Cody Taylor

Netbooks violate all the laws of the computer hardware business. Traditionally, development trickles down from the high end to the mass market. PC makers target early adopters with new, ultrapowerful features. Years later, those innovations spread to lower-end models.

While battery life is a chief cause of mobile moans, it’s possible to get significant improvements by simple good practice and a few software tweaks. To help you get the most from your laptop battery, here are seven easy ways to make it last longer.

Certain travel situations–traveling with a netbook rather than a full-powered laptop, or finding a cyber-cafe with a fast connection but sluggish operating system–call for online video tools. Here’s an overview

Barence writes “Dell has issued court papers in the US, accusing Psion of fraudulently laying claim to the term netbook. Psion sent out warning letters late last year to PC manufacturers, retailers and bloggers alike, asking them to stop using the term netbook, which the company registered as a trademark in the late 1990s. But in a Petition for Cancellation of Psion’s trademark, the PC manufacturer accuses Psion of abandoning the term and fraudulently claiming it was still in use. “Psion is not currently offering laptop computers under the Netbook trademark,” Dell’s petition claims. The petition also claims that Psion made false statements about its use of the term Netbook in a sworn declaration to the US Trademark Office.”

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For the uninitiated, Steampunk is the fantasy marriage of modern day technology and Victorian steam power. From mobile phones to full pc systems, the incredible imagination of the inventors behind these pieces of equipment never ceases to amaze. I mean, did you ever imagined your laptop running on steam?

CWmike writes “Microsoft has denied that it makes money when users ‘downgrade’ Windows Vista to XP, as a lawsuit filed last week alleges. The lawsuit, submitted last week, stems from the .25 fee that a California woman was charged in mid-2008 when she bought a Lenovo laptop and downgraded from Vista to XP. In fact, it’s computer makers, not Microsoft per se, that charge users the additional fees for downgrading a new PC from Vista to XP at the factory. For example, Dell Inc. adds an extra to the price to downgrade a PC. However, Microsoft may profit from the way it structures downgrade rights.”

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The next time you%u2019re stranded without an open WiFi network (but your 3G signal is going strong), you%u2019ll be glad you installed Addition%u2019s iPhoneModem 2 (free to try, full license is .99).

yahoi sends in news from a week or so back: “Vietnamese researchers have cracked the facial recognition technology used for authentication in Lenovo, Asus, and Toshiba laptops in lieu of the standard logon/password. The researchers were able to easily bypass the biometric authentication system built into the laptops by using photos of an authorized user, as well as by presenting multiple phony facial images in brute-force attacks. One of the researchers will demonstrate the hack at Black Hat DC this week. He says the laptop makers should remove the facial biometrics feature from their products because the vulnerability of this technology can’t be fixed.”

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