Notebooks.com

Apple store offline in wait for Macworld announcements

Amy — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:28:02 +0000

This week starts Macworld Expo in San Francisco. And with that, all the rumors and speculation about what is going to be discussed, especially since Apple will not be in attendance this year.

What we do know is that the Apple store is currently offline this morning. What does this mean? Well, if the rumors are anywhere near true, there will be announcements today about a refresh of the Apple hardware line, including the use of the new Intel Core i5 and i7 processors. There may also be news about a 4th gen iPhone, a video iPad and possibly news on an updated iLife 2010.

We’ll keep you posted as we receive news from Macworld!

UPDATE: 10:13EST- Looks like the only update so far was the release of Apeture 3, the photo editing program from Apple. We will still wait on more announcements later this week.

Optimus Makes it Simple

Rene Haas — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 13:00:03 +0000

Rene Haas is the General Manager of Notebooks at NVIDIA

In the past, consumers were forced to prioritize notebook performance or battery life, as one feature typically suffers significantly in order to accommodate the other. You could have long battery life from an underpowered notebook, or all the GPU power you desired from a notebook without extra long battery life. As of today, those days are behind us.

A new technology for notebooks called NVIDIA Optimus is available today on systems from Asus. Just as a Hybrid car chooses between the gas-powered and electric car engine on-the-fly and uses the most appropriate engine, NVIDIA Optimus technology does the same thing for graphics processors.

“NVIDIA Optimus is a game changer for the notebook PC industry. It intelligently and seamlessly manages graphics performance while extending battery life to provide the best notebook PC experience.”
- Dr. Jon Peddie, President of Jon Peddie Research, a pioneer of the graphics industry and a leading analyst

NVIDIA Optimus optimizes the mobile experience by letting the user get the performance of discrete graphics from a notebook, while still delivering great battery life. Optimus accomplishes this by automatically and seamlessly selecting the right graphics processor for the job between an NVIDIA discrete GPU or Intel integrated graphics.

Older technology called switchable graphics helped address the performance/battery life balance, but there were still several issues. Switchable graphics was pioneered by NVIDIA about 2 years ago and quickly adopted by other graphics companies. With switchable graphics, users have the advantage of having access to discrete and integrated graphics. However, they are required to manually switch between the two display adapters. Switching also often requires shutting down applications that are running and sometimes requires rebooting the system. Also, with switchable graphics often users do not know or remember what state their notebook is in. The result: users get frustrated and rarely switch.

“Switchable graphics is a great idea in theory, but in practice people rarely switch between integrated and discrete GPUs. The process is just too cumbersome and confusing. Some buyers wonder why their performance is so poor when they think the discrete GPU is active, but, unknown to them, it isn’t. Optimus fixes what is broken with switchable graphics.”
- Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates, one of the computer industry’s best-known market intelligence analysts

Optimus offers notebook users a far better user experience. Optimus is automatic. Optimus determines the best processor for the workload and routes it accordingly, with the decision being entirely transparent to the user.

“Optimus is switchable graphics done right. No toggles, no reboots, no thinking. Finally, there is an optimized notebook solution that painlessly gives notebook users both the performance they want and the battery life they need.”
- Rob Enderle, President and Principal Analyst of the Enderle Group, one of the most influential technology pundits in the world

With more and more processing being done on the GPU, the significance of Optimus becomes increasingly more important. GPU Computing is the use of the massively parallel architecture of the graphics processing unit (GPU) as a computational engine that can be programmed with high level languages and APIs. We already have a great roster of applications that run on the NVIDIA CUDA architecture that consumers love. In fact, video is the killer application for the GPU, and a number of new video applications are able to tap into the computing power of the GPU thanks to CUDA. Adobe has added support for GPU computing to their popular CS4 Suite, Flash 10.1 and their Mercury Playback Engine.

“NVIDIA Optimus is designed to work in ways consumers expect hardware and software to work together, it’s simple and seamless. We worked closely with NVIDIA to enable Adobe Flash Player 10.1 to take advantage of GPU acceleration whenever possible. As a result, consumers get the benefit of maximum battery life and the best multimedia experience when browsing the web.”
- David Wadhwani, general manager & vice president, Platform Business Unit, Adobe, which is redefining business, entertainment and personal communications by setting new standards for producing and delivering content

ASUS N61JV with NVIDIA Optimus

Notebooks with NVIDIA Optimus technology will be available shortly, starting with the Asus UL50Vf, N61Jv, N71Jv, N82Jv, and U30Jc notebooks.

“We are all hands-on-deck to bring this innovative new technology into the consumer market. NVIDIA Optimus is a unique approach that solves the problem of users having to choose between systems and graphics performance versus extended battery life. ASUS’ powerful multimedia N series and the thin and light UL series notebooks will adopt this new technology, and in doing so provide our users with powerful multimedia enjoyment at home or on-the-go.”
- P.C. Wang, Corporate Vice President & General Manager, Notebook Business Unit System Business Group of ASUS

Optimus is new and is a level beyond switchable graphics. Optimus is able to automatically give users the performance they need while also maximizing battery life, transparently, and with zero effort. It just works.

“The genius of NVIDIA Optimus is in its simplicity. One can surf the web and get great battery life and when one needs the extra horsepower for applications like Adobe Flash 10.1, Optimus automatically switches to the more powerful NVIDIA GPU.”
-said Dr. Jon Peddie, President of Jon Peddie Research, a pioneer of the graphics industry and a leading analyst.

For more information on NVIDIA Optimus technology, side by side videos and additional details, visit http://www.nvidia.com/optimus.

Win a Lenovo IdeaPad s10-3t from Laptop Magazine

Josh Smith — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 23:23:53 +0000

If you didn’t win the Lenovo s10-3t that Notebooks.com gave away in January I have great news! Laptop Magazine is giving away a Lenovo s10-3t netbook/tablet in exchange for filling out a short survey on USB flashdrive usage.

The Lenovo IdeaPad s10-3t tablet device looks a lot like a netbook, but it quickly converts into a tablet complete with a capacitive multitouch display. The more I see this tablet/netbook, the more I feel like it could replace both my full size tablet and netbook and be the perfect companion for a MacBook Pro; if Apple ever puts new Intel Core processors in the Macbooks!

Full specs of the Lenovo IdeaPad s10-3t tablet from Laptop Magazine:

1024 x 600 capacitive display that supports multitouch gestures
1.66-GHz Intel Atom N450 CPU
1GB of RAM
160GB hard drive
Windows 7 Starter.

The contest runs through March 8 so hurry up and enter today!

All Glass Gadgets Bring Sexy-Back to your Windows 7 and Vista Desktop

Josh Smith — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:42:11 +0000

Windows 7 has been out for a few months now which means you’re surely tired of the widgets and gadgets that you could place on your desktop out of the box. Sure they might be helpful, and you may even look at them from time to time, but so many of them are boring and they might cover up the your favorite part of your desktop background.

Well, fear not, The good folks at Into Windows not only compiled a list of 20 useful Windows 7 gadgets — but also created a sexy looking Glass Gadgets Pack for Windows 7 and Vista.

Imagine what it would look like to use these gadgets on the Samsung transparent notebook display!

The Glass Gadgets pack adds 14 transparent gadgets to your desktop cluttering choices including transparent replacements for many of the standard Windows 7 gadgets.

In all you’ll find the following Windows 7 transparent gadgets:

Calendar
Clock
System control (shutdown, restart & lock)
CPU meter
Email
Net bar (monitors download/upload speed)
Net usage stats
Notes colour
Notes white
Drive info
Radio
Recycle Bin
Stats
Weather

Installing a new gadget is as easy as downloading the files from Into Windows, unzipping the file and then double clicking on the gadget you want.

I’ve never been a big user of gadgets but I may have to install this pack and make use of several of these gadgets, like Net bar and net usage states, since they look a nicer than the original gadgets.

Via DownloadSquad

Samsung’s Transparent Display Notebook May Ship in 2010

Josh Smith — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:19:47 +0000

AT CES Samsung showed off some cool transparent, as in see through, technology including a 14″ transparent display notebook and a transparent display MP3 Player. The mp3 player seemed like an easy reality but a 14″ transparent screen seemed a little more like science fiction than real life; but, according to Brad Linder at Liliputing, the Samsung transparent display notebook might ship this year.

Image via Engadget

I have to agree with Brad that the transparent display is cool, but would work better in other applications, he mentions GPS displayed on a windshield or movies shown on windows as one use but I have a better idea.

Like the Samsung transparent Mp3 player allows you to control the device without blocking your view of the small screen a transparent touchscreen would be a cool, and useful, addition to a slate device like the iPad. If the backside had touch technology you could access on screen controls without the need to block your view of the screen and thus your game.

Here’s a hands on of the Samsung OLED transparent notebook from Brad Linder at CES 2010:

Super Bowl Tech Ad Roundup – Intel, GoDaddy, Google, Vizio and more

Josh Smith — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 04:27:27 +0000

Super Bowl 44 has wrapped up and with New Orleans already on it’s way to Mardi Gras complete with a Vince Lombardi trophy in hand we wanted to take a quick look at the technology commercials that have taken over the Super Bowl in recent years. Personally, I felt that the commercials in the first half looked a bit like last year’s notebooks but like the Saint’s performance I was pleasantly surprised be the second half worth of Super Bowl commercials.

Intel Sad Robot Ad:

Intel Generations – aka Space Invaders, Email, Wireless and Turboboost:

GoDaddy Spa – Massage Therapist Ad:

GoDaddy News Spoof:

GoDaddy “Lola” – NFL player turned fashion designer ad:

Megan Fox’s Bathtub Motorola Devour Ad for Verizon’s new Android Phone:

Google’s Parisian Love Story Ad:

KGB – Skinny guys versus a Sumo wrestler:

Vizio Internet Enabled TV / Vizio Web TV Super Bowl Ad:

Cars.com – Delivers a Tiger but scared to buy a car ad:

Flo TV Mobile TV- Driven Crazy with Jim Nantz:

Flo TV Mobile TV – Will.I.Am My Generation Super Bowl Ad:

Boost Mobile – Shuffle Super Bowl Ad:

Dante’s Inferno Game Trailer Super Bowl Ad:

To watch the rest of the Super Bowl Commercials check out the AdZone on Hulu:

What did you think? Did tech companies do a good job this year? At least they kept their pants on! Am I right?

Why I Love Evernote (Part 1)

Ben — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 08:37:45 +0000

Here starts a series of posts on why I love Evernote, an awesome piece of software that has a near infinite number of uses. I’m going to relay some of the ways that Evernote works great for me as a student attending university. First let’s start with a brief intro about what Evernote is. Here is a short video from the Evernote site:

While I can’t promise that Evernote will turn you into a “superhuman”, I can tell you that it is mighty handy for keeping your life organized.

There first reason why I love Evernote is the same one that makes it practical for me to use – Multi-platform availability.

Evernote is all about capturing information that you need and being able to access it when you need it. If Evernote only worked on one platform (say, PC), you’d always need to be near your computer to be able to access your information. Luckily, the people who make Evernote understand that it’s important to be able to access your info from anywhere, so they’ve developed Evernote for a large number of popular platforms, and your info is synced across all of these platforms seamlessly as you use them. Evernote is available on the following platforms:

Mac OSX
Windows
iPhone/iPod Touch (and the iPad once it is released)
Android
Blackberry
Palm Pre/Palm Pixi
Windows Mobile

And if that isn’t enough, Evernote is available as a powerful web-app so that you can access your info from any computer or device with a web-browser, just go to www.evernote.com and sign in!

In addition to multi-platform availability, Evernote’s variable pricing scheme is great. Evernote is completely free to download and use for any of the above platforms. If you are a power-user and really take advantage of Evernote, you may want to upgrade to Evernote premium which has several benefits, but mostly gives you a huge chunk of monthly bandwidth to use with Evernote. Standard (free) users get 40mb/month for note synchronization, and if you are just taking text notes, you’ll probably never even go near this limit. However, if you take a lot of photo/audio notes (which we’ll go into more in another section) you may run up against this limit and desire to upgrade to premium.

I personally use Evernote for Windows across a few computers, and I also use it on my iPhone. Having info synced between these platforms effortlessly is great. I’ve actually run out of battery on my laptop in class on several occasions, and simply pulled out my iPhone and continued to take notes for the rest of the class using the Evernote application. Once I got back to my dorm, everything was synced as I got my computer plugged in and running, all without any effort on my part – it’s automatic.

Evernote allows you to easily make virtual notebooks to organize all of your notes and data. Naturally, I have a separate notebook for each one of my classes, and use Evernote on my laptop every day to take notes in each class. My laptop is a tablet PC which means I can write on the screen with digital ink. Evernote is an awesome companion for anyone who uses a tablet PC as it has full support for ink notes which I’ll be sure to talk about in another section of this post series.

Stayed tuned as I delve into some of the truly awesome and useful facets of Evernote in part 2.

9 out of 10 premium computers sold are Macs

Josh Smith — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 14:30:29 +0000

It’s no surprise that Apple computers are known as premium machines, given their reputation and the fact that most of their notebooks fit the definition of premium (over $1,000), but you may be surprised to know that the 9 out of 10 premium PCs sold are Macs.

Joe Wilcox at Betanews used information he requested from NPD, not an official NPD report, to reach this conclusion and while I am surprised it is 90%; I’m not surprised that Macs are the most popular premium computers.

It should be noted that these figures are for premium computers sold at retail locations, in store or online, and don’t represent overall marketshare such as government and corporate purchases.

If I asked you to name one computer over $1,000 what would you say? If you’re like most of the people I know it’s a Macbook Pro. Sure, if you are into technology you might be able to name the HP Envy 13 or another powerful Windows PC, but to most people Macs are the go to notebooks and desktops over $1,000.

But, as Wilcox points out, this is an issue for Apple because the growth is coming in the sub $500 range; like the $499 Intel Core i5 Blu-ray equipped Gateway notebook I just purchased and the numerous netbooks which tempt consumers on every trip to the store.

What does this all mean? Well, not a whole lot right now, but given the growth of cheap computers and the success of the $999 Macbook; Apple might be inclined and able to offer cheaper computing experiences in the near future. Wilcox points to the iPad, but I’m more hopeful that the Macbook will drop in price slightly as notebooks in general trend cheaper and students look for more deals this fall.

Another neat offshoot of the Betanews post is a cool chart showing the range of prices for Apple products including the new Apple iPad.

Dell Latitude 13: World’s Thinnest 13″ Commercial Notebook

Josh Smith — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 23:50:15 +0000

Dell has announced a new business notebook, the Dell Latitude 13, which it is claiming is, “world’s thinnest 13-inch commercial client laptop”. The Dell Latitude 13 has a 13.3″ screen and is designed with many features that businesses will find worthwhile including “robust” remote management, security features and a virtulization ready design.

While the Dell Latitude 13 isn’t the thinnest notebook out there it does look pretty sleek and reminds us of the Dell Vostro V13, which shares some looks with the Dell Adamo notebook line.

No detailed specs have been released about the Dell Latitude 13 other than the fact that it will work with Citrix and VMware for virtualization and the following details from Dell.

Comprehensive systems management with support for Broadcom® TruManage™ technology and Dell ImageDirect service which lets IT create, update and deploy system images 24/7 from a secure online location;
Virtualization-ready design lets IT cost-effectively deliver a full PC experience to users in non-standard computing environments such as call centers, regional offices and hotels;
Customized security offerings including solid-state drives (SSD), full disk encryption (FDE), Trusted Platform Module (TPM)¹ control and Computrace software;
On-the-go connectivity with optional WWAN mobile broadband, Bluetooth and 802.11g/n wireless LAN options help to keep customers connected wherever work takes them; and
Optional external Blu-ray Disc™ drive or ability to download photos to the 5-in-1 media-card reader.

The Dell Latitude 13 will be available in late February or early March.

Google is Planning to Open Their Own App Store

Rajesh — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 23:04:18 +0000

Google, perhaps inspired by the success of Apple’s App store, is planning to open an App store of their own. Unlike Apple’s App store, Google’s App store won’t be selling apps for mobile devices. Instead , Google will be offering business software that integrates with Google’s web services such as Gmail , Google Docs and others.

According to the Wall Street Journal “Google Inc. is preparing to launch a store selling online business software that integrates with its Web services, according to people briefed by the company, enlisting software developers in its battle against Microsoft Corp.”

This move comes at a time when Microsoft is planning to launch cloud based services with Office 2010 and is feeling increased pressure form iWorks and free tools like Open Office and others. It is likely that the Google Apps store could provide users with the ability to purchase new options or greater security to existing Google services.