Watch out for the Apple imitators

At the recent IDF, Intel stated that their second-generation dual-core mobile processors for … ultra thin and light notebook PCs” are soon to made available to all hardware manufacturers. This effectively means that any PC builder can create a MacBook clone.

I’m not entirely sure of the reasoning behind this announcement (apart from the money factor). Let’s face it, if any of these othere companies were half as innovative as Apple we’d have seen a waifer thin laptop a long time ago.

I don’t expect to see this go unanswered by Apple either. Knowing Jobs and Co. I’d expect to see an Air replacement hitting the market soon after the launch of a Far Eastern copycat.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Microsoft are getting ready to release technical details surrounding the Windows 7 operating system, according to a new blog about the OS.

Engineering managers Jon DeVaan and Steven Sinofsky have written in their blog, Engineering Windows 7, “in-depth technical information…” will be released at the Professional Developers Conference on October 27 and the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) the following week.

Some reporters are suggesting that, by pushing Windows 7 into the public gaze Microsoft is signalling the demise of Vista! I must point out at this stage that I’ve been using Vista for some time now and, as far as I’m concerned, it was dead from the start. Poor responses from users and the slow uptake among enterprises would suggest that I’m right.

Apparently, the Engineering Windows 7 blog will allow a two-way disussion to take place based on comments and input from the engineering team.

It would appear that some commenters simply won’t let Vista fade away as some some have used the blog to highlight flaws in Vista - just let it die!

“Less is more. Really, it is. Microsoft went completely in the wrong direction with Vista,” wrote one commenter. “I personally think that, if you want a real hit on your hands, strip down the Vista OS to bare bones, optimise the heck out of the code, and tune the baby for speed.” - hmm, no shit!

Windows 7 has been slated for release in early 2010. Microsoft better pray that it doesn’t suck like Vista!

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Mini Amilo on the way.

With all the hype around the Ultra Mobile sector it’s no surprise that every man and his rusty dog is jumping on the band wagon. UMPC’s sales are predicted to eclipse those of laptops and PC’s combind by 2011 - that’s a whole lot of hardware.

So, into the fray steps Fujitsu Siemens Computers with a mini Amilo offering. The new device will be unveiled at the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin later this month.

The mini Amilo will be powered by Intel’s Atom processor and run Windows XP (I don’t which version yet but hopefully not Home Edition). Prices of about £300 are being touted so it should easily be within the budget of most buyers. Users will be able to choose a number of differently coloured clip-on casings - a pretty crap idea if you ask me but in reality feature has been added to keep prices down.

More details will be disclosed at IFA.

There’ll be some info available over here at this UMPC news site.

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Monster rising from the depths!

About 6 years ago I used to get excited about 2Gb hard disks. Talk about the dark ages! Seagate have announced a beast of a hard disk -  the Barrcuda 7200 1.5Tb, aimed at the desktop market.

The 1.5TB capacity Barracuda 7200.11 drive has four platters and uses a Sata 3Gbps interface with a sustained data rate of up to 120MBps. The 3.5-inch drive is also offered in capacities of 1TB, 750GB, 640GB, 500GB, 320GB and 160GB with cache options of 32MB and 16MB.

Expect to this beast ripping up the tarmac sometime next month.

Popularity: 47% [?]

…hardware market to defy the economy.

I said it yesterday and now Gartner have confirmed it (I feel really good when things like this happen).

The predictions came out of the Gartner IT Hardware Insights forum, which was held at the company’s UK headquarters in Egham, Surrey.

Senior research analyst Errol Rasit said the period from 2008 to 2009 will be marked by a split in the market for hardware. “At the high end and the very low end, we have two very large groups who are spending,” he said. Linux-based systems are a beneficiary of this trend, thanks to the move away from high-end Unix systems to x86-based systems.

It looks like IBM are going to benefit as well. There is renewed interest in the zSeries mainframe as companies seek to achieve economies of scale through the purchase of larger systems. That said, the server market is still dominated by Sun which is good news. I’m a huge Open Source fan and Sun are the number one contributors which makes me very happy.

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Trailing the US by a long chalk!

Same old story; the US leads the way in yet another area. The business world is being driven by an information explosion which would have easily swamped traditional methods of computing. The virtualised world provided companies with the ability to side step issues associated with power requirements, physical space and virtualised storage. But the uptake in Europe is slow.

Recent independent surveys conducted in both the United States and Europe indicate that the majority of businesses surveyed in bothregions believe that their existing storage solutions will only be able to scale for the next one to two years.

It is widely recognised that storage virtualisation is the best way to provide a alleviate many current but only 27% of European  respondents are actually implementing
storage virtualisation today as compared with 35% in the US.

73% of US respondents reported that they currently operate a virtualised server environment, and 67% answered that they are considering deploying virtualised storage in their data centres.

In the US, 45% of businesses surveyed stated that they would realise
operational cost savings between 20-40%, which is the main driver of
storage adoption. In Europe that figure was near identical on 48%.

Other significant results from the survey include:

• 59% of respondents believe that at the current growth rate, their existing storage solution will be able to scale for only one totwo years; way ahead of the European market, which was on 40%

• Half of US respondents believe that simplifying management is the most important consideration when choosing a storage virtualisationsolution. In Europe the figure was far higher on 60% of the sample.

• 45% of US respondents consider 20-40% operational cost savings to be the number one motivation to switch from their current file storage solution to virtualised storage. In Europe the figure was comparable at 48%.

I guess it’s time for European countries to get their act in order; we wouldn’t to fall behind the US, would we?

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Healthy sales this year.

I freely admit to liking new toys. Admittedly, my Sharp Zaurus is getting on but it’s one thing that I’m loathe to get rid of but my desktops are regularly replaced (let me just add that my old PC’s are recycled). So are yours according to a report by iSuppli.

The research shows global PC sales have been increasing at a steady rate - growing by 12.1 per cent over the last year. The significant point here is this: the figure is identical to the first quarter growth rates recorded over the last five years. This suggests that, regardless of the world economic state, home users and businesses feel the need to keep up with the latest tech (or at least have half a chance of supporting Vista the resource hog).

HP headed up the sales league with more than 13 million PC shipments, a 23% increase and 18.9 per cent of the total market. The success of HP’s notebook lines and a strong sales channel is credited as a significant factor in the companies rising sales figures.

Dell was second on the list with a 20% growth over last year. The company shipped more than ten million PCs attaining a 15.4% share of the market.

Acer, Lenovo and Toshiba rounded out the top five, posting market shares of 9.7 per cent, 6.9 per cent and 4.4 per cent, respectively.

Analysts are rather surprised by the figures, having expected the numbers to be far lower on the basis of the flagging world economie - then again, we’re only just starting to feel the effects now so let’s see what the future holds.

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MS Hyper-V gets official launch

Microsofts answer to VMWare, Hyper-V, has been launched 6 weeks ahead of schedule. The technology is expected to appeal to small businesses who can’t afford, or don’t need, the capabilities offered by VMWare.

The software will be available free to licensed user of Windows 2008 or as a standalone product which will be priced at $28 - that’s a huge price saving over VMWare. But be aware, Hyper-V is nowhere near as advanced as the VMWare software - Hyper-V is probably not the software of choice for mission critical applications.

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About bloody time!

Windows users, businesses in particular, having been banging the desk for some time now over Microsofts plans to end-of-life XP. It looks like the Redmond giant has finally taken the ear plugs out!

Earlier this month we reported that Microsoft would continue to allow the sale XP on ULCPC’s. Microsoft has now sent a letter to customers stating that critical support for XP will be extended until 2014. A full three years longer than usually seen.

OEM will be allow to supply preloaded XP until 2009.

Why the change of heart? It’s all about Vista. The bottom line is that many users aren’t happy with the latest incarnation of Windows. In particular, many businesses are deferring Operating System upgrades until the launch of Windows 7 in 2010 citing issues such as hardware support and the Vista knack of hogging resources.

Now Microsoft needs to make sure that they get the next release right

Popularity: 43% [?]

Sub-notebooks galore.

In an apparent attempt to boost flaggins sales Acer has announced the launch of its ‘netbook’. Basically, the Ultra Mobile PC has been designed to compete with the Eee PC and HP2133 in a market that is reported to become the next big thing in hardware sales.

The Aspire One is a Linux based device offering WiFi and an 8Gb Solid State Disk - not great storage features but likely an attempt to keep the price low. WiMax and 3G models are expected to follow shortly after the initial launch.

The Aspire One should make its debut on 10th July 2008. Prices range from £199 for the Linux variant, featuring  an 8Gb SSD, to £249 for the Windows XP model with an 80Gb platter disk. Hmm, I can’t wait to try this out when it hits the market.

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