VIA hasn’t been able to make much of a dent on the Intel Atom stranglehold for netbooks, but that doesn’t mean the company is conceding the market. Today, VIA introduced an updated Nano processor dubbed the Nano 3000. The company says that it has increased performance over the last-generation Nano by 20%, while also increasing power efficiency by 20%. The chips range in clock-cycle from 1.0 GHz to 2.0 GHz and all offer an 800 MHz front side bus, support for high-bitrate 1080p playback, 64-bit compatibility, advanced CPU virtualization, and SSE4 for enhanced multimedia processing.

VIA also points out some new benchmarks against the current N270 Atom:

• PCMark 05 tests — 2,137 for Nano, 1,496 for Atom = 43% higher
• 3DMark2006 — 2,419 for Nano, 1,605 for Atom = 49% higher

Although VIA doesn’t mention the Nano 3000 power consumption when in use, they do point out the low power when idling:

Those idle power numbers are quite low, but to gain wider acceptance by OEMs in the netbook space, device makers will be looking at in-use run times against the Atom. I’d love to take a look at a netbook powered by the Nano 3000 to see how it fares. I’m sure it will offer solid performance, but battery life is more important to me in a companion device. VIA says that mass production availability for the Nano 3000 line is the first quarter of 2010, so don’t expect to see any devices with it before then. Of course, at January’s Consumer Electronics Show there could be some demonstration units, so we’ll keep our eyes peeled.

I was asked about the ability to remotely access a Windows computer from a BlackBerry, and I admit I wasn’t up to speed on what solutions are available. I have tested various methods in the past, but I don’t access my PC desktops through a phone as a rule. It is not easy working with a large desktop on a small phone screen, but those who need this ability find it very useful. I know some system support folks who do this regularly, and it often saves them a trip to sit down in front of the computer. I started searching around the web for such a solution, and found the Remote Desktop Manager Plus (RDM+) from SHAPE Services that looks pretty useful.

RDM+ does indeed work with certain BlackBerry models (Storm included), but there are clients for other phones too. There are client apps for the iPhone/ iPod Touch, Windows Mobile, Java phones and the old Palm OS. There is no Android nor WebOS version that I could find. There is also a client to allow remotely connecting via another web-connected computer.

The program consists of one of the clients, and a host application for the computer to be remotely accessed. The host can work with any flavor of Windows, 7 included, and there is a Mac version. This means you can effectively work with any Mac or Windows computer, from almost any phone. That is a very powerful combination, and it looks to be a viable utility for those needing remote access from anywhere. I have not used it myself, but would love to hear from those who are using RDM+. The program is an expensive $40, but there is no subscription and this price includes all future upgrades.

What is the most definite way that Apple can convince the netbook crowd that there will never be a Mac netbook? By killing off support for the Intel Atom processor family that powers virtually all netbooks. It is being reported that Apple is going to do just that, in the next version of Snow Leopard, 10.6.2.

It is easy to speculate that Apple is trying to kill off the growing Hackintosh movement. Just about every netbook out there has been hacked by someone to install OS X to create what has come to be called a “Hackint0sh.” Kevin even gave that a spin, and it’s pretty cool to have a little Mac netbook. That will be impossible once 10.6.2 is released, so those hardy souls who have created a Hackintosh better not update the OS once it is available. It is surprising that Apple would go to the trouble to remove processor support — it’s not often that a company will remove support that’s already included in an OS.

Image from OS X Daily

The smartbook has been a category of devices that has been slow to appear since Qualcomm started pushing it earlier this year. The smartbook is basically the result of putting smartphone capability into a highly mobile notebook form. The idea is to have a highly mobile device with ubiquitous connectivity, at a price even cheaper than that of netbooks. The smartbook will have a smartphone processor, like the Snapdragon, and an OS optimized for light computing. Kevin recently wondered when the smartbooks would appear, and it turns out he might not have much longer to wait.

ASUS, creator of the EEE PC and thus the netbook craze, had embraced producing a smartbook at one time, only to back off from the possibility in subsequent statements. CEO Jerry Shen has ended the speculation, saying that the Taiwanese company will produce a smartbook for release in the first quarter of 2010, for a price equivalent to about $180.

The statement came during an investor conference in Taiwan, and Shen claimed that the ASUS smartbook device could be the “secret weapon” that helps ASUS recreate the peak reached with the original EEE PC release. ASUS had demonstrated a branded smartbook earlier this year at CompuTex (pictured right), but the device quickly disappeared from view and hasn’t been seen again.

Has it been a full release cycle for Ubuntu already? It seems like only yesterday that we saw a jackalope jaunting by, but that was back in April. Now it’s time for Karmic Koala, which is the endearing name for the just released, final version of 9.10. I’m still re-running a Windows 7 netbook battery test — without Aero, this time — so I’m not ready to run Ubuntu 9.10 yet. I’ve got a download going for the Live CD, so while I wait for the software and my hardware, I’m perusing the press release and release notes for Karmic Koala. A few key updates look pretty handy:

• Ubuntu One integration — Much like Dropbox and other online storage or sync solutions, Ubuntu One offers a place to stash your data. Every Ubuntu user gets a free 2GB account and the service is natively integrated within the Ubuntu file system, making it pretty seamless.
• Improved 3G connectivity — I’ll have to try this to better understand what exactly has been improved, but this is key for mobile folks.
• New Software Center — One-stop shopping for software is always nice, especially when there’s a button for Free Software as well. This takes the place of Add/Remove in the Applications menu.
• New Kernel Mode Setting — By default on Intel hardware, this “reduces boot-time flickering and dramatically speeds up suspend/resume.”

Has anyone installed this — or the new Netbook Remix Edition — and been wowed by any other new features?

Prior to the final release of Microsoft Windows 7, there some question as to what the new operating system would do for battery life on laptops. At that time, I felt it was too early to make any judgments, simply because final hardware drivers and power management utilities weren’t available. Now that Windows 7 is available, most vendors have provided software updates, so it’s a good time to check in on this. I spent yesterday running a Battery Eater test on my Toshiba NB205 netbook and then re-ran the test today. I have the device setup for dual booting between Windows XP and Windows 7, so it’s pretty easy to run the test. Battery Eater stresses out the device under test to provide the minimum runtime you can expect, not the maximum. I tried to setup the environments as equal as possible in what I consider a reasonable “real world” situation: screen brightness at 40%, Wi-Fi on and all power management features disabled. I’m a little surprised at the results.

Continue reading »

You have to hand it those clever Mayans. How the heck did they correctly predict the ending of the calendar for every SPOT watch in the world in 2012? It’s true — if you don’t believe me, just check the official Microsoft MSN Direct announcements page. It clearly states that the MSN Direct service will cease on January 1, 2012. How can you dispute the impeccable accuracy of the Mayan calendar now? And not only did the Mayans get the end of the SPOT watch calendar right, they even knew that we’d use the Internet to announce and prepare for the end of days. Amazing!

Matt Miller got suckered into three SPOT watches while I bought one myself back in 2004 or so. I liked the concept  a smart watch that used FM radio to grab data, but the value never really met my expectations. The potential was there, but I think it’s wise for Microsoft to simply let MSN Direct die off. There are just too many better solutions than FM radio waves out there for connectivity — 3G, Wi-Fi, WiMAX — not to mention the maturity and acceptance of smartphones. I think I’ll bury my SPOT watch in a personal time capsule in case anyone lives beyond 2012 — call it my little joke for the mobile tech geeks of the future.

Here’s a nice Windows 7 tip from the How To Geek — with a little registry tweak you can adjust the how quickly or slowly Aero Peek thumbnails appear. By default, Aero Peek is programmed to show an application thumbnail when the mouse hovers over the app for a half second. That’s 500 milliseconds to the programmer types out there. And you can modify that 500 number by finding this registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced

To mod the time, simply run type regedit in your Start menu to run the registry editor. Note: although this is a very minor change, it always makes sense to backup your registry before making any changes. You never know what might get hosed up and a backup can save the day.

Once you have the registry editor open, just navigate to the key path above. Look for and double-click on DesktopLivePreviewHoverTime, which should show the default value of 500. Here you can edit the Aero Peek delay time in terms of milliseconds: 1000 would be one second, 0 would be instant, etc… Not only will your live thumbnails appear faster — or slower, if you want — but the Show Desktop function in the far right of the Taskbar will follow the same time delay.

Here’s a quick note on my Toshiba NB205 netbook which is dual-booting Microsoft Windows XP and Windows 7 Ultimate. Now that the Toshiba fully supports Microsoft’s newest operating system, I plan to run a battery test on each operating system. I had hoped to do that prior to now, but there were two things holding me back. I was waiting for Toshiba to provide its power management utility — which it made available last week — and I wanted to ensure I had the latest BIOS.

I’ve actually had version 1.60 of the BIOS since early September, but it simply wouldn’t install. Over the weekend, one of our readers told me he finally got his BIOS updated (thanks Hector!) by re-downloading it. I did the same, and it worked like a charm, so my netbook has the latest and greatest BIOS flashed on it. Come to think of it — I flashed the BIOS in Windows XP this time and don’t remember if my prior attempts were with Windows 7. Hmm…

I’ll likely run the Battery Eater test, which provides the minimum run-time of a device by stressing it out continuously. That’s probably going to take a good five to six hours for each of the two testing runs, so I’m hoping to have the comparison for tomorrow. After that, I’ll use the Toshiba NB205 all day in Windows 7 for my normal workday. That ought to provide a real-world usage scenario under Windows 7 which we can compare to the roughly eight hours of time I get with XP in the same situation. Why spend all these cycles testing the battery life? I read over the weekend that an ASUS 1008HA was tested in a similar fashion and the netbook gained an hour’s worth of run-time under Windows 7. That’s counter to what earlier reports were prior the Windows 7 launch, although at that time, I felt those observations were premature.

Dell’s recent announcement of the new notebook for executives was unique in two ways. The Latitude Z was the first notebook to offer wireless charging. The announcement also covered Dell’s new instant-on technology, Latitude ON. Dell’s Latitude ON differs from similar technologies as it uses a second processor in the notebook to power the Linux-based special environment.

Latitude ON is an option on various enterprise class notebooks that Dell offers, including the Latitude E4300 used in this video demonstration. In the video you get a complete look at the capabilities in the Latitude ON environment. You also get to see moving back and forth between the Windows and Latitude ON environments.