Ultraportable laptops – netbooks such as the Eee PC – are becoming increasingly popular. A computer that’s small enough to live permanently in your bag without giving you backache can be incredibly useful, especially as wireless connectivity and 3G hardware are growing in ubiquity.
Meneguzzi writes “Having stuck with wired mice for years, I have recently been impressed by a couple of cordless mice I’ve used on other people’s computers so much that I now want to buy one to use with my Mac Book Pro. However, while shopping around for the perfect cordless laptop mouse I was stuck with the question of whether to go for a bluetooth mouse or one of the many proprietary cordless mice with tiny USB receivers. To my surprise, there seems to be little literature systematically comparing these two options for attributes like precision, battery life (both for the mouse and the laptop), RF interference, and whatnot. As a Mac user, bluetooth has the advantage that it won’t take up a USB port, and (in theory), would consume less battery than a USB port, but I wonder if this is actually true in practice. On top of that, I noticed that there are far fewer (and less fancy) options for Bluetooth mice than there are for proprietary cordless ones. Logitech, for instance, has a very basic Bluetooth Mouse, while its proprietary options are much fancier. So I was wondering what are the experiences from Slashdotters on this particular type of hardware, and any recommendations.”
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mighty7sd writes “I am about to be released from my contract with Time Warner for my home internet service, and I am evaluating alternatives to my current cable modem setup. I would love to use AT&T U-Verse or Verizon Fios, but they are not available in my area. I have a good idea of what the costs and limitations of Cable and DSL service, so I am considering using mobile broadband for my home internet connection. Most providers seems to cap the connection at 5 GB of data transfer per month. I am a relatively heavy internet user using streaming video and a web server, so I need decent down/upload speeds and a large data transfer cap. Has anyone in the /. community had a good experience using mobile broadband cards at their home, specifically with lots of streaming video or a home server? What has happened if you have gone over your data transfer limit? Cricket Wireless is available in my area for per month with ‘unlimited’ service, but I am skeptical that it is truly reliable and unlimited. I also found products that act as a WiFi router for mobile broadband services, but it seems that this is against most carriers TOS. Can they really detect these, and are they comparable to a wired broadband router?”
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It’s crazy, we know. Just hours after hearing shockingly believable whispers that Apple’s white-hot iPhone 3G could be sashaying over to Verizon Wireless, in flies a Wall Street Journal report asserting that the suits in Redmond are (also?) in talks with America’s largest carrier. Should be launched next year!!!
The Narrative Fallacy writes “According to BusinessWeek, Verizon Wireless is in talks with Apple to distribute two new iPhone-like devices that are not iPhones. (Apple has created prototypes.) AT&T’s contract with Apple, which has not been made public, is believed to cover all models of the iPhone, but only the iPhone. So if Apple builds something that isn’t an iPhone — and perhaps doesn’t even make cellular calls — they won’t be violating their exclusivity contract with AT&T, which runs through at least 2010. One device is a smaller, less expensive calling device described by a person who has seen it as an ‘iPhone lite.’ The other is a media pad, said to be smaller than a Kindle but with a bigger screen, that would let users listen to music, view photos, watch high-definition videos, and make calls over a Wi-Fi connection. (And read books?) Apple could use the prospect of an iPhone-esque device as leverage to prevent Verizon Wireless from introducing the Palm Pre, or at least to delay its introduction on Verizon’s network. ‘The media pad category might go to Verizon,’ said one person who has seen the device. ‘We are talking about a device where people will say, “Damn, why didn’t we do this?” Apple is probably going to define the damn category.'” Reader stevegee58 writes with word that Verizon may be playing both ends against the middle. Marketwatch reports that Microsoft and Verizon are in talks to develop a touch-screen mobile phone that would run on Windows Mobile.
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narramissic writes “Engineers at Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) have developed stereo speakers in paper (video) that are are well suited for thin devices like LCD TVs and will be used in cars starting next year. According to an ITworld article, ‘The special paper is made by sandwiching thin electrodes that receive audio signals and a prepolarized diaphragm into the paper structure. A special Flexpeaker adapter between the MP3 player and the speaker is used to play music through the paper.’ ITRI says it hopes in the coming year to develop a chip that will do away with the adapter and allow people to plug a digital music player directly into the speaker. ITRI is also working on wireless technologies and will show off its first Bluetooth enabled paper speaker in July.”
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We’ve been down this path countless times, but rumors are once again heating up that Apple and Verizon are actively discussing the possibility of creating an iPhone to work on Big Red’s airwaves, according to USA Today’s infamous “people familiar with the situation.” Could the iPhone come to Verizon Wireless next year?!
Hugh Pickens writes “June marks the launch across Brazil of Zeebo, a console that aims to tap an enormous new market for videogaming for the billion-strong, emerging middle classes of such countries as Brazil, India, Mexico, Russia and China. Zeebo uses the same Qualcomm chipsets contained in high-end smartphones, together with 1GB of flash memory, three USB slots and a proprietary dual analogue gamepad. It plugs into a TV and outputs at a 640 x 480 pixel resolution. ‘The key thing is we’re using off-the-shelf components,’ says Mike Yuen, director of the gaming group at Qualcomm. This approach means that, while Zeebo can be priced appropriately for its markets — it will launch at US 9 in Brazil compared to around US 0 (plus another US for a mod chip to play pirated games) for a PlayStation 2 in the region — and next year the company plans to drop the price of the console to 9. But the most important part of the Zeebo ecosystem is its wireless digital distribution that gets around the low penetration of wired broadband in many of these countries, negates the cost of dealing with packaged retail goods, and removes the risk of piracy, with the games priced at about locked to the consoles they’re downloaded to. Zeebo is not meant to directly compete with powerful devices like Sony’s PlayStation 3, Microsoft’s Xbox 360, or the Wii. ‘In Latin America, where there’s a strong gaming culture, that’s what we’ll be, but in India and China we can be more educational or lifestyle-oriented,’ says Yuen. One Indian gaming blog predicts Zeebo will struggle, in part due to the cultural reluctance toward digital distribution and also the lack of piratable games.”
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Mohamed Zaian writes “Canonical, the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu, announced today that Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop Edition is free to download from Thursday 23 April. Also announced were the simultaneous releases of Ubuntu 9.04 Server Edition and Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix (UNR) Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop Edition delivers a range of feature enhancements to improve the user experience. Shorter boot speeds, some as short as 25 seconds, ensure faster access to a full computing environment on most desktop, laptop and netbook models. Enhanced suspend-and-resume features also give users more time between charges along with immediate access after hibernation. Intelligent switching between Wi-Fi and 3G environments has been broadened to support more wireless devices and 3G cards, resulting in a smoother experience for most users.”
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The next version of the Bluetooth short-range wireless protocol officially launched this week, promising an eightfold speed increase that could help device makers like Apple offer true wireless syncing on their handheld products in about a year’s time.
