Rob Beschizza

HP offers 17TB Windows Home Server box

HP's latest mediasmart home server can stack up to 17TB of storage in a box the size of one of those little desktop fridges you can buy from Skymall.

Data. Beer. Your decision.

P.S. it has much-improved Mac admin software, and an enhanced media/video collection and conversion package, say the makers.

Datasheet (PDF) [HP]

Rob Beschizza

Is Apple's tablet a kindle-killer?

At Gizmodo, Briam Lam writes about the true target of Apple' tablet: readers.

Two people related to the NYTimes have separately told me that in June, paper was approached by Apple to talk about putting the paper on a "new device." The R&D labs have long worked on versions of the paper meant to be navigated without a keyboard or mouse, showing up on Windows tablets and on multiple formats using Adobe Air. The NYTimes, of course, also publishes via their iPhone application. Jobs has, during past keynotes, called the NYTimes the "best newspaper in the world."

Apple's gamble is that is e-ink isn't all that important to most of us: we are used to glowy LCD screens and our eyes don't need the passive look of paper to enjoy reading. Moreover, it's realized that the Kindle and its kin have a broad potential beyond reading long documents, like novels, where e-ink is a real help. We read an awful lot of little things, and that's the real market.

Apple Tablet To Redefine Newspapers, Textbooks and Magazines [Giz]

Illo: Jesus Diaz.

Rob Beschizza

Latitude Z

That Dell's new Latitude is $2,000 suggests quality and high specifications are involved, but this one has a trick up its sleeve: wireless recharging, thanks to the (wired) dock that comes with it.

It's it nice, also, to see heavy attention to design that isn't also trying to bottle someone else's magic? Love that geometry. [Gadget Lab]

Rob Beschizza

The awfulness of Windows vs. the creepiness of Mac

Charlie Brooker:

I don't care if you're right. I just want you to die. I know Windows is awful. Everyone knows Windows is awful. Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway. ... Still, bad though it is, I vaguely prefer the clumping, clueless, uncool, crappiness of Microsoft's bland Stepford gang to the creepy assurance of the average Mac evangelist.

Microsoft's grinning robots or the Brotherhood of the Mac. Which is worse? [Guardian]

Rob Beschizza

Put linux on a Zipit, get a $40 netbook

A cheap little cellular WiFi handheld, Zipit does instant messaging in similarly single-minded fashion to how the Peek does e-mail. Unlike the Peek, however, the Zipit now has a real Linux distribution that turns it into a cute, ingenious, and nearly-useless laptop. From Lilliputing:

You might be interested in running Linux, installing DOSbox, or maybe an NES emulator. The Zipit has a 300MHz XScale processor, 32MB of RAM, and a Mini-SD card slot for stroage. It has a 2.8 inch QVGA display and a 1000mAh Li-Ion battery. It connects to 802.11b/g WiFi networks. And if you follow a series of steps from hacker Hunter Davis, you can install a working Linux operating system with the Fluxbox window manager.

"The speakers are remarkably underpowered," says Hunter Davis, creator of this neat how-to video.

[Lilliputing]

Rob Beschizza

From Rick Dickinson's photostream.

Rob Beschizza

Microsoft announces an end to coffee rings

A table on which nothing hot, wet, sharp or heavy may be placed! [Marilink's flickr via Gadget Lab]

Rob Beschizza

Sharp's NetWalker looks sharp

James Kendrick compares Sharp's forthcoming NetWalker (right) with the Umid Mbook (left). It comes out on top, thanks to having a better keyboard and a screen that folds all the way back. [JKKmobile]

Lisa Katayama

Korean PC decked out in Hello Kitty

[Moneual via Akihabara News via Crunchgear]

Rob Beschizza

Vivienne Tam redesigns HP netbook

HP's Vivienne Tam-designed "Digital Clutch" is designed to "reflect a transformative spirit and sophisticated lifestyle" in which "high fashion, small form factor and innovative function" are "fused" to "take the personal computer from a necessity to a lifestyle statement for modern-day women on the go."

In a particularly progressive twist, this second edition will no longer feature the pink flowers of the original. It will, however, retain the enormous markup on the otherwise identical black one.

Press Release [HP]

Rob Beschizza

Viliv S7 Premium takes on Vaio P

Viliv's S7, at $630 and up, isn't cheap by netbook standards. But at 1.8 pounds and with a swiveling touchscreen and 3G internet, its a striking one. The internals are similar to other smaller UMPC-style netbooks (lower-power 1.33GHz Atom, SSD, etc.) and it's available from Dynamism.

Steven Leckart

Celebrity Hard Drives

For only $20, you can have a racy graphic of Kim Kardashian added to your hard drive.

Or a skin of Domo. Or Wu-Tang Clan. Or even Bob Marley.

One love, Seagate.

[via Gearlog via New Launches]

Steven Leckart

Computer Repair Flowchart

From Morris Rosenthal's Computer Repair with Diagnostic Flowcharts. Bonus: On his site, the charts are interactive, so clicking on a diamond jumps you to the text for each decision step.

After the jump, check out all the branches up close...

[via Tech DC]

READ THE REST

Steven Leckart

Apple iPod Announcement: Sept 9th

Apple's set to show off its latest iPod on September 9th @ 10am PST/1PM Eastern.

So what's up Jobs' sleeve?

[via Gizmodo]

Rob Beschizza

Nokia N900 tablet runs Maemo, runs flash, likes money

Nokia's N900, a well-heeled angle on the shaky "mobile internet device" category, shall run Maemo 5, a cut of linux intended for heavy internet use. At 800 pixels wide, the display will better cellphones at showing web-pages, and high-end features abound: there's a 5 megapixel camera, a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, Flash compatibility, 32GB of storage, GPS and TV-out. Such a shame it isn't a cellphone! Update: It is a cellphone! Damn!

Furthermore, at 500 Euros, it'll have to justify itself as a "netbook replacement" for those not already fond of Nokia's past lineup of internet tablets.

Product Page [Nokia]

Rob Beschizza

Sharp's tiny NetWalker netbook echoes classic Zaurus

Sharp's netbook-cum-MID is something of a surprise--a shrunken laptop running an ARM CPU and Ubuntu linux, like the Zauruses of yore.

Featuring a 1024x600 pixel display, an 800MHz Freescale chip, 4GB of flash storage and 512MB of RAM, it won't challenge the latest from Asus and MSI on the performance front. But, like the perpetually sold-old Umid mBook, it has both a "real" qwerty keyboard and a pocket-friendly format.

The big claims, to my eye, are the 10 hour battery life and a 3-second boot time. If those are true, it'll be a real contender. Type on these tiny keyboards, though, is a chore: Sony's Vaio P is the smallest I've been comfortable with in the past.

Expect a price point around $500.

NetWalker, Sharp's Latest Ubuntu Netbook... Is the Zaurus back? - Hands-On !!! [Akihabara News via Lilliputing and Engadget]

Steven Leckart

Snow Leopard Review Round-Up

Awesome, yawn-worthy, or a bit of both? The bottom lines are in...

Ed Baig at USA Today:

Snow Leopard isn't a must-have upgrade. There's not much new in the sizzle department. Many feature enrichments are modest, such as the ability to highlight text from a specific column in a PDF. The fine Safari 4 Web browser is also included, but you don't need Snow Leopard to get it. Apple does say the browser is faster and more crash resistant. (My iMac did crash once in my testing.)... Still, Snow Leopard should delight Mac fans...

Brian X. Chen at Wired.com:

This upgrade won't deliver any radical interface changes to blow you away (not that we would want it to), but the $30 price is more than fair for the number of performance improvements Snow Leopard delivers. Stay tuned for Wired.com's full review of Snow Leopard as we continue to test it over the week.

Jim Dalrymple at CNET:

We think the interface tweaks to Expose, Stacks, the Finder, Mail, and iCal make Snow Leopard more than just a service pack and worthy of the $29 upgrade price... Though the system performs well in everyday use, many of our tests indicate it is slightly slower than the older version of Leopard in more intensive application processes. Still, we highly recommend upgrading for all the new features and Microsoft Exchange support.

Andy Ihnatko at Chicago Sun-Times:

...the price represents perhaps the most emphatic middle finger that Apple's ever extended towards Microsoft's general direction. In the past five years, Microsoft has done far less with Windows than Apple has done with the Mac OS.

Galen Gruman at InfoWorld:

When a new OS upgrade costs $29, you can be forgiven for thinking of it as a service pack... an under-the-hood upgrade whose new capabilities won't be so obvious to users, and thus not worth the usual $129. I agree with that price assessment (if only Microsoft had made the same judgment about Windows 7), but I don't agree that what Snow Leopard offers resides merely under the hood. Instead, it provides many enhancements and some new features that Mac users of all persuasions will really like.

Randall C. Kennedy at PC World:

"Where's the beef?"

Brian Lam at Gizmodo:

Some fanboys will ask, incredulously, "This is a new operating system?!" Those people are missing the point. On deeper inspection, Snow Leopard's inconspicuous aspects--performance squeezed from underused CPU multicores/GPUs and basic UI tweaks--are found to be the kind of refinement generally reserved for virtuosity. These speed optimizations are deep, reminding me of when a master martial artist puts the entirety of his weight behind a strike (while a neophyte would flails his limbs like a henchman in a Bruce Lee movie). The little UI tweaks are no different than when a great sculptor's chisel works to remove everything non-essential during the final steps on a statue.

Walt Mossberg at the Wall Street Journal:

Apple already had the best computer operating system in Leopard, and Snow Leopard makes it a little better. But it isn't a big breakthrough for average users, and, even at $29, it isn't a typical Apple lust-provoking product.

David Pogue at the New York Times:

Incredibly, Snow Leopard is only half the size of its predecessor; following the speedy installation (15 minutes), you wind up with 7 gigabytes more free space on your hard drive. That, ladies and gents, is a first... That Snow Leopard's looks haven't changed at all, in other words, betrays the enormous changes under its pretty skin... Either way, the big story here isn't really Snow Leopard. It's the radical concept of a software update that's smaller, faster and better -- instead of bigger, slower and more bloated.

Jason Snell at Macworld:

Snow Leopard is Apple's lowest-priced OS update in eight years. Granted, it's a collection of feature tweaks and upgrades, as well as under-the-hood modifications that might not pay off for users immediately. But the price of upgrading is so low that I've really got to recommend it for all but the most casual, low-impact Mac users.

Peter Svensson at AP:

For most Mac users, Snow Leopard will likely be a no-brainer upgrade, given the low price. But early upgraders often face minor bugs and installation problems, so unless you're dying for one of the new features, waiting a month or so is a safer course... So how does Snow Leopard compare to Windows 7? Snow Leopard's benefits will be most apparent down the road, while Windows 7 promises more of an immediate payoff.

Joshua Topolsky at Engadget:

...the single inescapable fact that hung over our heads as we ran our tests and took our screenshots and made our graphs: it's $30. $30! If you're a Leopard user you have virtually no reason to skip over 10.6... If you're still on Tiger, well, you'll have to decide whether or not you want to drop $130 on what's essentially a spit-shined Leopard, but if you do decide to spend the cash you'll find that the experience of using a Mac has changed dramatically for the better since you last upgraded.

photo by Tambako

Steven Leckart

IBM Tape Drives (1965)

Rob Beschizza

Apple Store fixes problem with man's image files

A man walked into the Apple store to report that something was wrong with his image collection. This was true enough.

Raymond Miller, of ... Fairfield, told Apple store clerks the computer had a problem with image files, court records show. After a technician began looking through the computer, images of naked 10- to 13-year-old girls in suggestive and explicit poses were found, according to court documents.

You'd think that someone taking a computer for servicing would think to remove the cache of illegal smut before doing so. [The Advocate via The Consumerist]

Photo: The Advocate

Rob Beschizza

New Mac Ads

At the risk of incurring John Hodgman's ire, they're a bit ... meh

Rob Beschizza

MSI X600 comes to America

MSI's X600 ultraportable notebook, at 5.5 pounds, weighs in heavy given its name. That said, at less than an inch thick at its thickest point, and just $900, it's thin and not unreasonably expensive. The bonuses are neat, too: a free external optical drive, discrete ATI HD 4330 graphics card and 4GB of RAM. The 6-cell should keep it awake a while.

Product Page [Amazon]

Steven Leckart

Great Byte Hope: Visualizing Gordon Bell's Bits

Since 2001, Bell has been compulsively scanning, capturing, and logging each and every bit of personal data he generates in his daily life. This trove includesWeb sites he's visited (221,173), photos taken (56,282), emails sent and received (156,041), docs written and read (18,883), phone conversations had (2,000), photos snapped by the SenseCam hanging around his neck (66,000), songs listened to (7,139), and videos taken by him (2,164). To collect all this information, he uses a staggering assortment of hardware: desktop scanner, digicam, heart rate monitor, voice recorder, GPS logger, pedometer, smartphone, e-reader...

After the disappearance and presumed death of a friend, computer scientist Jim Gray, Bell combed through thousands of files to find forgotten photos and stories he was then able to arrange into a powerful slide show for Gray's memorial.

Bell's data dump is more than just a glorified photo album. By using e-memory as a surrogate for meat-based memory, he argues, we free our minds to engage in more creativity, learning, and innovation (sort of like Getting Things Done without all those darn Post-its).

Rob Beschizza

Nokia netbook brings its "A" game

Nokia arrives at the netbook party just as things are starting to wind down. But what a nice bottle it brought: 3G, GPS, Windows 7, HDMI, and a claimed 12 hours of battery life--not to mention an aluminum body.

How much, Nokes?

Rob Beschizza

iTablet photoshop disaster

This atrocity was sent into CrunchGear. It has more.

Steven Leckart

"This Is Going To Be Such A Rad Tweet..."

Lisa Katayama

Naoto Fukazawa's colorful Samsung netbooks

I'd seen the Samsung N310 netbook before, but I didn't know until now that it was designed by famed Japanese designer Naoto Fukazawa. It comes in four colors, has a rubberized back, weighs less than 3 lbs, and costs less than $500. I almost want it except I don't like the giant Samsung logo on the back.

[Naoto Fukazawa Design via Designboom]

Rob Beschizza

Umid M1 finally reaching western shores

The fabled black UMID hits Dynamism.com next week. The $600 ultraportable has a 1.3GHZ Intel Atom CPU, 4 hours of battery life and a great keyboard for its tiny size, but lacks 3G and has some connectivity irritations, like micro-USB ports and no headphone jack. [UMPC Portal]

Rob Beschizza

Behold! Slim PS3

Sony unveils slimmer PS3: $300, lands in September [Engadget]

Steven Leckart

TV is Dead, Long Live PC.TV

My friend Sonia has written a series of posts for the New York Times in which she tests several options for streaming web content to your television. Everything from Boxee to PlayOn.

I'm already saving up for a Mac Mini. Call me a fanboy, but I already have AppleTV (it was a gift).

That said, I'd love to know what all of you are using or eyeballing...

image by hellabella

Rob Beschizza

IdeaCentre Q100

What do you make of the stuff on the side? It's like a child's birthday card by Luis Vuitton. [Engadget]