STOOPID!!! ‘Nuff said ;p
Daily Archives: January 8, 2009
So Cute! A Baby Blackbird!
I’m pretty sad that I’m not at CES this year because I would like to see this little guy. Yes, it’s Firebird, a light gaming PC from HP. From the specs, it also sounds like it would be an excellent entertainment PC to connect to your TV. Here’s a link to Rahul Sood’s Blog for his perspective on the Firebird. Anyhow, what’s amazing to me is that they crammed all this good stuff in and the power usage peaks at 350-Watts. Nice! It seems like the size, noise, and power consumption trade-offs are nicely matched with the computing power. Personally, this all sounds like a GREAT entertainment PC to me. With some changes to the case, it could fit nicely into an entertainment center. Hahaha!!!
Oh, a weird rambling tangent, this morning when I thought of a baby blackbird, a “sparrow” came to mind. You know, sparrows are small, agile, and bright eyed birds — everything a light weight but powerful laptop should be. In terms of styling cues and marketing, “Friend of the Forest” comes to mind. It’s eco-friendly, people friendly, and adventurous all at the same time. Fly, little sparrow, fly!!!
Chumby on Samsung Frame — Squealz!!!
Check it out! It’s not a real product yet, but it’s a nice demo. I’d definitely get one of these. I enjoyed the Chumby I had, but I would have liked to have had a much bigger frame (and some heat dissipation features).
Oh Goody, Windows 7 …
Just when you’ve gotten use to avoiding Vista, MS gives us something new to avoid … uh Vista Reborn … oh, ‘scuse me “Windows 7” … you know, because they HAVE to release a new OS every 3-yrs no matter what … This new version of Windows is supposed to be more compatible with mini-notes, netbooks, and touch interfaces. Yay … btw guys, XP workd just fine for the minis. I guess I should quit giving Vista a hard time. It works great on super beefy machines :). Anyhow, I see this going about as well as the Vista launch. The only reason I have Vista is because my new computers came with it. Given a choice, I would have stuck with XP because after years of patching, it was pretty stable. Well, it should be fun watching the confusion this time next year with XP, Vista, and Windows 7 all out at the same time. Oh, and I love the little dig about the threat from Android with respect to the netbooks. Sigh … nice piece of Google bait to hang in front of the MS bear (btw: bear baiting is illegal). All MS has to do is give us a nice stripped down version of Windows and some Office Essentials (Meat, Cheese, and Bun, no lettuce, tomatoes, spread, onions, sprouts, pickles, bacon, nor a little stick to hold it all together) and it will be all good. Anyhow, here’s a link to an article with more details about the beta launch. (There’s got to be somebody out there who wants to try Window 7 first — Lord knows who would want to sacrifice a perfectly good piece of hardware to this beast ??? It sounds like something to pay a medical guinea pig to do.)
Layoffs At OLPC
Leave it to profit seeking to ruin charity. Yep, OLPC is cutting it’s staff by ~50% and lowering the salary of those that remain. Here’s a link to an article for more details. I suppose now that netbooks are the hottest new segment amongst paying customers in 1st world countries, you can’t just give them away anymore (okay, not give them away — but pretty close to it.) I’d like to see OLPC push on though in terms of continuing to develop technologies that allow for computing where there is no power infrastructure, let alone a wired communication infrastructure. In the long run, those types of devices will be good for everyone because they can be used literally anywhere. Well, we’ll see … As a proud new owner of a netbook, I would love to have a little solar cell to power my laptop when I’m away from home 😉