HP Fansite

Intel: ULV is the new ‘standard’ notebook processor; EliteBook redesign anyone?!

Well, this is big news: Tech/business website Ars Technica is reporting Intel’s big shots announcement at a San Francisco conference to move ‘standard’ laptop processors to have the TDP’s of current ultra-low voltage (processors), between 10 to 15W TDP. Traditionally, standard processors in laptops had a TDP of 35W while ultra-low voltage models (the stuff you see in things like the TouchSmart tm2, various Asus ultra-thin models, and other thin-and-light laptops) had TDP’s of 17W… so lowering the new TDP of ‘standard’ processors to 10-15W would mean very power-efficient processors that sip battery life. Considering Intel’s plans for their 2012 Ivy Bridge processors, I don’t doubt this as a possibility at all.

So while we’re all still awaiting for an official announcement from Intel, that they will utilize this new standard of theirs in Ivy Bridge processors, let’s take a look at what these new more energy-efficient chips would mean in our notebooks:

• Thin and light laptops for all! This is great news for everyone! Who doesn’t want a slimmer laptop that performs the same or better than their current brick of a laptop?
• The sky is NOT the limit. We will likely see a great and sudden barrage of waif-thin laptops that measure an inch or less in thickness but they’ll likely stay that way until someone figures out how to make batteries, graphics cards, connectivity ports, and displays super-thin… and only then, we may see laptops slimmer than our smartphones.
• 1.8 inch disks go mainstream? For years, we’ve seen 1.8 inch hard disks and solid state drives in the market catering to the niche of ultra-portable notebooks, but the sad part is they never took off: 2.5 inch disks are still the staple of a big majority of laptops these days. In fact, some may even speculate 1.8 inch drives are going the way of the dodo because how many laptops announced in the past year use 1.8 inch disks (other than the recently announced EliteBook 2760p convertible tablet?). I digress but at the rate laptops could potentially slim down a bunch with Intel’s new plans, I can see 1.8 inch drives suddenly being adopted on a widespread basis to accommodate the new thinness of new notebooks (at 5 to 6 mm in height, 1.8 inch drives are almost half the thickness of 2.5 inch drives)
• Fanless designs. Lower TDP, especially the ‘cut in half’ Intel has planned,  -typically- means that power consumption and heat output of a processor will be drastically reduced. As a user of an EliteBook 2530p with a low-voltage (and self undervolted) Core2Duo processor, I can attest to the fact that the fan rarely comes on when I’m out and about with the laptop… it only comes on when I’m running a bunch of heavy programs on my 2048 x 1536 resolution Dell monitor at home, and even then processor temperature never exceeds 65 degrees Celcius. Such laptops need only a tiny fan or maybe not one at all, which can save a lot of space in terms of internal surface area layout
• Single RAM slots. Traditionally notebooks have come with two RAM slots so we could have plenty of memory to run programs… if you’ve used something like Windows Vista before, you’d understand perfectly! However, considering 4 GB RAM sticks for laptops are getting more affordable nowadays, 8 GB sticks being introduced (but still prohibitively expensive) and the fact most sub-15 inch notebook users will probably not be crunching hundreds of photos while playing Crysis 2 while having six dozen browser tabs open at the same time (so majority won’t really need more than 4 gigs of memory anyway), there’s a high chance we’ll see the ‘two RAM slots’ norm in notebooks being trimmed down to one… in consumer models, at least. A cut down in components that take up space is a must anyway if one were to make slimmer laptops.
• String two together? With a really efficient processor inside, we might see the next big (literally) Mobile Workstation and 17 inch models in general come up with battery life numbers that rival Apple’s 17 inch MacBook Pro, or at least last more than 2 hours before having us to scurry around looking for a power outlet. But people who usually buy these things normally use them as desktop replacements and 17 inches of laptop is really too much to venture outside the home/office for a full day anyway, so battery life and power consumption isn’t really a big dealbreaker anyway. Consequently, there is a small chance some PC maker out there who will realize this, perhaps HP, maybe Dell, and string two of these chips together like we see in desktops… fingers crossed for the day we can have dual quad-core processors in our 17 inch laptops!

Alright, and once again, we have the magical question! Should Intel decide to make low voltages the new standard starting from Ivy Bridge next year, will we see a drastic redesign in all laptops? Or will manufacturers just take the lazy route and stuff these chips into existing shells and cases for most part? I’m not sure what HP will make of this either, with their recently redesigned EliteBook range… with processors that encourage slimmer laptops, will we see HP foregoing their “redesign every two refresh cycles” and retool the design of their EliteBooks? Will we see the Envy 13 reintroduced in a much sleeker form with Ivy Bridge next year? Or perhaps the Envy 11 to fight the 11 inch MacBook Air and offerings from Asus and Lenovo? Exciting times lay ahead of us indeed!

Holding out for Intel Ivy Bridge? Three reasons to be patient!

If you’ve been keeping up with the super-fast moving tech news and development out there, you’ll know that Intel recently announced a revolutionary new “3D” way of creating transistors for their processors. First off, the term “3D” Intel has chosen to use has ignited an uproar among some users and regular Joes who seem to misunderstand and misinterpret this as a move from Intel to force ’3D viewing’ on everyone. Cool down everybody, that’s not what Intel has in mind! What the 3D refers to has nothing to do with objects flying out of your display at you while you’re wearing those wacky, overpriced special glasses! 3D here refers to how the Intel chips under the hood of your computer will be made. This ‘stacking’ will enable Intel to continue Moore’s law; further increasing performance and efficiency.

And here are three reasons to continue to be patient if you’ve already begun holding your breath and staying in to your seat for Ivy Bridge:

• 3D Ivy Bridge for everyone! Intel has mentioned that the new fabrication process will not be exclusive to the upper-end ‘Enthusiast’ or ‘Extreme’ series processors, but will be made mainstream into all of their future products. This is arguably the biggest reason of the three listed, because you won’t have to stand in line and scowl in envy as high-end machine buyers, the uber rich and gamers get their 3D processors first before they trickle the technology down to mainstream (car manufacturers and camera makers take note!)
• More power for more hours. As a person who uses a 12 inch ultra-portable laptop to do some serious heavy-lifting (Photoshop, video processing and such), Intel’s new processors excite me a lot. They’re saying performance can be up to 37% higher while power consumption gets cut down to 50% compared to Sandy Bridge products. Having seen the huge leaps from 2nd generation Core-series processors versus their 1st generation counterparts, I can’t wait to see what 3rd generation Core i-series will look like. In theory, a laptop running a Sandy Bridge 2.7 GHz dual core processor with 8 hours of battery life could be outfitted with a 3.6 GHz dual core Ivy Bridge processor and still have 16 hours of battery life! Alternatively, manufacturers can outfit notebooks with smaller batteries and slap in a dedicated graphics card with switchable graphics with the space gain, endless possibilities when one dreams, right?
  Desktop users won’t be left out as the power efficiency improvements would mean a pleasant surprise (in a non-sarcastic manner) for you guys when you receive your next electricity bill!
• Better Intel integrated graphics. Well, this will probably benefit mobile users (and people who cheap-out on getting a dedicated graphics card for their desktop) the most because of what I’ve seen in the first two generations of Intel’s Core i-series processors: The first-gen Core i7-620M could play Left4Dead 2 at native resolution (1280 x 800) on a laptop at low settings and borderline acceptable frame rates (20 to 30 FPS range), the second generation Core i7-2620M can do the same with a mix of medium graphics settings thrown into the mix. The 3rd generation (Ivy Bridge) of processors with their integrated graphics is expected to bring a 30% increase versus the 2nd generation chips we have now, along with DirectX 11 and OpenCL 1.1 support, so imagine that! With Intel Ivy Bridge IGP supporting DX11, we might just see more PC games that take advantage of DirectX 11 too!
• Bonus point: 16:10 ratio displays might make a comeback (Viva la 1920 x 1200!!) or we might see a support for high resolutions beyond ‘full HD’, such as 2K resolution (2048 x 1080)! Sony showing off a concept glasses-free 3D television with 2K resolution four months ago at CES might be a tiny hint of ‘the next big thing’ after Full HD!

So if Intel announces Ivy Bridge processors in January at CES 2012 (like they announced Sandy Bridge at CES 2011), I think we can expect the first cycle of computers and laptops sporting their 3rd generation Core i-series processors to become available by February or March 2012, and swamp the market by June or July 2012. One can barely wait because exciting times lie ahead (nothing to do with Harry Potter!), folks! Hopefully Intel plays their part and 3D Ivy Bridge processors will be as good as they say.

Choosing an ultra-portable companion: Looking at the iPad

I was about to move away from looking at tablets, but before I did, I decided to have a look at one more option – the Apple iPad. Like many of Apple’s products, the iPad has received and continues to receive plenty of hype – from its ‘awesome’ feature set and versatility to its slim profile and form factor suited to content consumption. And the fact that it even sold out faster (with some help from Apple taking pre-orders of course) than iPhones (well at least before the iPhone 4 came out) will make one wonder what the people who called it a ‘big iPod Touch’ have to say.

Many people say the main appeal of the iPad is the ability to use it as a big time content consumption device. Various apps available from the iPhone side such as Reeder (an RSS app), Docs To Go (office/document suite) and TweetDeck (a Twitter client) have retooled iPad versions to take advantage of its larger display. So on something like TweetDeck, you can see much more on the iPad as opposed to being limited to viewing one column at a time on the iPhone (I know because I currently use an iPhone alongside another Windows Mobile device). And like on the iPhone, the iPad has its fair share of games, now in 1024 x 768 resolution.

There are also apps that are far more useful on the iPad (versus on the iPhone) such as news reader and e-book apps. Combined with the long battery life and instant startup time, the iPad sounds like a good candidate for lazing around with in the morning, checking the day’s top headlines and agenda while waiting for the coffee to brew… But not quite up to task for long hours of typing and working with all day. One could argue that there’s always the Apple wireless Bluetooth keyboard to the rescue, but doesn’t come in the box (ie. It costs extra) and it’s yet another item to carry around (mind as well get a netbook or ultra-thin notebook, in my opinion). The storage expansion accessory (an SD card reader attachment) has to be purchased separately and, from what I’ve read, only works with photos.

The iPad, like other tablet devices, excels at content consumption (the exact purpose it was made for) but looks like a less suitable candidate for content creation. It’s also poor at handling files; if I threw an MKV or M2TS format video (commonly called ‘the Blu-Ray format’) at it, the iPad won’t play it. Same with other not-so-common file types (PSD and Illustrator files, anyone?). Oh, there also isn’t any sort of file manager for the iPad, probably one of those restrictions by Apple… which brings me to my next point.

The iPad depends a whole lot on the iTunes software on your computer – I see this as a big turn-off, a really big one. Having been (and still being) an iPhone user, I can’t say that I’ll appreciate using another device which behaves in the same way; using a locked-down platform. Everything, from transferring music, movies, contacts and applications, requires iTunes. Considering just about every mobile device I’ve used before never NEEDED any special software for basic transferring of files, why should I start now? Recalling the days of my primary phone running Windows Mobile, I could dump anything and everything (not limited to music, movies, photos and apps like on the iPad) on its memory card and treat it like a regular mass storage device.

One super useful app that I see various iPad owners tout is Air Display, an application that allows you to connect the iPad to your computer and hook it up wirelessly as a secondary display. This currently works only for Macs, but the developers for Air Display say Windows compatibility is next on their list and coming soon. The thing here is that I’m shopping for something that I will be using as a primary, not secondary, machine.

Even if I were to get a secondary device, it’ll probably be a “superphone” and very unlikely, an iPad. Not two weeks ago, a friend of mine just got an iPad and let me play with it. My impressions in brief are: it’s slight heavier than I thought it would be, the screen seems to pick up fingerprints more easily than the iPhone and the interface is really speedy (versus an iPhone 3GS).

Fun as it may be during the first few days, I just don’t see where the iPad fits in when it comes to daily life. Why use the iPad at home when I can use a notebook that runs a full-fledged operating system and any applications I want (coupled the vast amount of screen real estate in terms of size and resolution compared to the iPad’s small 9.7 inch, 1024 x 768 display)? I’ve had the “instant on” issue solved ages ago by simply leaving the notebook in sleep mode the previous night, for times I had to get on the net or continue working on something in a hurry the next morning. Otherwise, I’ll just wait out the 40 to 60 seconds it takes for a ‘cold’ Windows 7 boot and go brush my teeth in the meantime. On days when I don’t want to get out of bed just yet, I just grab my phone (and run through the daily RSS feeds and tweets) or netbook.

The iPad also has roughly the same footprint/surface area as a netbook, which raises a few issues and questions for me when going out. Since it’s bigger than say a phone (which I can and will carry with me all day without having second thoughts), I have to wonder every time before I step out the door: Should I bring this with me (requires a bag, and I like traveling light)? Will I need it/use it where I’m going today? Then the latter question leads to yet another question: to bring the iPad OR a similarly sized (but not as thin) netbook? If it wasn’t the case of me wanting to try and field-test the iPad before returning it to its owner, I would’ve chosen the netbook anytime, everytime. Why settle for the iPad, when something a little bigger in depth packs a comfortable, almost full-size keyboard, ports galore, full Windows OS functionality and long battery life that comes close.

And nope, I’m not buying the reason “but you can use Air Display!” Of the two and a half years using a netbook, and I’ve owned two (one of them was among the first of netbooks too; the Mini 2133), never once have I had any need for a secondary display while on the go. I’ve been content, tiling two application windows side-by-side, though a primary display larger than the 10 inches of netbooks would have been nice.

Verdict? No iPad for me, thanks. That was it for tablets, maybe I’ll reconsider in the future but for now my next step was to check out netbooks and notebooks… maybe I’d find one small and impressive enough to satisfy all requirements I need in my “ultra-portable companion”.

Choosing an ultra-portable companion: Shifting through tablets

Fresno, California. That’s where I’ll be heading this August. And that’s why I’ve been scouring high and low for the ultra-portable device that will be my companion for at least the next 3 years or so. Because I’m a long term planner, my hunt has been on-going since January (sometime near CES)… and after reading up on various devices and platforms, countless comparisons and obligatory “waiting for the latest”, I think I have finally made up my mind.

The first thing I did was strike phones off my consideration list: yes, I’m looking at you, smartphones (including the iPhone 4) and superphones (like the HTC Evo and Samsung Galaxy S aka Epic 4G). Not that I’ve got anything against them – I’ve been using smartphones for ages and will be getting something decent (or nice, if my wallet approves) when I arrive – but as my experience with them proves, I’m going to need a screen bigger than a mere 3.5 or 4.3 inches if I want to stay productive.

Exactly what will I be doing with my future device to need a bigger screen? Well I’m going to be using it on a daily basis for web surfing, RSS reading, working on documents, “socializing”/connecting with people and of course for some music and entertainment. Of course, any additional features and functionality like large internal memory or a physical keyboard would be most welcome.

I also plan on attending a convention or two, or more, next year (I currently have my sights set on going to CES 2011, PMA 2011 and the annual HP Workstation Convention, all for the first time – so anyone with invitations or press passes, do drop me an email ). Add that with some potentially long days out on my daily schedule (I’d rather not carry around a charger if I can help it) and the occasional unpredictable day where I’m suddenly away from home longer than I would like, and you end up with long battery life being almost compulsory.

How long is ‘long battery life’ for me? At least four to five hours of pure usage, preferably more. Take a look at all those requirements of mine and I’m sure many of you would say “go look for a tablet”…. Which was exactly what I did. I went looking at the available options in the land of tablets and slates (fortunately for me, 2010 happens to be the year of the tablet/slate, with manufacturers all coming out with their respective offerings).

At the time, the HP Slate seemed like a fairly viable option… Until all this news about HP acquiring Palm for $1.2b and uncertainty and speculation HP was dumping the Windows-powered Slate for a new HP Slate design with HP-Palm Web OS running the show. The HP Slate remains unreleased, and by the looks of it, we won’t be seeing it until fall or holiday 2010. But no, I need it now… waiting is not an option.

Come to think of it, I now wonder how well Windows 7 would run on a tablet form-factor device, powered by Intel Atom and components from your typical netbook. Stability and ease of use are my primary concerns – even a “touch optimized” Windows 7 would be questionable when used on a pure touchscreen device as Win 7′s primary methods of input are meant to be a mouse and keyboard. Also, Windows 7 is awesome when used on a real system but might run a little slow and/or hot on a slim, fanless, Atom-powered device. I’m confident that Windows Phone 7 will be more adept and suitable for use on tablet-style devices, but it isn’t coming out until fall 2010 and manufacturers are currently focusing on putting Windows Phone 7 on phones first.

Then there’s the Dell Streak: the 5 inch version appears to be shipping now but it’s a bit on the small side if I use it to create documents or do anything that involves typing on a virtual keyboard for extended periods of time. Dell is planning to make larger versions of the Streak but they won’t be coming out until the end of this year or next. I wonder if HP would have something better to compete by then…

In the previous months, I definitely considered an Android OS backed tablet but if you’re used to using high resolution screens like me, you’d want to wait until Android 3.0 AKA Gingerbread which supports large, high-res screens (up to 1366 x 768) comes out. Less than a few weeks ago, there was a lot of chatter about a Blackberry tablet but like Windows Phone 7, Android OS 3.0 and larger sized Dell Streaks, it is said to only make an appearance later this year. Even then I don’t think it’ll be ready for primetime yet as app development would take at least another few weeks.

So much for getting a tablet to be my daily mobile companion, huh? By this time I sorta figured perhaps it was time to look elsewhere…

Check out my next article of this series: Choosing an ultra-portable companion: Looking at the iPad

Apple iPad vs HP Slate?! And my predictions

Somewhere in the middle of this week, Apple dropped the news on their iPad “tablet”, putting an end to almost a decade of rumors and speculation about their mythical tablet. Well, turns out the Apple iPad is not what people had expected it to be; in fact, far from it. While initial speculation and plenty of wishful thinking portrayed the “future” (then-vaporware) Apple iPad to be the best of both worlds – iPhone ease of use and fluid touch interface combined with full (or almost full) Mac OS X operating system functionality and features – the real deal turned out to be quite underwhelming. So, what is the Apple iPad exactly? Is it a revolutionary (or magical, as Apple puts it on their website) device? Is it the best thing since sliced bread, or at least, the best thing since the iPhone was announced? No, and no. The Apple iPad is nothing more than a “big” iPod Touch; as many people would put it, and I have to agree.

So far, the Apple iPad has invoked mostly negative responses from the public, while I’m seeing plenty of media publications still trying to hype up the product in an effort to cover up its shortcomings. Nope, I’m not trying to bash the Apple iPad here just because this site is called the “HP Fansite” – granted I have had a good experience with HP’s stuff, I have used/tested many other products of various brands before and I make an effort to provide unbiased, constructive views of other brands’ goods (and when needed, criticisms with concrete reasoning). I have a handful buddies who are big supporters of Apple, and yet, they agree and have been wondering “what was Apple thinking?!” when word first came out about the iPad and its features and functions. “Far off from what I had expected it to be” was everyone’s main response, Apple loyalist or not, when I asked them what they thought of the iPad at a dinner gathering + Left4Dead 2 LAN party on Thursday. In case anyone was wondering, YES, Apple fans who also own Windows PC’s (for gaming, non-Mac supported applications and such) and don’t act like the fanboys you see on the internet do indeed exist – and they’re nice people to talk to!

Conveniently, there was a short, little feature video about the HP Slate posted this very week, just less than two days before Apple’s official announcement of the iPad. In many ways, the HP Slate is similar to the Apple iPad – that touchscreen-only (no physical keyboard) form factor, similar size and design, ability to function as e-book readers and multimedia devices, and even identical starting price of $500! The main areas where the HP Slate pulls away, far ahead of the Apple iPad, is in terms of operating system, functionality and performance. Here’s how:

• The HP Slate will come with a full-fledged Windows 7 operating system, and knowing HP, probably enhanced for touchscreen input with an additional interface overlay (such as Bump Top 3D found on the HP Touchsmart tm2). On the other hand, the Apple iPad runs on a variation of the iPod Touch/iPhone OS, which we all know many appreciate but a mobile operating system just doesn’t cut it on a non-mobile phone device and pales in comparison to a full desktop experience OS.
• I remember clearly that just three years ago, Apple was boasting about the “widescreen” on its iPhone (well, not true widescreen anyway, since it has a 3:2 ratio, but that’s just Apple…) and now the iPad comes with a non-widescreen 4:3 touch display. Chances are you won’t be running AutoCAD with a slim and portable device under 10 inches, but would like to play some music or watch a movie or two on it. That’s just it – the HP Slate’s 16:10 widescreen display ensures that precious screen real estate is mostly dedicated to the video/movie you’re watching… instead of the thick black letterbox bars above/below your movie on the iPad’s 4:3 non-wide display
• Adobe Flash – if you’ve been keeping up (or managed to keep up) with the flood of Apple iPad news-hype by various media outlets, you would know on the sidelines, a certain big company called Adobe (you know, they guys who develop Photoshop and Illustrator) have been and are still busy complaining about Apple’s refusal to support Adobe Flash on their iPod Touch, iPhone and now, iPad devices. That means no Hulu TV playback, no Facebook or Flash games, no YouTube, no interactive websites, no this and no that on the Apple iPad. All those things that you take for granted on your computer (Facebook games and YouTube seem to be the most prominent, based on what I’ve seen), you can NOT do on the Apple iPad because it lacks Adobe Flash.
  All that happening while you can be happily skipping along, maintaining your Farmville farms on Facebook, watching your favorite TV shows on Hulu and Iron Man 2 trailer on YouTube using the HP Slate. As I mentioned, the HP Slate runs Windows 7, which will gladly support Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, Sun Java and any other application you use on your ‘full-size’ notebook or desktop!
• High definition video playback – the HP Slate can play back high definition (720p) video and movies, and is likely to be able to play them on your huge living room TV via a built-in HDMI or DisplayPort output port. The Apple iPad, in comparison, can only playback ‘standard definition’ 576p video. And you gotta see it to believe it – watching HD movies and videos compared to ‘standard’ ones can make a whole world of difference in detail levels and entertainment immersion (sorta).

In short, the HP Slate is everything that people wanted the Apple iPad to be, but the iPad just isn’t that dream device everyone had expected – again, it’s just a big iPod Touch! The factor that plays a part in ‘who wins’ is when HP will make the HP Slate available to the masses. Apple has already set a release date for the iPad for March 2010, while HP has given a rather vague “available in 2010″ availability date for the HP Slate. If HP gets their act together in time and releases the Slate around the same time or perhaps slightly after the iPad, then it could deliver a potential blow to Apple’s ‘tablet’ sales.

With the same base price with far more features and functions, it’s a close-to brainless decision to pick the HP Slate over the Apple iPad (unless you’re that Apple kool-aid drinking guy/girl still wearing your pair of rose-tinted shades when you purchase the iPad)

Another factor that will determine the iPad’s success/failure is consumer awareness. The HP Slate made a big debut at CES 2010 (thanks to the announcement made together with Microsoft) but apparently not big enough, as I see it. There are still many people who don’t know about the HP Slate, but do know about the Apple iPad. Then there’s brainwashing by the media – I know consumers nowadays are slightly more informed and up to date with information than before, but that too, is not enough. The truth needs to get out there (preferably by March 2010) so that the Apple iPad isn’t as pretty or cool or useful as the media portray it to be. Really, I’m sounding like a broken tape recorder and you may have heard this on other sites as well – the Apple iPad is nothing more but a big iPod Touch, and it’s true.

I still foresee, however, that Apple will still sell at least a truckload of iPad’s because there are still people who want it (no matter how incapable and useless it is, especially if you already have an iPod Touch or iPhone or Zune HD) just to look uber cool in front of their friends.

Nevertheless, the final outcome of this battle will become apparent once both the HP Slate and Apple iPad start selling, and sales figures are posted. A very interesting battle indeed, and an exciting 2010 to come!