CES 2009: Netbooks and notebooks from under $500 to over $5,000
CES rollouts will run the gamut from MSI's Wind "hybrid" netbook -- with a mix of SSD and HDD drives in a single machine -- to a high-end notebook with a secondary display. And Windows 7 could be closer than anyone thinks.
Now that notebooks are overtaking desktop PCs in worldwide sales and shipments, next week's CES show is sure to feature a slew of new models across a wide spectrum of form factors and price points. New sub-$500 netbooks will be plentiful, particularly with the global financial crisis still at hand. On the other side of the proverbial coin, CES will also act as a launchpad for much pricier models with high-end features such as secondary displays and advanced 3D graphics.
CES Countdown #8: Can smart HDTVs bypass the 'media PC' altogether?
If you don't own a media PC yet, do you actually want one? Now would be a good time for anyone who makes media PCs to step up to the plate and deliver an updated value proposition...Any volunteers?
It was supposed to be the breakthrough product of CES 2006: a personal computer platform designed for incorporation into the living room entertainment cabinet, that would serve as the centerpiece of a component-rich environment full of choice and diversity. It was an idea touted by both AMD and Intel, and backed up by Microsoft. And if you ask consumers directly, the media PC isn't all that bad an idea.
Samsung boosts its own 4G wireless chip development
While other manufacturers are pulling back on chip development because of the bleak economy, Samsung is now stepping up its work on WiMAX and LTE so as to bring down its royalty payments -- and quite possibly, its financial risk.
To cut costs by saving on royalty payments to Qualcomm, Samsung is expanding its chip development activities for 4G WiMAX and LTE devices in both internal and external directions -- bucking current industry trends to "conservative" development.
Blinkx debuts its 'least annoying' ad platform
Video search engine Blinkx has taken a new approach to video advertising with its "un-roll" format, in a move which leverages its technology for sorting videos for a project with a potentially much higher rate of return.
Instead of tag-based cataloging, Blinkx uses contextual cues such as speech recognition and video analysis to sort its videos. The service is now taking a similar approach to advertising.
Microsoft denies the severity of a Media Player exploit
The proof of concept for a Windows Media Player exploit does exist, and it has been shared. But it's not a vulnerability, Microsoft said, because it would need to trigger remote code execution...and this one doesn't.
Coder Laurent Jaffié recently posted to some "security" sites (at least one of which clearly deserves the prefix "in-") a Perl script that literally does nothing more than create a malformed .WAV file. If you play that WAV file in Windows Media Player, well, it evidently crashes. And Jaffié's description of the file in his comments actually does not claim to do more than that -- specifically, he calls it a "remote integrer [sic] overflow."
Sling widens Windows Mobile support for remote TV viewing
The numbers of mobile users who can watch their TVs remotely has just grown larger, with an expansion by Sling Media in Motorola, Samsung, and other Windows Mobile devices supported by SlingPlayer Mobile.
After testing, Sling Media has announced nine Windows Mobile smartphones from AT&T, Verizon, and other suppliers that now meet the system requirements and work well with its SlingPlayer Mobile software for remote TV viewing. Free trials are available.
AMD to terminate 100 more than planned
In an SEC filing yesterday, the CPU maker disclosed that it will incur a slightly larger restructuring charge than earlier estimates, due to its need to trim about 600 employees from its roster starting this quarter, rather than 500.
At some point, there should be a turnaround for struggling AMD, but it's not here yet. Last month, the company announced it would have to trim 500 positions worldwide from its corporate payroll, in a restructuring effort connected to its workforce reduction plan of 1,600 announced last April.
LG further diversifies its Blu-ray players with online content
During the summer, South Korean CE maker LG debuted the first streaming Netflix-enabled Blu-ray player. Today, the company announced its Blu-ray players will receive content from more streaming partners.
LG's network-connected Blu-ray players will be receiving an upgrade in early 2009, endowing them with features similar to the latest broadband TiVo DVRs: Users will be able to access CinemaNow and YouTube content.
Virtual worlds firm files IP suit on Christmas Eve
Worlds.com, which launched its first 3D avatar environment back in the mid-90s, has retained an intellectual property law firm and has filed patent infringement suits. Its first, against game developer NCsoft, was filed on Christmas Eve.
The company claims that NCsoft -- the publisher of Lineage and City of Heroes -- is infringing on two patents. The latest of the two, "System and method for enabling users to interact in a virtual space" (US Patent 7,181,690), was filed in August 2000 and awarded in February 2007. It describes a method for displaying other avatars and non-avatar objects (e.g., background items) to multiple users.
CES Countdown #9: Will the smartphone become the 'new PC?'
Despite the G1, iPhone, and upcoming announcements such as LG's GD910 smartphone wristwatch, smartphones won't outshine PCs at CES 2009. For starters, Sony will reportedly launch a netbook PC with a choice of hard or solid state drive.
With all the hype surrounding devices like Apple's iPhone and the Android-enabled G1, you'd almost think that smartphones will replace PCs as the main attraction at CES. But how close will smartphones come to stealing the PC's thunder? Not as close as you might suppose -- this year, at least -- despite the growing capabilities and shrinking price tags of the pocket-sized devices.
AnyDVD claims it defeats protection on latest BD+ discs
Download AnyDVD HD 6.5.0.3 from FileForum now.
With its usual ostentatiousness, the makers of the media disc backup program AnyDVD HD released a new version that it claims decrypts "all commercial Blu-ray releases," including those which feature the latest BD+ copy protection.
Wal-Mart's iPhone launch meets widespread outage
Yesterday, discount retailer Wal-Mart began selling the iPhone 3G, and as if to welcome customers to their new devices, AT&T suffered a substantial network outage.
AT&T representative Meghan Roskopf told the Chicago Tribune that at 9:30 am Eastern Time, only a matter of hours after Wal-Mart locations opened for business, the Bloomfield, Michigan AT&T facility experienced a power outage, causing "intermittent disruption of mobile services for customers in some Midwest states."
DHS R&D arm gets new privacy guidelines
The primary research and development arm of the Department of Homeland Security will operate under a fresh set of privacy principles for research projects, as per a report delivered to Congress this month.
DHS presented Congress with its "Data Mining: Technology and Policy" summation in December, explaining how it handles the sensitive aspects of data mining. The main body of the report covered progress or lack of it for the Automated Targeting System (ATS), best known as the group that gifted America with the no-fly list; the Data Analysis and Research for Trade Transparency System, which looks into money laundering and the like; and the Freight Assessment System (FAS), TSA's watch-the-ports endeavor.
HP premieres its $600 home server before CES
Rather than wait a week, Hewlett-Packard is hoping the post-Christmas bargain hunters are out an about this week, as it unveils its latest MediaSmart home server at a potentially attractive price.
There's no question that there's a respectably healthy niche market in the field of home servers -- computers that fulfill the function of a small business server, only with a more turnkey-style management approach. They're a way of leveraging another high-power CPU and high-capacity hard drive (maybe more than one) into a household that already has at least one of each, and probably more. And since home servers don't require monitors, their package price doesn't have to be "rounded up" by two hundred bucks or so.
Mac OS X 10.6 'Snow Leopard' makes a video appearance
Screenshots and user-uploaded videos of OS X 10.6 (aka Snow Leopard) have been popping up as the first quarter of 2009 inches ever closer.
During WWDC last June, Apple's Jordan Hubbard gave a presentation which included a slide saying that Snow Leopard was slated for a Q1 2009 release. The OS update is comprised mainly of un-flashy improvements that are geared toward increased performance and optimization of the new hardware architecture of the latest Macs.
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