Walter Williams has a great column demonstrating some of the myths regarding greed, need, and money.
http://townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliams/2008/01/02/greed,_need_and_money
One of the cooler things I saw at CES this year was the arrival of mini laptops that didn't suck.
Over the past couple of years, I've seen more and more people (including myself) starting to use full-sized laptops as their main machines.
I think there's a reasonable chance that these mini laptops (laptops weighing less than 2 pounds) might be the next step.
Two in particular stood out.
First there is the OQO Model 2. Running Windows Vista, it seemed reasonably peppy. It doesn't support running the DWM so don't think to use this for video game playing. But with a 1.6Ghz CPU, 64GB SSD and a gig of RAM, it's quite impressive.
If you have Verizon, you can even have it connect to the Internet with mobile Broadband. It also supports 802.11a/b/g out of the box, Bluetooth 2.0 and even has an Ethernet port.
It's not perfect. The resolution is only 800x480 which means it can't natively view many modern websites without scrolling around.
It is also a little clunky in terms of navigating, no touch screen, and I didn't like the keyboard.
But these are minor nits compared with the utility of the device. It has an HDMI port, track stick (instead of a mouse), USB, and more. If it had a built in camera, I'd pick one up in a second. It's only 16 ounces.
One other nice feature, it has an awesome docking station which supports external output up to 1920x1200.
It will set you back over $1,300 so it's not a toy to be sure.
The Fujitsu mini laptop is a bit bigger. They only had the U810 on the show floor but a new model (I think the U910) is in the works.
It's about a pound and a half so it's heavier than the OQO. But it has a much better keyboard, has a web cam. But it is quite a bit slower than the OQO. It uses an Intel A110 (800mhz based). But it has a faster graphics card built in.
Like the OQO, it has WiFi built in and Bluetooth support. It doesn't include Mobile Broadband.
On the other hand, its display is 1024x600 which is key because most websites will fit fine at 1024 pixels wide.
It has a decent touch screen and an optional integrated webcam.
It sells for $1,100.
So which one is better? Hard to say. I haven't gotten to play with either one for any length of time. I wish I could take features from both and put them together. The lower resolution display of the OQO is a near show stopper as is its weak keyboard. But on the other hand, it's only a pound, has good performance, and high utility.
The Fujitsu is cheaper, has a better keyboard and much better display. But that 800mhz CPU worries me and it's heavy enough that I could start thinking about lugging a ThinkPad X60 around.
Fujitsu
OQO
In the next couple weeks Stardock will begin officially rolling out MyColors 2008. This may be the single most significant event in skinning in the past few years.
Check out the tour below.
To prove I'm not narrow minded about Microsoft Sync, I would be willing to take this Sync-equipped car off their hands because that's just the kind of guy I am this week.
Okay, that's pretty cool.
Almost everything I saw from Microsoft at the show was pretty impressive. But Sync was underwhelming.
Sync is Microsoft's technology for integrating technology into cars. It's a great idea. But the execution is the problem.
The Sync issues are similar to the issues I have with Windows Mobile. Over-engineering, design by committee and inelegant.
Their demo of voice recognition really highlights the klunkiness of the system. (paraphrased)
Person: Phone
Car: Phone ready
Person: Dial Mom
Car: You said Mom, correct?
Person: Yes.
Car: Did you want to dial Mom on cell phone or home phone?
Person: cell phone
Car: You said cell phone, correct?
Person: Correct
Car: Dialing mom cell phone.
...
In between each of those transactions is a beep the user must wait for to begin speaking.
It's just tedious. I much prefer to just use the on-screen display to dial whomever. But almost everything in Sync struck me as being needlessly catered to very possible user. One can almost imagine someone in a meeting in Redmond saying "Oh, we really should also include support for X" resulting in everything being more complicated.
For those people who have been wanting to jump into high definition video viewing on their fancy new HD televisions but didn't want to have to pick between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray can pick up LG's new "Super Blu" (BH200).
It's a bit pricey at $999 but for those who want to jump in now but don't want to be the owner of Betamax v2, it's the first dual player of its kind.
LG also had a ton of really other cool things to show that I wish I could give them all adequate attention. A wireless television set was one of the more interesting displays. With built in 802.11N, it can handle wireless high definition streams without a problem.
Garmin had several new GPS devices to show off. For those who have been thinking of picking up geo caching or getting a GPS for their car but wanted to wait a little longer, you need wait no longer.
nuvi 880
The 880 adds speech recognition for navigation on the road. It makes use of MSN Direct services for getting the latest data from the net.
Thanks to its use of MSN Direct, it gains features such as traffic conditions, fuel prices, weather reports, movie listings, local events, news, and plan entire trips from your home computer and then upload.
The only down side is that MSN Direct costs $49.95 a year (or a one-time charge of $129.95). Users do get 3 months to try it out to see if it's worth it.
Users who just want the speech recognition but don't care about MSN Direct can get he Nuvi 850.
For more info, visit www.garmin.com
Intel had one of the most impressive displays at CES and one of the more impressive showcases was the myriad of real-world uses of the Intel Mobile Core Duo processor.
In one example, a eco-PC using it along with the 950gm Express chipset achieved an impressive PC experience while using less than 60 watts of power (i.e. less than a common light bulb).
In addition to being able to be used for eco-friendly PCs, they can be used in extremely small form factor PCs.
The PC that the Intel representative is showing is one from AOpen which you can find here.
DeskScapes is a program that allows users to play animated wallpaper on their desktop. For the past year, it has been available exclusively for Windows Vista Ultimate users as way for users of Windows DreamScene to play dynamic animated wallpaper in addition to video content.
On January 16th, Stardock intends to make DeskScapes 2.0 available in beta form to users of Object Desktop. DeskScapes 2.0 will include dynamic animated wallpaper with the program and supports all versions of Windows Vista.
The final version of DeskScapes 2.0 will be made generally available in February.
To get Object Desktop visit www.objectdesktop.com