Product Central
Dispatches from the Reviews Editor's desk
Friday 19 September 2008, 8:58 AM
Look, another netbook!
With HP, Lenovo, Dell, Acer and others all on-board the netbook bandwagon, it's no surprise at all to see Toshiba announcing its own offering in the shape of the 8.9in., Atom N270-based NB100.
According to Toshiba, we can expect 'build quality of a premium standard', as well as a choice of colours — Cosmic Black, Champagne Gold or Bright Silver. There's a choice of operating systems too: a Toshiba version of Ubuntu or Windows XP Home.
Toshiba NB100: premium build quality, choice of colours
The basic specs are pretty standard fare for the netbook market: 8.9in. LED-backlit screen; 1.6GHz Atom N270 with up to 1GB of RAM; hard drive storage up to 120GB; 802.11b/g Wi-Fi; 0.3-megapixel webcam; 3 USB ports. The battery life claim, which we look forward to testing, is unusually specific: 3 hours 47 minutes.
The webcam looks distinctly low-res, and there's no mention of solid-state storage or integrated 3G/HSDPA connectivity, which business users will certainly be looking for in a netbook. It's also about time the top-tier vendors starting adding options like docking stations for their offerings in this market.
The NB100, which is expected to come in under £300, will ship in October. Look out for a full review.
According to Toshiba, we can expect 'build quality of a premium standard', as well as a choice of colours — Cosmic Black, Champagne Gold or Bright Silver. There's a choice of operating systems too: a Toshiba version of Ubuntu or Windows XP Home.
Toshiba NB100: premium build quality, choice of colours
The basic specs are pretty standard fare for the netbook market: 8.9in. LED-backlit screen; 1.6GHz Atom N270 with up to 1GB of RAM; hard drive storage up to 120GB; 802.11b/g Wi-Fi; 0.3-megapixel webcam; 3 USB ports. The battery life claim, which we look forward to testing, is unusually specific: 3 hours 47 minutes.
The webcam looks distinctly low-res, and there's no mention of solid-state storage or integrated 3G/HSDPA connectivity, which business users will certainly be looking for in a netbook. It's also about time the top-tier vendors starting adding options like docking stations for their offerings in this market.
The NB100, which is expected to come in under £300, will ship in October. Look out for a full review.
Wednesday 17 September 2008, 5:30 PM
With Intel in Prague
Intel is hosting a shindig in Prague today, to celebrate the recent launch of its Dunnington processor, a.k.a. the Xeon 7400. Boyd Davis (Intel's General Manager, Server Product Group Marketing) duly trumpteted the 6-core chip ("a wonderful, wonderful piece of technology") and a series of impressive benchmarks, notably IBM's record-breaking 1.2 million-plus transactions per minute on its 8-socket System x3950 M2 server. Boyd went into overdrive on this: "it's like scoring a goal at football, ripping off your jersey and running around".
Intel's Boyd Davis shows off a wafer of 6-core Xeon 7400 (Dunnington) processors
Intel had some industry partners on hand to cast their benediction on the Xeon 7400 in general, and on virtualisation — for which the 6-core Dunnington CPU is a suitable platform — in particular. Microsoft's Bob Visse (Senior Director of Marketing, Server Marketing Group — yes, a man with 'marketing' twice in his job title) talked about Redmond's vision for the 'dynamic datacenter in the cloud', and announced in passing that its Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V hypervisor now supports up to 24 logical processors (that is, a 4-socket Xeon 7400 server). Next up was VMware's Douglas Philips (Senior Product Marketing Manager, Management & Automation, EMEA), who made pointed reference to the fact that VMware has been delivering some key virtualisation services, such as the live migration of running virtual machines, for several years.
All moderately informative and sporadically entertaining, but what the hacks were asking was: where's the hard news? Well, we did get some news, on the third generation of Intel's vPro remote management technology. But that's embargoed until next Monday (22 September), so you'll have to wait for those details.
So right now, there seems little for it but to explore what Prague has to offer of an evening.
Prague, of an evening...
Intel's Boyd Davis shows off a wafer of 6-core Xeon 7400 (Dunnington) processors
Intel had some industry partners on hand to cast their benediction on the Xeon 7400 in general, and on virtualisation — for which the 6-core Dunnington CPU is a suitable platform — in particular. Microsoft's Bob Visse (Senior Director of Marketing, Server Marketing Group — yes, a man with 'marketing' twice in his job title) talked about Redmond's vision for the 'dynamic datacenter in the cloud', and announced in passing that its Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V hypervisor now supports up to 24 logical processors (that is, a 4-socket Xeon 7400 server). Next up was VMware's Douglas Philips (Senior Product Marketing Manager, Management & Automation, EMEA), who made pointed reference to the fact that VMware has been delivering some key virtualisation services, such as the live migration of running virtual machines, for several years.
All moderately informative and sporadically entertaining, but what the hacks were asking was: where's the hard news? Well, we did get some news, on the third generation of Intel's vPro remote management technology. But that's embargoed until next Monday (22 September), so you'll have to wait for those details.
So right now, there seems little for it but to explore what Prague has to offer of an evening.
Prague, of an evening...
Tuesday 16 September 2008, 8:42 AM
HTC goes WVGA with Touch HD
HTC, the hardest-working smartphone maker in the business, has announced another Windows Mobile handset in the Touch family. The headline feature on the Touch HD, which joins an increasingly long list of WinMob iPhone-wannabes, is a high-resolution 3.8in. screen offering 480 by 800 pixels (WVGA).
At the back there's a 5-megapixel camera (a step up from the Touch Pro's 3.2-megapixel unit), plus a forward-facing VGA camera for video calling. Music-lovers will appreciate the device's standard 3.5mm audio jack, and of course there's HTC's pretty TouchFLO 3D interface to put a bit of gloss on the underlying Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional.
The 3.8in. screen makes the Touch HD a bit bigger than the Pro (62.8mm by 115mm compared to 51mm by 102mm), although it lacks a slide-out keyboard and so is thinner (12mm versus 18mm); it's lighter too (146.4g versus 165g). The battery in the Touch HD is a 1,350MAh unit that HTC rates for 310 minutes of GSM talk time.
A quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE phone with HSDPA support, 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0 (+EDR) and integrated GPS, the Touch HD ticks all the specification boxes. Like the Touch Pro, it's powered by a 528MHz Qualcomm MSM7201a processor with 288MB of RAM and 512MB of flash. Storage can be augmented via an SDHC-compatible microSD card slot, and the Touch HD will ship with an 8GB card.
There's no word on pricing yet. HTC says that the Touch HD will be available across major European carriers in Q4 2008. We'll follow up with a full review just as soon as we can prise one out of HTC.
At the back there's a 5-megapixel camera (a step up from the Touch Pro's 3.2-megapixel unit), plus a forward-facing VGA camera for video calling. Music-lovers will appreciate the device's standard 3.5mm audio jack, and of course there's HTC's pretty TouchFLO 3D interface to put a bit of gloss on the underlying Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional.
The 3.8in. screen makes the Touch HD a bit bigger than the Pro (62.8mm by 115mm compared to 51mm by 102mm), although it lacks a slide-out keyboard and so is thinner (12mm versus 18mm); it's lighter too (146.4g versus 165g). The battery in the Touch HD is a 1,350MAh unit that HTC rates for 310 minutes of GSM talk time.
A quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE phone with HSDPA support, 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0 (+EDR) and integrated GPS, the Touch HD ticks all the specification boxes. Like the Touch Pro, it's powered by a 528MHz Qualcomm MSM7201a processor with 288MB of RAM and 512MB of flash. Storage can be augmented via an SDHC-compatible microSD card slot, and the Touch HD will ship with an 8GB card.
There's no word on pricing yet. HTC says that the Touch HD will be available across major European carriers in Q4 2008. We'll follow up with a full review just as soon as we can prise one out of HTC.
