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Photos: Asus and HP mini-laptops
This photo shows the Asus Eee PC 900 next to HP’s 2133 Mini-Note PC, two miniature laptops that are approximately the same size and both of which cost less than £500.
As should be apparent from the picture, HP’s model is slightly wider, which enables it to have larger keys and thus makes for easier typing. The Mini-Note is also more polished, with a brushed aluminium case, while the Asus feels rather plasticky by comparison.
However, the Asus has the advantage of weighing under a kilogram, while the Windows version of HP’s pint-sized portable weighs almost half again as much at 1.46kg.
There are other notable differences; the Eee PC has Windows XP installed (although the Home edition rather than Professional), and with 1GB memory, it feels as responsive as any other Windows XP system. The HP Mini-Note ships with Vista Business Edition, and despite its having 2GB of memory, Vista is a severe drag on its performance.
Asus also ships the Eee PC with 12GB of Flash solid state disk (SSD), while the HP model has a more conventional 120GB hard drive. Both have an 8.9in screen, but the Eee PC has a native resolution of 1024 x 600, while HP’s is a step up at 1280 x 768.
In early tests, the HP Mini-Note appeared to have a longer lasting battery than the Eee PC, but a full report will appear in a future issue of IT Week.
Photos: The HTC Shift from Orange
I took this photo to give readers some idea of just how small the HTC Shift really is. No, that isn’t a giant comedy mug next to the unit, but an average sized one such as most people have in their kitchen.
The unit weighs just 800g and has a 7in touch screen, specifications comparable to an ultra-mobile PC (UMPC) such as those from OQO or Samsung. But the Shift is better thought of as an ultra-petite laptop; it has a full qwerty keyboard, and the screen slides back and tilts into a configuration just like a typical laptop when opened up, as you can see. It even has a mini touchpad, the dark square to the right of the screen.
The Shift is actually two devices in one. Turn on the power, and it boots Windows Vista. However, it has a second environment called SnapVue that can be activated at any time by pressing a button next to the screen.
This allows access to email, calendar and contact information - even when the main unit is shut down - and also lets users send text messages via the Orange network. The second photo shows the main SnapVue screen (apologies for the slightly blurry quality of the image). The beauty of this is that you can quickly check your email without waiting for Vista to boot up, and this also saves on battery power.
My first impression is that the Shift really struggles to handle Windows Vista, although I found the display a pleasant surprise and easy to read for such a small sized panel. The keyboard is also too small to type at any speed, and the battery is unlikely to last for more than a couple of hours.
Nevertheless, the Shift is much easier to carry around than a full-size corporate laptop, and could quite easily fit into a briefcase without weighing down an executive’s carrying arm. With Wi-Fi and 3D wireless built-in, users can stay connected from virtually anywhere.
Microsoft Office 2007 is bundled with the unit, so those who absolutely must have access to Office applications (including Outlook) while travelling should find the Shift worth evaluating. A full review of this system will appear in a future edition of IT Week.
Photo: Maxdata's tiny laptop
This photo shows just how small Maxdata's Belinea s.book 1 ultraportable is when compared with a standard-sized laptop.
However, while the s.book 1 is small, I found it perfectly capable of running standard applications under Windows XP, and its keyboard is just big enough to type on at a reasonable speed.
The 7in screen is what lets it down, though, especially as this has been squashed up to make way for a detachable Bluetooth handset, used for making VoIP calls when the laptop is connected to the internet. At a native resolution of 800 x 480 pixels, the screen feels cramped in use. The VoIP handset itself is designed to be used with Skype, which ships pre-installed with the system.
The s.book 1 is based on a 1.2GHz VIA C7M processor with 1GB memory and an 80GB hard drive. With a price tag of £419 including VAT, it is also inexpensive for such a small system, although still about twice the price of the Linux-based Asus eee PC, which is comparable in size. A full review of the s.book 1 will appear in a future issue of IT Week.
Aerosystems ThunderPack jet pack or Kawasaki KH500 triple – you decide
Fancy a journey with a difference? Why not shell out $100,000 for a 75 second trip into the wild blue yonder, courtesy of Thunderbolt Aerosystems ThunderPack Revision-2, Generation-2 (R1G2). This hydrogen peroxide-powered jet pack looks like tons of fun, but I suspect it could easily ruin your day.
At one time or another, I've tried most forms of personal transport – and the only piece of hardware which might compare, from a bygone age admittedly, is one of the scariest motorbikes on two wheels bar none - the Kawasaki KH500 triple. This was a two-stroke, 'three pot' screamer, with a power band the width of a spider's thigh, and handling which required a fair amount of fresh underwear each day.
If you’re working flexibly to avoid the journey into central London and you're in range, then maybe you might consider using the jet pack. Top speed is 75 mph, but there’s only enough fuel for 75 seconds, and no, I don’t know if you’d require a license from the DVLA or the CAA. Since the hardware is a client device and Dan Robinson is the client section editor - i'll leave him to test this piece of hardware.
Those wondering about potential refuelling problems, have a valid point. Going into a chemist to buy hydrogen peroxide nowadays, tends to have shop assistants fingering the emergency alarm quicker than you could say, "bleached hair". What would happen if you asked for hydrogen peroxide of greater than 70 per cent purity at the local chemist? I'll leave that one to your imagination.
OK, for a trained specialist, the jet pack is probably safer than driving down the M25. Me - i'll stick with the KH500 - once described by Bike Magazine's testers as -'Thanatoid' (translation – ‘resembling death’).
PCs burn up the watts - even when switched off
In a review of the HP Compaq dc7800 published in IT Week today, I measured the power consumption of this compact new desktop PC to see if it used less energy than rival systems. It did just that, using a maximum 78W in our tests, whereas a standard system can easily top 200W.
However, I was surprised to see just how much energy the system used even when it was switched off. Just connected to the mains, the dc7800 and its mains adapter consumed over 9W. Multiplied across a building full of PCs, this might add up to a considerable waste of energy overnight and at the weekend, even if users respond to calls to turn their system off before they leave work.
And this is in a system designed for power efficiency. A standard mini-tower PC I measured was found to consume at least 21W when turned off.
However, as I pointed out in the print review of the HP system, it is not practicable for most businesses to introduce a policy of unplugging equipment when not in use, because IT departments need to able to remote boot systems for after-hours maintenance and updates.
Is there anything that enterprises can do to reduce this waste of power, or is it all down to the equipment manufacturer to design kit to be as efficient as possible, even when in the off state?
First impressions of OQO's new UMPC
OQO launched its first model of ultra-mobile PC (UMPC) aimed at the European market earlier this week, and I went along to get a closer look at the device.
The OQO model e2 is a full-spec PC that just happens to fit in the palm of your hand. What images don’t convey is how good the screen is – even though it is only 5 inches across the diagonal, I could quite clearly read the text on the 800 x 480 Windows desktop.
The unit itself is quite comfortable to hold, at least for the short period I tried it out, and it feels quite natural to type with thumbs BlackBerry-style while cradling it in your hands.
One concern of this model is likely to be battery life. The company quotes the OQO as offering up to three hours only on the standard batteries. Nevertheless, this looks like the only UMPC I have seen that could stand up as a serious rival for a full-blown laptop.
Look out for a full review of the OQO model e2 in future, when IT Week will evaluate the performance and battery life of the model, as well as reporting on using such a small form factor device for productivity work.
Making that first voice-over-Wi-Fi call
I've been trying out HP's iPaq 514 Voice Messenger phone, which turns out to be a very nice lightweight handset despite having built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless interfaces.
This Windows Mobile 6 device also comes with a built-in SIP client for IP telephony, which is designed to pair up with a SIP server or IP PBX when a worker is in their office and in range of the corporate Wi-Fi network. The problem is, how to go about testing this without access to such infrastructure?
Fortunately, it turns out that there are online SIP service providers that allow you to access IP telephony over a broadband internet connection. Many of these, such as the one I chose to try out – Freespeech.co.uk – are free to sign up for, and offer free calls to other VoIP numbers.
Armed with an 0844 number and my registration details from Freespeech, I set about configuring the iPaq 514 to connect. However, it turns out that the SIP client cannot be configured from the handset itself. Users instead have to link the phone to a Windows PC and use the HP iPaq Setup Assistant that comes on a CD-ROM with the phone.
This tool turns out to be very handy and lets you configure almost all aspects of the handset, including Wi-Fi access point settings, email accounts, speed dial numbers, and even populate the browser Favourites list.
With all necessary configuration information entered, I turned on Wi-Fi and connected the phone to my wireless router at home. The VoIP client then looked for the SIP server and connected, showing the status message "freespeech.co.uk selected". The "selected" part means that any calls made will now go via the internet instead of the cellular network.
I made a quick call using the phone to a colleague that had also signed up on the same service, and found the call quality excellent, if a little on the quiet side.
Overall, I was surprised at how easy it was to get voice-over-Wi-Fi working on this handset. That said, the settings Freepeech emailed to me did not exactly match those in the iPaq 514 configuration screen, and I had to make an educated guess to bridge the gap between the two.
The only drawback to this setup is that I now have a separate phone number for calls made over VoIP that differs from my landline and the mobile number of the iPaq.
This will probably not be a problem in a business environment, as the SIP service will link to the corporate infrastructure and probably tie in with the user's desk phone. For home users, the Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) VoIP protocol, which features in RIM's new BlackBerry 8820, instead links the handset with the mobile carrier's infrastructure.
A full review of HP's iPaq 514 Voice Messenger will appear in a future issue of IT Week.
Flash disk performance compared
I've finally managed to run some comparison tests on a laptop before and after upgrading its hard disk to a Samsung 32GB Flash solid state disk (SSD), as mentioned in this blog a couple of weeks ago.
The good news is that the Flash disk appears to deliver on Samsung's promises, both improving performance and extending battery life.
With the Flash drive fitted, the test laptop increased its Business Winstone 2004 benchmark score from 3.3 to 3.8, an improvement of 15 percent just by replacing the hard disk. It should be noted that Winstone measures application performance, not just disk read and write speeds.
Turning to battery life, the laptop lasted for three hours and 51 minutes with its original hard disk, but managed four hours and 27 minutes – at least half an hour longer - with the Flash disk fitted.
Of course, my test unit is a somewhat old laptop, but hard drives are still the bottleneck in most PCs, and anything that boosts performance and gives extra battery life is surely welcome – providing you can justify the price tag, and upgrading isn't too tricky.
A full report will be published in a future issue of IT Week.
3G broadband takes connectivity strain on the train
IT Week Executive Editor Martin Veitch tests out 3G connectivity with a USB modem for laptops
Theoretically, a 3G 'wireless broadband' connection is supposed to come into its own when you are on the move and need ad hoc access to the web or email. Some recent train journeys between London and Newcastle and Edinburgh to London, as well as several half-hour hops between London and its suburbs, provided me with opportunities to discover just how useful these products are.
I tested Thus’s Mobile 3G Broadband device aimed at customers of its Demon subsidiary. This is a Huawei-manufactured product that runs on the Vodafone network and Thus makes no attempt to cover up the fact that it is also available as the Vodafone Mobile Connect USB Modem.
The modem took just a few minutes to set up. This involved slotting in the SIM card then plugging the device into the laptop's USB port. Windows XP took about 30 seconds to recognise the product and install its native software. (Mac owners will need to run the disk provided and users of earlier versions of Windows will have to invoke a startup program.)
A console appeared on screen and with one click the connection was created. The console shows connection status and speed, as well as providing device management options.
The modem is small, not much larger than a box of matches, and connects via a short cable. It does not look particularly elegant hanging down from the laptop but it works well enough in practice and the lead may help prevent accidental damage if the modem should get caught on anything.
The contentious issues with 3G modems relate to speed and cost. On the journeys to the north and Scotland I could have paid for faster Wi-Fi access or taken advantage of a free service in first-class compartments. 3G data services are not cheap and businesses would be well advised to consider the implications of tariffs before rolling out accounts across large teams.
Service was very good with just one loss of connectivity. However, the colour-coded light on the modem and status software underlined the patchy nature of high-speed cellular connectivity in the UK, with GPRS availability much more common than 3G or HSDPA. Usability is similar to going back to a dial-up connection with occasional bursts of higher speeds.
My final takeaway is that 3G services are great for situations where there are no other options, and a serviceable alternative to Wi-Fi in some cases. But keep an eye on the price and don’t expect an experience comparable to fixed broadband.
The pitfalls of testing a replacement hard disk
Some guys from Samsung recently dropped by and left me one of the firm's 32GB Flash solid state disk (SSD) modules to test out.
This has so far proved to be more problematic than I had anticipated. The Samsung drive is supposed to be a drop-in replacement for a standard 2.5in laptop hard disk.
Unfortunately, the key word here is 'standard'. Samsung has designed the drive with a trusty ATA connector, but most of the laptops we have access to for testing purposes turn out to be relatively new models, all boasting the latest Serial ATA drives instead.
In desperation, I hunted around for any laptop that might have an ATA hard drive (and whose owner wouldn't mind me performing the equivalent of heart surgery on it to swap in the Samsung module).
Eventually, an ancient Dell Latitude was found lying forgotten at the back of a dusty cupboard. The reason for its abandonment soon became clear – the screen was no longer working. Never mind, I just plugged in a VGA cable and connected it to a spare monitor.
The Latitude is so old it is still running Windows 2000 Professional. That's no problem – I still have an install disk for this, so I can compare performance before and after the hard disk upgrade.
But wait – I'd better make sure that both Windows 2000 installs end up patched to the same level, so I decided to check for downloads on Microsoft's Windows Update site....oh dear, the Latitude is so old that it doesn't have a built-in Ethernet port.
Another rummage through the Labs store cupboards throws up a PC Card LAN adapter. Inevitably, Windows asks for the driver disk, which is missing, of course. Eventually, I find an ageing Xircom RealPort PC Card that is so old that even Windows 2000 shipped with drivers for it.
The Windows Update site finds no fewer than 52 patches that need applying, and these are just the critical ones. Oh, but before I can install them, Windows Update needs to download and install an update for the Windows Update service, of course.
Feeling slightly like I may be wasting a great deal of my precious time, I now have a fully patched Windows 2000 laptop. In the near future, I intend to test out its performance and battery life in its current state, then repeat the process with the new SSD in place and see if it really does boost performance and extend battery life, as Samsung claims.
