Have Laptop Will Travel

Eudora goes open source

Originally posted on September 10, 2007 @ 11:54 pm

one of the first popular email clients was Eudora. Talk about Eudora and visions of the internet in its infancy come to mind. It’s because it was one of the pioneers and acknowledged favorites during the first few years of the technology. Eudora and Netscape Navigator are technological relics that forms a snapshot of the internet at a particular period of time.

Of course, Eudora is already way past its popularity. Any mention of the brand now will most likely just show the age of the listener rather than his technological adeptness. Even though it enjoys a strong fan base and is consistently getting good reviews, the fact is that it just could not compete in terms of popularity and sales with the products Microsoft was putting out. But it looks like it is getting a new lease on life. Qualcomm, Inc., after deciding to stop selling Eudora as a product last May, decided to donate it to the open source community.  What this means is that anyone can now download the product and use it for free. What’s more, the source code for the software will now be made available to the public, allowing them to tweak the software or make additions for distribution to other users.

This is a great way of extending the life of software and also spurs the creativity of the open source community. I hope this move becomes an example to other software companies to do the same thing with their products.

Hot laptops on your lap, anyone?

Originally posted on August 18, 2007 @ 12:34 am

Heat is one of the things that annoy me the most in laptops.

Okay, it’s great that you can bring your computer anywhere with you and basically do anything you want, anywhere you want. Portability is really a great come-on for anyone, but heat issues with certain laptops can really dampen your enthusiasm for them.

Take for example, my trusty Acer laptop. We’ve been through so much together. It has been a very able and tough road warrior but what I hate about it is that I really can’t consider it a “laptop”. Any attempts to use my lap to prop up my laptop will only last for thirty minutes or less. The bottom gets uncomfortably hot for any extended usage time. It actually gets hot enough for me to worry about my fertility. I can imagine my little sperm cells boiling down there, all because of a little computer.

I hope computer companies make laptops with more effective heat dissipation designs. I’ve already heard of units that employ heatpipe technology to wick away ambient heat from CPUs. I look forward to future products that will employ more exotic heat dissipation solutions so I can finally get a laptop that I can put on my lap without fearing for my balls.

AMD to aggressively enter notebook sector

Originally posted on October 12, 2007 @ 10:02 pm

AMD has gained a firm foothold in the server market because of its high performance, low cost CPUs but the company is not content with its achievements. They are now poised to increase its presence in the notebook sector by releasing low power CPUs and GPUs that are specifically designed to achieve the best performance on notebooks.

According to AMD CEO Hector Cruz, the company’s acquisition of GPU manufacturer ATI has enabled them to finally give consumers a more complete solution as well as the ability to present a more robust and varied lineup of products — mainly, CPUs, chipsets and graphics — that allows consumers the freedom to choose the platforms that would fit their needs and budgets.

Ruiz also announced that it will be coming out with its Puma and Griffin processors by next year along with its Hardcastle cooperation with industry participants.

Ruiz’s comments are something that I knew will happen with AMD’s acquisition of ATI. Instead of the prevailing fear then of a monopoly, I knew that the merger will actually result in a better market overall for consumers. I’m glad that this is the direction that AMD and the market is taking because in this scenario, it is us the consumers who will be the winners.

Acer 4520 keyboard lag could be a BIOS problem

Originally posted on August 20, 2007 @ 10:58 pm

There has been a great response to my blog post about the keyboard lag problem on the Acer 4520 laptops. It seems that people who bought the laptop in other countries are also experiencing the same problem.

In that previous entry I talked about what some of the Acer owner sdid in order to address the problem — that is, they tried to swap the laptop’s memory in the hope that it may just be incompatible RAMs. But the keyboard lag still persisted. Another new tactic that was used that also proved to be ineffective was to reinstall the Windows OS on the affected units. Some people reported a “slight” improvement — meaning the lag was not as slow as before. But there were also some users who said the lag time was still the same.

From the number of users that are complaining about the keyboard lag, the inevitable conclusion that has been arrived at is that it is a system problem. The culprit being pointed at is the system bios, which really has no user level solution though. Acer 4520 users have no choice but to wait for the company to issue a bios update that can possibly address the issue of the keyboard lag.

Microsoft to release Vista Service Pack

Originally posted on August 31, 2007 @ 12:15 am

Finally, the anticipated release of the Windows Vista service pack is nigh. The Vista service pack marks the first significant upgrade to the operating system that Microsoft debuted last January. According to Microsoft officials the Service Pack will be released to a relatively “moderate sized audience” in the next couple of weeks while the general release to the public at large will happen within the first few months in 2008. Up to now there are still no firm dates for the release of the service pack, this will happen after the company has evaluated the feedback from the people who are using the beta release of the Vista service pack. Microsoft also announced that the service pack will come in three distinct forms. These are express, stand-alone, and slipstream. These are basically delivery models in which the service pack will be introduced to the core operating system.

Why are these service packs so anticipated? well, the answer is simple. These updates actually improve security and performance, adds more support for emerging standards and hardware and also addresses bugs in the OS itself. Call me jaded, but I always have a problem with calling these upgrades service packs. Let’s face it, Microsoft always ships an incomplete product during launch. It’s basically just an improved and more stable beta release and the service packs are the patches that bring the operating system to version 1.0.

perating system, an update that features security upgrades, improved performance, and support for emerging hardware and standards.

“A small group of testers has been putting a preview of the SP1 Beta through its paces to help prepare for broader release,” Nick White, a Microsoft product manager, wrote in a Wednesday blog post. “We made the choice to start with a very small group of testers because we think it’s better for both our customers and for Microsoft to keep the beta program small at the start.””A later pre-release of SP1 will be available to a larger group of testers via MSDN and TechNet subscribers,” White said.

Vista SP1 will be available in three forms: express, stand-alone, and slipstream.