Have Laptop Will Travel

Dells signs deal with Tesco

Originally posted on December 28, 2007 @ 10:19 pm

Dell looks to further strengthen its market presence in other countries, most especially in Europe as a way of really driving competition and extending its overall share of the worldwide market. It recently signed a deal with British retail gian Tesco to distribute and sell Dell personal computers in its outlets in Europe.

According to the company, starting January 2008, customers can buy Dell XPS and Inspiron computers in Tesco outlets in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Slovakia, Poland and the Czech Republic.

Earlier, Dell also signed a similar deal with DSGi, a bigtime European retailer. The agreement will allow DSGi to sell Dell PCs at PC World, Currys and Dixons.co.uk in the UK and in Norway, Finland, Spain, Greece and other countries in Eastern Europe.

Earlier this month Dell said it had reached an agreement with European retailer DSGi to offer Dell computers at PC World, Currys and Dixons.co.uk in the UK as well as outlets in Norway, Spain, Finland, Greece and across eastern Europe.

Democrat Congressman to file new net neutrality bill

Originally posted on December 4, 2007 @ 12:01 am

With the US presidential elections looming, politicians are doing their best to be heard and noticed among the din of other politicos beating their own pots and pans. what better way to be heard than to ride on a very hotly contested issue.

Rep. Ed Markey is planning to present a network neutrality bill in the next two weeks. The Massachusetts Democrat’s new bill is reportedly going to be very similar to an earlier network neutrality legislation that he unsuccessfully lobbied for in 2006.

Based on the 2006 bill, the proposal was to prevent broadband carriers like AT&T and Comcast from charging internet content, application and service providers with additional fees that are based on bandwidth consumption. This practice, according to network regulation supporters, is almost like price discrimination.

Will this new bill gain more headway than the previous bill? We’ll see in the coming months.

Google to release storage service

Originally posted on November 27, 2007 @ 11:56 pm

One of the problems that I think broadband connections have caused is file storage. With large files that were once too big to download now easily downloadable because of fast download speeds. Most computer and laptop users are finding it exceedingly difficult to store the various files that receive from the office, from friends and from the internet. I myself am having a lot of storage problems and I already have four spare hard drives for most of my files.

Google’s decision to come out with a remote storage service is a welcome one for people like me. The service will allow people to store different kinds of files — documents, music files, videos and images — on Google’s computers. Users can access their files anywhere and it will also be secured.

As with other Google products, there will be free storage provided to users but additional storage capacities will require additional fees. Pricing at this point is still not known.

This is a great service to offer users. I remember using a similar service about nine years ago but unfortunately, that service closed down and brought along with it all of my precious data.

New ASUS EEE with bigger screen but with the same processor?

Originally posted on March 7, 2008 @ 11:23 pm

I’ve been raving about my ASUS EEE to anyone who would care to listen. I’m just so in love with my little machine that I want to spread the love and tell them how versatile it is, it’s very light weight, its portability and how useful it is in extending one’s productivity.

But recent news from ASUS has brought me a bit more excitement. The company is apparently releasing a new ASUS EEE model that sports an 8.9 inch screen. This is the answer to the prayers of people who have been “complaining” about the diminutive 7 inch screen of the first model. What’s more, the SSD will get a capacity bump up to 12gb in some models. That’s also quite significant.

I did seriously consider ditching my baby and replacing it with the big-screen EEE especially if the price point will be attractive for me. But there are some news trickling in that the new model will sport the same processor as the first model, a Celeron 900. There had been hopes that the Intel Atom will be incorporated into the second generation model but it looks like this is where ASUS will scrimp in order to maintain that attractive number on the price tag.

Let’s wait and see though if ASUS will change its mind before the new model is released in a couple of months.

New Windows version in a couple of years?

Originally posted on April 7, 2008 @ 11:58 pm

I don’t know how you guys will take this recent news from Microsoft.

In a recent seminar on corporate philantrophy, Bill Gates said that the new version of Windows could be released anytime within the “next year or so”. This statement seems to back up the new corporate strategy of releasing far more regular updates of its dominant operating system. This means that we can expect the next OS upgrade to Vista to come to market far earlier than what was previously thought.

The new strategy seems to be to release a new Windows version within 3 years of the last version. What Gates said, therefore, actually fits into the development cycle that Microsoft has identified. Of course, this could just mean test versions coming out and not the final release product yet. Nevertheless, this development cycle leaves a very bad taste in the mouth. The cost of software upgrades is just too steep and now, the expectation is that every four to five years you have to upgrade again? It would have been a good thing if consumers can decide for themselves when to upgrade but with Microsoft’s policy of stopping support for older OS and bundling important features exclusively to the new OS (like Vista and DirectX 10), we are being forced to upgrade at gunpoint.

This is just unacceptable.