Cool Tech Reviews

We’ve mentioned previously that Microsoft’s new security suite, Windows Live OneCare, is not faring well in reviews. Add one more as the folks at agnitum (which does offer a competing firewall) put the OneCare firewall through its paces. Hit the link for the technical details, but here’s the punch line:

Although the program is very intuitive, nice to look at, and easy to use – which is good for the program’s target audience of inexperienced users – its functionality is a big let-down and does not serve that inexperienced user audience well. It reminds us of those a colorful and feature-rich Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) with nothing behind them that you sometimes see at exhibitions, because the vendors couldn’t finish the whole program in time. Microsoft OneCare needs a serious overhaul before it can be considered anything more than just a fancy interface with no real security under the hood.

Ouch! While I don’t necessarily buy in to all the issues raised, check this out:

After OneCare has worked for a couple of hours and created a reasonable-sized database of application access rules, we subjected the firewall to a slate of leaktests intended to verify how the program would protect users against imaginary malware attempts to upload data from the host computer. The results were very poor, with the OneCare firewall passing only the most basic and simple leaktests and failing the rest. Amusingly, it treated leaktests as if they were normal Windows Explorer (explore.exe), Internet Explorer and other credible applications widely used on a Windows-based computer, failing to detect the tests’ tendency to imitate, implant its code in, or hijack a credible application on which behalf it subsequently gained access credentials.

The implications of this poor performance are far-reaching: any competent piece of malware would have no problem stealing data from a PC ‘protected’ by OneCare, and the firewall uttered not a single peep to prevent this from happening.

Sounds like Microsoft has got some work to do.

Solid state, non volatile disk storage replacement has been a dream for a lot of years and while flash disks are finally killing the floppy, advances in hard disk technology have always kept the price per byte low enough that solid state didn’t have much leverage except for special use devices. That may be starting to change as laptop manufacturers have started introducing new models with flash disks instead of hard drives in some notebook models. Martyn Williams at PCWorld:

Sony will replace hard disks with flash memory when it launches a new model of its Vaio U laptop next week, it said today (June 27 - ed.).
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Flash has long been eyed as a potential replacement for hard drives because it is lighter, runs silently, offers faster data access, and uses less power, but price has always been an obstacle.
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The Vaio UX90 will come with 16GB of flash memory storage in place of the 30GB hard drive on the original model. It will cost around $1805, or about $345 more expensive than the disk-based model, and go on sale in Japan on July 3.

The UX Micro PCs look like a PDA on steroids, but they run Widows XP Professional and regular Windows applications as well as having some media player functionality.

Samsung Electronics launched a couple of PCs with flash storage earlier this month. The Q30 laptop and Q1 ultra mobile PC both use Samsung’s “solid state disk,” which packs 32GB of NAND flash memory into a case the same size as a 1.8-inch hard drive.

The Q1 is Samsung’s entry in the oddball Origami (AKA UMPC) tablet PC form factor developed by Microsoft and Intel, while the Q30-SSD (Solid State Drive) is a regular laptop:

Sammy just announced that their sweet, sweet NAND-based Q30-SSD we first got down and dirty with at CeBIT will hit the shelves in Korea (only) from early June onward. Yeah, it’ll fetch a steep $3,700 US-equiv (a roughly $900 premium) on that aging 1.2GHz Celeron M Q30 platform, but that 32GB of NAND reads 300 percent faster (53MB/s) and write 150 percent quicker (28MB/s) than normal hard drives while offering better protection against shock, 25-50% faster boots and sleep recovery times, longer battery life and reduced weight all in a completely silent, fanless package. Hoozah!

To which, I guess I have to add, ouch! The prices still have a way to go to attract the average consumer. More on Samsung’s solid state hard drive here.

Greg Sandoval at ZDNet:

Warner Bros. Entertainment on Monday began selling full-length feature films and TV shows over the Internet via Guba, one of a legion of companies presenting amateur-videos on the Web.

Guba customers can rent a film for $1.79 per day or pay $9.99 to own an older title. Newer movies cost $19.99 (actually TV shows rent for $1.79 and movies for $1.99 a day - ed.). All the content is protected by Microsoft-developed digital rights management software, the companies said.

The agreement is the latest sign that at least some in Hollywood may be ready to deal with Internet sites that some in the movie business consider a threat. Warner Bros. last month announced that it had chosen file-sharing technology from BitTorrent to distribute films.

The difference is that the Guba content can be copied to DVDs:

Under the Guba-Warner Bros. agreement, people will be able to make a copy of a video onto a DVD, but, because of industry licensing agreements, it can only be played on the computer from which it was burned. Wuthrich said he hopes consumers will be able to watch the copied DVDs with a DVD player within a year or so.

while purchases from BitTorrent cannot be copied to DVDs at all.

For Guba, the partnership is a coup. Like most other competitors in the video-sharing space, Guba has seen its public profile eclipsed by the juggernaut, YouTube. Thomas McInerney, the Guba’s CEO, said he hopes the Warner Bros. partnership will help the company stand apart from rivals.

There is some interesting background on Guba by following the link, but the bigger story is studios embracing download services in the apparent hope that the widespread availability of legal content will cut down on piracy. It might even work.

Note that Warner Bros. did a separate deal with corporate cousin AOL for distributing old TV shows for free.

Update 8/23: This post was heavily revised.

Last week was a big week for the Blu-ray high definition DVD ([1], [2]) but there was some interesting news about the competing HD DVD format - ‘Teardown’ finds Toshiba taking a loss on HD DVD player:

Toshiba Corp. is taking a substantial loss on sales of its new HD DVD player in hopes of buying a head start in the battle for the next generation of DVD technology, according to a “teardown” analysis conducted by market research firm iSuppli Corp.

According to iSuppli’s teardown analysis, bill-of-materials (BOM) costs for Toshiba’s HD-A1 HD DVD total an estimated $674, far exceeding the unit’s $499 U.S. retail price. The estimated BOM figure excludes costs for manufacturing, testing, cables, remote control and packaging-costs that could easily push the total cost of each unit to more than $700, iSuppli (El Segundo, Calif.) said.

iSuppli’s analysis suggests that Toshiba is subsidizing the HD-A1 in an attempt to gain early market share over players that use the rival Blu-ray high-definition DVD standard, the firm said. Initial Blu-ray players, which are slated to cost $999 or more, are scheduled for launch by Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Sony Corp. and others this summer.

I’m not surprised at the results of the analysis, but the price of the player is only part on the equation. The availability of something to play on it is going to be critical and Blu-ray seems to have more movie studios lined up at the moment, but only time will tell and perhaps the consumers who may just sit this one out.

Tom Spring has a cautionary tale of Web Phone Woes at PCWorld:

Pamela Stodghill of Alabama thought Internet-based telephone service would help lower her household’s $65 monthly phone bill. An “unlimited” calling plan from the company 8×8 looked like a great way to stay in touch with distant family and friends.

But despite spending 12 hours on a (landline) phone with 8×8’s tech support staff over the course of a month and despite paying $104 in fees, Stodghill never received working phone service, and she lost the family’s phone number of three years while trying to transfer it from BellSouth, her landline carrier, to 8×8.

Millions of consumers are tempted by inexpensive Net phone services–some priced as low as $10 a month–and Stodghill isn’t the only one to incur huge headaches when things go wrong. She says she gave up on VoIP after spending far too much time dealing with technical problems and installing replacement equipment. “At a certain point you just have to throw in the towel and say, ‘Is this really worth it?’” Stodghill says.

She also reported 8×8 to the Better Business Bureau where VoIP firms are apparently well known.

I tend to think of the possible downsides of VoIP as technical issues such as spotty call quality, limited 911 service, and inability to work when the power is off. This article pointed out some problems that I had never heard of before:

Many VoIP providers impose very restrictive terms of service, including low-usage fees–surcharges that apply if you don’t incur enough regular charges in a month–huge early termination fees, and mandatory shipping costs for returning faulty equipment. ViaTalk requires that the ratio of calls received to those placed be roughly equal; if you receive 75 percent or more of the calls on your account, or make 75 percent or more of them, you risk being designated as a business account and incurring a steep rate hike.
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Jean-Claude DeMars of Texas says that Primus tried to charge him $5 extra one month as a low-usage fee. He angrily canceled his service–but then discovered that he would have to pay the shipping fees to return his Primus equipment or face a $40 disconnect fee.

Amazing stuff, but curable by reading the fine print before signing up. More by following the link.

Business Week online’s Arik Hesseldahl does the honors in Sony’s Pretty, Pricey Picture:

The Good Gorgeous video. Blu-Ray burner. Huge hard drive
The Bad High price. Feeble battery
The Bottom Line Great for those willing to pay through the nose
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First let’s get to the Blu-Ray disc. The video quality is gorgeous. Sony (SNE) furnished a copy of a Blu-Ray disc with the movie Hitch, and while I can’t say much about the content of the film, the video looked great, with lots of detail within the shot. The movie has several overhead shots of New York City that looked almost cinematic, even on the 17-inch notebook screen. The machine boasts a glossy, glare-resistant screen, the kind that are quickly becoming more common.

But let’s get one thing straight: This isn’t the kind of notebook you’re going to want to take everywhere with you, and certainly not one for watching movies on an airplane or anywhere else you don’t have a power outlet. With the disc playing I watched the battery run down from fully charged to less than 20% full in about 30 minutes, at which point the screen displayed one of the strangest shutdown routines I’ve ever seen: a patchwork of wavy multicolored lines.

Ouch! But then it seems to be directed more at the desktop replacement market and at $3500, you might want to keep it chained to desk anyhow. Of course when you’re talking high definition DVD, there has to be one more caveat:

Blu-Ray disc content is just now beginning to hit the market. (The computer ships with House of Flying Daggers in the box.) If you really, really want to shoot and edit HD video and have a critical need to burn it to Blu-Ray, you might be willing to pay the premium. But as yet, that’s not a good enough reason for me to lay out that much to be an early Blu-Ray adopter. I suspect that will be the judgment of most people as well.

There’s also the risk that you might end up backing the wrong horse in the brewing battle between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. Unless you really think Blu-Ray is where it’s at, and indeed many companies do, I suggest staying on the sidelines until the winner is clear.

Oddly, Hesseldahl never mentions the model number, but it seems to obviously be the Sony VAIO AR190G which was also reviewed by Justin Jaffe at CNET:

At $3,500, the VAIO AR190G is intended primarily for the long-suffering professional video editors and producers whose HD files have been marooned on laptop hard drives or trapped on DVD-ROMs, which are not supported by Blu-ray set-top players. With the VAIO AR190G, you can now import a video directly from an HD camera (via FireWire), edit the content on an excellent 17-inch 1080p display, and burn it to a Blu-ray disc or play it on an HDTV or monitor (via the HDMI connection)–never settling for less-than-HD-quality compression, media, or playback.

Of course, as with most new technologies, you will have to suffer a number of indignities with the VAIO AR190G. Aside from the high price point of the laptop itself, there’s the painful price of media: approximately $20 for a 25GB BD-R or $25 for a 25GB BD-RW, both of which burn at a syrupy 1X. (Fortunately, a 50GB BD-R will soon be available for $48 and a 50GB BD-RE for $55–ouch.)

If you’re a professional video editor, it’s all a deductible business expense anyway, I guess, but I think the advice for most consumers is to wait on this technology a while.