HP Fansite

No, don’t release Windows 7 yet

As opposed to those making petitions and screaming and yelling for Windows 7 to be released (aka in a “I want it, and I want it now!” manner), I don’t think Microsoft should release Windows 7 that quickly yet. Sure the Beta of Windows 7 looks, feels and seems to run pretty well thus far and lots of people are satisfied; now anticipating the launch of Microsoft’s new operating system more than ever. But why not wait a while more for further testing and any (more) bugs to be ironed out to perfection so we actually have a STABLE operating system in the end when it launches.

Why the rush for Windows 7 to be released? There’s already the beta version available of 7 available for download and you’ve already waited two years since Vista (seven to eight years if you’re coming from Win XP), what’s a few months compared to that? I’d go with Microsoft taking their time to perfect Windows 7 instead of releasing it in a hurry, in a clumsy manner.

*ONLY* two hours?!!

Hmm frustrated, tech-unsavvy users nowadays can actually make life hard for computer companies. Today I happened to (over)hear the ranting of a really dissatisfied guy who recently bought himself a new $350 consumer notebook PC and he had “heard” the battery life of his computer model was 3 to 3 and a half hours. But in his usage, he could only get “less than 1.5 hours of just web surfing, without wifi and on Windows Vista’s power saver mode too” out of his computer. It also seems that the computer company managed to perform testing on his notebook and THEY could get around 2+ hours of web surfing, WITH wifi AND maximum screen brightness. Either way he was pissed and had pretty much convinced himself to think there’s something wrong with his notebook PC because he couldn’t achieve that “three plus hours” that he wanted… and so he spent about two hours in a conversation, debating with some customer support guys about that.

One of his other argument points was that with technological advancements today, battery life should be the same or better nowadays – in some way, that’s true but on the other hand, I feel that people should be aware despite the fact that processors and hardware in computers nowadays may be more power efficient, they are also more powerful and pack more processing power (ie Dual core Core 2 Duo versus a single core P4 chip). What does that mean? Let me give an example: If you say “Ultra Low Voltage Core Duo”, then we’re talking, but otherwise for regular Intel Core and AMD processors, any “power efficiency” benefits may well be negated or reduced by the fact that processors today are much more powerful and hence use equal or negligibly less amount of power versus processors from say, the Pentium 4 era.

This guy was comparing apples and oranges. He expected his new notebook’s dual core 2.0 GHz AMD processor to his old notebook’s Pentium 4 single core 1.8 GHz processor! Maybe comparing the power efficiency and speed of a 1.6 GHz Intel Atom versus 1.6 GHz Pentium 4 would be more fair in an “old versus new” comparison.

However, a quick check, google and in fact a few people I know own that specific model of that notebook PC reveals that the battery life of that notebook model itself is around 2 hours on average and 2.5+ hours of power. And as far as the rest of the world is concerned, just about every recent consumer notebook out there with a 14 or 15 inch screen averages around 2 hours of battery life and I’d say the guy was being unreasonable. I didn’t bother to listen in on the rest of the conversation, but that was a pretty interesting two hours of my day this week while I was typewriting some articles on my HP Mini Note 2133, then I went off for dinner.

What do you guys think?

My favorite HP trackpads

My all-time favorite notebook PC trackpad has gotta be the one on the HP Pavilion tx-series notebooks. The tactile feedback of the little dimples are absolutely fantastic and I have no problem finding the trackpad area, even when I’m not looking at it. And the thing still works great when using wet hands to touch. By the looks of it, I suppose the one on the Voodoo Envy 133 will offer the same, nice control as the HP tx-tablets. Next up is the ones on HP business notebooks, which always have a matte like finish to the trackpad area and rubberized buttons.

The vertical scroll zone has gotta be the best thing since sliced bread too since I don’t need to shift my hand to the arrow keys or page up/down controls, or move the mouse to the scrollbar on the side of the screen. Practically, minimum finger/hand movement. I don’t quite care for horizontal scroll zones on my trackpad though, as it somehow isn’t as precise or natural as vertical scrolling and it takes up precious real estate (Really now, with widescreens and high-resolution displays nowadays, how often does one need to do horizontal scrolling?).

I’m not a big fan of the slippery trackpads on the HP HDX, and some of the HP dv-series and Compaq Presario models, which make them hard to use with wet hands and the horizontal scroll zone makes things worse, in my opinion.

I can’t wait to see multi-touch on more notebook PC trackpads. The Voodoo Envy 133 already has one which supports multi-touch and chiral gestures. I’m sure this will trickle to high-end notebooks and other premium notebooks, before (sooner or later) becoming a standard feature on all notebook PCs.

Nokia N97; where is the iPAQ R&D team?

Is somebody in the driver’s seat asleep? Nokia just launched their N97 top-of-the-line mobile phone today – which blows away pretty much everything else on the market right now. And while I think the “multimedia computer” thing is still a bunch of marketing bull, everything else sounds solid, if not fantastic. A large 3.5 inch touchscreen – a widescreen one at that, 32 GB internal memory with a microSD slot for even more, 5 megapixel camera with VGA video recording, a 3.5 mm headphone jack plus the usual mobile phone goodies: WiFi, HSDPA, Bluetooth, A-GPS and all. And yea, a side slide-out QWERTY keyboard… this is what the HP iPAQ Data Messenger should have been!!

HP is the world’s largest computer manufacturer and sure they would have a good excuse to not put high emphasis on thigs like printers or calculators. But there are several good reasons to divert some resources (ahem, put in some effort in developing) the iPAQ line of Pocket PC/phones. These little devices are like micro computers too; they have processors, RAM, even have operating systems and offer expandability through software – though Nokia’s gimmicky marketing is taking things a little too far over the edge. And, unlike printers or calculators whose markets are already saturated and where there’s little product differentiation between competition (come on, claims of prints lasting up to 90, 99, 100 or 101 years are everywhere), the mobile device market is a lucrative one.

Though not at its infancy, the (mobile device) market is currently at a place where there’s still room for growth, people are rushing for them as every year there is a “leap” in one area or another (it was built-in cameras at one time, then WiFi, now it’s GPS and touchscreens) and so a sizeable profit can still be made here – somewhere I’d call its “teenage years”, where product makers still have some features they can experiment with, that they can stuff into this phone and that one, things that will gather “oohs” and “aahs” from the crowds and make them a ton of sales. Want good, recent examples? Look at the Nokia N95, look at the Apple iPhone.

The N95 wasn’t the first slider phone in the world, nor was the iPhone the first to feature a touchscreen. Hey, the HP iPAQ h6310 had a 3.5 inch touchscreen too waaay back in 2004! The N95 was marketed heavily as a multimedia device; it could play music, movies, had a 5 megapixel camera, and so was the iPhone (umm just replace the 5 megapixel camera part with a large touchscreen).

There hasn’t really been any exciting or revolutionary new iPAQ recently that the crowds would gush for, since the iPAQ hw6515 in 2005. The hw6915 was a mere refresh of the hw6515, the rw6828 and iPAQ 514 weren’t high-end powerful devices, and the rest of the line, iPAQ 600, 900 and Data Messenger really had nothing special to trump the competition, or at least spark some public hype.

Dear HP/Compaq, isn’t it time to wake up? What happened to being the number one Pocket PC manufacturer in the world? Even that title was snagged by HTC a while ago. With that kind of company size and especially a company being in the IT & computing industry itself, I’m sure HP could churn out some impressive Pocket PC/phones too, if only they’d work a little harder at it. Some impressive new iPAQs in the future would be nice, just like the good old days in pre-2005.

Put in better cameras into the iPAQs, stuff in bigger LCDs and more memory, have dual microSD/microSDHC slots (after all, they’re so small), ask the Touchsmart team to help with the user interface, heck add a SIM card slot to the current iPAQ 200! Anything to bring out a nice iPAQ Pocket PC phone that will sell like hot cakes.

I sure hope something’s brewing back there in the HP Labs. And if so, I hope we see the real deal coming out soon (READ: ASAP in 2009).

P.S. If some of this sounds familiar, then yes, it’s no mistake – I’ve posted some input on HP iPAQs in The Next Bench before as “mark” (as in “benchMARK”, not your neighbor Mark) when the article by Enderle brought up the discussion of the “Voodoo phone”.

Netbooks CAN do 720p movies

Are you kidding me? I just read from several websites about how people complain netbooks can do only “limited things” and are “useless for anything above 720p”. I guess there are a lot of people out they who enjoy jumping to conclusions or ranting about something they don’t even own!

I watch at least one (720p) movie a month on my HP Mini 2133 and nothing wrong. Sure I’m sure the netbook’s 1.6 GHz processor could’ve left out some frames while playing; but I didn’t notice it that much at all. I don’t believe in overly in-depth technical testing where even one or two frames ‘count’, since if something is good enough (in this case, watchable), then why complain about a few dropped frames? It’s not that your eyes have a built-in FPS benchmarker.

I also read that you can browse the web, do documents and listen to music all at once on a netbook without it being ‘untolerably slow’. Rubbish, I say. Most of the time I have Firefox with a few tabs open, Microsoft Word 2007, Excel 2007, Windows Explorer with picture viewer and WinAmp on all at the same time. Umm no crashes or insane slowdowns as reported by some full notebook (*ahem MacBook *ahem*) purists.

There you go; Myth busted.