Cool Tech Reviews

Over at his PC Magazine blog, Michael J. Miller has a preliminary review of the Toshiba Portege M400 convertible tablet PC. Frankly, it doesn’t seem all that different from other convertible tablets except for the compact 12 inch screen size which is the main point:

I’m a big fan of both small notebooks and tablet computers. I like my laptops light, because I’m a train commuter, and carry my laptop a lot. And I like tablet computers mostly because I like reading on them (with the screen in a vertical position), and for occasionally annotating notes and documents with the pen.

Ultimately, Miller remarks that he prefers the Lenovo Thinkpad X41 12 inch convertible tablet which is even lighter at 3.7 pounds than the M400 at 4.5 pounds. At the opposite end of the spectrum is Eric Mack who teases his readers with news of an “ultra-wide screen” tablet PC that he is expecting shortly from an unnamed manufacturer:

I just got off the phone with an excited representative from a well known computer manufacturer who called to let me know that, because of my blog, I’ve been selected to evaluate one of their new ultra-wide screen Tablet PCs. She promised me that it was perfect for Tablet PC mind-mapping and that I would be very happy with the display resolution and size.

Since Mack also says he’d “be happy with a 2.5″ thick Tablet the size of a Tecra M4 with a fold-out screen twice the size of an M4″ which is 14.1 inches, it’s clear he’s not worried about portability.

I can see the merits of both points of view, but the real problem is that the amount of time I really want a tablet PC of either size is vanishingly small. Battery life inhibits true portability and I am not comfortable enough with tablet technology to have some monster version parked permanently on my desk taking up space. I’m hopeful though, that one of these days there will be a tablet that convinces me.

Bruno Giussani has an interesting post at his blog, that also appeared in Wall Street Journal Europe, which reveals a little known downside to using Skype for VoIP telephone service. It turns out that Skype is actually a peer-to-peer application and under certain circumstances, your PC may get turned into a “supernode” spewing a ton of Internet traffic on behalf of Skype.

Consider this text from CERN’s Web site: “Skype [peer-to-peer] telephony software is not permitted on CERN’s computing or network facilities. It violates CERN’s Computing Rules by bypassing firewall protections and offering services to others.”
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The issues are a bit complex. Let’s try to break them down.

First, the “supernode” question. “Skype can turn user computers into ‘supernodes’ which route traffic through CERN,” François Grey of CERN’s IT communications team explained in an email exchange: “We have encountered some operational problems as a result.” That’s because Skype’s design is based on peer-to-peer, distributed networking principles. This means that the core functions of the system are decentralized, as is the database of Skype users (the tool that lets you look up other Sykpers and tells the system where to forward a call). The calls are set up and passed on among users, flowing through a chain of computers around the world without traversing any central infrastructure.

That’s good for robustness and scalability — and for Skype, which can avoid massive investments and add new users at near-zero marginal cost. For the system to work, however, some users have to take over its vital functions: routing traffic and holding portions of the database. In Skypeville, these tasks are farmed out to those users with the most powerful computers and the biggest bandwidth, such as CERN. Skype turns them into supernodes.

Only a fraction of users are elevated to this function–currently some 20,000, according to research presented at a recent conference in the Netherlands by Philippe Biondi and Fabrice Desclaux of EADS. And only a small portion of their bandwidth is supposed to be shared. Skype CEO Niklas Zennström explained it to me in an interview last year: “When you become a supernode you share some of your resources and a little bit of bandwidth, but very little; you won’t notice.”

That’s the idea at least, but it doesn’t always work out that way:

But some do notice. San Diego-based venture capitalist and TV host Paul Kedrosky, for example, complained on his blog in January that while he was traveling his computer “was sending out enormous amounts of traffic.” The IT people at his firm discovered that the machine was routing Skype traffic as a supernode. Computerworld magazine found that “in supernode mode, Skype is reputedly able to saturate 100 Mbit/second connections.” In layman’s terms, those are fast connections. The average Skype user’s PC is much less taxed than this, obviously. The possibility of becoming a supernode is written into Skype’s end-user license agreement, but not explicitly: The word “supernode” is never used. The license speaks of “permission to utilize the processor and bandwidth of your computer for the limited purpose of facilitating the communication between Skype Software users.”

The criteria for a subscriber PC to be chosen for use as a “supernode” aren’t really clear although the Computerworld article linked above suggests that if your machine has a high speed Internet connection and a routeable IP address (e. g. not behind the average home router with Network Address Translation (NAT)), you are a good candidate.

There’s much more by following the link including worries about security and legal regulations that might require Skype users to store any traffic routed through their machines. Nicholas Carr notes how using customer machines to provide infrastructure seems to be critical to Skype’s business model and that there it is no such thing as a free ride. I’m wondering about the multitudes of other VoIP services and how many of them are really P2P applications too?

Tom Krazit at CNET:

Dell has agreed to purchase gaming PC maker Alienware, in a rare acquisition designed to improve Alienware’s supply chain and boost Dell’s standing among PC enthusiasts.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Alienware will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of the world’s largest PC maker, said Nelson Gonzalez, chief executive officer of Alienware. Gonzalez will now report to Jim Schneider, Dell’s chief financial officer, but the company will operate separately from Dell, he said.

A Dell representative confirmed the deal, but said the company was deferring comment until later on Wednesday.

There are more details in the article, but it appears the calim is that Alienware will operate semi-autonomously. While not as bad a match as the HP acquisition of Compaq, there still was some adverse comment about overlap:

“I still think it’s a bad idea, and a bad fit,” said Stephen Baker, an analyst with NPD Techworld. Alienware’s customers buy from that company in part because of its image as a technology-driven company that understands the needs of gamers, while Dell is viewed by those customers as a stodgy corporate supplier.
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The deal also could mean that Dell has to rethink its consumer PC strategy, said Roger Kay, principal analyst with Endpoint Technologies Associates. The company has sunk a lot of effort into building its XPS lineup of high-end desktops and notebooks for gamers and multimedia enthusiasts. Now, it looks like those systems compete with Alienware in certain areas, he said.

Alienware sells very powerful and very expensive PCs to the top tier of the gaming market. Dell, on the other hand, has a stronger identity with casual gamers who want a good PC but don’t want to pay Alienware prices. Both companies have recently tried to appeal to gamers that fall in between those two groups, with Alienware reaching down and Dell reaching up, Kay said. It’s unclear how those strategies will continue.

Not unexpectedly, some Alienware fans are already expressing their displeasure. Ed Bott says, “So long, Alienware, it was nice to know you”:

Pretty soon Dell customers will be able to spend $10,000 for a PC.

It will be interesting to see how those first buyers react when they have a problem with that Dell PC and get shunted into the world’s worst technical support system.
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In the six months or so since I last wrote about Dell, their service has become worse. I’ve now been waiting 24 days for Dell to repair a defective motherboard on a notebook computer that’s still under warranty. The sheer incompetence of their support organization is breathtaking.

If you’re thinking of buying a Dell – or an Alienware – think again. There are plenty of well-run companies you can give your business to.

Finally, John Pain from the AP has a nice background story on the people who built Alienware.

Charlie Demerjian at The Inquirer:

Every so often there comes a genre-bending product, and Tyan has one of those on its stand at CeBIT this year. It is called the Typhoon PSC or Person Super Computer, and is aimed at the scientific and HPC set. Typhoon PSCs come either Opteron or P4/PD flavours, and brushed aluminium or black finish.

The point of this box is not to make an ultimate gaming rig, it is meant to take what used to be the domain of a data centre and move it to under the desktop.
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There are two PSCs, the Opteron one is the B2881YDS4T and the P4/D model is the B5160YDS4T. Both are basically four dual socket blades in a box with all the necessary cables and attachments in a nice aluminium case. It also has little wheels and two carry handles which I have personally tested to get the rear shot here.

The specs vary between the models a bit, but there are eight sockets and up to 16 cores on either one, depending on how you want to set up the system. The Opteron can handle 64GB of memory, 32 for the Pentium. There is one S-ATA drive per blade, and they are coupled through GigE on the back. Each blade has an independent 350W PSU for a total of 1400W, which fits nicely in the 1500W most circuits can provide.

Yikes, that’s still a pretty heavy load! If you click through to the article, you’ll see the photo mentioned and it looks like a box of fans, although Demerjian says it is very quiet. There are more details in the Tyan press release and the B2881YDS4T and B5160YDS4T product pages but the most startling thing is that the whole package is 14″ x 12.6″ x 26.7″.

No prices are mentioned, but if I really had a project in hand that required heavy computing I’d certainly give this a look.

One of my pet theories is that if a PC manufacturer would only turn out units with slightly “out of date” technology instead of competing on specs with everyone else, they could offer some amazingly cheap but still very functional PC hardware. It looks like Fry’s Electronics is doing just that as Loyd Case reports at PC Magazine in Your Next PC Will Cost $159:

Holy tightwads, Batman! A better PC than what you’re running costs less than a pair of designer jeans? What’s happened to the computer industry?

Were GQ magazine to design a computer, it would sport a Gucci leather jacket and stroll in slick Prada loafers. It would also cost eight, maybe nine thousand dollars. But when Fry’s Electronics designed the GQ system, it wasn’t thinking of luxury linens and leather. It wanted something cheap. The surprising thing is that the GQ (short for “Great Quality,” by the way, not Gentleman’s Quarterly) turns out to be a powerful PC. It’s low-cost, in other words, not high crap.

Hit the link for the full review but here’s what you get for $159:

What $159 Buys You…

• COMPUTER In addition to the 1.67-GHz AMD Sempron chip (and integrated graphics and 6 channel audio), you’ll get four USB ports, Ethernet, and an AGP slot.
• MEMORY Only 128MB of RAM, which is barely adequate, really. Replace it with 512MB for around $40.
• 40 GB hard disk.
• SPEAKERS They’re included, but they sound awful. Really, these speakers are just terrible.
• Generic modem
• KEYBOARD AND MOUSE A surprisingly responsive keyboard and generic ball mouse round it all out.

…& What It Doesn’t

• NEW TECH You’ve heard of PCI Express, SATA, and dual-core, but you won’t get them here.
• LCD MONITOR Nope. Not a chance. In fact, there’s no screen included, period. (Fry’s offers a companion 17-inch CRT for $119.)
• DVD BURNER There’s no DVD recorder, not even a CD burner. But there is a fast CD-ROM drive.
• SOFTWARE Nothing from Microsoft here, but to be fair, the Linspire OS is pretty decent.

As far as the hardware goes, the memory is obviously short, even for Linux, but while you can argue about some of the other features it seems to be a pretty capable machine. Case was impressed with Linspire (which comes with OpenOffice) but obviously that’s going to be a matter of taste. If you have to buy Windows XP, it’s likely at least another $70 on top which rather spoils the deal but gives you an idea of where the money on a PC is going.

However, it turns out that there’s another alternative. Microsoft’s Chris Sells saw the PC Magazine review and decided to give the bargain PC a try. Apparently the $159 PC was a limited quantity offer, but he came up with an equivalent one for $171 and added $100 for 1GB of RAM and $95 for an ATI Radeon 9550 AGP card. The net was a $366 PC and he installed a beta of Windows Vista on it!

At 12:04am, I started the Vista Feb ‘06 CTP installation. At 12:44am, I was running Vista, it having recognized all of hardware (except the sound device) from my $366 PC, including enabling those cool “glass” effects and the nifty animations, integrated search and all the neat things you’ve read about in the Vista reviews.

I know I work for “the man,” but even so, I’m seriously impressed. The install was fast and seamless. The performance is way better than I thought it would be. And the little UI tricks are fabulous. I can’t do any media stuff ‘cuz my audio device wasn’t recognized, but it was cool when I tried to play video and a DVD, that the Vista Media Center UI came up (my complete home entertainment needs are served with a coupla TVs, a Media Center PC and an XBox).

I know, I know, I got the OS for free, but come on! It’s still beta and it runs great on my cheapo PC!

Hit the link for all the details including a certain amount of disbelief from some commenters who have had performance problems with the Vista beta. I’m not recommending buying an inexpensive PC in anticipation of Vista, but it looks like there truly is some capable bargain hardware out there if you are willing to shop around.

The Pentium Chronicles : The People, Passion, and Politics Behind Intel’s Landmark Chips by Robert P. Colwell. Published 2006 by John Wiley & Sons. ISBN: 0471736171.

Summary: Dr. Robert P. Colwell was Chief Architect of Intel’s wildly successful P6 processor and the The Pentium Chronicles is an anecdotal account of its development from someone who was in on it from the start. While portions of the book will only appeal to those in the chip industry, there is something there for everyone about life in a large organization.

Review: Dr. Colwell’s account of the development of the Intel’s “P6″ processor (which appeared to great success as Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III, and other names) will inevitably be compared to Tracy Kidder’s The Soul of a New Machine, but the comparison is imprecise. While Kidder provides a start-to-finish narrative of the development of a minicomputer at Data General in the 70’s, Colwell recounts a selection of high (and low) spots along the way to the completion of the P6. Both projects were huge bets for their respective companies that were ultimately successful and both teams seemed to have suffered the same sort of “post partum depression” when they were completed.

Colwell describes starting out with a small team and the perils of each step along the way from concept to final production of a large chip technology project. The technological and development process insights are interesting to me and likely anyone else with experience in the industry. One is the guidance of design with performance information based on real data which is often amazingly absent from many technical projects. While many designers tend to shoot from the hip based on their “intuitions,” Colwell describes how his team trained their intuitions in designing the unprecedented features of the P6 using performance analysis tools they wrote themselves and exploiting real instruction traces.

If that is too techie for you, there are plenty of items of more general interest about the computer industry (e.g. a meeting at Microsoft turning into a shouting match between the Windows 95 and Windows NT teams or an off-the-cuff remark at a press event being blazoned across the headlines) and about life in a large organization. What do you do when when rival teams make bogus performance claims; or when there’s a corporate directive replacing satisfactory tool systems with buggy “approved” versions; or when implementing the latest corporate slogan campaign has your engineers in revolt? Colwell has no magic answer other than to shoot straight and tell the truth which is the best advice anyone can give.

However, while it never seems like it at the time, all successful technical projects are a brief magic moment which passes all too swiftly. Organizations inevitably change which places a premium on another key skill which is knowing when to move on. Colwell eventually did exactly that and explains why. The changes that have taken place at Intel over the years are likely one of the reasons it is facing its current difficulties.