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|  | The power of waste
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Over the last few years, as I have followed VIA's progress with their pc-1 initiative to bring PCs to the developing world, the problems of powering PCs when their is no reliable supply, has established a recurrent theme. I must admit, however, that I hadn't thought that recharging mobile phones was also a problem. PC sales in the developing world is a growth market, and so is mobile phone sales growth. But to sell mobile phones, you need to offer connectivity and to offer that you need to be able to power the cellular base station. "Communications giant Ericsson is taking a novel approach to making wireless workable in developing countries. It’s powering cellular base stations with kitchen scraps. The Swedish company announced Thursday that four mobile base stations powered by waste fish and vegetable oil had been put into service in the Indian state of Maharashtra. None of the sites had previously had cellular coverage." Read on at RedHerring.com. |   |
| An LCD connected by USB
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
"Although USB connectors in monitors appeared many years ago, they have performed only secondary functions all this time. However, now Samsung Company offered an LCD monitor that is connected to the PC via the USB bus and can work without a graphics card." Interesting. Read about it on XBitLabs.com. | |
| Vista running faster than XP?!!!!!!!!
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
I know that a lot of gamers with high spec rigs have steered clear of Vista so far due to an apparent slow-down effect. But maybe it's different with UMPCs?! Hugo from GottaBeMobile.com tests out the new OS with the OQO model 02. Testing performance by opening applications etc, using your finger to click the mouse as the starting point, isn't 100% accurate of course, but this video does suggest that Vista is more responsive! | |
| | Cables - organization options
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
“In this article I’ll be discussing something which really doesn’t get that much attention. It’s something that we all have to deal with. You’ve got them; you hate them. They’re cables, and they’re everywhere. To help me get clean, I’ve enlisted the help of our friends at CableOrganizer.com; if they don’t have what I need for my cabling woes, nobody does. While I had initially intended for this article to serve as a sort of guide to all my messy brethren lurking in the shadows out there, that is not going to be the case. I’d be kidding myself if I thought for one second I could tell anyone how to get organized. I’m probably messier than most of you, after all. What I will do instead is share my experience with a handful of cable management products.” It's like Ikea solutions for geeks! Read on at TheTechLounge.com. | |
| Beat generation
Monday, June 18, 2007
"Ever since I started using Ultra Mobile Devices such as the Samsung q1b, OQO Model 02, and VIA NanoBook, I’ve been wondering how writers from the Beat Generation like Jack Kerouac would have made use of them rather than having to rely on old fashioned pen and paper to record their exploits “on the road”." With that in mind, VIA's VP Richard Brown has put together this video. | |
| Solar powered UMPC trip: Delayed
Monday, June 18, 2007
Chippy's trip across Germany on a bike with a solar powered UMPC has been delayed, but I have been reading up about his preparation: "One nice side-effect of all this drive for tiny, light devices is that solar energy starts to cash-in. Smaller energy requirements means smaller solar panels which means lower costs and higher mobility. Right now, today, if you took the best solar technology and made a fold-out sun-shade for a UMPC of about 20x20cm, you would be able to power the UMPC non-stop during sunshine." Ironically his trip was delayed because of bad weather - is that more because of comfort or because if the sun doesn't shine, neither will his UMPC screen? | |
| VIA Mobile-ITX: not a static concept
Monday, June 18, 2007
PCWorld.com reports: "C.J. Holthaus, a CPU engineer at Via, demonstrated a device using a working Mobile ITX prototype during an interview. The board, which has been functional for about a month, was housed inside a nondescript aluminum case sporting a touchscreen display and Wi-Fi antenna. In a demonstration, Holthaus showed the Mobile ITX system boot Windows XP and play a movie. The prototype system uses a 1GHz C7-M ULV (ultra low-voltage) processor and a CX700 chipset, but Holthaus said running a 2GHz processor with the board is no problem. The board can hold either 256M bytes or 512M bytes of DDR2 memory, but those numbers will rise as memory makers increase the capacity of their chips." Mobile-ITX is a platform smaller than a business card. | |
| RAID tutorial
Monday, June 18, 2007
"In the last few years RAID has become really quite popular. Once purely in the domain of high-end enterprise servers, today, any self respecting enthusiast motherboard had better have onboard RAID if it wants to be taken seriously. The abundance of onboard RAID controllers mean that it’s not unusual to see small arrays in today’s home computers. The reasons for this can be for increased speed, increased reliability or simply for bragging rights. After all, two (or more) disks are better than one, right?" Read on at Bit-tech.net. | |
| Pricey but nice
Monday, June 18, 2007
Whilst all the marketing photos show some hot chick surfing the Internet on their UMPC out in some beautiful garden, it is true that sun glare often makes it pretty hard to see the screen. GottaBeMobile.com reports on a solution: "Courtesy of Damien Stolarz ( via JKKMobile ), we have learned of some technology from Advanced Link Photonics that will make outside viewing much more pleasing to the eye. According to Damien, for a few hundred dollars, Advanced Link Photonics will treat the LCD with a new surface, and then replace the touch panel with another type to help with glare reduction. The results look stunning." You can see photos of the difference on their site. | |
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