Cool Tech Reviews

Tom Spring at PC World:

Is the idea of getting a capable notebook from a major vendor for just $500 too good to be true? Not if your needs are modest. Although such deals involve definite catches, our tests revealed that new bargain-basement models work well if you want a machine that handles e-mail, Web surfing, word processing, and other run-of-the-mill productivity chores.

We tested laptops from Acer, Dell, and HP’s Compaq line; each company sells basic models for around $500 (after rebates). Gateway and IBM are also getting into the act: As we went to press, both were advertising units starting in the $500 range after rebates.

These ultralow-priced systems challenge the adage that even the most inexpensive laptops are costlier than the lowest-priced desktops.
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Thanks to strong sales of budget notebooks, in August 2005 more laptops than desktops sold at retail stores for the first time ever. Notebooks represented 52 percent of retail PC sales, according to NPD. The rise in sales corresponds to a fall in prices: The average cost of a notebook during August 2004 was $1350; in August of this year, it was $1100, NPD says.

Hit the link for the full reviews of the Acer Aspire 3003LCi, HP’s Compaq Presario M2000, and Dell Inspiron 1200. Note that for each of them you have to check the rebates and special offers carefully to make sure the total comes in under $500. Beyond that, they all seemed fairly capable although you have to watch the features included. For instance, I’m picky about Wi-Fi and only the Acer has that built in. The Acer also has a faster processor and more hard disk storage, but much worse battery life. PC World rated it the winner but only by a hair.

So where’s this all going?

How low can laptop prices go? Lower than $500, say a number of PC vendors.

The cheapest notebooks could sink to the $400 range by the end of this year and may even drop as low as $300 by late 2006, according to various computer vendors, chip experts, and PC industry observers. In fact, as we went to press CompUSA was selling a Compaq laptop for $425 after $300 in various rebates.

“It used to be notebooks would sell for close to $600 only as a stunt,” says Mark Margevicius, an analyst with Gartner Research. But now some laptops have sold for that price consistently, he says.

Due to increases in production, some expensive notebook components have dropped in price, explains Roger Kay, analyst with Endpoint Technologies Associates. That in turn drives system prices down.

That certainly happens at one end of the spectrum. At the other end, they start piling on features.

Ed Oswald at BetaNews:

Handheld devices continued to fall out of favor with consumers, according to a report released by market research firm IDC. In the third quarter of 2005, handheld sales fell 8.8 percent compared with last quarter, and 16.9 percent year over year.

Even with the declines, device manufacturers are continuing to release new products, many featuring some type of wireless connectivity. While IDC expects an uptick in sales sequentially from quarter to quarter, sales will likely miss last year’s numbers.

“The combination of tremendous competition from converged mobile devices with waning consumer demand for handhelds is forcing manufacturers to search for new or improved solutions that leverage existing hardware and software capabilities,” wrote Ramon Llamas, research analyst with IDC.

I think of it as “convergence of handheld gadgets” - who wants to carry both a cell phone and a PDA when they can quite reasonably be combined?

Laptop Logic puts them through their paces:

The world held their breath when the 100GB 7200RPM models were announced. Finally, a drive larger than 60GB that would offer near desktop performance with the 7200RPM spindle speed. Seagate and Hitachi promised high performance and high capacity, but unfortunately they couldn’t deliver it in a timely manner. Seagate announced the 7200.1 in April, but product has only shown up at resellers in the past few weeks. Hitachi does better by announcing the 7K100 in May and availability a few weeks before Seagate, but both of these products were effectively vaporware for some time.

Now that both products are readily available, albeit at rather different price points, and we’ve got a head to head look at how well these long heralded drives perform. Onto the drives!

Hit the article for all the details, but the way I read it, the Seagate has a better warranty (5 years vs 3) and is slightly quieter, while the Hitachi is slightly faster and $87 cheaper ($212 vs $299). Looking up the Hitachi price at my usual vendors I kept getting prices around $300 and was frankly puzzled until I noticed that the price quoted in the article is actually for an E7K100 and not the 7K100 which was tested.

That being said, the E7K100 seems to have the same specs as the 7K100 except for a lower max operating temperature (40° C vs 55° C for the 7K100 like the Seagate) and lacks “Enhanced ABLE™ for maximum battery utilization.” The E7K100 seems to be “designed for demanding applications requiring extended power on usage” like blade servers, network equipment, and POS terminals, while the 7K100 is explicitly for laptops. It beats me what the real difference is, much more why the E7K100 is so much cheaper.

My net is that these drives seem to be a wash on other factors, so picking on price is fine. Just be aware that the substantial cost saving comes with the E7K100, not the 7K100.

Over at PC Magazine, Sascha Segan thinks it’s pretty neat:

Verizon’s answer to the T-Mobile Sidekick, the LG VX9800, is a top-notch phone with an unusual style and features that will appeal primarily to hard-core SMS addicts. It will appeal less to corporate types, because Verizon fails to provide a high-quality corporate e-mail solution, but for consumers looking for a good-sounding phone for text messaging and gaming, the LG VX9800 hits the mark.

At first glance, it appears to be merely a chubby, businesslike, candy bar-style phone (4.6 by 2 by 1 inches, 5.2 oz), with well-spaced keys and a very sharp 160-by-128 pixel color screen, but the VX9800 is something of a quick-change artist. Flip it open horizontally and you see a very usable thumb keyboard and dual stereo speakers flanking a downright gorgeous 320-by-256 pixel color internal screen. With its wide range of movement, the phone’s hinge allows the two halves of the device to lie flat for the best possible two-handed messaging, or into a laptop-like position for sitting on a desk.

Hit the link for a picture of the “clamshell” case, which is interesting, as is the fact that it can be used as an EV-DO modem for a laptop:

This is the first instance that a Verizon non-PDA phone has been equipped with Bluetooth for laptop connectivity with the intention of using the phone as a modem. Yes, other phones can be hacked to work as modems, but you’re violating Verizon’s terms of service to do so. Lest you Verizon subscribers find yourself getting overly excited, it takes some knowledge to get your laptop online with the VX9800—inexplicably, Verizon provides no instructions. Nonetheless, we were successful in getting our Dell and IBM laptops connected to the VX9800’s Dial-Up Networking profile. That was as far as we got, though, because at press time Verizon wouldn’t tell us when the dial-up networking service would become available or how much it would cost.

Which brings us to exactly what it can be used for and the phrase above, “non-PDA phone,” provides the clue that this isn’t the normal smartphone. Cut to Scott Moritz at TheStreet.com:

While some phones are made for work, the VX9800 is clearly made for play. This is no smartphone, which means it has no PDA or PC operating system. So don’t expect to find a Word program, an Excel spreadsheet or any kind of task organizer.

So what does it have? Well, there is the phone (digital only), of course, and it has a camera, Bluetooth, a web browser of sorts, an IM client, and an email/contacts application service for $20 extra per month (there are other options). And there are videos and games:

But then come the demerits for the skimpy display screen. For whatever reason, the LG/Verizon braintrust decided to put a 2.25-inch screen in a 3-inch opening. It’s an odd move for a flagship 3G video and gaming phone.
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And at the moment, Verizon’s media download setup, called VCast, is a tad light on compelling offerings. Unless, of course, you feel like watching TV previews, a Chianti wine tasting or, for a mere $4 extra, a Shakira video.

You can certainly see where Verizon is going with this. Think Japan or South Korea, where media feeds to cell phones are a popular feature. However, given the VCast programs available today, a lot is going to be left to your imagination.

One group of users is probably going to like this phone a lot: gamers. My 7-year-old son’s discovery of the trove of preloaded games opened my eyes to a big market for this phone. You get a few games included, and of course you can also download games from a menu including Evel Knievel for $2.50, Tetris for $3 or unlimited Tetris for $7.50.

Sorry, but that won’t have me picking up the phone, particularly at its current price:

And even with the puny screen, don’t expect to see a bargain basement price. The VX9800 is in the same bracket as rival devices like the new Palm Treo and the Sony PSP. The VX9800 goes for $300 with rebate and two-year contract. And in addition to your calling plan, you will pay another $25 a month for unlimited messaging and access to the games and media offerings.

After sinking hundreds of millions of dollars into a fast evolution data-only, or EV-DO, upgrade to its network, Verizon Wireless’ desire to sell lots of videos and music is understandable. But if you promise the kids thrill rides, you better deliver an amusement park.

Hit both reviews to get the full picture, but it doesn’t seem to me that this one is fully baked yet.

One last review of the “Video iPod”- Richard Baguley in PC World:

Given the brouhaha surrounding Apple’s latest player, one might assume its name is the Video iPod. Think again: It’s simply an iPod, the fifth generation of the device since its introduction four years ago.

And that’s probably the best way to think of it. Although the big story is its ability to play videos, it’s really just an audio player (and a good one) that can do video, not a dedicated video player.

Microsoft had an odd press release the other day - Q&A: Microsoft and Sony Team on Digital Entertainment Content Management System:

Though rivals in the gaming-console market, both companies find they have much to gain from working closely to integrate the new Sony VAIO XL1 Digital Living System with Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005.

The kids are asleep. The popcorn’s ready. Time to watch that favorite old movie on DVD. You pop open the case, but instead of “Dr. Zhivago,” you’re staring at a copy of “Dr. Seuss.”

Another misplaced disc, another frustrating search through the entertainment center shelves – it’s one the more familiar and irritating drawbacks of owning large collections of entertainment content stored on DVDs and CDs. But with today’s launch of the Sony VAIO XL1 Digital Living System, a new digital content management product developed in close partnership with Microsoft, movie and music buffs can get back to enjoying their discs instead of playing hide-and-seek with them.

Consisting of a 200-disc media changer and recorder console that connects to a Sony VAIO PC running Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, the Sony VAIO XL1 Digital Living System lets users control their media library in one location using the wireless keyboard and remote control. In addition to storing and indexing up to 200 CDs or DVDs at a time for playback on audio and video devices linked to their home entertainment center through the PC, VAIO XL1 system owners can use the Media Center Edition capabilities to manage content such as downloaded movies and music, digitally recorded TV shows, personal photos and high-definition camcorder video files.

The challenges involved in tightly integrating Sony’s disc changer, media recording and archiving capabilities, and other feature sets with Media Center Edition required deep – but not unprecedented – collaboration between the two companies.

There’s more about the collaboration which is mildly amusing, but I was mostly interested in the box itself and Joel Santo Domingo at PC Magazine has done a review:

The Sony VAIO XL1 Digital Living System ($2,300 direct) disproves the notion that all the cool technology is found only in the Japanese domestic market. Designed to be the true Media Center in your home theater, the XL1 can replace your TiVo, CD changer, DVD player/changer, DVD recorder, and any older Media Center PC you have put in your rec room. The XL1 looks more like a piece of stereo equipment than a computer, and that is part of its appeal. It uses the latest Update Rollup 2 for Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 and brings added convenience to those with extensive media libraries. This is the system for the true media collector: Movies and music won’t be the same after you load them up in the XL1’s changer.

The XL1 Digital Living System consists of two halves: the VGX-XL1A main unit and the VGP-XL1B 200-disc CD/DVD changer. The XL1B is the muscle of the system. You can load 200 CDs into the changer, call up the MCE interface, select the “manage discs” menu item, and rip all 200 CDs onto the VGX-XL1A’s 200GB hard drive. This is a much better way to copy your music than what the typical MCE PC allows you to do, which is come back every few minutes to swap discs. The saving in time and convenience would be significant for the person with several hundred (or a few thousand) CDs. In our testing, the XL1 still took 3 to 4 minutes to rip a CD, but it does all 200 consecutively; so once you load them in the changer, you can leave the system alone, say overnight, and in the morning it’ll be done. Loading and unloading the slot-loading changer was a snap; loading or ejecting each disc took only a few seconds.

After you’ve ripped your CDs, you can keep as many as 200 DVDs in the changer. The XL1 system keeps track of them, so they can be called up and played at a moment’s notice.

Yikes! We’re talking a serious collector here. Much more by following the link, but he mentions something I was wondering about:

One major issue we have with the XL1 system is the relatively small 200GB hard drive. Although 200GB is sizable for an average desktop user, it is barely adequate for a heavy DVR user who wants to record entire seasons of shows regularly. Since the XL1 is designed for the living room, it is not the type of product people will want to crack open and upgrade every time a new hard drive capacity comes out. Sure, there are two spare internal drive bays (for up to 1.2TB of hard drive space) and several i.Link/FireWire ports for external drive upgrades, but living-room PCs typically follow the consumer electronics model: Buy it, set it up, and forget it.

So I guess the drive size is fixable although you’d think that in a $2300 machine they could go a bit higher to start with.

In a nutshell: “Sony VAIO XL1 Digital Living System won’t replace your notebook or desktop PC, but it fast approaches Media Center nirvana.”