Intel Pentium dual-core T2130 (1.86 GHz, 533 MHz FSB, 1 MB L2 cache)
14.1" WXGA Acer Crystal Brite LCD
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950
512 MB DDR2 Mem ory
120 GB HDD
DVD-Super Multi DL
802.11b/g WLAN
Bluetooth 2.0+EDR
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Monday, June 29, 2009
My Match Box Car
MADE IN CHINA
70 CHEVY EL CAMINO
MADE IN CHINA
TOYOTA SUPRA TURBO
MADE IN THAILAND
MAZDA RX-7
MADE IN CHINA
FJ HOLDEN PANEL VAN
MADE IN CHINA
08 FORD MUSTANG COBRA JET
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Windows 7 Upgrade FAQ
This is the new versions of Windows
Microsoft is readying its next major release of the Windows operating system. After months of demos, early testing, beta releases, and finally announced launch plans, here's what you can expect in an upgrade.
How many versions of Windows 7 will there be?
Six different editions of Windows 7 will be available: OEM, Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate. You won't however see in the shops all the above edition. Marketing efforts will be concentrated only on the Home Premium and Professional editions.
The other editions, including a non-Internet Explorer version for users in Europe, will be available for various markets around the world.
How much will it cost you to upgrade to Windows 7?
Residents in the U.S., Canada, and Japan can now pre-order an upgrade version of Windows 7 for a temporarily reduced price. The Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade is available for $49.99 and the Professional Upgrade version is $99.99.
The deal will last until July 11 in the U.S. and Canada, and only until July 5 in Japan. The number of copies available is not unlimited and Microsoft did not say how many will be available.
What are the minimum hardware requirements for Windows 7?
Microsoft says Windows 7 is designed to run well on PCs that meet the recommended system requirements for Windows Vista.
Before you upgrade to Windows 7, be sure to compare your PC's specifications with the Windows 7 system requirements as follows:
- 1GHz or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
- 1GB RAM (32-bit) / 2GB RAM (64-bit)
- 16GB available disk space (32-bit) / 20GB (64-bit)
- DirectX 9 graphics processor with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Laptops Sale Events In Kathmandu- Buy lenovo, asus and eee pc in Kathmandu
S10-39,900/-
Intel Atom 1.6 GHz, 160 GB HDD, 1 GB RAM, 1.3 Mega pixel Camera, Wi-Fi, BT, Genuine Win XP
G430-59,500/-
Intel Dual Core 2.16 GHz, 2 GB RAM, 250 GB HDD, 1.3 Mega Pixel Camera, DVD RW, Wi-Fi, BT, 3 USB, 14.1”
Y410-67,000/-
Intel C2D 2.0 GHz, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB HDD, 1.3 Mega Pixel Camera, DVD RW, Wi-Fi, BT, 14.1”, Face Recognition, Dolby
WORLD’S SMALLEST CPU
B204-27,900/-
Intel Atom 1.6 GHz, 1 GB RAM, 80 GB HDD, Wi-Fi, Genuine Win XP, ONLY 1 Kg in Weight, Mount to your MONITOR SAVES MORE THAN 90% in power
900HD-33,000/-
Intel Celeron, 30 GB HDD, 1 GB RAM, 1.3 Mega pixel Camera, 8.9 Screen, Wi-Fi, 3 USB, Less than 1 Kg in weight (Smaller than A4 sheet of paper)
F80S-92,000/-
Intel C2D 2.2 GHz, 2 GB RAM, 250 GB HDD, 1.3 Mega Pixel Camera, DVD RW, Wi-Fi, BT, 3 USB, 14.1” (2 YEARS GLOBAL WARRANTY)
Friday, June 26, 2009
Bhainsipati blogs wow!
This is my little approach to identify Bhainsipati- another yet exciting place on Sainbu VDC, Lalitpur, Nepal. And this blog is published from there.
Hope everybody enjoy my Bhainsipati presence and the little technology updates for Nepal’s Kathmandu tech market.
Rock with Bhainsipati blog now!
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Intel Licenses 3G HSPA Technology from Nokia
On Tuesday, Intel and Nokia signed a long-term relationship to develop a "new mobile platform beyond today's smartphones, notebooks and netbooks". As part of the deal, Intel will license Nokia's HSPA technology.
Intel and Nokia held a conference call on Tuesday morning to add further details, the companies said. However, when it came time for the call, that detail was carefully excluded.
The collaboration, which has already begun, will include the development of a new mobile platform, which may or may not be based around the Atom processor, executives said. There will also be two other parts: cooperative development on several mobile open-source projects, as well as Intel's decision to license HSPA technology from Nokia.
It wasn't clear how the new mobile platform would differ from the pantheon of netbooks, smartphones, PDAs, notebooks, ultrathin notebooks, ultralight notebooks, "smartbooks," and other portable devices that combine computing and communications. Neither executives from Intel or Nokia seemed willing to discuss the issue, claiming that product-specific details would be released in the future.
"As all of you are aware, computing and communications has been on a steady path of convergence for the past couple of years," said Anand Chandrasekher, senior vice president and general manager of the ultramobility group at Intel. The combination will provide new revenue opportunities for both companies, he said.
A greater potential impact may lie in the licensing of Nokia's 3G HSPA technology, which could conceivably be combined with Intel's existing PC chipsets, and allow Intel to further penetrate the mobile market. Intel's chipsets already combine Wi-Fi and WiMAX technology, and a 3G component would serve as an additional bridge to connect client devices roaming between the two technologies.
The Intel and Nokia effort includes collaboration in several open source mobile Linux software projects, including te open-source Moblin OS, and the similar Maemo OS which powers the Nokia N810 tablet, the companies said. Other shared investments include oFono, ConnMan, Mozilla, X.Org, BlueZ, D-BUS, Tracker, GStreamer, and PulseAudio.
Intel and Nokia held a conference call on Tuesday morning to add further details, the companies said. However, when it came time for the call, that detail was carefully excluded.
The collaboration, which has already begun, will include the development of a new mobile platform, which may or may not be based around the Atom processor, executives said. There will also be two other parts: cooperative development on several mobile open-source projects, as well as Intel's decision to license HSPA technology from Nokia.
It wasn't clear how the new mobile platform would differ from the pantheon of netbooks, smartphones, PDAs, notebooks, ultrathin notebooks, ultralight notebooks, "smartbooks," and other portable devices that combine computing and communications. Neither executives from Intel or Nokia seemed willing to discuss the issue, claiming that product-specific details would be released in the future.
"As all of you are aware, computing and communications has been on a steady path of convergence for the past couple of years," said Anand Chandrasekher, senior vice president and general manager of the ultramobility group at Intel. The combination will provide new revenue opportunities for both companies, he said.
A greater potential impact may lie in the licensing of Nokia's 3G HSPA technology, which could conceivably be combined with Intel's existing PC chipsets, and allow Intel to further penetrate the mobile market. Intel's chipsets already combine Wi-Fi and WiMAX technology, and a 3G component would serve as an additional bridge to connect client devices roaming between the two technologies.
The Intel and Nokia effort includes collaboration in several open source mobile Linux software projects, including te open-source Moblin OS, and the similar Maemo OS which powers the Nokia N810 tablet, the companies said. Other shared investments include oFono, ConnMan, Mozilla, X.Org, BlueZ, D-BUS, Tracker, GStreamer, and PulseAudio.
WD Launches New SSDs
Western Digital announced that it has begun shipping its new SiliconDrive III SSD product family based on technology from its March 2009 acquisition of SiliconSystems. According to a press release, the company's new SiliconDrive III products feature faster read/write speeds and increased capacities, and offer mechanical scalability, and are designed for embedded system and data streaming applications such as multimedia content delivery systems and data center media appliances.
SiliconDrive III SSDs include a 2.5-inch Serial ATA (SATA) and Parallel ATA (PATA) and 1.8-inch Micro SATA products featuring native SATA 3.0 gigabits per second (Gbps) or ATA-7 interfaces with target read speeds up to 100 megabytes per second (MBps) and write speeds to 80 MBps in capacities up to 120 gigabytes (GB).
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Shifts Expression Media's Focus
Microsoft will no longer ship its Expression Media digital asset management software as part of the Expression Stud
io suite effective with the upcoming Expression Studio 3 release, a company representative confirmed by an e-mail message last week.
Instead, Expression Media will be a standalone product marketed to digital photographers, the largest customer base for the product. Expression Media catalogs photos, video, and music. The company also will continue to invest in digital photography, the representative said.
Expression Studio has featured application design tools for Windows and Web interfaces. It has been closely linked with the company's Silverlight rich Internet application technology. The company has planned a July 10 launch event for Expression Studio 3 and Silverlight 3.
[ Complicating matters for Microsoft is the new HTML 5 spec, which could make RIA technology like Silverlight obsolete. ]
"Expression Media is focused on the higher end digital photography market, while the Expression Studio is focused on developers and creative professionals involved in the production of rich interactive experiences rather than photography. As such, it no longer makes sense to ship Expression Media as part of the Studio [suite]," the representative said.
Other tools in the Expression Studio suite have included: Expression Design, for graphic design; Expression Web, for Web design; Expression Blend, for interactive design, and Expression Encoder, for video encoding.
io suite effective with the upcoming Expression Studio 3 release, a company representative confirmed by an e-mail message last week.
Instead, Expression Media will be a standalone product marketed to digital photographers, the largest customer base for the product. Expression Media catalogs photos, video, and music. The company also will continue to invest in digital photography, the representative said.
Expression Studio has featured application design tools for Windows and Web interfaces. It has been closely linked with the company's Silverlight rich Internet application technology. The company has planned a July 10 launch event for Expression Studio 3 and Silverlight 3.
[ Complicating matters for Microsoft is the new HTML 5 spec, which could make RIA technology like Silverlight obsolete. ]
"Expression Media is focused on the higher end digital photography market, while the Expression Studio is focused on developers and creative professionals involved in the production of rich interactive experiences rather than photography. As such, it no longer makes sense to ship Expression Media as part of the Studio [suite]," the representative said.
Other tools in the Expression Studio suite have included: Expression Design, for graphic design; Expression Web, for Web design; Expression Blend, for interactive design, and Expression Encoder, for video encoding.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Microsoft on New Xbox 360
Microsoft says all this talk about an upgraded Xbox 360 is not only wrong, it's missing the point. There won't be an upgraded Xbox 360 next year, and in fact, we're only halfway through the current console cycle. What's more, Project Natal, the company's no-controller 3D motion and voice recognition technology is being designed for the existing Xbox 360, not an imaginary "performance-upgraded" one.
In an official statement released to the media, a Microsoft spokesperson wrote
As the Xbox team stated at E3 two weeks ago, we are not even halfway through the current console generation lifecycle and believe Xbox 360 will be the entertainment center in the home for long into the next decade. Project Natal will be an important part of this platform, but we have not confirmed a launch date at this time.
And while games blog Kotaku makes assumptions I wouldn't about the Ballmer quote in the introductory paragraph to this article, the piece is worth scanning for the following quote, from Xbox Live Director of Product Management, Aaron Greenberg:
There will be no new console.
You can't get any less ambiguous than that, and unless you're into torturing semantics, that's book shut, case closed, speculation over.
But what about Natal? Will there be a version of the Xbox 360 with Natal integrated? Maybe, maybe not. Greenberg says they've looked into it, but that's all he's saying. What Steve Ballmer said yesterday doesn't help--it's simply too ambiguous to cite evidentially. Anyone claiming otherwise needs to rethink how this medium works.
In an official statement released to the media, a Microsoft spokesperson wrote
As the Xbox team stated at E3 two weeks ago, we are not even halfway through the current console generation lifecycle and believe Xbox 360 will be the entertainment center in the home for long into the next decade. Project Natal will be an important part of this platform, but we have not confirmed a launch date at this time.
And while games blog Kotaku makes assumptions I wouldn't about the Ballmer quote in the introductory paragraph to this article, the piece is worth scanning for the following quote, from Xbox Live Director of Product Management, Aaron Greenberg:
There will be no new console.
You can't get any less ambiguous than that, and unless you're into torturing semantics, that's book shut, case closed, speculation over.
But what about Natal? Will there be a version of the Xbox 360 with Natal integrated? Maybe, maybe not. Greenberg says they've looked into it, but that's all he's saying. What Steve Ballmer said yesterday doesn't help--it's simply too ambiguous to cite evidentially. Anyone claiming otherwise needs to rethink how this medium works.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Safari 4
Safari won't change the browser game the way the iPhone has changed mobile phones. This year's Apple Worldwide Developer Conference billed it as "the fastest and most innovative browser." While it is both fast (with the Nitro JavaScript engine) and innovative (thanks to some UI enhancements), I don't buy the superlatives. Google Chrome is still the speed leader on my tests, and Safari 4 lacks innovations, like the WebSlices and Accelerators in Internet Explorer and the extreme customizability of Firefox. Nevertheless, Safari (on both Mac and Windows) is definitely a fine performer in terms of speed and usability.
Setup and the New Look
I had no problem installing Safari 4 on my Vista system, and the browser was up and running in short order. At 27MB, the download is bulkier than that of the smallest browser, Chrome, which is a mere half megabyte. Then again, Safari offers more features. Mac users should note that the installer requires OS 10.5.6—10.5.5 won't do. When you first run Safari 4, you'll see a new animated splash screen featuring the Apple logo, complete with inspirational music.
For the final release, Safari backtracked on one of the beta's distinguishing interface features, the Chrome-like "Tabs on Top," which placed page tabs above the address bar. Another change from the beta is the return of the page-load progress bar: It's in a different form now, in the right-hand side of the address bar.
The released version of Safari 4 does retain the most eye-catching trait of the Safari 4 beta, Top Sites, which shows your most-accessed Web pages in a glorious 3D view. In this and elsewhere, Safari 4 brings the added elegance and clever interface ideas we've come to expect from Apple. One example is the incorporation of Cover Flow in the browser's history list. Sure, it's mostly eye candy, but it's at the same time stylish and useful.
When you open a tab, you see the new Top Sites page, a curved, 3D grid of images of your most frequently visited Web sites. An Edit button lets you remove any of these thumbnails, and you can drag any mini-page to a spot of your choice and "pin" it to that spot. If a site in your Top Sites group has new content, a blue dog-ear with a star shows up in the page's top right corner. In some ways, I prefer Opera's approach, which adds only sites you specify to the speed-dial thumbnails. Still, I can see Chrome and Safari's rationale, that people are more likely to use the feature if it's automatically populated.
Unlike the bare-bones Chrome, Safari includes a handy sidebar, which you can show by clicking the book icon at the top left of the window. The sidebar has a variety of functions: You can choose from among History, Bookmarks, Bonjour networking, and a basic RSS reader. Any of these sidebar choices takes advantage of the scrolling Cover Flow view in the top half of the main center panel, while the bottom half offers a simple list of the links. You can scroll back and forth through the Cover Flow images via mouse wheel, or you can use a slider beneath the images.
Safari's bookmark management is adequate, but I was unable to import more than one IE bookmark at a time. Chrome has the same problem, whereas Firefox let me import a whole folder at once. Safari also lacks Firefox's ability to show recently bookmarked items and its tagging capability.
Also new for Version 4 is a native Windows look for the browser, in Classic, XP, and Vista flavors. This means that window borders (nonexistent in previous versions of Safari for Windows) now look like those of other apps. The Mac version, of course, maintains the border-free look. Windows users also now receive the standard Windows fonts they're used to seeing, instead of Apple's more minimalist standard fonts. And in the Windows version, you get the same two toolbar icons you get in Chrome, for page and general settings—possibly showing the browsers' similar WebKit roots.
You can customize the buttons you want on your toolbar, such as New Tab and Home, but Safari still comes nowhere near Firefox in customizability. The Mozilla browser not only avails itself of thousands of extensions that alter both appearance and function, but even offers "Fashion My Firefox" and Personas to help users with the sea of available customizations.Safari won't change the browser game the way the iPhone has changed mobile phones. This year's Apple Worldwide Developer Conference billed it as "the fastest and most innovative browser." While it is both fast (with the Nitro JavaScript engine) and innovative (thanks to some UI enhancements), I don't buy the superlatives. Google Chrome is still the speed leader on my tests, and Safari 4 lacks innovations, like the WebSlices and Accelerators in Internet Explorer and the extreme customizability of Firefox. Nevertheless, Safari (on both Mac and Windows) is definitely a fine performer in terms of speed and usability.
Setup and the New Look
I had no problem installing Safari 4 on my Vista system, and the browser was up and running in short order. At 27MB, the download is bulkier than that of the smallest browser, Chrome, which is a mere half megabyte. Then again, Safari offers more features. Mac users should note that the installer requires OS 10.5.6—10.5.5 won't do. When you first run Safari 4, you'll see a new animated splash screen featuring the Apple logo, complete with inspirational music.
For the final release, Safari backtracked on one of the beta's distinguishing interface features, the Chrome-like "Tabs on Top," which placed page tabs above the address bar. Another change from the beta is the return of the page-load progress bar: It's in a different form now, in the right-hand side of the address bar.
The released version of Safari 4 does retain the most eye-catching trait of the Safari 4 beta, Top Sites, which shows your most-accessed Web pages in a glorious 3D view. In this and elsewhere, Safari 4 brings the added elegance and clever interface ideas we've come to expect from Apple. One example is the incorporation of Cover Flow in the browser's history list. Sure, it's mostly eye candy, but it's at the same time stylish and useful.
When you open a tab, you see the new Top Sites page, a curved, 3D grid of images of your most frequently visited Web sites. An Edit button lets you remove any of these thumbnails, and you can drag any mini-page to a spot of your choice and "pin" it to that spot. If a site in your Top Sites group has new content, a blue dog-ear with a star shows up in the page's top right corner. In some ways, I prefer Opera's approach, which adds only sites you specify to the speed-dial thumbnails. Still, I can see Chrome and Safari's rationale, that people are more likely to use the feature if it's automatically populated.
Unlike the bare-bones Chrome, Safari includes a handy sidebar, which you can show by clicking the book icon at the top left of the window. The sidebar has a variety of functions: You can choose from among History, Bookmarks, Bonjour networking, and a basic RSS reader. Any of these sidebar choices takes advantage of the scrolling Cover Flow view in the top half of the main center panel, while the bottom half offers a simple list of the links. You can scroll back and forth through the Cover Flow images via mouse wheel, or you can use a slider beneath the images.
Safari's bookmark management is adequate, but I was unable to import more than one IE bookmark at a time. Chrome has the same problem, whereas Firefox let me import a whole folder at once. Safari also lacks Firefox's ability to show recently bookmarked items and its tagging capability.
Also new for Version 4 is a native Windows look for the browser, in Classic, XP, and Vista flavors. This means that window borders (nonexistent in previous versions of Safari for Windows) now look like those of other apps. The Mac version, of course, maintains the border-free look. Windows users also now receive the standard Windows fonts they're used to seeing, instead of Apple's more minimalist standard fonts. And in the Windows version, you get the same two toolbar icons you get in Chrome, for page and general settings—possibly showing the browsers' similar WebKit roots.
You can customize the buttons you want on your toolbar, such as New Tab and Home, but Safari still comes nowhere near Firefox in customizability. The Mozilla browser not only avails itself of thousands of extensions that alter both appearance and function, but even offers "Fashion My Firefox" and Personas to help users with the sea of available customizations.
Tabs
Safari does an excellent job of implementing tabs, though I'm a bit disappointed that its designers abandoned the beta's bold, Chrome-like design concept of moving the tabs to the very top of the application's window. Media critics lambasted the feature, so Apple retreated, and now Safari looks pretty much like any tabbed browser. The plus sign for adding a new tab is way off to the right now, and is easily missed—I prefer Opera's clearer tab addition system. I also am disappointed that Safari's tabs don't show site icons for a nice visual clue, as they do in all the other major browsers, even Chrome.
Some of the problems with Safari beta's late, lamented (by me, at least) Tabs on Top, however, have gone away too. You won't minimize (in Mac OS) by double-clicking a tab now, and the lined handle needed to move the tab around is gone. You can move the tabs back and forth on the bar, and even out onto the desktop to create a new window. A neat little thumbnail of the page represents the page, and this zooms up to full size when you release it. I could also drag a tab from one browser window into another. Hover the mouse over any tab and the "X" for closing it appears. This is better than in IE, which shows the X only for the active window—sometimes you want to kill a background tab.
Smart Address Field and Smart Search Field
Unlike Chrome, which thinks you should use the same text entry box for both Web addresses and searches—something I'm still not really comfortable with—Safari 4 keeps addresses and search entries separate. Both have been enhanced in this version, too. The address bar, officially called the Smart Address Field, adds functionality that has become de rigueur in today's browser: predictions of what page you want from the moment you start typing. This showed up first in Firefox 3 (where insiders dubbed it the "awesome bar"), and subsequent releases of Internet Explorer, Opera, and Chrome have all followed suit. It's a good addition, but Apple's really just playing catch-up, here.
Still, Safari's version of the predictive address bar is clever; it seems to offer fewer, more targeted suggestions, and its Top Pick suggestion is highlighted. What this means is that you don't have to hit the Down Arrow to navigate to the Top Pick—hitting Enter gets you there. This may seem trivial, but anything that saves you from hunting and pecking a keystroke streamlines browsing considerably over time. The predictions come not only from page titles and URLs in your history, as they do in Firefox, but also from the complete text of Web pages. So even if you remember only a topic discussed on a page, rather than the site name, you'll see it suggested.
The Smart Search Field does one of those "why didn't anyone think of this before?" things: It combines Web search and on-page search. The option for the latter appears at the bottom of the suggestion drop-down box. When you do search for text on the page, all but your found terms will be dimmed. I do wish Web search in the bar would offer more choices than just Google or Yahoo—Bing and Ask.com fans are out of luck.
Performance and Compatibility
Though Safari was considerably faster at JavaScript rendering than IE 8, Chrome is still the leader—but just barely. I tested using the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark on my 2-GHz Athlon dual-core test system with 2MB of RAM, running Vista Safari 4, which returned a score of 1,707 milliseconds—a remarkable improvement over the beta's 3,757 ms (lower numbers indicate quicker rendering times). This trounces Internet Explorer 8's awful 10,108 ms and puts Safari within spitting distance of Google Chrome's 1,656 ms. Firefox 3 holds the middle ground, taking 6,371 ms, though the soon-to-be-released version 3.5 aims to change this, with its new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine. Once distinguished for speed, Opera is now middling, at 7,884 ms.
In the real world, browsing demanding pages with Version 4 usually felt snappy. In general, I felt that Safari was about tied with Chrome, though that browser loaded the demanding Stickam.com noticeably faster. In start-up time, Safari was comparable with the current generation of browsers, taking less than 2 seconds on my test system.
Firefox is still the leader in one respect, however: memory use. When I opened the same set of ten tabs filled with media-intensive sites in each browser, Safari 4 took up 434MB of RAM, whereas Firefox 3 used up only 121MB of RAM. Chrome used 213MB, and Opera 259MB, while Internet Explorer trailed all, at 484MB. Safari is close to the bottom, here. And, unlike tabs in Chrome and Internet Explorer 8, Safari's aren't run in separate processes, a technique that can limit the severity of site crashes.
In compatibility, I didn't run across any sites displaying "Browser not supported" pages, nor did I find instances of misrendered pages. In one "official" measure of standards compliance, Safari 4 joins only Opera 10 beta in passing the Acid3 browser compatibility test. Though it's not a definitive measure of correct site rendering, Acid3 gives an indication of support for features that Web developers hope to use in the future. In this vein, Safari 4 supports HTML 5 features such as the video and audio tags, as well as has the ability to run Web applications off-line. It also can render CSS3 effects, like gradients and reflections.
Version 4 doesn't add new security and privacy features, but updates to Version 3 already added pretty much everything you'd expect in that area: private browsing, antiphishing and anti-malware tools, and support for Extended Validation (EV) Certificates. The private browsing feature, unlike that in Internet Explorer, Firefox 3.5, and Chrome, doesn't have any icon indicating you're in the mode, and on my tests it did indeed keep private browsing session URLs out of history and Smart Address bar's autosuggestions.
Safari 4 adds some welcome innovations, while catching up with the competition in some features. Its fast page rendering and stylish 3D interface features, like Cover Flow, will appeal to many. It's a bit of a memory hog, however, and fans of Firefox's extensions won't be tempted to switch, as Safari doesn't offer anywhere near that browser's level of customization. While most Mac users are likely to avail themselves of the new browser's advances, Windows users who like alternatives to Internet Explorer will probably get more out of Firefox or Chrome.
Setup and the New Look
I had no problem installing Safari 4 on my Vista system, and the browser was up and running in short order. At 27MB, the download is bulkier than that of the smallest browser, Chrome, which is a mere half megabyte. Then again, Safari offers more features. Mac users should note that the installer requires OS 10.5.6—10.5.5 won't do. When you first run Safari 4, you'll see a new animated splash screen featuring the Apple logo, complete with inspirational music.
For the final release, Safari backtracked on one of the beta's distinguishing interface features, the Chrome-like "Tabs on Top," which placed page tabs above the address bar. Another change from the beta is the return of the page-load progress bar: It's in a different form now, in the right-hand side of the address bar.
The released version of Safari 4 does retain the most eye-catching trait of the Safari 4 beta, Top Sites, which shows your most-accessed Web pages in a glorious 3D view. In this and elsewhere, Safari 4 brings the added elegance and clever interface ideas we've come to expect from Apple. One example is the incorporation of Cover Flow in the browser's history list. Sure, it's mostly eye candy, but it's at the same time stylish and useful.
When you open a tab, you see the new Top Sites page, a curved, 3D grid of images of your most frequently visited Web sites. An Edit button lets you remove any of these thumbnails, and you can drag any mini-page to a spot of your choice and "pin" it to that spot. If a site in your Top Sites group has new content, a blue dog-ear with a star shows up in the page's top right corner. In some ways, I prefer Opera's approach, which adds only sites you specify to the speed-dial thumbnails. Still, I can see Chrome and Safari's rationale, that people are more likely to use the feature if it's automatically populated.
Unlike the bare-bones Chrome, Safari includes a handy sidebar, which you can show by clicking the book icon at the top left of the window. The sidebar has a variety of functions: You can choose from among History, Bookmarks, Bonjour networking, and a basic RSS reader. Any of these sidebar choices takes advantage of the scrolling Cover Flow view in the top half of the main center panel, while the bottom half offers a simple list of the links. You can scroll back and forth through the Cover Flow images via mouse wheel, or you can use a slider beneath the images.
Safari's bookmark management is adequate, but I was unable to import more than one IE bookmark at a time. Chrome has the same problem, whereas Firefox let me import a whole folder at once. Safari also lacks Firefox's ability to show recently bookmarked items and its tagging capability.
Also new for Version 4 is a native Windows look for the browser, in Classic, XP, and Vista flavors. This means that window borders (nonexistent in previous versions of Safari for Windows) now look like those of other apps. The Mac version, of course, maintains the border-free look. Windows users also now receive the standard Windows fonts they're used to seeing, instead of Apple's more minimalist standard fonts. And in the Windows version, you get the same two toolbar icons you get in Chrome, for page and general settings—possibly showing the browsers' similar WebKit roots.
You can customize the buttons you want on your toolbar, such as New Tab and Home, but Safari still comes nowhere near Firefox in customizability. The Mozilla browser not only avails itself of thousands of extensions that alter both appearance and function, but even offers "Fashion My Firefox" and Personas to help users with the sea of available customizations.Safari won't change the browser game the way the iPhone has changed mobile phones. This year's Apple Worldwide Developer Conference billed it as "the fastest and most innovative browser." While it is both fast (with the Nitro JavaScript engine) and innovative (thanks to some UI enhancements), I don't buy the superlatives. Google Chrome is still the speed leader on my tests, and Safari 4 lacks innovations, like the WebSlices and Accelerators in Internet Explorer and the extreme customizability of Firefox. Nevertheless, Safari (on both Mac and Windows) is definitely a fine performer in terms of speed and usability.
Setup and the New Look
I had no problem installing Safari 4 on my Vista system, and the browser was up and running in short order. At 27MB, the download is bulkier than that of the smallest browser, Chrome, which is a mere half megabyte. Then again, Safari offers more features. Mac users should note that the installer requires OS 10.5.6—10.5.5 won't do. When you first run Safari 4, you'll see a new animated splash screen featuring the Apple logo, complete with inspirational music.
For the final release, Safari backtracked on one of the beta's distinguishing interface features, the Chrome-like "Tabs on Top," which placed page tabs above the address bar. Another change from the beta is the return of the page-load progress bar: It's in a different form now, in the right-hand side of the address bar.
The released version of Safari 4 does retain the most eye-catching trait of the Safari 4 beta, Top Sites, which shows your most-accessed Web pages in a glorious 3D view. In this and elsewhere, Safari 4 brings the added elegance and clever interface ideas we've come to expect from Apple. One example is the incorporation of Cover Flow in the browser's history list. Sure, it's mostly eye candy, but it's at the same time stylish and useful.
When you open a tab, you see the new Top Sites page, a curved, 3D grid of images of your most frequently visited Web sites. An Edit button lets you remove any of these thumbnails, and you can drag any mini-page to a spot of your choice and "pin" it to that spot. If a site in your Top Sites group has new content, a blue dog-ear with a star shows up in the page's top right corner. In some ways, I prefer Opera's approach, which adds only sites you specify to the speed-dial thumbnails. Still, I can see Chrome and Safari's rationale, that people are more likely to use the feature if it's automatically populated.
Unlike the bare-bones Chrome, Safari includes a handy sidebar, which you can show by clicking the book icon at the top left of the window. The sidebar has a variety of functions: You can choose from among History, Bookmarks, Bonjour networking, and a basic RSS reader. Any of these sidebar choices takes advantage of the scrolling Cover Flow view in the top half of the main center panel, while the bottom half offers a simple list of the links. You can scroll back and forth through the Cover Flow images via mouse wheel, or you can use a slider beneath the images.
Safari's bookmark management is adequate, but I was unable to import more than one IE bookmark at a time. Chrome has the same problem, whereas Firefox let me import a whole folder at once. Safari also lacks Firefox's ability to show recently bookmarked items and its tagging capability.
Also new for Version 4 is a native Windows look for the browser, in Classic, XP, and Vista flavors. This means that window borders (nonexistent in previous versions of Safari for Windows) now look like those of other apps. The Mac version, of course, maintains the border-free look. Windows users also now receive the standard Windows fonts they're used to seeing, instead of Apple's more minimalist standard fonts. And in the Windows version, you get the same two toolbar icons you get in Chrome, for page and general settings—possibly showing the browsers' similar WebKit roots.
You can customize the buttons you want on your toolbar, such as New Tab and Home, but Safari still comes nowhere near Firefox in customizability. The Mozilla browser not only avails itself of thousands of extensions that alter both appearance and function, but even offers "Fashion My Firefox" and Personas to help users with the sea of available customizations.
Tabs
Safari does an excellent job of implementing tabs, though I'm a bit disappointed that its designers abandoned the beta's bold, Chrome-like design concept of moving the tabs to the very top of the application's window. Media critics lambasted the feature, so Apple retreated, and now Safari looks pretty much like any tabbed browser. The plus sign for adding a new tab is way off to the right now, and is easily missed—I prefer Opera's clearer tab addition system. I also am disappointed that Safari's tabs don't show site icons for a nice visual clue, as they do in all the other major browsers, even Chrome.
Some of the problems with Safari beta's late, lamented (by me, at least) Tabs on Top, however, have gone away too. You won't minimize (in Mac OS) by double-clicking a tab now, and the lined handle needed to move the tab around is gone. You can move the tabs back and forth on the bar, and even out onto the desktop to create a new window. A neat little thumbnail of the page represents the page, and this zooms up to full size when you release it. I could also drag a tab from one browser window into another. Hover the mouse over any tab and the "X" for closing it appears. This is better than in IE, which shows the X only for the active window—sometimes you want to kill a background tab.
Smart Address Field and Smart Search Field
Unlike Chrome, which thinks you should use the same text entry box for both Web addresses and searches—something I'm still not really comfortable with—Safari 4 keeps addresses and search entries separate. Both have been enhanced in this version, too. The address bar, officially called the Smart Address Field, adds functionality that has become de rigueur in today's browser: predictions of what page you want from the moment you start typing. This showed up first in Firefox 3 (where insiders dubbed it the "awesome bar"), and subsequent releases of Internet Explorer, Opera, and Chrome have all followed suit. It's a good addition, but Apple's really just playing catch-up, here.
Still, Safari's version of the predictive address bar is clever; it seems to offer fewer, more targeted suggestions, and its Top Pick suggestion is highlighted. What this means is that you don't have to hit the Down Arrow to navigate to the Top Pick—hitting Enter gets you there. This may seem trivial, but anything that saves you from hunting and pecking a keystroke streamlines browsing considerably over time. The predictions come not only from page titles and URLs in your history, as they do in Firefox, but also from the complete text of Web pages. So even if you remember only a topic discussed on a page, rather than the site name, you'll see it suggested.
The Smart Search Field does one of those "why didn't anyone think of this before?" things: It combines Web search and on-page search. The option for the latter appears at the bottom of the suggestion drop-down box. When you do search for text on the page, all but your found terms will be dimmed. I do wish Web search in the bar would offer more choices than just Google or Yahoo—Bing and Ask.com fans are out of luck.
Performance and Compatibility
Though Safari was considerably faster at JavaScript rendering than IE 8, Chrome is still the leader—but just barely. I tested using the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark on my 2-GHz Athlon dual-core test system with 2MB of RAM, running Vista Safari 4, which returned a score of 1,707 milliseconds—a remarkable improvement over the beta's 3,757 ms (lower numbers indicate quicker rendering times). This trounces Internet Explorer 8's awful 10,108 ms and puts Safari within spitting distance of Google Chrome's 1,656 ms. Firefox 3 holds the middle ground, taking 6,371 ms, though the soon-to-be-released version 3.5 aims to change this, with its new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine. Once distinguished for speed, Opera is now middling, at 7,884 ms.
In the real world, browsing demanding pages with Version 4 usually felt snappy. In general, I felt that Safari was about tied with Chrome, though that browser loaded the demanding Stickam.com noticeably faster. In start-up time, Safari was comparable with the current generation of browsers, taking less than 2 seconds on my test system.
Firefox is still the leader in one respect, however: memory use. When I opened the same set of ten tabs filled with media-intensive sites in each browser, Safari 4 took up 434MB of RAM, whereas Firefox 3 used up only 121MB of RAM. Chrome used 213MB, and Opera 259MB, while Internet Explorer trailed all, at 484MB. Safari is close to the bottom, here. And, unlike tabs in Chrome and Internet Explorer 8, Safari's aren't run in separate processes, a technique that can limit the severity of site crashes.
In compatibility, I didn't run across any sites displaying "Browser not supported" pages, nor did I find instances of misrendered pages. In one "official" measure of standards compliance, Safari 4 joins only Opera 10 beta in passing the Acid3 browser compatibility test. Though it's not a definitive measure of correct site rendering, Acid3 gives an indication of support for features that Web developers hope to use in the future. In this vein, Safari 4 supports HTML 5 features such as the video and audio tags, as well as has the ability to run Web applications off-line. It also can render CSS3 effects, like gradients and reflections.
Version 4 doesn't add new security and privacy features, but updates to Version 3 already added pretty much everything you'd expect in that area: private browsing, antiphishing and anti-malware tools, and support for Extended Validation (EV) Certificates. The private browsing feature, unlike that in Internet Explorer, Firefox 3.5, and Chrome, doesn't have any icon indicating you're in the mode, and on my tests it did indeed keep private browsing session URLs out of history and Smart Address bar's autosuggestions.
Safari 4 adds some welcome innovations, while catching up with the competition in some features. Its fast page rendering and stylish 3D interface features, like Cover Flow, will appeal to many. It's a bit of a memory hog, however, and fans of Firefox's extensions won't be tempted to switch, as Safari doesn't offer anywhere near that browser's level of customization. While most Mac users are likely to avail themselves of the new browser's advances, Windows users who like alternatives to Internet Explorer will probably get more out of Firefox or Chrome.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Microsoft Names Three in 'Click Fraud' Suit
Microsoft said Tuesday that it filed suit against three Canadians and two associated businesses that the software giant had committed a version of "click fraud".
Microsoft sued Eric Lam, Melanie Suen, and Gordon Lam of Vancouver, British Columbia for breach of contract, torturous interference with business relationships, fraudulent inducement and misrepresentation, computer fraud, conspiracy, and two violations of Washington anti-spyware and consumer laws. Companies named UMGE, Super Continental USA and Super Continental US, both allegedly tied to the trio, were also named, as were 50 "John Doe" plaintiffs.
The complaint accuses the Lams and Suen of abusing Microsoft's adCenter network, specifically exploiting it to benefit their own company, and its ad purchases of keywords associated with so-called "gold farming" in the online game "World of Warcraft," and a separate business reselling car insurance.
The method, according to Microsoft, was a technique known as "pay-per-click fraud".
Advertisers pay a certain amount per keyword or set of keywords to promote their own company when a certain keyword search term is entered, such as "auto insurance". That money is paid out of a budget when a user clicks on the sponsored ad, and is redirected to the site. Once the budget vanished, so would the sponsored ad.
Higher bids receive higher placement, according to the complaint. But the ad is only valuable when a genuine customer visits the sponsoring site. In Microsoft's case, the defendants allegedly either manually clicked competitor's sites, or used automated tools to do so.
The effect, according to Microsoft, was to defraud those who had paid for the higher rankings, as the rival ad budgets were quickly exhausted by the artificial clicks. "This would cause the higher-sponsored sites to drop off the results page or decrease in the rankings, and the perpetrator's lower-ranking sponsored site to rise to a higher position in the sponsored site list," Microsoft's complaint said. "This improved sponsored site positioning would lead to higher and better quality traffic (and presumably greater revenue) for the click fraud perpetrator -- without the perpetrator paying a higher price for keywords."
Microsoft said it would continue to take action against other incidences of click fraud.
"Consumers and businesses around the world rely on free Internet services and content funded and powered by advertising," Tim Cranton, the associate general counsel of Microsoft, wrote in a blog post. Indeed, just last week the Interactive Advertising Bureau released a study that found interactive advertising is responsible for $300 billion of economic activity annually and has created 3.1 million U.S. jobs.
"Given the sector's size and strategic importance, it is critically important for the industry to continue working together to help combat fraud against online advertisers and promote a healthy marketplace for online advertising and Internet services to thrive," Cranton added. "This marketplace will help fuel technology advancements worldwide and provide a key element in economic recovery and growth in the years ahead."
Microsoft sued Eric Lam, Melanie Suen, and Gordon Lam of Vancouver, British Columbia for breach of contract, torturous interference with business relationships, fraudulent inducement and misrepresentation, computer fraud, conspiracy, and two violations of Washington anti-spyware and consumer laws. Companies named UMGE, Super Continental USA and Super Continental US, both allegedly tied to the trio, were also named, as were 50 "John Doe" plaintiffs.
The complaint accuses the Lams and Suen of abusing Microsoft's adCenter network, specifically exploiting it to benefit their own company, and its ad purchases of keywords associated with so-called "gold farming" in the online game "World of Warcraft," and a separate business reselling car insurance.
The method, according to Microsoft, was a technique known as "pay-per-click fraud".
Advertisers pay a certain amount per keyword or set of keywords to promote their own company when a certain keyword search term is entered, such as "auto insurance". That money is paid out of a budget when a user clicks on the sponsored ad, and is redirected to the site. Once the budget vanished, so would the sponsored ad.
Higher bids receive higher placement, according to the complaint. But the ad is only valuable when a genuine customer visits the sponsoring site. In Microsoft's case, the defendants allegedly either manually clicked competitor's sites, or used automated tools to do so.
The effect, according to Microsoft, was to defraud those who had paid for the higher rankings, as the rival ad budgets were quickly exhausted by the artificial clicks. "This would cause the higher-sponsored sites to drop off the results page or decrease in the rankings, and the perpetrator's lower-ranking sponsored site to rise to a higher position in the sponsored site list," Microsoft's complaint said. "This improved sponsored site positioning would lead to higher and better quality traffic (and presumably greater revenue) for the click fraud perpetrator -- without the perpetrator paying a higher price for keywords."
Microsoft said it would continue to take action against other incidences of click fraud.
"Consumers and businesses around the world rely on free Internet services and content funded and powered by advertising," Tim Cranton, the associate general counsel of Microsoft, wrote in a blog post. Indeed, just last week the Interactive Advertising Bureau released a study that found interactive advertising is responsible for $300 billion of economic activity annually and has created 3.1 million U.S. jobs.
"Given the sector's size and strategic importance, it is critically important for the industry to continue working together to help combat fraud against online advertisers and promote a healthy marketplace for online advertising and Internet services to thrive," Cranton added. "This marketplace will help fuel technology advancements worldwide and provide a key element in economic recovery and growth in the years ahead."
Monday, June 15, 2009
Microsoft Silverlight Challenges Adobe AIR
Microsoft Silverlight 3 is catching up to the capabilities of Adobe Flash, Flex, and AIR in all the areas where Silverlight was behind. Silverlight 3 applications can run in or out of the browser, online or offline, with much improved audio, video, and 3-D graphics.
Recently I've been hearing from Adobe on a regular basis about adoptions of the Adobe Flash Platform by large media organizations, such as Clear Channel Radio and MLB.com, for streaming media content to the Web both live and on demand. I've been hearing rather less from Microsoft about Silverlight adoptions.
I think that part of the reason is that Adobe leapfrogged Microsoft last winter in the area of media support, particularly H.264/Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) audio and full HD video playback. These and many other capabilities are included in Silverlight 3, which is currently in a beta that does not include a "go live" license, but will most likely be released in July.
[ See related Test Center reviews: Silverlight 2 | Adobe AIR | Adobe Flex Builder | Curl | Visual Studio 2010 preview. ]
Another area where Flash and Flex were ahead of Silverlight is Windows and Macintosh desktop operation. A number of desktop Flex/AIR applications have become popular, especially Twitter clients; examples include TweetDeck, Twhirl, DestroyTwitter, and Seesmic Desktop. (Let's ignore the memory leak issues they all have in common for the moment.)
Out of the browser
Silverlight 2 didn't have a viable way to run on a desktop; the best a developer could do along those lines was to build a desktop WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) application based loosely on a corresponding Silverlight RIA (rich Internet application). Silverlight 3 addresses those issues very nicely, with easy ways to install Silverlight applications on a desktop, update them in place, detect Internet connectivity state changes, and store information locally and securely.
What else was wrong with Silverlight 2? From a developer's point of view, no single tool covered all needs; Expression Blend 2 did graphical XAML design but couldn't edit code, and Visual Studio 2008 did code editing and XAML editing and preview, but couldn't do graphical XAML design. That will be fixed in Expression Blend 3 and Visual Studio 2010, both of which have solid betas. For designers, the Expression Blend 3 Preview already imports Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator files, another lack in Blend 2, and will add "SketchFlow" prototyping and interactive behaviors in a future release.
In addition, Silverlight 2 lacked 3-D graphics, pixel shader effects, writing to bitmaps, animation effects, themes, decent data binding, and a reasonable assortment of controls. Those deficiencies are all fixed in Silverlight 3.
Rich and obscure
One problem area that Flash and Silverlight have had in common is SEO (search engine optimization). A search engine such as Google can only see the text on a Web page; RIA applications historically have not displayed usable text or allowed external links to states "deep" inside the animation, concentrating instead on their forte -- flashy graphics. Recently there's been some improvement in SEO for Flash and Flex, using external JavaScript objects such as SWFObject (for dynamic loading) and SWFAddress (for deep linking), at least for those who to take the trouble to revamp their Flash sites; Silverlight 3 addresses both SEO and deep linking internally.
Silverlight has long been strong on execution speed and language support. Both of those are getting better still in version 3.
I do not expect many Adobe shops to give up their Flash, Flex, and AIR for Silverlight 3. I do expect many Microsoft shops to do more RIAs with Silverlight now that it's more capable and to create lightweight browser/desktop Silverlight 3 applications where they might have fashioned heavier-weight Windows Forms or WPF client applications. Some mixed but Microsoft-oriented shops might phase out their Adobe work in favor of Silverlight on integration grounds, but some won't. Meanwhile, the next generation of streaming media adoptions are likely to be closely contested, now that the two technologies are near parity.
Of course, in a few months everything will change again. Stay tuned.
Microsoft Silverlight 3 beta
Pros Silverlight 3 applications can run in or out of the browser, online or offline. Much improved audio and HD video support. 3-D graphics and pixel shading effects. Many more controls, with enhanced data support. Expression Blend can import Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator files.
Cons No go-live license for the beta; need to wait for release, probably in July.
Cost Free
Platforms Development: Windows XP SP2 or later with Visual Studio 2008 SP1 or Visual Web Developer Express 2008 SP1. Runtime: Windows XP SP2 or later, or Intel-based Mac OS X.
Recently I've been hearing from Adobe on a regular basis about adoptions of the Adobe Flash Platform by large media organizations, such as Clear Channel Radio and MLB.com, for streaming media content to the Web both live and on demand. I've been hearing rather less from Microsoft about Silverlight adoptions.
I think that part of the reason is that Adobe leapfrogged Microsoft last winter in the area of media support, particularly H.264/Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) audio and full HD video playback. These and many other capabilities are included in Silverlight 3, which is currently in a beta that does not include a "go live" license, but will most likely be released in July.
[ See related Test Center reviews: Silverlight 2 | Adobe AIR | Adobe Flex Builder | Curl | Visual Studio 2010 preview. ]
Another area where Flash and Flex were ahead of Silverlight is Windows and Macintosh desktop operation. A number of desktop Flex/AIR applications have become popular, especially Twitter clients; examples include TweetDeck, Twhirl, DestroyTwitter, and Seesmic Desktop. (Let's ignore the memory leak issues they all have in common for the moment.)
Out of the browser
Silverlight 2 didn't have a viable way to run on a desktop; the best a developer could do along those lines was to build a desktop WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) application based loosely on a corresponding Silverlight RIA (rich Internet application). Silverlight 3 addresses those issues very nicely, with easy ways to install Silverlight applications on a desktop, update them in place, detect Internet connectivity state changes, and store information locally and securely.
What else was wrong with Silverlight 2? From a developer's point of view, no single tool covered all needs; Expression Blend 2 did graphical XAML design but couldn't edit code, and Visual Studio 2008 did code editing and XAML editing and preview, but couldn't do graphical XAML design. That will be fixed in Expression Blend 3 and Visual Studio 2010, both of which have solid betas. For designers, the Expression Blend 3 Preview already imports Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator files, another lack in Blend 2, and will add "SketchFlow" prototyping and interactive behaviors in a future release.
In addition, Silverlight 2 lacked 3-D graphics, pixel shader effects, writing to bitmaps, animation effects, themes, decent data binding, and a reasonable assortment of controls. Those deficiencies are all fixed in Silverlight 3.
Rich and obscure
One problem area that Flash and Silverlight have had in common is SEO (search engine optimization). A search engine such as Google can only see the text on a Web page; RIA applications historically have not displayed usable text or allowed external links to states "deep" inside the animation, concentrating instead on their forte -- flashy graphics. Recently there's been some improvement in SEO for Flash and Flex, using external JavaScript objects such as SWFObject (for dynamic loading) and SWFAddress (for deep linking), at least for those who to take the trouble to revamp their Flash sites; Silverlight 3 addresses both SEO and deep linking internally.
Silverlight has long been strong on execution speed and language support. Both of those are getting better still in version 3.
I do not expect many Adobe shops to give up their Flash, Flex, and AIR for Silverlight 3. I do expect many Microsoft shops to do more RIAs with Silverlight now that it's more capable and to create lightweight browser/desktop Silverlight 3 applications where they might have fashioned heavier-weight Windows Forms or WPF client applications. Some mixed but Microsoft-oriented shops might phase out their Adobe work in favor of Silverlight on integration grounds, but some won't. Meanwhile, the next generation of streaming media adoptions are likely to be closely contested, now that the two technologies are near parity.
Of course, in a few months everything will change again. Stay tuned.
Microsoft Silverlight 3 beta
Pros Silverlight 3 applications can run in or out of the browser, online or offline. Much improved audio and HD video support. 3-D graphics and pixel shading effects. Many more controls, with enhanced data support. Expression Blend can import Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator files.
Cons No go-live license for the beta; need to wait for release, probably in July.
Cost Free
Platforms Development: Windows XP SP2 or later with Visual Studio 2008 SP1 or Visual Web Developer Express 2008 SP1. Runtime: Windows XP SP2 or later, or Intel-based Mac OS X.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
HP Notebook Launches AMD ' Turion Neo'
AMD has begun shipping a dual-core Athlon Neo processor as part of a new Hewlett-Packard notebook, as well as a new processor, the Turion Neo.
On Wednesday, HP released the dv2z, now user configurable with either the Athlon Neo X2 or Turion Neo X2 processors. AMD confirmed that, at least in the United States, HP is currently the exclusive provider of both processors, according to an AMD spokeswoman.
The Athlon Neo was first announced at the CES show in January, when the Neo-based dv2 was first launched. The dv2 was based on the AMD "Yukon" platform, which AMD defines as a single-core, 15-watt Athlon Neo, paired with an MS690 chipset, as well as a ATI Radeon 1200 graphics chip, according to a slide set of a presentation AMD released at the recent Computex show in Taiwan.
The "Congo" platform, by contrast, uses a dual-core Athlon Neo – the Conesus chip, paired with an MS780G chipset and an ATI Radeon 3200 chip. AMD has also included another feature, Hyperspace, a quick-boot capability. AMD does not disclose the pricing of its mobile processors.
An AMD spokeswoman said Friday that while Conesus will be a dual-core part, the processor AMD provided to HP was a custom iteration, and not technically the "Conesus" processor that will be shipped to the market at large. Other OEMs are welcome to use the custom part as well, she said.
Both the Yukon and Congo platforms are designed for what AMD (and Microsoft) call ultrathin notebooks, a step up from the low-cost netbook platforms that have captured the attention of the industry. AMD has essentially ceded the netbook market to Intel, and classified the systems as based on the Intel Atom microprocessor in its presentation. Both ultrathin notebooks and netbooks compete against ARM-powered "smartbooks", although they will not use Windows, Microsoft has said.
The Turion Neo, by contrast, is positioned as a "top of the stack" processor, sitting above the Athlon Neo. The Turion Neo that HP is shipping is a 1.6-GHz part, the same as the Athlon Neo, available for a $25 premium. The Turion Neo has a larger cache size, however, 1 Mbyte versus 512 Kbytes on the Athlon Neo X2.
Placing the Athlon Neo X2 and Turion Neo X2 is permitted; "we don't restrict our customers and allow them to innovate, so these things sometimes happen," the AMD spokeswoman said.
On Wednesday, HP released the dv2z, now user configurable with either the Athlon Neo X2 or Turion Neo X2 processors. AMD confirmed that, at least in the United States, HP is currently the exclusive provider of both processors, according to an AMD spokeswoman.
The Athlon Neo was first announced at the CES show in January, when the Neo-based dv2 was first launched. The dv2 was based on the AMD "Yukon" platform, which AMD defines as a single-core, 15-watt Athlon Neo, paired with an MS690 chipset, as well as a ATI Radeon 1200 graphics chip, according to a slide set of a presentation AMD released at the recent Computex show in Taiwan.
The "Congo" platform, by contrast, uses a dual-core Athlon Neo – the Conesus chip, paired with an MS780G chipset and an ATI Radeon 3200 chip. AMD has also included another feature, Hyperspace, a quick-boot capability. AMD does not disclose the pricing of its mobile processors.
An AMD spokeswoman said Friday that while Conesus will be a dual-core part, the processor AMD provided to HP was a custom iteration, and not technically the "Conesus" processor that will be shipped to the market at large. Other OEMs are welcome to use the custom part as well, she said.
Both the Yukon and Congo platforms are designed for what AMD (and Microsoft) call ultrathin notebooks, a step up from the low-cost netbook platforms that have captured the attention of the industry. AMD has essentially ceded the netbook market to Intel, and classified the systems as based on the Intel Atom microprocessor in its presentation. Both ultrathin notebooks and netbooks compete against ARM-powered "smartbooks", although they will not use Windows, Microsoft has said.
The Turion Neo, by contrast, is positioned as a "top of the stack" processor, sitting above the Athlon Neo. The Turion Neo that HP is shipping is a 1.6-GHz part, the same as the Athlon Neo, available for a $25 premium. The Turion Neo has a larger cache size, however, 1 Mbyte versus 512 Kbytes on the Athlon Neo X2.
Placing the Athlon Neo X2 and Turion Neo X2 is permitted; "we don't restrict our customers and allow them to innovate, so these things sometimes happen," the AMD spokeswoman said.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Safari 4 Launches, Snow Leopard Coming in Sept
Apple on Monday launched its next-generation browser,Safari, and gave details on the Snow Leopard OS X update.
Apple said during its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) that the operating system would be available in September. Apple presenters took the time to denigrate Windows 7 as merely a version of the much-derided Vista. Windows 7 will launch on October 22, according to Microsoft. Snow Leopard will only run on Intel-based Macs, so older IBM PowerPC based Mac PCs are out in the cold with Snow Leopard.
Snow Leopard, aka OS X 10.6, will cost just $29 to current Leopard users and will naturally ship with all new Macs. But it doesn't offer much in the way of new features for end users.
Its inner plumbing takes advantage of new trends in PC hardware, such as 64-bit and multicore CPUs, along with faster graphics processing hardware. The most noticeable feature for end users will be its built-in support for Microsoft Exchange mail, contacts, and calendars, and a new version of QuickTime called QuickTime X. Installation will be 45 percent faster and opening JPEF image files and PDF documents will be 2 and 1.5 times as fast, respectively.
"We've built on the success of Leopard and created an even better experience for our users from installation to shutdown," said Bertrand Serlet, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering. "Apple engineers have made hundreds of improvements so with Snow Leopard your system is going to feel faster, more responsive and even more reliable than before."
The Safari 4 browser is available today as a download for Mac OS X (Leopard and Tiger) and Windows. It's notable for an iTunes-like Cover Flow interface for viewing history, and Top Sites view that shows your most visited sites in a 3D grid view.
Apple said during its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) that the operating system would be available in September. Apple presenters took the time to denigrate Windows 7 as merely a version of the much-derided Vista. Windows 7 will launch on October 22, according to Microsoft. Snow Leopard will only run on Intel-based Macs, so older IBM PowerPC based Mac PCs are out in the cold with Snow Leopard.
Snow Leopard, aka OS X 10.6, will cost just $29 to current Leopard users and will naturally ship with all new Macs. But it doesn't offer much in the way of new features for end users.
Its inner plumbing takes advantage of new trends in PC hardware, such as 64-bit and multicore CPUs, along with faster graphics processing hardware. The most noticeable feature for end users will be its built-in support for Microsoft Exchange mail, contacts, and calendars, and a new version of QuickTime called QuickTime X. Installation will be 45 percent faster and opening JPEF image files and PDF documents will be 2 and 1.5 times as fast, respectively.
"We've built on the success of Leopard and created an even better experience for our users from installation to shutdown," said Bertrand Serlet, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering. "Apple engineers have made hundreds of improvements so with Snow Leopard your system is going to feel faster, more responsive and even more reliable than before."
The Safari 4 browser is available today as a download for Mac OS X (Leopard and Tiger) and Windows. It's notable for an iTunes-like Cover Flow interface for viewing history, and Top Sites view that shows your most visited sites in a 3D grid view.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Opera 10 Beta Released
Opera Software has made the first beta of its latest web browser, Opera 10, publicly available.
Opera says the new browser features Opera Turbo technology to deliver web content up to 40 percent faster than its previous browser Opera 9.5. The function will also automatically switch on if a slow connection speed is detected.
The web browser also features a resizable tab bar, which when pulled down reveals thumbnails of every open tab in your browser window.
Opera 10 allows you to see thumbnails of all open tabs
Opera also expanded the inline spell-checker to support 51 languages and revamped the user interface, with a new design from Jon Hicks.
"Initially, we were just going to clean-up some elements and focus on the interface for new features. But, over time, the new user interface elements became so different that we decided to update everything," said Jon Hicks.
"We think Opera 10 will redefine how you can enjoy the web. We have more surprises on the way, but when you try the features, enjoy the acclerated performance and get a glimpse at our shiny new wrapping, I think Opera 10 beta will excite both long-time users and those new to Opera," said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software.
Opera 10 can be downloaded from Opera's website for Windows, Mac and Linux.
Opera says the new browser features Opera Turbo technology to deliver web content up to 40 percent faster than its previous browser Opera 9.5. The function will also automatically switch on if a slow connection speed is detected.
The web browser also features a resizable tab bar, which when pulled down reveals thumbnails of every open tab in your browser window.
Opera 10 allows you to see thumbnails of all open tabs
Opera also expanded the inline spell-checker to support 51 languages and revamped the user interface, with a new design from Jon Hicks.
"Initially, we were just going to clean-up some elements and focus on the interface for new features. But, over time, the new user interface elements became so different that we decided to update everything," said Jon Hicks.
"We think Opera 10 will redefine how you can enjoy the web. We have more surprises on the way, but when you try the features, enjoy the acclerated performance and get a glimpse at our shiny new wrapping, I think Opera 10 beta will excite both long-time users and those new to Opera," said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software.
Opera 10 can be downloaded from Opera's website for Windows, Mac and Linux.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Forza Motorsport 3
Forza Motorsport 3 Hands-On
During a visit to Microsoft's E3 booth earlier today, we had an opportunity to meet with representatives from developer Turn 10 and talk to them about the recently announced Xbox 360-exclusive Forza Motorsport 3. Turn 10 didn't share any crazy new information about the game with us but instead gave us a few facts, figures, and philosophies, and then more or less let the game speak for itself.
In Forza Motorsport 3, the cars are most definitely the stars. There will be around 400 of them in the finished game (including classics, SUVs, and micros), each with 10 times as many polygons as their Forza 2 counterparts and higher-resolution textures. Needless to say, the results are impressive, and if seeing the game's signature bright-red Audi R8 V10 against the stark white background of the new user interface doesn't get you excited to drive it, then nothing will.
Cars look every bit as good on the circuit as they do on the selection screen, and you're in for a real treat if you're someone who likes to drive using the in-car view. Beautiful environments, like the mountain range and lakes that surround the Camino Viejo track, whiz by at a smooth 60 frames per second, and a plethora of driving options ensure that practically anyone can have a good time behind the wheel. Turn all of the auto-assists on, and you can drive doing little more than hitting the accelerator and turning left and right. Turn them off, and you'll find that Forza 3 offers a challenging and realistic driving experience that, if you're not as skilled behind the wheel as you think you are, might give you a great opportunity to roll your car and check out the impressive damage modeling.
Forza 3 will also be forgiving in ways that its predecessors weren't, though. If you make a mistake, you have the option to rewind time for what seems to be about 10 to 15 seconds, and try again. Cleverly, when you upload times to the game's leaderboards, they'll be listed only as "certified" if you didn't use the rewind feature. Purportedly, the game will also know if you gained an advantage by riding walls, taking shortcuts, or drafting someone for the entire lap or if you had someone in a faster car push you around, and your times will be listed as uncertified accordingly.
Toward the end of our meeting, Turn 10 made a point of telling us how important the Forza community is to them and how, while they're not ready to talk about specific features just yet, players who specialize in painting or tuning cars aren't going to be disappointed or forgotten. We were also told that Forza 3 will feature "a lot" of real-life and fantasy tracks, though only three of the latter are being shown here at E3. After leaving the meeting, we were invited to get some hands-on time with the game, and that's when things got really exciting.
The E3 demo includes eight highly desirable cars from Lamborghini, Ferrari, Ford, Mercedes, Aston Martin, Porsche, Corvette, and Audi, and after choosing one (the Aston Martin on this occasion), we got to race two laps against the other seven. Playing with the regular Xbox 360 controller, we immediately felt comfortable with the controls, and as we maintained position in the middle of the pack for much of the first lap, we were afforded several opportunities to witness the game's AI at work. Opposing drivers were competitive but knew when to back down, and crucially, they were fallible. We witnessed one driver make a completely unforced error going into a corner, which, while not entirely realistic, is certainly more entertaining than seeing opponents move around a track on rails.
However, where Forza 3 reallyimpressed us at E3 2009, was inside one of the three simulators that Microsoft has set up behind its booth. These simulators incorporate force feedback steering wheels, three pedals, three widescreens, and hydraulics that make you feel every bump in the road and, apparently, necessitate the wearing of a seatbelt. Most of us will never get to experience Forza 3 in this way outside of an event like E3, but the fact that it's even possible to do so underlines just how much attention to detail has gone into its making.
October can't come quickly enough, and in the meantime we hope to bring you plenty of updates on features that aren't being talked about at E3. Stay tuned.
Sony Ericsson Handset Features 8.1-Megapixel Camera
The Sony Ericsson W995a 3G handset, announced today, is among the select few in the U.S. to offer an 8.1-megapixel digital camera. This $600 unlocked quad-band GSM/tri-band UMTS multimedia handset will come in black, silver, and red, and is now available for pre-orders; it will ship July 6.
This 4-ounce slider phone's camera includes a flash, as is becoming increasingly common. The digital camera offers standalone-camera features such as a 16X digital zoom, face detection technology, geo-tagging, autofocus, image stabilization, and video recording. You can even hold the handset horizontally like a standard digital camera. The screen has an
sony ericsson w995a
accelerometer, and autorotates as needed.
The unit also has a 2.6-inch display, Bluetooth 2.0 stereo support, a Wi-Fi adapter, and a GPS receiver. As part of the Walkman line of phones, this model also has a healthy set of music-friendly features: Walkman 3.0 digital music/video player software with dedicated playback buttons; stereo FM radio with presets; Sony's Clear Bass technology for bolstering bass response; and Clear Stereo technology, for minimizing audio leakage between the right and left channels.
The W995a also comes with an 8GB Sony Memory Stick Micro for extra storage (the phone's
onboard memory is negligible). The phone, previously available overseas,continues to use Memory Stick Micro, although Sony Ericsson has already announced plans to bail on the memory format.
An interesting design point: If you actually want to make calls, a standard dialpad with rectangular buttons slides down from the casing. Sony Ericsson says the unit offers up to nine hours of talk time, more than two weeks of standby time, and 20 hours of music playback per charge.
This 4-ounce slider phone's camera includes a flash, as is becoming increasingly common. The digital camera offers standalone-camera features such as a 16X digital zoom, face detection technology, geo-tagging, autofocus, image stabilization, and video recording. You can even hold the handset horizontally like a standard digital camera. The screen has an
sony ericsson w995a
accelerometer, and autorotates as needed.
The unit also has a 2.6-inch display, Bluetooth 2.0 stereo support, a Wi-Fi adapter, and a GPS receiver. As part of the Walkman line of phones, this model also has a healthy set of music-friendly features: Walkman 3.0 digital music/video player software with dedicated playback buttons; stereo FM radio with presets; Sony's Clear Bass technology for bolstering bass response; and Clear Stereo technology, for minimizing audio leakage between the right and left channels.
The W995a also comes with an 8GB Sony Memory Stick Micro for extra storage (the phone's
onboard memory is negligible). The phone, previously available overseas,continues to use Memory Stick Micro, although Sony Ericsson has already announced plans to bail on the memory format.
An interesting design point: If you actually want to make calls, a standard dialpad with rectangular buttons slides down from the casing. Sony Ericsson says the unit offers up to nine hours of talk time, more than two weeks of standby time, and 20 hours of music playback per charge.
T-Mobile G2 to Come In July
T-Mobile is spreading word that the launch of the Android G2 is "early this summer." The carrier isn't mentioning which device will actually carry the T-Mobile G2 name-tag. Speculation has the HTC Magic as the best competitor for this position.
After giving T-Mobile G1 users a major software upgrade in the form of Android OS 1.5 (also known as Cupcake), T-Mobile announced it is ready to launch the successor of the G1 model early next month. More than 1 million G1s have been sold so far, so the G2 is set to build on the popularity of its older sibling.
Google gave away at the I/O conference last week an HTC Magic to all audience members, which makes me think this will be the T-Mobile G2. The HTC Magic is already available in some European countries (where it is also called HTC Dream), but is yet to make it in the U.S..
My colleague Melissa J. Perenson was at the I/O conference and had a hands-on with the phone. She found a lot to like about the HTC Magic, especially its slimmer profile and smaller overall size (mainly due to the lack of a physical keyboard). You can check out herhands-on with the HTC Magic.
T-Mobile's G2, however, could face a difficult time next month when it is launched. The phone jumps in at a time when Palm, Nokia, and Apple are fighting for customers in the touch screen realm. We already know the Palm Prewill launch on June 6, the Nokia N97 on June 19, and the new iPhone reportedly on July 17.
With so many red-hot phones coming out this summer, it would be safe to wait until all of them are released and then decide which one is best for you. My colleague James A. Martin has a few very interesting thoughts about that, talking about how to avoid instant buyer's remorse.
Meanwhile, for more Android goodness, make sure you check out the 11 cool Android prototypes I'd like to see, and for a head-to-head summer smartphones comparison, have a look at the latest Smartphone Smackdown.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Samsung Edges Out Sony Ericsson in Megapixel Race
Samsung launched on Monday the Pixon12, the company's first touchscreen phone with a 12-megapixel camera.
The long-rumored phone follows in the footsteps of the Sony Ericsson Satio, which also comes equipped with a 12-megapixel camera. But the Samsung phone will be the first to hit the market when it ships in some parts of Europe by the end of June.
Sony Ericsson, on the other hand, will start shipping the Satio in the beginning of the fourth quarter.
Losing that first-to-market advantage will be frustrating for Sony Ericsson, according to a research note from CCS Insight, which said that the megapixel race appears to be slowing down.
The Pixon12 also has a Xenon flash and Touch Auto-Focus tracking, which lets the user select the focus point with the touch of a finger, after which the phone automatically follows the object. It features fast-image saving, so users should be able to take next photo within about two seconds, according to a statement from Samsung.
Both images and videos -- which the Pixon12 records with 720x480 resolution at 30 frames per second -- can be uploaded to social-networking sites such as Facebook, Picasa, Flickr, MySpace, Photobucket, Friendster, Samsung said. Images are stored on a 16G byte MicroSD card.
Besides a camera it has some other fairly standard features, including a 3.1-inch display, GPS and an FM radio. Users can surf the net using HSPA (High-Speed Packet Access) or Wi-Fi.
The long-rumored phone follows in the footsteps of the Sony Ericsson Satio, which also comes equipped with a 12-megapixel camera. But the Samsung phone will be the first to hit the market when it ships in some parts of Europe by the end of June.
Sony Ericsson, on the other hand, will start shipping the Satio in the beginning of the fourth quarter.
Losing that first-to-market advantage will be frustrating for Sony Ericsson, according to a research note from CCS Insight, which said that the megapixel race appears to be slowing down.
The Pixon12 also has a Xenon flash and Touch Auto-Focus tracking, which lets the user select the focus point with the touch of a finger, after which the phone automatically follows the object. It features fast-image saving, so users should be able to take next photo within about two seconds, according to a statement from Samsung.
Both images and videos -- which the Pixon12 records with 720x480 resolution at 30 frames per second -- can be uploaded to social-networking sites such as Facebook, Picasa, Flickr, MySpace, Photobucket, Friendster, Samsung said. Images are stored on a 16G byte MicroSD card.
Besides a camera it has some other fairly standard features, including a 3.1-inch display, GPS and an FM radio. Users can surf the net using HSPA (High-Speed Packet Access) or Wi-Fi.
Simmtronics
Simmtronics Launches 2GB DDR3 1333MHz Memory
Simmtronics Semiconductors Ltd. has announced the launch of 2GB DDR3-1333 MHz 240-pin DIMMs for both Desktops & Notebooks, targeted towards power users like gamers, animators and graphic designers. Simmtronics’ DDR3-Modules are currently available in 2GB capacity with life time warranty. DDR3, the successor to DDR2 Memory, is expected to soon become the industry standard for PC Memory Modules. The operating voltage of DDR3 Memory Modules also offers reduction in power consumption of 30% compared 1.8V to 1.5V, thus reducing actual Memory power consumption by 20-30% compared to systems with DDR2 Memory.
DDR3 Modules can transfer data at a rate of 800–1600 MHz using both rising and falling edges of a 400–800 MHz I/O clock. In comparison, DDR2's current range of data transfer rates is 400–800 MHz using a 200–400 MHz I/O clock, and DDR's range is 200–400 MHz based on a 100–200 MHz I/O clock. DDR3 Modules have 240 pins, the same number as DDR2, and are the same size, but are electrically incompatible and have a different key notch location to avoid usage of wrong type of RAM with incompatible slots.
Price- Rs.3400/-(MRP)
Warranty - Life time limited to 5 years
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)