Laptop hunters? More like desktop replacement hunters
When Microsoft released its first Laptop Hunters ad, I found the concept interesting—a fresh angle on the Mac vs. PC rivalry and an opportunity to show what the Windows laptop market has to offer. Unfortunately, as more ads come out, I'm getting the impression that Microsoft is stuck in a rut.
The company released its fourth Laptop Hunters spot yesterday. Here it is:
Okay, first of all... a self-described artist and filmmaker who can afford a MacBook Pro but turns it down because the default config has "only" 2GB of RAM? Really, Microsoft? Is this how you're going to woo one of the few Mac-loyal demographics out there?
But I digress—that's not the subject of this rant. See the system "Sheila" walks away with? If it looks familiar, that's because we already saw a variant of it in the second Laptop Hunters ad. And the two other ads in that series feature very similar machines:
- Lauren has a $1,000 budget and gets a 17" HP Pavilion dv7.
- Giampaolo has a $1,500 budget and chooses a 16.4" HP HDX 16.
- Lisa and Jackson have a $1,500 budget and pick a 16.4" Sony Vaio FW.
- Sheila has a $2,000 budget and goes with a 16.4" HP HDX 16.
All of these systems have large displays, aren't very portable, and run Windows. Microsoft's message so far seems to be: "Why buy a Mac when you can get a good deal on a bulky, Windows-based desktop replacement notebook at Best Buy?"
I'm sure many people would be perfectly happy with a large notebook like that, but come on. If you've ever walked into a brick-and-mortar chain store, you'll know those thick, bulky laptops are all over the place. Consumers already know about them, and there's a good chance they don't find them very exciting. It's like Microsoft is so eager to get actors to talk trash about Macs that it's completely forgotten to pimp the PC notebook market's biggest upside: diversity.
Netbooks have been conspicuously absent from the Laptop Hunters series so far, but that's not surprising. I'm sure Steve Ballmer doesn't want to advertise Windows XP-based computers at this point, especially when his company only makes about 15 bucks for each netbook-bound XP license.
But why not showcase something like HP's Pavilion dv2? It's a great little ultraportable with a low price tag and Vista installed out of the box. More importantly, it has zero competition from Apple. Where's the ad with Alfredo looking for a sub-$800 laptop to take away on vacation? Microsoft evidently likes promoting HP systems, so why not use this one to highlight the limited scope of Apple's mobile offering?
Even ignoring newly released low-cost ultraportables, though, the PC notebook market is brimming with options. In my view, releasing four commercial spots about similar 16-17" systems just shows a fundamental lack of originality and imagination on Microsoft's part.
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Last by leor at 1:38 AM on 05/08/09
I finally bit the bullet and decided to buy a digital SLR camera last weekend. I've been shooting with a Canon PowerShot A570 IS for the past couple of years, and although it's a great little camera, I'm finding its limitations increasingly frustrating. What better upgrade than an entry-level DSLR?
As I'm wont to do, I perused countless online reviews and studied the competitive landscape before making my purchase. Canon's EOS 450D (a.k.a. Digital Rebel XSi) tempted me, but the lower-end EOS 1000D (Digital Rebel XS) seemed to have everything I needed—live view, a decent lens with image stabilization, a good sensor, and a good assortment of professional features—at a more attractive price.
I spent a little while shopping around to get the best price, too, of course. Here are some of the listings I encountered:
Those all look like the same camera with the same kit lens, don't they? One of them does say "IS" while the others don't, but the prices are the same, and one of the non-IS ones is actually more expensive. Surely Canon isn't peddling an inferior model without image stabilization for as much (or slightly less) than the rest. None of the reviews mentioned anything like that.
Well, I made a boo-boo—I ordered the €440.99 ($587) model and got a Taiwanese EF-S 18-55mm II lens in the box instead of the Japanese EF-S 18-55mm IS lens. The Taiwanese lens has no stabilization features, and a quick look around the web suggests it has lower-quality optics than its Japanese counterparts.
That'll teach me to pay closer attention to listings, I suppose. The frustrating part is that I'm all too used to online retailers getting model names slightly wrong or omitting details, and Canon doesn't exactly go out of its way to differentiate the two offerings. Seriously, why isn't there a price markup on the IS model despite the better lens? I did go for one of the cheapest listings, but opting for the most expensive ones above would have gotten me the same Taiwanese lens. That's unfortunate—especially since some buyers might not notice until they can no longer send it back.
In the end, I decided to return the 1000D for a refund, and I just placed an order for the 450D/Rebel XSi. (Yes, I made sure it said "IS" in the model name this time.)
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Last by JustAnEngineer at 7:40 AM on 05/10/09
You may have noticed a small change in the TR layout this afternoon. If you look at the bottom of articles, news posts, and blog posts, you'll see TR has joined the ranks of the many publications that feature links to popular social bookmarking and sharing sites.
We experimented with common sharing widgets like AddThis last month, but none of them seemed lightweight, customizable, or open enough for our tastes. So, I took it upon myself to write one pretty much from scratch using CSS and (very) minimal JavaScript. The result looks like so:
In an effort to be as non-annoying as possible, I made it so you need to click the button to bring up the sharing menu. That way, you won't see a menu pop out of nowhere when you're just trying to browse the site—a pet peeve I have with some of the common prefab widgets. Otherwise, it behaves just like you'd expect: click on the name of a given service, and you'll be able to promote whatever page you were reading through that service.
As always with new TR features, we invite you to give it a shot and give us your feedback in the comments below. If we left out your favorite social bookmarking or sharing site, do let us know! And if you need to sound off about how terrible all those web-2.0 sites are... well, that's cool too.
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Last by scpulp at 10:34 PM on 04/19/09
Yesterday, French MPs approved a portion of a new copyright bill that would see suspected online pirates get their Internet access disabled after two warnings. I'm sure many of you couldn't care less about French law, but the "three strikes and you're out" approach to online copyright law enforcement seems to be spreading like wildfire. It's already generated interest (and sometimes more) in Britain, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, and South Korea. If the RIAA had its way, Americans might soon face similar measures.
In theory, I have no qualms with Internet service providers giving recidivist pirates the boot. Hey, if one of your customers is screwing around and getting you in trouble, you shouldn't have to put up with it. However, the French proposal—and what some other governments hope to implement—is considerably more insidious, dangerous, and fundamentally misguided.
Here's how Christine Albanel, France's Minister for Culture and Communication, wants things to go down:
- The government creates a new independent regulatory agency called "HADOPI." The name means something like "High Authority for the Distribution of Works and the Protection of Rights on the Internet."
- Copyright holders monitor the Internet and supply HADOPI with the IP addresses of suspected pirates.
- HADOPI contacts ISPs to obtain the identities of users with flagged IP addresses.
- First-time offenders get an e-mail warning from HADOPI. Second-time offenders get a warning through certified mail. Third-time offenders get their Internet access cut off for two months to a year—although they can reduce that to one month if they swear not to do it again and not to fight the sanction in court.
But that's no big deal, right? You could just sign up at another ISP? Well, no. HADOPI would effectively blacklist alleged repeat offenders, preventing them from purchasing Internet service as long as their suspensions are effective. According to Le Figaro, Mrs. Albanel claims users could avoid having their net access cut off if they installed software that blocks "certain sites and programs that let one download [copyrighted works illegally]."
Now, anyone with the slightest bit of technical knowledge should be able to see at least several flaws with that system:
- First of all, users are presumed guilty until they, somehow, prove their innocence. I don't think Mrs. Albanel has clearly stated how someone wrongly accused would go about convincing HADOPI that he didn't pirate Saw IV. Can you imagine a technically illiterate small-business owner or grandmother faced with their second warning? What are they supposed to do, exactly?
- Let me say that again: you're presumed guilty until proven innocent. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, anyone? No? Okay...
- Because Wi-Fi networks—and tools for breaking into them—are so widely available, pirates could easily use the connection of a neighbor or nearby business to download the latest Evanescence album or Nicholas Cage movie. That brings us back to my first point.
- Mrs. Albanel suggests owners of public Wi-Fi networks aggressively secure them and use (presumably government-supplied) filtering software to block pirate sites, but that's hardly a realistic solution. Large-scale web filtering doesn't work in China, and it wouldn't work in France—whether mandatory or not. Some legit sites would be mistakenly blacklisted, while some pirate sites would slip through the cracks. And pirates would find workarounds.
- Similarly, since the French government wants to give copyright holders free reign to get as many suspected pirates off the net as possible, a number of innocent users would receive warnings because of simple false positives. Oh, and according to a 2008 paper by the University of Washington, "practically any Internet user can be framed for copyright infringement today." That paper describes how the University eventually received a DMCA notice for a printer's IP address, too. Awesome.
That's not even going into the ridiculous costs of implementing these measures. One article by Numerama points out that identifying users through IP addresses would cost HADOPI €8.50 a pop, which would induce yearly costs of €31 million ($41.7 million) if the agency sends 10,000 warnings a day (a figure the president of the ARMT suggests). Another Figaro article says the government would also have to pay for new ISP billing systems needed to implement the law, which would cost about €70 million ($94.3 million). In other words, taxpayers would pay dearly for measures that could see their Internet access unjustly disabled, all theoretically to pad the bottom lines of copyright holders. I say "theoretically" because folks who pirate music and movies now aren't necessarily going to go out and buy them when their Internet access gets cut off. Most likely, they'll either buy less content or find other piracy avenues—like good old DVD and CD burning.
I suppose I should refrain from making this blog post too politically loaded, but this three-strikes bill is so absurd, so reprehensibly stupid, and so obviously flawed to anyone with even the slightest bit of technical knowledge, I just don't see how France's majority party (not to mention the French president himself) can still back it. Twice now, the European Parliament has approved legislation to make such "three strikes and you're out" measures illegal, yet the French government seems to be going full steam ahead.
What bewilders me most is that a nation so fond of public protests hasn't reacted more strongly. I mean, French college students have been on strike on and off for the past couple of months over the latest university reforms. If students all over the country—who, need I remind you, receive their education practically free of charge and get government benefits to boot—have no qualms about mass strikes, where's the mass public uproar over this bill? We're talking about a country with 66% Internet penetration and the world's fifth largest economy here; it's not like the French are too busy making baguettes and cheese to care about the Internet.
As some of you might know, I currently reside in France and work online, so this proposed legislation could be particularly troublesome for me. Now, I make a point to purchase music, games, and movies whenever possible. However, I'm currently forced to resort to BitTorrent to download TV shows, because sites like Hulu and ABC.com block access to users in Europe, and I have no interest in watching French-dubbed versions of previous seasons available here. Some music just isn't available through legal download sites, either.
Since this legislation wouldn't resolve those little conundrums, I'd have to stop watching a good chunk of U.S. TV just to keep my job. Or perhaps I'd have to subscribe to a VPN service to cloak my online activities from prying eyes. In either case, though, I could still get flagged as a pirate because of some record company's screw-up. And what then?
People are always going to pirate copyrighted content. That's just the way it is, and you can't curb it through mass lawsuits or absurdly repressive government legislation. Copyright holders like the MPAA, RIAA, and their foreign equivalents just need to realize two things: one, piracy doesn't automatically translate into lost sales. If a broke college kid downloads a new movie every night, it's only because he can do it for free. Two, people with money—you know, actual potential customers—will favor legal avenues if they're simpler and faster than piracy. Imagine if, the day a movie comes out in theaters, it's available online in HD format for the price of a movie ticket or slightly less. Are gainfully employed consumers really going to bother hopping on BitTorrent to download shaky-cam rips from Eastern Europe?
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Last by d2brothe at 10:26 AM on 04/09/09
Now that both AMD and Intel have laid down their roadmaps for 2009 and 2010, we can have a little fun and start speculating about how the two competitors might match up. AMD has made it clear that it will stick with its 45nm Deneb core—the one that powers current Phenom IIs—through 2010. As for Intel, it's planning two waves of Core i7 derivatives: 45nm quad-core parts later this year (Lynnfield and Clarksfield) followed by 32nm dual-core CPUs (Clarkdale and Arrandale) in late 2009 or early 2010.
If the flurry of code names leaves you scratching your head, just check out the official roadmaps below:
What does this mean for AMD? Based on how current chips perform and what Intel has disclosed about its future 32nm processors, we can make some educated guesses. Here's how I predict things are going to go down on the desktop.
Right now, AMD's Phenom IIs are essentially competitive with Intel's 45nm Core 2 Quads. When Lynnfield comes out later this year with a Core i7-derived architecture, four cores, and eight threads, we can probably count on it outperforming the Phenom II overall—even if it's not quite as fast as the Core i7 clock for clock. AMD could foreseeably compensate by raising clock speeds, but I expect the firm is likelier to simply cut prices and offer slightly lower performance at a discount.
So, what happens when 32nm Clarkdale processors roll out, presumably early next year? With two cores, four threads, and a built-in graphics core, Clarkdale will likely inhabit a lower price bracket than quad-core/eight-thread Lynnfield and Core i7 offerings. And, if my first assumption is right, that would pit it right against the Phenom II.
I think we might very well end up with a close race between the Phenom II and Clarkdale. AMD's processors will have more cores, but the Intel chips should have better clock-for-clock performance and the ability to scale to higher clock speeds. Just look at current benchmarks: in Worldbench, the 3.33GHz Core 2 Duo E8600 is actually faster than the 3GHz Phenom II X4 940 overall. In several media encoding tests, a single 3.2GHz Core i7 manages to outrun dual Core 2 Quads running at the same speed.
I really wouldn't be surprised to see Clarkdale keep up with or even outperform quad-core Phenom IIs overall, with the AMD chips pulling ahead in heavily multi-threaded apps (like, say, 3D rendering). Assuming AMD can refine its 45nm process and keep power consumption low enough, that might not be such a bad matchup—and it certainly wouldn't be as bad as pitting Phenom IIs against 32nm Core i7 derivatives with four cores. Intel could clip AMD's margins by offering Clarkdale processors at bargain-basement prices, though, which shouldn't be hard with two small dies. (The cost of producing a big die like the Phenom II's is greater.) Also, no matter how much AMD refines its process, Intel should have a significant power efficiency advantage.
What about notebooks? I won't make detailed predictions here, because I'm not quite as familiar with the mobile end of the CPU market, but we know several things for sure: on the Intel front, Lynnfield and Clarkdale will both have mobile siblings. On the AMD side, a dual-core Turion X2 successor code-named Caspian will roll out this year, followed by a quad-core Champlain chip in 2010. I doubt shoving a 45nm quad-core processor into a notebook will be all that practical even next year, though, so I think AMD may choose to focus more on Conesus and Geneva—both dual-core chips for affordable and ultraportable notebooks.
We've already caught a glimpse of Conesus' potential in the form of the Athlon Neo, which is that chip's single-core little brother. The Athlon Neo powers HP's Pavilion dv2, a $699 notebook that weighs just 3.8 pounds and features a 12.1" 1280x800 display, Mobility Radeon HD integrated graphics, and Windows Vista. In many ways, that seems like the sweet spot between netbooks and full-featured laptops.
Intel will undoubtedly attempt to fill that same niche with its own batch of processors, but I think AMD will be in a uniquely privileged position here thanks to its integrated graphics. Even Clarkdale's mobile sibling, Arrandale, will have an IGP with the same lackluster underpinnings as today's GMA X4500. AMD should have no trouble pitching slower CPUs with faster graphics in a market where CPU performance really isn't that big a concern.
All in all, AMD will probably be in a very tough position until it introduces its next-gen Bulldozer architecture in 2011, but it seems like the company could manage to get by in the lower end of the market even against 32nm Nehalem derivatives (assuming it survives the current economic crisis, of course). Bulldozer will really need to deliver, though, because it should come out right as Intel hits its next "tock" with Sandy Bridge, a microarchitectural refresh based on 32nm technology.
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Last by Kougar at 10:28 PM on 02/24/09
If you were reading this blog last year, you'll know I was pretty excited about early glimpses of Mirror's Edge. When reviews of the full game started cropping up, however, my enthusiasm subsided. People booed the title for being too difficult, too confusing, too short, and too frustrating. Geoff echoed some of those criticisms after playing the console version last year, and I ended up buying the PC version some time after its release, largely because I was getting bored with Left 4 Dead.
As I finally started playing earlier this month, I could definitely relate to some popular complaints: certain parts of the game felt needlessly frustrating, requiring perfectly timed acrobatics in the midst of enemy fire. I found combat awkward, and I could never get the hang of some moves, like disarming bad guys. The PC controls did feel right, like this was an original PC game and not a console port, but that didn't make it any less difficult. (Disclaimer: I've never played the console version.)
Still, something about the art direction and the overall feel of the game enthralled me, because I felt compelled to start a new game almost immediately after blowing through the main campaign. Suddenly, everything seemed to feel right. It's like the first playthrough was a sort of practice run, and I was finally experiencing what the developers intended. I could effortlessly disable armed foes and lunge my way across rooftops, timing jumps perfectly and chaining wall-runs with lethal kicks.
I'll be the first to admit that Mirror's Edge is difficult and unforgiving no matter how much you play. The story feels convoluted and cliched, the voice acting is awful, and the whole thing could be a bit longer. However, whereas my first playthrough was a mix of fun, awe, and frustration, my second one was pure enjoyment. Almost to an intoxicating degree.
In fact, I started a third game on the highest difficulty setting last night after completing my second playthrough. With the exception of some racing titles and Lucas Arts adventure games, I've almost never picked up a game again after completing it. I often mean to—like with Fallout 3 and Portal—but I either don't follow through or get bored a couple of hours in. And generally, the more frustrating a game is, the less likely I am to play it more than once. What makes Mirror's Edge different, then? Why am I still looking forward to beating it a third time?
Somehow, I think there's something uniquely satisfying about leaping across rooftops in first-person perspective in a brightly lit proto-utopia. Maybe it's my body telling me to get more sunlight and exercise, but the visceral feeling of speed and motion, the beautiful art direction, the sound effects, and the music all add up to create something really special. Some folks criticize Mirror's Edge for not being a third-person game, but I think that misses the point—if it were a third-person title, it'd just be yet another Tomb Raider clone (albeit a very pretty one). In first-person mode, this game really makes the player feel like an integral part of the running, leaping, close combat, and fleeing.
Even aside from the well-implemented free-running and art direction, there's just something unique about Mirror's Edge. How many games encourage running over combat? How many games penalize players for carrying weapons? For once, you're not a walking gun shop wrapped in a hundred layers of Kevlar. You can still take a beating, but forget about trying to take on multiple armed enemies at once—you'll get shot or pistol-whipped before you can say "how do you do." Tackling the touchy subjects of civilian surveillance and the surrender of civil liberties is unusual for a video game, too, even if the story is clumsy at best and cringe-inducing at worst.
With all that said, I think my failure to enjoy the game fully the first time highlights a real problem. Mirror's Edge has a somewhat uncommon control scheme, and it requires very precise interaction with the environment. Why couldn't DICE make the training a little longer, or better yet, integrate it into the early levels like an increasing number of titles do nowadays? I expect many players don't even feel like playing a second time, and they retain a negative impression of the game as a result. That's a shame.
Before I sign off, I'd like to say a word about PhysX. Nvidia showcases Mirror's Edge like an example of PhysX integration done right, but it didn't take me long to turn that feature off. Simply put, it induces a significant frame rate hit, and most of the PhysX additions are barely noticeable—more realistic broken glass after shattering a window, fancier smoke effects, random debris, etc. DICE also added destructible pieces of cloth, tarp, and translucent plastic sheeting throughout the game, but those often look out of place. In one instance, I found a small crawlspace where a pristine plastic sheet was separating a ventilation fan and the switch controlling it. Is that really the best PhysX has to offer?
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Last by zqw at 1:56 PM on 02/05/09
It happens to the best of us. We spend hours putting together a new PC, mounting a nice aftermarket heatsink, making sure all the cables are nicely organized, and we're just so glad to get Windows installed that we forget one detail: setting the storage controller to AHCI or RAID mode. Both settings enable native command queuing, which can improve performance, but switching settings after loading up Windows almost guarantees a nasty bluescreen.
I had enough foresight to enable AHCI before installing Windows last time, but I stayed clear from the RAID setting. That came back to bite me in the butt last weekend, when I received a fresh Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB hard drive in the mail and decided to arrange my dual Caviar SE16 320GB drives in a RAID 1 array. For the uninitiated, RAID 1 essentially mirrors the contents of one drive onto another drive. That doesn't remove the need for backups, but if applied to an OS drive, it can save quite a bit of time in the event of a hard drive failure.
Microsoft provides simple instructions on switching from IDE to AHCI mode, but switching from AHCI to RAID was another story—at least on my Intel P965 Express- and ICH8R-powered system. I still got the bluescreen at boot-up, and no amount of Googling or tinkering with drivers solved that problem.
Finally, I found an easy solution. My motherboard has six Serial ATA ports running off the ICH8R south bridge, and a seventh SATA port is hooked up to a JMicron controller. All I had to do was connect my primary hard drive to that controller, make sure it was in IDE mode (since Windows has built-in drivers for that), and set the Intel controller to RAID mode. Vista happily booted off the JMicron and recognized the "new" Intel RAID controller my other drives were hooked up to, allowing me to go back, connect the OS drive to the ICH8R again, and finally boot with the RAID setting enabled (and no hiccups).
Wasn't this all for nothing, though? Wouldn't building a RAID 1 array from there on involve reinstalling the operating system anyway? I'm not familiar with other storage controllers, but Intel's handy Matrix Storage Console software allows you to skip that step and create a RAID from an existing boot drive. Somehow, it doesn't care if there's an OS installed on it, and you can keep running software and doing whatever you need to do while the conversion process goes on in the background. Neat.
After about six hours, my dual 320GB Caviars were joined in holy redundancy at last, and I finally went to bed. Somehow, though, Windows wasn't happy the next time I rebooted, since it asked me to re-activate it—and the online process didn't work, so I had to use the gruelling automated phone system, juggling groups of digits and confirming that, yes, my operating system was still installed on just a single computer. That may have been the most annoying part of this whole endeavor, actually.
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Last by ChrisDTC at 8:34 PM on 03/08/09
