HP includes its own touch user interface called TouchSmart which can be used instead of the standard Vista interface and helps the efficiency of using the technology.   Touch capability is still in its early days and is still very gimmicky but HP have moved things forward with this computer.

However using a vertical screen is not very ergonomic, requiring the user to hold up their arms the whole time.  I think we are perhaps going to see more of this technology used with horizontal screens on something like a tablet PC.

As the iQ500 has now been released I expect some good deals on the HP iQ790 PC

I know that it must seem like we have been having a bit of a Asus fest over the last few weeks on this blog but I do think think that Asus is one of the vendors who are doing interesting things at present. Today I have one more blog about Asus before we move on to something else for a while, I promise!

Asus Eee Box

Along with all their new releases of netbooks under the Eee brand Asus have also announced a mini desktop computer similar in concept to the Mac Mini but of course, like the Eee PC netbooks, for a cheaper price.  The product, to be called the Eee Box, offers similar capabilities to the newest of the netbook range and runs off Intel’s Atom processor. It has been designed with a small but interesting angled case that will eventually be available in various colours. The unit measures just 23 by 18 by 3 cm so it will fit on your desk quite nicely. An interesting twist is that Asus is selling the feature that you can attach it to, and therefore hide it on, the back of any LCD monitor with the supplied VESA mount.

Entertainment Hub?

Asus is suggesting the box can act as a entertainment hub, but I am not so sure, as to be complete for this role I would have expected a DVD player to be included. Yes you can stream content but I do think it is a major gap in this units capabilities.  The Eee Box is currently due to be launched in the UK in September and should retail for around £200.  The initial versions will only be running Windows XP but Linux versions are likely in the future and like the Mac mini you’ll have to provide your own keyboard, mouse and monitor.

In the meantime the black Windows version of the Eee PC 901 is the most popular computer product on Pricegrabber and the rest of the Eee family are not far behind!

Do you think that the Eee Box will be as successful as the Eee PC?

A couple of days ago I posted about the “instant on” feature that Dell has now included in its new range of Latitude laptops.  Essentially the idea is that  included with your normal operating system you have a small but completely separate sub system that will let you have very quick access to the Internet and your emails. This sub system is based on an embedded Linux-based internet appliance-like environment running off a flash memory chip,  linked directly to the BIOS. This avoids having to boot up your full system or to continuously maintain it in a “suspend” state saving both  time and battery life.

Dell and Asus

This a pretty interesting idea and not one that just Dell is looking at either.  Asus have also been developing systems and components that have this capability.  The Asus brand name for
this is called Express Gate and is essentially an Asus branded version of the Splashtop product from embedded Linux developer DeviceVM.

Laptops and motherboards

Asus have been aggressively introducing this into a significant proportion of its motherboard range and like Dell is now selling laptops which include this feature.  We will  have a look at a couple of the Asus laptops and some of the feature of Splashtop in future posts.  However if you are building your own PC and like the idea, you can now get Asus motherboards that support Express Gate. The Asus P5Q Deluxe Motherboard is a good example of a well rated board that includes Express Gate.

I haven’t been able to actually try any “instant on” system yet. Have you?

At their developers forum in San Francisco Intel released details of their new processor that will form the basis of their new products from next year onwards.  With the official name of Core i7 the chips will begin to appear in laptops, desktops and servers during 2009.  We have become fairly used the never ending performance increases implied by Moore’s law when talking about new processors, so what is new or different about the Core i7 processor?

Performance and energy efficiency

Intel are trying to both increase performance and reduce power consumption at the same time. This is a neat trick if it can be managed as usually there is a trade off between one or the other. Intel will increase performance through putting more multiple processing cores on a single chip while at the same time increasing the memory to processor performance by removing the FSB bottleneck (which is something AMD have done for a while). At the same time the processor will reduce energy requirements by having the ability to turn off any processing cores on the chip that are not actually being used.

In the meantime

Of course in the meantime the world continues to turn, so if you are looking for an new processor you could do worse than look at the popular and highly rated Intel Core 2 Duo Quad Q6600 Processor. As time goes on more applications exist to take advantage of the Quad and this processor would be ideal for someone that needs good multi-tasking performance.

Dell last week announced the release of a new range of its Latitude business range of laptop computers which we looked at in a previous post. One of the ways that Dell is seeking to differentiate its laptops from those of other vendors is through something called Dell Latitude ON. This feature allows access to e-mail, calendar, attachments, contacts and the Internet very quickly without actually booting into Windows Vista.

The idea

The idea is that a lot of the time, e-mail, the Internet and chat are all we want to do with our laptop, so if you have the ability to do that without having to wait minutes (although it is always seems like hours) for our laptop to boot up that would be a very compelling feature, especially if your on the move a lot. Also by using this feature you are using very little power potentially having a very positive effect on battery life.

How it works

I promised in the previous post that I would investigate how this is achieved. It would appear that the Latitudes that support this feature (not all do) will utilise a completely separate dedicated, Linux subsystem using  a low-power ARM processor and flash memory. This will run completely  independently from the laptop’s main CPU and storage. The custom Linux OS Enterprise will includes a Firefox-based browser and email, calendar, and contacts applications as well as MS Office and PDF viewers to view attachments.  As far as I understand on board data is not accessed locally so data has to be pulled from a central source via a wireless connection.

Dell appears to have got a head start on the other mainstream vendors although Asus have been playing with something similar for a while. These “instant on” operating systems seem like they could be really useful and is something that we may see grow in importance over the next few years. What do you think?

In the meantime the existing Dell Latitude range are presently available with some nice discounts, of which the Dell Latitude D630C is a nice example (follow the shop link to see the discounts).

Asus the manufacturer of the Eee PC are now busily trying to capitalise on the massive  success of the Eee PC Brand and fight off the growing competition. They have introduced a number of new versions under the brand name.  Yesterday I blogged about the Eee PC 901, the most up to date version of the original Eee PC, but in this post I want to look at the Eee PC 1000. This is the newest release from Asus and one which departs from the original vision somewhat.

Asus Eee PC 1000

The Eee PC 1000 departs a little from the original concept of a small and lightweight PC in that it is significantly bigger and also quite a bit heavier.  The main reasons for the size increase is to accommodate a bigger 10″ screen and a bigger keyboard.  The weight increase (1.3 -1.45 kg) comes from both its bigger size and a bigger more powerful battery. The 10″ screen comes with a good 1024 x 600 resolution and the keyboard is now claimed by Asus to be about 95% of the size of a standard laptop keyboard. As the small keyboard on the original Eee PC was considered to small to be truly usable this will make a lot of people happy and from the reviews I have read so far most consider the keyboard a big improvement.

Apart from the storage (more on that in a minute), the other updates are all similar to those on the Eee PC 901 with a Intel Atom CPU, 1 GB RAM, 802.11n WiFi and Bluetooth wireless.  The battery life is now an impressive 5 - 8 hours depending on usage and what storage options you go for.  The  on board storage has increased  significantly with both 40 GB SSD and 80 GB standard hard drive options available, both of which offer a big increase over the original models.

Options

The Eee PC 1000 is available in both a Linux and Windows XP version (1000H), the only difference apart from the operating system is that only the Linux version comes with the 40 GB SSD. The Windows XP version (1000H) has a 80 GB standard hard drive however if you were so inclined you could install your preferred operating system on either model.

Verdict

Making the perfect netbook is always going to be a balance between size , weight, screen and keyboard size and battery life.  Asus appears to have decided that you can’t please everybody and have produced two versions each with a different emphasis on these criteria, which I think is the right approach.   The Eee PC 1000 is a capable machine that will make the Eee PC brand stronger.

My own choice would be for the Linux version to get the SSD drive and a reduced weight machine which will also run cooler. What would you choose?

Asus the manufacturer of the Eee PC are now busily trying to capitalise on the massive, and I suspect somewhat unexpected, success of the Eee PC Brand. They have introduced a number of new versions under the brand name.  I blogged about my first impressions of the Eee 900 the first update of the original Eee PC a few days ago, but now I want to look at some of the newest releases from Asus starting in this post with the Asus Eee PC 901.

Asus Eee PC 901

The Eee PC 901 is essentially the Eee PC 900 updated to take advantage of the new Intel Atom CPU. This low power processor improves battery life while maintaining or even improving performance and operating at lower temperatures. This coupled with the better battery and low power requirements of the 20Gb SSD (Solid State Drive - like USB flash drives) means that Asus are claiming up to 8 hours battery life for the Eee 901 which is important for the intended go anywhere vision associated with the Eee.  There are other small changes such as  802.11n WiFi and Bluetooth wireless capability all improving the capability of Eee without taking away what makes it special.

The Eee 901 is available in both a Linux and Windows XP version, the only difference apart from the operating system is that the XP version comes with only a 12GB SSD instead of 20GB, which presumably reflects the additional cost of Windows.

So updated with new features and with a new CPU and better battery, the Eee PC 901 still delivers the small, easy to use, go anywhere spirit which the original embodied. In the next post we will look at the slightly bigger Eee PC 1000.

Dell has this week announced the release of a new range of its Latitude business range of laptop computers. Nothing too strange about that you might think, vendors are always coming out with new releases of their products as technology advances and prices come down. But this is a little different if Dells claims are true, in that these systems are capable of 19 hours battery life!

Of course battery life claims by the laptop vendors always seem to be optimistic to say the least, but a 19 hour claim is huge. After further research I found that to reach this goal you will need to have opted for a 9 cell battery instead of the standard 6 cell battery and purchase what Dell calls a 12 cell slice. This slice is a separate “slice” of laptop that fits beneath the laptop effectively giving you over three times the normal battery capacity. Still if battery life is important to you this might be a nice solution for you.

Other things that Dell offer do not appear to be big steps over the competition but this is what you would expect in such a commodatised marketplace. However there are some nice touches with things like an ability to provide access to e-mail, calendar, attachments, contacts and the Internet without actually booting into Windows.  More on this in a later post. Other nice touches include LED-backlit displays, backlit keyboards, and USB ports that can charge cell phones and MP3 players even when the system is powered off.

All in all a competent new range of business laptops. What this means is in the short term though is that you can get some real nice deals on the existing models. The Dell Latitude D400 range is selling at about a 20% discount if you follow the links through from the PriceGrabber website.  The Dell Latitude D4300 is presently a good example of such a nice bargain.