News Brief: Dell to deliver a smartphone?

The computer-maker may be ready to take the plunge in the cell phone arena. According to ComputerWorld, CEO Michael Dell recently said in Tokyo that the company is "exploring smaller screen devices." What the devices will look like or when they will be available weren't disclosed. Still, InformationWeek reports that wireless carriers were unimpressed with an early prototype of the Dell smartphone.

The takeaway: Dell's interest in smartphones isn't surprising, given sagging sales of computers (except for netbooks) and the wild success of Apple's iPhone. (As previously noted, Acer is also ready to jump into the cell phone market.) Dell had previously offered handhelds that used Microsoft Windows Mobile software. And as ComputerWorld reported, Dell already has agreements with "many mobile carriers" for its 3G radios in notebooks and laptops. But what do you think? Will Dell be able to deliver a capable iPhone competitor? Feel free to weigh in below. In the meantime, we'll keep an eye out for any further announcements from Dell.

News Briefs

Here are some interesting consumer electronics and computer technology news headlines that caught our eyes this morning:

Apple iPhone 3.0
Today, Apple is expected to hold an “invitation-only event” to give select media groups “an advanced peek” at what the Cupertino, Calif.-based company is building—including a new operating system software for the iPhone. But other news sources are noting a variety of other developments could also be unveiled—including a tablet computer.
The take away: Since we bought and tested the iPhone last year, like many users we have a list of things we'd like to see in the new iPhone. We'll be monitoring what develops out of today's Apple-fest. But what would you like to see Apple develop next? Weigh in below.

Dell launches a notebook to love?
Dell is taking pre-orders for its new Adamo (Latin for “to fall in love with”) notebook computer. Based on Adamo's specs, it may be one of the thinnest notebooks Dell has ever sold. Could Dell have a Macbook Air killer on its hands?
The take away: Adamo could be the PC world's latest reply to the MacBook Air. But such lightness will also lighten your wallet of $2,000—a very hard sell in these tough economic times. We'll be testing the Adamo after we buy one (it's available on March 26) and add it to laptop Ratings (available to subscribers). In the meantime, for help in deciding what to look for in a laptop or desktop, check out our free Computer Buying Guide.

After the megapixel wars
Over at NewScientist's new Innovation tech column, a camera industry insider is claiming an end to the numbers game. In other words, expect more advertisements on other digital camera features instead of focusing on just the digital camera's megapixel, a numbers manufacturers love to tout.
The take away: For a while, we've advised consumers not to focus on megapixels when shopping for a digital camera. (Yes, 6-megapixels is all most consumers really need.) For more shopping tips, see our free Buying Guide to digital cameras.

CES 2009: New solid-state drives vanquish "boot lag"

Does it seem like your PC isn't booting up and loading programs as quickly as it used to? It may not be your imagination or have anything to do with the processor or graphics chips, the components usually associated with speed.

What's probably happening is that your hard drive is filling and fragmenting. (For more details on how and why that happens, see "For geeks only" below).

How to fix it? Get rid of the moving parts. That's what Solid-State Drives (SSDs) do, using the same technology as the flash-memory cards in digital cameras and USB drives. SSDs solve the speed-erosion problem and use less power, and their price is dropping.

SSDs are being shown at CES by hard-drive manufacturers like Samsung and Toshiba, memory makers like SanDisk, processor manufacturers like Intel, and companies you probably haven't heard of, like Mtron and Super Talent. Smaller in capacity, and priced considerably higher per gigabyte than hard drives, they're appearing either standard or as options in quite a few laptops: For example, the new MacBook Pro 17-inch Apple announced Tuesday at Macworld will have a gigantic 320GB SSD as a costly option. The 1.4 pound portable computer Sony announced here at CES, the Vaio P Series Lifestyle PC, also has SSDs up to 128 GB in capacity as options. And $400 netbooks from Dell and HP offer tiny 8 and 16GB SSDs.

CES 2009: Asus's Tablet Netbook, the Eee PC T91

More and more innovative features are being added to netbooks, which makes us wonder, when is a netbook" no longer a netbook?

The original emphasis on netbooks was simplicity: portable and inexpensive, good for surfing the Web and e-mailing. Asus was among the first to launch a computer in the category.

Now, Asus is among the first to push the envelope at CES, introducing a netbook in a tablet format with a touchscreen. Our colleagues at Which?, the independent consumer magazine in the United Kingdom, took a look at the new Eee PC T91. Click on the video for more details.

—Donna Tapellini

CES 2009: Is Sony’s new portable a netbook or laptop?

Sony's sleek new Vaio P Series Lifestyle PC, launched this week at CES in Las Vegas, falls somewhere between a netbook and a laptop. Sony doesn't call it a netbook, but it looks and feels like one. (Click on the images for a closer look.) Its lightest version weighs just 1.4 pounds, far less than most netbooks. It's also less than an inch thick. Shaped like a business envelope, it'll slip into a jacket pocket or purse. Its keyboard is just 12 percent smaller than that of a typical standard laptop, Sony says. It's got built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. And it uses an Intel Atom processor similar to the ones found in most netbooks.

Despite its small size, it differs in several ways from netbooks we've seen, such as those from Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo. Its $899 price tag is two to three times theirs. And that's just for the low-end configuration, which includes a 1.33GHz processor, 2GB of memory, and a 60GB hard drive. (For hundreds more, you can get a solid-state drive with up to 128GB of storage.) It has no touchpad; instead, you use a "stick" to move the cursor. And it uses Windows Vista Home Premium or Basic, while netbooks nearly always run Linux or Windows XP.

The Lifestyle has a few nifty features, like an instant-on function for playing music and viewing photos. The LED-backlit display has a widescreen resolution of 1600x768 so you can fit more on the screen, though at that resolution words and numbers are tiny (you can zoom in to temporarily enlarge them). And a utility button arranges multiple open windows for you to help compensate for the small screen.

GPS technology is built in, so you don't need a 'Net connection to locate the nearest coffee shop or get directions. Sony claims the Lifestyle gets 4 hours of battery life (we'll let you know how it does when we test it). There's also a larger-capacity battery that Sony says could last up to 8 hours.

So…netbook or laptop? You decide.

—Donna Tapellini

Macworld: The new 17-inch MacBook Pro

"The day of the swappable battery is over for at least some of our laptop models, and probably all of them, sooner or later—get over it," seemed to be the subtle message of Apple's demonstration earlier this week of the new 17-inch MacBook Pro, at which it claimed that its new model will get up to 8 hours of battery life. (Click on the image at right for a closer look.)

I particularly liked Apple's film of the new battery systems being made, with the developers explaining how it worked. Apple claims that something called "adaptive charging" reduces wear and tear and extends battery life. There's a chip in the battery that talks to individual cells, reports the state of charge, and adjusts the connection to the power line accordingly.

And of course the argument for this engineering sounded quite familiar: As the battery is expected to last 5 years, you'll probably replace the computer before you need to replace the battery. (Do I sense a variant of planned obsolescence creeping in here?) I was later told that if a battery was DOA out of the box, one could simply take or ship the computer to the nearest Apple store (including the one in Beijing, I presume), and they'll swap out the part or even the entire laptop. I found the statement particularly amusing since, during the keynote, I had to swap out the spent battery on a 2007-vintage Intel MacBook Pro, as there are always few power outlets in Moscone and those are guarded jealously. At Macworld, it has always been carry a spare or lose the ability to file content in real time.

Otherwise, the new Pro's feature set is quite robust, with two built-in video card environments, up to 8GB of RAM, and a 320GB hard drive. There is an "anti-glare" option for the screen (essentially removing the glossy-glass cover), 1920x1200 resolution, and an 700:1 contrast ratio. It comes in 2.63 and 2.93GHz Intel Core2 Duo configurations. The base model starts at $2799.

While this "battery issue" may not be a huge deal for iPod or even iPhone owners, the jury is still out on MacBook Air's battery. (When we tested the Air last spring, its battery life was in the same range as other Mac laptops, 4.5 or 5.5 hours, depending on the processor). It remains to be seen whether serious cross-media creative pros will overcome their fears and develop an interest in the 17-inch MacBook Pro.

Next up: Changes to the iTunes store.

—Thomas A. Olson

CES 2009: The future of Microsoft is…cloudy

To hear Steve Ballmer—Microsoft's wunderkind and now CEO—tell it, computing is drifting off into the clouds…referring to the "cloud" of interconnected computers, that is, which makes up the Internet. Ballmer played the starring role in Wednesday night's opening keynote presentation for the 2009 CES, taking over from Bill Gates, who, as expected, was nowhere to be seen except in flashes among the quick-cut scenes in the Microsoft ads played on a huge screen.

Ballmer (seen at right) spoke glowingly of "Windows Live," Microsoft's major push into Internet-based computing, leading the way—or following in the footsteps of Google, some believe—towards software as a service (SaaS). For Microsoft, the ultimate success of this model depends on users' willingness to "pay as you go" for the use of Microsoft applications that are not running on their PC, but on virtual machines in a distant data center, accessed through a web browser that could even be running on (gasp!) Mac OS.

For now, Microsoft is offering Windows Live Essentials, comprising "Messenger, Mail, Writer, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker beta, Family Safety, and Toolbar", as a free download; it will be preinstalled on all Dell consumer and small-business computers. Not that you couldn't get most of these functions from existing applications bundled in Windows Vista, but Microsoft's new push leverages the "connectedness" of PCs and other Internet-connected devices, and preps users to think of the Internet as an extension of Windows that provides limitless capabilities, and an opportunity for Microsoft and its partners tosell you up to some of them.

Macworld: Notes from (probably) the Last Keynote Ever

I guess if I wanted to spin it, I could argue that Apple staff was much better at crowd control Tuesday than in previous years. Otherwise, I might have been asking, "Where was the crowd?"

Over the last decade of "Stevenotes," attendees have simply grown accustomed to Mac cultists camping out literally all night in front of Moscone Center, so they could be first in the door when it finally opened and Steve Jobs made his product pronouncements. During those years, a festival atmosphere ruled. I would arrive around 6AM to see the line already snaking three-quarters of the way around an entire city block, four people or more thick.

Tuesday was a much more subdued environment. No long lines, no festival atmosphere, and certainly no overnight campers. When I arrived at 7:30AM, there were two small waiting areas in front of Moscone, one for the Platinum Pass folks, and one for Media. Each held only a handful of people. When the lines got too long, the groups would be escorted to larger, segregated waiting areas inside, on the ground floor. The only groups I saw were Platinums, Media, and VIPs, whom media folk outnumbered 4 to 1. I couldn't see where they were staging the "general" audience, but it certainly wasn't anywhere in sight.

Given Apple's announcements of recent weeks, expectations were low, at least in the estimation of colleagues I spoke with while waiting. They fell even further when Apple, at the last minute, canceled all private press briefings, including one that a colleague and I had tried to schedule for six weeks. That made us wonder whether there wouldn't be anything presented worth a private briefing.

Macworld Keynote: Modest expectations are fully met

There were no lines outside the door of MacWorld this morning, a change from recent Keynotes. Another change: No new "killer" product. Nevertheless, the Phil Schiller presentation played to a relatively full house of very supportive Apple fans.

The high points: Significant upgrades to the iLife and iWork application suites, a new 17-inch MacBook Pro (finishing off the upgrades to the entire laptop line), and the iTunes Music Store is going DRM-free and fully supports both Wi-Fi and 3G on the iPhone.

Here's a quick rundown on each:

iLife '09
The new suite (iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, iTunes, Garageband) sports some major and more robust feature upgrades, including new special effects for iPhoto and iMovie, and mapping/geo-tagging capability to let users sort images by place, or make an animated map of your vacation journey between movie clips. Garageband now offers nine free music lessons for guitar and keyboard as a new feature.

As a bonus, Apple is offering "Artists Lessons" (at $4.95 per download), where artists like Sting will teach you one of their hit songs on piano or guitar, including a bit of history about how the song was created. iLife '09 ships the end of January, free with a new Mac purchase, or upgrades for $79 (single) and $99 (5-seat family license).

Macworld 2009: What to expect at today's keynote

Leave it to Apple CEO Steve Jobs to steal everyone's thunder—even by his absence.

As I noted yesterday, speculation concerning the fate of Macworld, and the decision by Jobs to skip delivering the keynote for health reasons, has so dominated the blogosphere that even educated guesses regarding what new Apple products may be announced at the keynote address for the Apple community's trade show is taking a back seat.

Never one to shrink from risky speculation, I'll take a stab at handicapping what Apple VP Phil Schiller—subbing for Jobs—may say today:

• The first thing we're usually treated to at a typical keynote are stats: sales milestones, total downloads of songs/films/apps. iPhone App Store stats will be a new category to boast about, and since Mac market share has passed double-digits in the domestic market, expect some celebratory oration there, as well.


• We'll likely see a demo of Snow Leopard, OS 10.6. As Apple back in June filed for patents for a 3-D interface, it's also possible that we'll get a first taste.


• We may see some upgrades to the iLife and iWork productivity suites, possibly with a web component.


• There may be some incremental improvements to iPod Touch and iPhone, along with new offerings at the iTunes Music Store.


• We may get a look at Apple's first major update to their Cinema Display line of monitors in many years.


• I expect we'll hear something about AppleTV, the set-top box that ferries content to your TV set. Will it undergo yet another facelift to boost lagging sales, "merge" with MacMini, or quietly disappear, like the XServe Raid? More likely we'll see some updates to MacMini, and they'll sneak in some of AppleTV's features when they think no one is paying attention.