The New York Times > Technology > Sale of I.B.M. Unit to China Passes U.S. Security Muster
March 10, 2005
The New York Times
March 10, 2005
Sale of I.B.M. Unit to China Passes U.S. Security Muster
By STEVE LOHR
The Bush administration has completed a national security review of the planned sale of I.B.M.'s personal computer business to Lenovo of China, clearing the way for the deal, I.B.M. announced yesterday.
The unusual scrutiny given to the deal mainly reflects the ambivalence in Washington toward China, and its rising economic and military power.
Other Chinese companies are expected to follow Lenovo's example by shopping for acquisitions in the United States. "The lesson from the I.B.M. experience is that the government is going to be difficult on them all," said William A. Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council and a former trade official in the Clinton administration.
The Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States, a multiagency group, reviews purchases of American businesses by overseas corporations for any impact on national security. The I.B.M. inquiry was a full investigation, which occurs in far fewer than 1 percent of cross-border deals, according to former committee members.
The committee's proceedings are secret, and I.B.M. would not say what steps it took to address the concerns of the group, which includes representatives from the Homeland Security, Defense, Justice, Treasury and Commerce Departments. Two people who have been told of the committee's inquiry said I.B.M. made more in the way of commitments and assurances than concessions, which might restrain its sales or product development.
The steps, they said, included agreeing to separate Lenovo's American employees, mainly in Research Triangle Park in North Carolina, from I.B.M. workers there who work on other products, like larger server computers and software.
The people close to the inquiry said I.B.M. also agreed to ensure that the chips and other parts in desktop PC's and notebooks were stamped with the name of their manufacturer and country of origin. Such labeling is fairly common among PC makers.
Steven M. Ward Jr., an I.B.M. senior vice president who will become chief executive of Lenovo, said he met with more than a dozen senior government officials to explain the sale for $1.75 billion in cash, stock and debt, announced in December. He said the steps I.B.M. took to gain the approval of the committee would not hobble the business.
"I'm delighted with getting this approval," Mr. Ward said. "And we expect to sell Lenovo PC's and ThinkPads to businesses, governments and individuals around the globe."
Some committee members were concerned that the sale to Lenovo, which is partly state-owned, could result in technology with important military uses being passed to the Chinese, but the people close to the inquiry said I.B.M. addressed that in briefings and demonstrations in Washington in mid-February.
I.B.M. engineers and executives, they said, dismantled a desktop PC and a ThinkPad notebook for the committee, identifying where the components were produced and explaining how the machines were assembled. Most I.B.M. PC's are made in China. They contain Intel microprocessors and are assembled with chips and parts made around the world, though mostly in East Asia.
The I.B.M.-Lenovo episode should prompt Congress to review the authority of the investment committee, which dates from the cold war, said Michael R. Wessel, a member of the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a group established by Congress.
Representative Donald A. Manzullo, an Illinois Republican, said yesterday that he planned to push for hearings to see if the committee's role should be expanded to "take more account of economic security as well as military security."
Thursday, March 10, 2005
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
From oddity to commodity | Perspectives | CNET News.com
From oddity to commodity | Perspectives | CNET News.com
From oddity to commodity
March 9, 2005, 12:01 AM PT
By Michael Kanellos
TrackBack Print E-mail TalkBack
While sitting around a campfire about two weeks ago, my 10-year-old nephew told me that he discovered something recently: Every person, everywhere, is important.
Naturally, I was floored and elated, and I asked him how he came to that conclusion.
"It's when I was playing 'Halo 2,'" he replied. "When someone gets killed, the Covenant starts to gain the upper hand. If you lose two people really quickly, forget it."
Unpredictability remains the hallmark of the consumer world. You develop a game to stimulate compulsive hand-eye coordination, and the kids come away with philosophical insights.
Unpredictability remains the hallmark of the consumer world. You develop a game to stimulate compulsive hand-eye coordination, and the kids come away with philosophical insights.
A number of the monumental successes in this marketplace in recent years were largely unanticipated. Google? Consumers already had a wealth of search options. Word of mouth made it a global phenomenon. Conversely, the Moxi box sunk. Taste remains difficult to predict, and it's complicated by the fact that you have Harvard-educated MBAs trying to anticipate the needs of 13-year-olds in Missouri.
To get around the problem, venture capitalists often place smaller investments in a wider variety of companies, said Aneel Bhusri, a partner at Greylock Partners. This week, a number of small start-ups pitched their ideas at the iHollywood Forum in San Mateo, Calif. Here's a brief look at some companies that might either rock your living room or get on the next train to oblivion. Please vote with your comments on which might succeed.
• EZTakes. If the Easthampton, Mass.-based company has its way, it will now be a lot easier to get DVDs of award-winning foreign films or discs with outtakes from "The Beverly Hillbillies." EZTakes has developed software that lets consumers legally download movies from authorized sites to their PC and burn them to a standard DVD disc.
The idea is to circumvent the problems with the other video-on-demand ideas, founder Jim Flynn said. Consumers get to own a hard copy of the movie. "They also don't have to buy a new box," he said.
Conversely, producers can cut distribution and packaging costs in selling DVDs, which, in turn, permits them to offer a wider range of content. One film distributor is tinkering with the idea of using this as a way to disseminate the 250 movies and documentaries on the film festival circuit that rarely reach the public. Two film distributors are currently conducting trials. A formal launch will begin this spring.
• Pepper Computer. The Internet appliance is back for another sequel. The company is marketing a Linux-based device for searching the Web, viewing photos and sending e-mail.
The 2-pound gadget comes with a 20GB hard drive, an 8.4-inch screen, built-in Wi-Fi, a QUERTY keyboard, an ARM processor and speakers covered with Gore-Tex (to protect from spills).
CEO Len Kawell says he's familiar with the many failures in this market but that things for his company might be different. Consumers are now acclimated with digital entertainment, and Linux provides better security. Still, the lap-size pad costs more than the budget $699 laptops circulating these days. Pepper is taking pre-orders now and will start selling them in a few weeks.
• Powergrid Fitness. Crossbreed a joystick with a Bowflex, and you get the Kilowatt from Powergrid, a machine that lets you work out while playing video games like "Blood Wake" or "Smuggler's Run." Instead of pushing buttons, the user pushes against a shoulder-high rod to play a game.
"Sixty-three percent of the population wants to lose 20 pounds or more, but fewer than one-third exercise," CEO Greg Merril said. The company sold 250 units last year and hopes to sell 7,700 this year. It's unusual, noted George Zachary of Charles River Ventures, but so was the George Foreman Grill, when it first came out. Models range in price from $1,199 to $799.
• GalleryPlayer. Now bring the treasures of the Musee d'Orsay to your big-screen TV. The company has licensed paintings and photographs from Corbis, National Geographic, Time-Life and others, and delivers them to plasma and LCD TVs, CEO Craig Husa said. It sounds dopey, yes, but it is sort of cool to see the photos of Dorothea Lange on the big screen. The service starts at $4.99 a month. While testing it as an on-demand option, a major cable provider found that 4 percent of viewers tried it out.
And if there isn't a market for art, other things might sell. A source from a video-on-demand company added that one of his customers, an adult publisher, is interested in the technology.
• DigitalDeck. The company sells a home-networking system that lets you watch a DVD in one room and then watch it in a different room without moving the disc. A three-room system costs $4,500. But that's a bargain compared with the $10,000 systems now on the market, said Marin Levine, vice president of strategic development. The systems mostly will be built into new homes, but the price could be a challenge. You could probably decorate your lawn with 45 burl-wood bears for that kind of money.
• Streamload. The San Diego, Calif.-based company has come up with a way to let users send e-mails that contain 2GB worth of files, making it a lot easier to send video clips. For $4.95 a month, consumers get unlimited storage on the company's servers and an xStreamMail account.
• Orb Networks. This is sort of the opposite of Streamload. Rather than send a file, Orb's service transforms a PC into a server. With a password, you can watch a video clip or view photos from a remote location, so the file never has to travel or get copied. The tough part for the company is that it seems that there are a million people out there promoting the same thing.
biography
Michael Kanellos is editor at large at CNET News.com, where he covers hardware, research and development, start-ups and the tech industry overseas. He has worked as an attorney, travel writer and sidewalk hawker for a time-share resort, among other occupations.
From oddity to commodity
March 9, 2005, 12:01 AM PT
By Michael Kanellos
TrackBack Print E-mail TalkBack
While sitting around a campfire about two weeks ago, my 10-year-old nephew told me that he discovered something recently: Every person, everywhere, is important.
Naturally, I was floored and elated, and I asked him how he came to that conclusion.
"It's when I was playing 'Halo 2,'" he replied. "When someone gets killed, the Covenant starts to gain the upper hand. If you lose two people really quickly, forget it."
Unpredictability remains the hallmark of the consumer world. You develop a game to stimulate compulsive hand-eye coordination, and the kids come away with philosophical insights.
Unpredictability remains the hallmark of the consumer world. You develop a game to stimulate compulsive hand-eye coordination, and the kids come away with philosophical insights.
A number of the monumental successes in this marketplace in recent years were largely unanticipated. Google? Consumers already had a wealth of search options. Word of mouth made it a global phenomenon. Conversely, the Moxi box sunk. Taste remains difficult to predict, and it's complicated by the fact that you have Harvard-educated MBAs trying to anticipate the needs of 13-year-olds in Missouri.
To get around the problem, venture capitalists often place smaller investments in a wider variety of companies, said Aneel Bhusri, a partner at Greylock Partners. This week, a number of small start-ups pitched their ideas at the iHollywood Forum in San Mateo, Calif. Here's a brief look at some companies that might either rock your living room or get on the next train to oblivion. Please vote with your comments on which might succeed.
• EZTakes. If the Easthampton, Mass.-based company has its way, it will now be a lot easier to get DVDs of award-winning foreign films or discs with outtakes from "The Beverly Hillbillies." EZTakes has developed software that lets consumers legally download movies from authorized sites to their PC and burn them to a standard DVD disc.
The idea is to circumvent the problems with the other video-on-demand ideas, founder Jim Flynn said. Consumers get to own a hard copy of the movie. "They also don't have to buy a new box," he said.
Conversely, producers can cut distribution and packaging costs in selling DVDs, which, in turn, permits them to offer a wider range of content. One film distributor is tinkering with the idea of using this as a way to disseminate the 250 movies and documentaries on the film festival circuit that rarely reach the public. Two film distributors are currently conducting trials. A formal launch will begin this spring.
• Pepper Computer. The Internet appliance is back for another sequel. The company is marketing a Linux-based device for searching the Web, viewing photos and sending e-mail.
The 2-pound gadget comes with a 20GB hard drive, an 8.4-inch screen, built-in Wi-Fi, a QUERTY keyboard, an ARM processor and speakers covered with Gore-Tex (to protect from spills).
CEO Len Kawell says he's familiar with the many failures in this market but that things for his company might be different. Consumers are now acclimated with digital entertainment, and Linux provides better security. Still, the lap-size pad costs more than the budget $699 laptops circulating these days. Pepper is taking pre-orders now and will start selling them in a few weeks.
• Powergrid Fitness. Crossbreed a joystick with a Bowflex, and you get the Kilowatt from Powergrid, a machine that lets you work out while playing video games like "Blood Wake" or "Smuggler's Run." Instead of pushing buttons, the user pushes against a shoulder-high rod to play a game.
"Sixty-three percent of the population wants to lose 20 pounds or more, but fewer than one-third exercise," CEO Greg Merril said. The company sold 250 units last year and hopes to sell 7,700 this year. It's unusual, noted George Zachary of Charles River Ventures, but so was the George Foreman Grill, when it first came out. Models range in price from $1,199 to $799.
• GalleryPlayer. Now bring the treasures of the Musee d'Orsay to your big-screen TV. The company has licensed paintings and photographs from Corbis, National Geographic, Time-Life and others, and delivers them to plasma and LCD TVs, CEO Craig Husa said. It sounds dopey, yes, but it is sort of cool to see the photos of Dorothea Lange on the big screen. The service starts at $4.99 a month. While testing it as an on-demand option, a major cable provider found that 4 percent of viewers tried it out.
And if there isn't a market for art, other things might sell. A source from a video-on-demand company added that one of his customers, an adult publisher, is interested in the technology.
• DigitalDeck. The company sells a home-networking system that lets you watch a DVD in one room and then watch it in a different room without moving the disc. A three-room system costs $4,500. But that's a bargain compared with the $10,000 systems now on the market, said Marin Levine, vice president of strategic development. The systems mostly will be built into new homes, but the price could be a challenge. You could probably decorate your lawn with 45 burl-wood bears for that kind of money.
• Streamload. The San Diego, Calif.-based company has come up with a way to let users send e-mails that contain 2GB worth of files, making it a lot easier to send video clips. For $4.95 a month, consumers get unlimited storage on the company's servers and an xStreamMail account.
• Orb Networks. This is sort of the opposite of Streamload. Rather than send a file, Orb's service transforms a PC into a server. With a password, you can watch a video clip or view photos from a remote location, so the file never has to travel or get copied. The tough part for the company is that it seems that there are a million people out there promoting the same thing.
biography
Michael Kanellos is editor at large at CNET News.com, where he covers hardware, research and development, start-ups and the tech industry overseas. He has worked as an attorney, travel writer and sidewalk hawker for a time-share resort, among other occupations.
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
The Bright Future of Mobile Computing :: February 2005
The Bright Future of Mobile Computing :: February 2005
February 2005
February 2005
The Bright Future of Mobile Computing
By Bibhu Choudhary and Suvarna Singh
Search site
Search Encyclopedia of Software and Accessories
Browse Encyclopedia
The year is 2009 and Robert is the head of California Design Studio, a multi-million dollar architectural firm in San Diego. His firm is competing with three others for the prestigious commercial complex proposed near O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. Robert takes the morning flight to Chicago. He reviews the materials he is carrying on his Pocket PC, which consists of a PowerPoint presentation on the credentials of his firm, the concept design of the proposed plan in AutoCAD, a walk through simulation of the proposed complex in 3-D, and video clips from his firm's previous projects in Phoenix and Seattle.
His is a renowned West Coast firm, and this is his first attempt to expand his business to the middle of the country. He realizes that his presentation could shape the future of his firm. He notices a few mistakes in the presentation. He activates a laser projector built into his Pocket PC and the image of a keyboard is projected on the seat-back tray table. As his fingers touch the key images, the finger motion is recognized and translated into keystrokes. He makes some final changes to the presentation and changes the lighting effects on the 3-D model of the proposed complex. Then he pulls out his flexible display screen to get a panoramic view of the entire presentation.
Robert meets his clients the next morning. He pulls out his Pocket PC and hooks it to an external monitor in the boardroom and makes his presentation. As he opens a media player to display the video of his earlier projects, his Pocket PC automatically detects the wireless speakers in the board room. Robert chooses to use the speakers to make the commentary audible to the whole room.
The potential clients are impressed with the presentation but not sure that the proposed design will work well with the school building that they just completed in the neighboring plot. Robert asks for the AutoCAD drawing of the school building, downloads it to his Pocket PC, drops it into his onboard CAD program, and adjusts its position to fit the overall layout. It turns out that the proposed granite faade of the commercial complex is too bright for the surroundings. Robert taps on the paint-brush tool and quickly gives the faade the look and feel of exposed concrete. The final request is for the inclusion of an information kiosk in the design. Robert notes it down and heads back to his hotel room.
From his hotel room, Robert uses his Pocket PC to audio conference with his office and explains the clients' requests to his support staff. His California team works on the requested changes and sends him the updated designs. Robert presents these to the clients the next day. During the meeting he uses his Pocket PC to video conference with his team in California. When it's time to explain the innovative pile foundation used to support the complex, Steve, the structural engineer, takes over control of Robert's Pocket PC using terminal services and makes free hand sketches to explain the vertical section of the columns.
There are questions about the project schedule and completion dates. Robert pulls up his copy of Microsoft Project on his Pocket PC to refer to his Gantt charts. His VBA macro-enabled Microsoft Excel workbooks do the complex calculations for him and make accurate estimations of building materials and pricing. The clients are happy with Robert's presentation and he wins the contract.
In this futuristic story, we see a Pocket PC totally replacing the bulky notebook PC among mobile information workers. The truth is that many of the innovations described in this story are already available today as third-party add-ons, and others are in development. By 2009, most of these capabilities will be built into the Pocket PC.
Increased storage capacity lets you bring everything you need with you
The advent of high-capacity storage cards will make it possible for Robert to bring all the information he needs with him. This includes his e-mail, reference material, documents, presentations, high-resolution graphics, video files, additional applications, and more. Toshiba recently entered the Guinness Book of World Records by introducing the world's smallest hard disk drive-a 0.85 inch device with a 4 GB capacity! (Fig. 1) In five years, storage capacity will be even higher and the prices even lower. All this is set to change the storage paradigm on Pocket PCs and SmartPhones. We can expect hard disk drives to be built into future mobile devices.
Fig.1: Toshiba's 0.85 inch hard disk drive can store 4 GB of data.
Input innovations make data entry easier
We already have a variety of external keyboards and alternate input software available for Windows Mobile devices. In the near future we'll see more innovative solutions like the projection keyboards being developed by Canesta (Fig. 2). This solution combines a laser "pattern projector" to display a keyboard on a flat surface and "electronic perception technology" to recognize and translate finger movements into keystrokes.
Fig 2. Laser projection keyboard by Canesta
In addition to laser keyboards, improved voice-to-text capability and advanced transcriber technology will make it possible for Robert to create or edit data easily while on the move. Robert's phone-enabled Pocket PC will be able to translate conversations with his engineers into text format and save them as document files for later reference, or to cut and paste portions of them into a presentation. In addition to the soft input panel, the applications will come equipped with voice recognition capabilities which will let Robert drive his applications with his voice.
Enhanced display technology
Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition already supports resolutions of 480x640, but few devices have VGA screens. In the future, VGA screens will be common and Pocket PCs will be able to support even larger monitors and duplicate monitors (i.e., displaying on two screens at the same time). You can also expect to see flexible screen technology similar to Universal Display Corporation's innovative "Flexible Organic Light Emitting Device" (Fig. 3). This lightweight, ultra-thin display can be rolled up, or laminated onto just about any surface. Flexible screen technology can potentially put larger, more durable screens in handheld devices without increasing the size or weight of the device.
Fig. 3: Flexible screen technology developed by Universal Display.
In the future, the Pocket PC will have resolution and orientation-aware applications that will support multiple external monitors. Pocket PC applications will detect the presence of attached external monitors and automatically change the image resolution, shape and contents to optimize and suit the available display. One new tool, IA Screen Mirror 2.0, lets you project multiple Pocket PC screens on to an external monitor. With all these enhancements, Robert will be able to display his presentation on a variety of screens without compromising the quality of the picture.
Faster processors support feature-rich applications
The Intel PXA27x is the most recent processor series for Windows Mobile devices. It not only provides speeds up to 624 MHz, it is also more energy efficient. In addition, it includes Intel's Wireless MMX technology, which brings desktop-like multimedia performance to Pocket PC-based clients while minimizing the power needed to run rich applications. This better supports full motion video conferencing on mobile phones, as well as DVD-quality video playback on PDAs.
In five years Pocket PCs will have even more power, making it even easier for Robert to use the terminal services capability of his Pocket PC to access and control feature-rich programs running on his office server, like AutoCAD, 3D Studio, Microsoft Project and macro-enabled Microsoft Excel. Full versions of these programs may also be available for mobile devices. As Pocket PCs become more capable, the developers of these PC programs will add features to support these new mobility scenarios.
Stay connected with faster, more ubiquitous wireless
You can expect cellular data networks to expand and become faster in the next five years. AT&T's EDGE ("Enhanced Data Rates for Global Evolution") is expected to achieve speeds of about 130-200Kbps. 3G networks are expected to reach speeds of more than 2Mbps. Nokia's High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) is said to be capable of boosting 3G speeds to 10Mbps or even more. All this will make it faster, easier, and less expensive for Robert to access the Internet and check his e-mail while he's on the road.
However, when Robert is in his hotel room or at the client's office, he will be using Wi-Fi access points to connect to the Internet and conference with his team. All peripheral devices like mouse, speakers, microphone, keyboards, and monitors will connect to his Pocket PC via Bluetooth. If a particular device is not equipped with the required driver, it will automatically look for the driver on the Web, download, and install it.
Enhanced battery capacities and more power-efficient devices
Faster processors, increased dependence on wireless connectivity, and increased use of feature-rich applications all require more power and drain the Pocket PC's battery more quickly. Fortunately, we've seen a corresponding increase in battery capacities. Most developers of ruggedized/industrial Pocket PCs offer high-capacity battery options, and many consumer-oriented Pocket PCs have "extended battery" options that can double the battery capacity (and the time between recharges).
To further conserve power, the Intel PXA27x processor family incorporates Wireless Intel SpeedStep technology, which allows the CPU to dynamically adjust its performance and the power it draws based on the needs of the application that is running.
Over the next five years we can expect the Pocket PCs processors to become more efficient, and battery capacity to increase. Robert will be able to work uninterrupted throughout the day on his Pocket PC, checking his e-mail, taking notes, and giving rich presentations and demos to his clients without having to search for an available place to plug in his charger.
Portable processing power
Today, the mobile information professional expects a conference room to be equipped with an overhead projector and little else. If he needs speakers or a microphone, he makes arrangements for them in advance or brings them with him, along with his notebook PC, a power adapter, a variety of cables, etc.
In five years, fully-equipped conference rooms will be the norm, and mobile professional will carry a Pocket PC and nothing more. The Pocket PC will "sniff out" the available wireless peripherals, the user will tap on the screen to select them, and the presentation will begin. Of course, he'll still have to make a good presentation and close the deal. But he'll have all the portable processing power he needs-sitting in his pocket.
February 2005
February 2005
The Bright Future of Mobile Computing
By Bibhu Choudhary and Suvarna Singh
Search site
Search Encyclopedia of Software and Accessories
Browse Encyclopedia
The year is 2009 and Robert is the head of California Design Studio, a multi-million dollar architectural firm in San Diego. His firm is competing with three others for the prestigious commercial complex proposed near O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. Robert takes the morning flight to Chicago. He reviews the materials he is carrying on his Pocket PC, which consists of a PowerPoint presentation on the credentials of his firm, the concept design of the proposed plan in AutoCAD, a walk through simulation of the proposed complex in 3-D, and video clips from his firm's previous projects in Phoenix and Seattle.
His is a renowned West Coast firm, and this is his first attempt to expand his business to the middle of the country. He realizes that his presentation could shape the future of his firm. He notices a few mistakes in the presentation. He activates a laser projector built into his Pocket PC and the image of a keyboard is projected on the seat-back tray table. As his fingers touch the key images, the finger motion is recognized and translated into keystrokes. He makes some final changes to the presentation and changes the lighting effects on the 3-D model of the proposed complex. Then he pulls out his flexible display screen to get a panoramic view of the entire presentation.
Robert meets his clients the next morning. He pulls out his Pocket PC and hooks it to an external monitor in the boardroom and makes his presentation. As he opens a media player to display the video of his earlier projects, his Pocket PC automatically detects the wireless speakers in the board room. Robert chooses to use the speakers to make the commentary audible to the whole room.
The potential clients are impressed with the presentation but not sure that the proposed design will work well with the school building that they just completed in the neighboring plot. Robert asks for the AutoCAD drawing of the school building, downloads it to his Pocket PC, drops it into his onboard CAD program, and adjusts its position to fit the overall layout. It turns out that the proposed granite faade of the commercial complex is too bright for the surroundings. Robert taps on the paint-brush tool and quickly gives the faade the look and feel of exposed concrete. The final request is for the inclusion of an information kiosk in the design. Robert notes it down and heads back to his hotel room.
From his hotel room, Robert uses his Pocket PC to audio conference with his office and explains the clients' requests to his support staff. His California team works on the requested changes and sends him the updated designs. Robert presents these to the clients the next day. During the meeting he uses his Pocket PC to video conference with his team in California. When it's time to explain the innovative pile foundation used to support the complex, Steve, the structural engineer, takes over control of Robert's Pocket PC using terminal services and makes free hand sketches to explain the vertical section of the columns.
There are questions about the project schedule and completion dates. Robert pulls up his copy of Microsoft Project on his Pocket PC to refer to his Gantt charts. His VBA macro-enabled Microsoft Excel workbooks do the complex calculations for him and make accurate estimations of building materials and pricing. The clients are happy with Robert's presentation and he wins the contract.
In this futuristic story, we see a Pocket PC totally replacing the bulky notebook PC among mobile information workers. The truth is that many of the innovations described in this story are already available today as third-party add-ons, and others are in development. By 2009, most of these capabilities will be built into the Pocket PC.
Increased storage capacity lets you bring everything you need with you
The advent of high-capacity storage cards will make it possible for Robert to bring all the information he needs with him. This includes his e-mail, reference material, documents, presentations, high-resolution graphics, video files, additional applications, and more. Toshiba recently entered the Guinness Book of World Records by introducing the world's smallest hard disk drive-a 0.85 inch device with a 4 GB capacity! (Fig. 1) In five years, storage capacity will be even higher and the prices even lower. All this is set to change the storage paradigm on Pocket PCs and SmartPhones. We can expect hard disk drives to be built into future mobile devices.
Fig.1: Toshiba's 0.85 inch hard disk drive can store 4 GB of data.
Input innovations make data entry easier
We already have a variety of external keyboards and alternate input software available for Windows Mobile devices. In the near future we'll see more innovative solutions like the projection keyboards being developed by Canesta (Fig. 2). This solution combines a laser "pattern projector" to display a keyboard on a flat surface and "electronic perception technology" to recognize and translate finger movements into keystrokes.
Fig 2. Laser projection keyboard by Canesta
In addition to laser keyboards, improved voice-to-text capability and advanced transcriber technology will make it possible for Robert to create or edit data easily while on the move. Robert's phone-enabled Pocket PC will be able to translate conversations with his engineers into text format and save them as document files for later reference, or to cut and paste portions of them into a presentation. In addition to the soft input panel, the applications will come equipped with voice recognition capabilities which will let Robert drive his applications with his voice.
Enhanced display technology
Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition already supports resolutions of 480x640, but few devices have VGA screens. In the future, VGA screens will be common and Pocket PCs will be able to support even larger monitors and duplicate monitors (i.e., displaying on two screens at the same time). You can also expect to see flexible screen technology similar to Universal Display Corporation's innovative "Flexible Organic Light Emitting Device" (Fig. 3). This lightweight, ultra-thin display can be rolled up, or laminated onto just about any surface. Flexible screen technology can potentially put larger, more durable screens in handheld devices without increasing the size or weight of the device.
Fig. 3: Flexible screen technology developed by Universal Display.
In the future, the Pocket PC will have resolution and orientation-aware applications that will support multiple external monitors. Pocket PC applications will detect the presence of attached external monitors and automatically change the image resolution, shape and contents to optimize and suit the available display. One new tool, IA Screen Mirror 2.0, lets you project multiple Pocket PC screens on to an external monitor. With all these enhancements, Robert will be able to display his presentation on a variety of screens without compromising the quality of the picture.
Faster processors support feature-rich applications
The Intel PXA27x is the most recent processor series for Windows Mobile devices. It not only provides speeds up to 624 MHz, it is also more energy efficient. In addition, it includes Intel's Wireless MMX technology, which brings desktop-like multimedia performance to Pocket PC-based clients while minimizing the power needed to run rich applications. This better supports full motion video conferencing on mobile phones, as well as DVD-quality video playback on PDAs.
In five years Pocket PCs will have even more power, making it even easier for Robert to use the terminal services capability of his Pocket PC to access and control feature-rich programs running on his office server, like AutoCAD, 3D Studio, Microsoft Project and macro-enabled Microsoft Excel. Full versions of these programs may also be available for mobile devices. As Pocket PCs become more capable, the developers of these PC programs will add features to support these new mobility scenarios.
Stay connected with faster, more ubiquitous wireless
You can expect cellular data networks to expand and become faster in the next five years. AT&T's EDGE ("Enhanced Data Rates for Global Evolution") is expected to achieve speeds of about 130-200Kbps. 3G networks are expected to reach speeds of more than 2Mbps. Nokia's High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) is said to be capable of boosting 3G speeds to 10Mbps or even more. All this will make it faster, easier, and less expensive for Robert to access the Internet and check his e-mail while he's on the road.
However, when Robert is in his hotel room or at the client's office, he will be using Wi-Fi access points to connect to the Internet and conference with his team. All peripheral devices like mouse, speakers, microphone, keyboards, and monitors will connect to his Pocket PC via Bluetooth. If a particular device is not equipped with the required driver, it will automatically look for the driver on the Web, download, and install it.
Enhanced battery capacities and more power-efficient devices
Faster processors, increased dependence on wireless connectivity, and increased use of feature-rich applications all require more power and drain the Pocket PC's battery more quickly. Fortunately, we've seen a corresponding increase in battery capacities. Most developers of ruggedized/industrial Pocket PCs offer high-capacity battery options, and many consumer-oriented Pocket PCs have "extended battery" options that can double the battery capacity (and the time between recharges).
To further conserve power, the Intel PXA27x processor family incorporates Wireless Intel SpeedStep technology, which allows the CPU to dynamically adjust its performance and the power it draws based on the needs of the application that is running.
Over the next five years we can expect the Pocket PCs processors to become more efficient, and battery capacity to increase. Robert will be able to work uninterrupted throughout the day on his Pocket PC, checking his e-mail, taking notes, and giving rich presentations and demos to his clients without having to search for an available place to plug in his charger.
Portable processing power
Today, the mobile information professional expects a conference room to be equipped with an overhead projector and little else. If he needs speakers or a microphone, he makes arrangements for them in advance or brings them with him, along with his notebook PC, a power adapter, a variety of cables, etc.
In five years, fully-equipped conference rooms will be the norm, and mobile professional will carry a Pocket PC and nothing more. The Pocket PC will "sniff out" the available wireless peripherals, the user will tap on the screen to select them, and the presentation will begin. Of course, he'll still have to make a good presentation and close the deal. But he'll have all the portable processing power he needs-sitting in his pocket.
Sunday, February 27, 2005
H6315 PDAPhone.Com Forum Unofficial Upgrade By John H. Armwood
H6315 PDAPhone.Com Forum Upgrade
I performed the unofficial upgrade the day that it was posted online H6315 PDAPhone.Com Forum as an executable file. The upgrade went smoothly. I immediately knew the device was upgraded because I saw an HP splash screen, like I had on my hp 5555 and not the T-Mobile splash screen I was used to seeing on my h6315 prior to the upgrade.
I then made a contravershal decision to reinstall my many third party applications by using the restore function found in the basic HP ROM based operating system instead of doing a clean, brand new installation. My reasoning was quite simple. In theory a clean installation is the ideal way to go but it would take me at least five or six hours to install my many programs. I figured that if the restoration of my back up did not go well I could always do a hard reset and then do a clean installation.
I was fortunate. My clean restoration worked. I did not have the problems getting the T-Mobile mail triggers to work that many who performed a clean installation encountered. For some it took at least a day to resolve this issue. All I had to do was copy the T-Mobile application folders that had been in the old ROM into the program files directory and then edit the registry to identify the new location of the files. This allowed the T-Mobile Today screen plug in to appear and work. This was a simple process.
I am very happy with the update. My device runs faster without any real problems. The device does not crash. Web surfing is noticibly faster. My Jabra 250headset and my Logitech Mobile Freedom both work flawlessly. The sound level of both headsets is louder. The sound level of alarms and the phone ringer seem louder. The update however did not improve the performance of my HP Blue tooth Stereo Headset. The popping noises remain.
The promise of the h6315 has been finally realized. Other than the issue with the blue tooth headset the h6315 is working flawlessly. I am a happy man. The contributors to the PDAPhone.Com forum who worked collectively, on line, to make this unofficial update work, should feel happy that their contributions have benifitted many. Like many others I want to convey to them a heart felt thanks for a job well done.
La
Friday, February 25, 2005
nickbair.net >HP iPAQ h6365 Pocket PC ROM Update version 1.00.38 (14 Feb 05) Modified to update ROM on HP iPAQ h6315. This is not an official release.
nickbair.net: "ickbair.net
ickbair.net
HP iPAQ h6365 Pocket PC ROM Update version 1.00.38 (14 Feb 05) Modified to update ROM on HP iPAQ h6315. This is not an official release. Use at your own risk.
Primary Upgrade Links
PDAPhoneHome.com Thread
The original thread regarding this upgrade. Do not perform this upgrade without thoroughly reading this information. This is also where to go if you have questions. Do you see a link to my email address on this page? No. "Okay, I'll just go to the root domain and find his email link there." Well don't. I will ignore any personal help requests. Thanks.
ROM Patch
The modified ROM patch as described in the forum thread. Do not install this patch without reading the above link.
T-Mobile Install Pack
All the necessary files to restore many T-Mobile-specific apps. Restores the Battery Monitor, SIM Phone Book, Today Screen plugin, and email trigger functionality. Instructions included in .zip file.
Miscellaneous Files
T-Mobile Extended ROM Bundle
The unsupported group of files removed from the original h6315 ROM by dmc874 in the forum. It is available here for whatever purposes. Use the T-Mobile Install Pack above for a cleaner installation.
T-Mobile Email Trigger Apps
More unsupported files available for whatever. If you simply want to reactivate email triggers following the ROM upgrade, use the T-Mobile Install Pack listed above.
Some other files of interest for h6315 users are available here.
ickbair.net
HP iPAQ h6365 Pocket PC ROM Update version 1.00.38 (14 Feb 05) Modified to update ROM on HP iPAQ h6315. This is not an official release. Use at your own risk.
Primary Upgrade Links
PDAPhoneHome.com Thread
The original thread regarding this upgrade. Do not perform this upgrade without thoroughly reading this information. This is also where to go if you have questions. Do you see a link to my email address on this page? No. "Okay, I'll just go to the root domain and find his email link there." Well don't. I will ignore any personal help requests. Thanks.
ROM Patch
The modified ROM patch as described in the forum thread. Do not install this patch without reading the above link.
T-Mobile Install Pack
All the necessary files to restore many T-Mobile-specific apps. Restores the Battery Monitor, SIM Phone Book, Today Screen plugin, and email trigger functionality. Instructions included in .zip file.
Miscellaneous Files
T-Mobile Extended ROM Bundle
The unsupported group of files removed from the original h6315 ROM by dmc874 in the forum. It is available here for whatever purposes. Use the T-Mobile Install Pack above for a cleaner installation.
T-Mobile Email Trigger Apps
More unsupported files available for whatever. If you simply want to reactivate email triggers following the ROM upgrade, use the T-Mobile Install Pack listed above.
Some other files of interest for h6315 users are available here.
PDA Phone.Com Forum Unofficial h6315 Rom Update Instructions
....::Welcome to my domain::....
ROM Update for 6315 *un-official*
Use at own risk!!! Any suppliers of this unofficial ROM update including myself will and shall not be held responsible for any action that may arise.
By downloading this unofficial ROM update you agree to to the terms above. (Instructions?)
New ROM
OldROM
HP/T-Mobile people, if you don't want this here then I suggest you make one available to us, or contact me via e-mail
More goodies http://www.lvlolvlo.net/pda
Many thanks goes to the following evil geniuses who got this to work
beaups
dmc874
lgingell
Mashie
njbair
splintercell
And of course the one who made this unit bearable until the above mentioned got the patch to work
mswlogo
Instructions
1. Download the NewRom
2. Unzip it using your unzip program (i.e. WinRAR, WinZip, 7zip, etc...)
3. Double click on the hpRUU to run the program
4. View the Readme and if you wish to proceed Agree to the Terms and Conditions
5. Click Next
6. Click Next again to flash the device with the new ROM
7. Sit back relax and grab yourself something to drink while it handles its business.
If you want the SIM Contacts Manager, Battery Status, and T-Mobile today plug-in then do the following after completing the ROM upgrade.
1. Copied the entire "T-Mobile" folder from the oldROM to the Program Files directory /program files/
2. Then copy all of the .dll files from the T-Mobile Directory to the /windows directory
3. Lastly, create a shortcut to vsbattery.exe in the /windows/startup folder
If you want the Mail triggers to work then do the following
1. Download this and unzip it.
2. Copy tmo-IM.CAB to your device and run it. When prompted to overwrite, choose "No to All".
3. Copy all other files directly to the root directory of your device. The folders should merge where necessary. When prompted to overwrite, choose "Yes to All".
4. Run tmo.cpf in your root directory. There is no confirmation for this file, but you will see it disappear from the list once it is completed.
5. Remove your device from the cradle and perform a soft-reset.
6. In File Explorer, navigate to the /Windows/Start Menu/ directory. Delete the "Instant Messaging" shortcut, then delete the three shortcuts in the /Programs/ subfolder for AIM, ICQ, and Yahoo.
Voila! You now have email triggers.
You can configure your POP account via the T-Mobile website or by hand.
Enjoy E-Mail Triggers!
If you want the T-Mobile today plug in to work then do the following:
1. Download this registry editor
2. Browse to the following path:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Today\Items
3. And Remove the "\IPAQ ROM" from the path entries for both T-Mobile and Mail
If you want the original T-Mobile Theme the do the following:
1. Download this and unzip it
2. Copy both files to the \Windows directory on the PPC
3. Go to Start----Settings----Today
4. Choose which one you like
That's it I think now that concludes just about everything! Once again much thanks to mswlogo, beaups, dmc874, lgingell, Mashie, njbair, splintercell and PDAPHONEHOME.COM for everything.
-lvlolvlo
ROM Update for 6315 *un-official*
Use at own risk!!! Any suppliers of this unofficial ROM update including myself will and shall not be held responsible for any action that may arise.
By downloading this unofficial ROM update you agree to to the terms above. (Instructions?)
New ROM
OldROM
HP/T-Mobile people, if you don't want this here then I suggest you make one available to us, or contact me via e-mail
More goodies http://www.lvlolvlo.net/pda
Many thanks goes to the following evil geniuses who got this to work
beaups
dmc874
lgingell
Mashie
njbair
splintercell
And of course the one who made this unit bearable until the above mentioned got the patch to work
mswlogo
Instructions
1. Download the NewRom
2. Unzip it using your unzip program (i.e. WinRAR, WinZip, 7zip, etc...)
3. Double click on the hpRUU to run the program
4. View the Readme and if you wish to proceed Agree to the Terms and Conditions
5. Click Next
6. Click Next again to flash the device with the new ROM
7. Sit back relax and grab yourself something to drink while it handles its business.
If you want the SIM Contacts Manager, Battery Status, and T-Mobile today plug-in then do the following after completing the ROM upgrade.
1. Copied the entire "T-Mobile" folder from the oldROM to the Program Files directory /program files/
2. Then copy all of the .dll files from the T-Mobile Directory to the /windows directory
3. Lastly, create a shortcut to vsbattery.exe in the /windows/startup folder
If you want the Mail triggers to work then do the following
1. Download this and unzip it.
2. Copy tmo-IM.CAB to your device and run it. When prompted to overwrite, choose "No to All".
3. Copy all other files directly to the root directory of your device. The folders should merge where necessary. When prompted to overwrite, choose "Yes to All".
4. Run tmo.cpf in your root directory. There is no confirmation for this file, but you will see it disappear from the list once it is completed.
5. Remove your device from the cradle and perform a soft-reset.
6. In File Explorer, navigate to the /Windows/Start Menu/ directory. Delete the "Instant Messaging" shortcut, then delete the three shortcuts in the /Programs/ subfolder for AIM, ICQ, and Yahoo.
Voila! You now have email triggers.
You can configure your POP account via the T-Mobile website or by hand.
Enjoy E-Mail Triggers!
If you want the T-Mobile today plug in to work then do the following:
1. Download this registry editor
2. Browse to the following path:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Today\Items
3. And Remove the "\IPAQ ROM" from the path entries for both T-Mobile and Mail
If you want the original T-Mobile Theme the do the following:
1. Download this and unzip it
2. Copy both files to the \Windows directory on the PPC
3. Go to Start----Settings----Today
4. Choose which one you like
That's it I think now that concludes just about everything! Once again much thanks to mswlogo, beaups, dmc874, lgingell, Mashie, njbair, splintercell and PDAPHONEHOME.COM for everything.
-lvlolvlo
Friday, February 11, 2005
Ipaq HQ Forums - Carly Fiorina And HP Part Company
Ipaq HQ Forums - Carly Fiorina And HP Part Company: "arly Fiorina And HP Part Company
The move has been rumored for weeks -- HP's embattled CEO Carly Fiorina and HP have parted ways over unreconcilable differences.
'While I regret the board and I have differences about how to execute HP's strategy, I respect their decision,' Fiorina said in a statement. 'HP is a great company and I wish all the people of HP much success in the future.'
According to Patricia C. Dunn, an HP director, 'Looking forward, we think the job is reliant on hands-on execution, and we thought that a new set of capabilities was called for.'
In January, sources told the Wall Street Journal the company's board is tired of HP's inconsistent earnings and second billing to IBM. HP has been frustrated by its inability to clearly articulate its Adaptive Enterprise strategy as it relates to IBM's e-business on-demand plan for next-generation computing.
__________________
Mike Lohsl
News Editor & Mobile Evangelist"
The move has been rumored for weeks -- HP's embattled CEO Carly Fiorina and HP have parted ways over unreconcilable differences.
'While I regret the board and I have differences about how to execute HP's strategy, I respect their decision,' Fiorina said in a statement. 'HP is a great company and I wish all the people of HP much success in the future.'
According to Patricia C. Dunn, an HP director, 'Looking forward, we think the job is reliant on hands-on execution, and we thought that a new set of capabilities was called for.'
In January, sources told the Wall Street Journal the company's board is tired of HP's inconsistent earnings and second billing to IBM. HP has been frustrated by its inability to clearly articulate its Adaptive Enterprise strategy as it relates to IBM's e-business on-demand plan for next-generation computing.
__________________
Mike Lohsl
News Editor & Mobile Evangelist"
Saturday, January 15, 2005
WGCLTV.com > Probe Finds Liquid on Titan
Probe Finds Liquid on Titan
This is one of the first raw images returned by the ESA Huygens probe during its successful descent.
January 14, 2005
DARMSTADT, Germany (AP) -- A European space probe Friday sent back the first detailed pictures of the frozen surface of Saturn's moon Titan, showing stunning black and white images of what appeared to be hilly terrain riddled with channels or riverbeds carved by a liquid.
One picture, taken about 10 miles above the surface as the Huygens spacecraft descended by parachute to a safe landing after a seven-year voyage from Earth, showed snaking, dark lines cut into the light-colored surface.
"Clearly there is liquid matter flowing on the surface of Titan," said scientist Marty Tomasko of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, in Tucson, which made the probe's camera.
He said the liquid appeared to be flowing into a dark area at the right side of the image.
"It almost looks like a river delta," he said. "It could be liquid methane, or hydrocarbons that settled out of the haze" that envelops Titan.
Another image, taken about five miles above the surface, showed light and dark masses, which Tomasko said seemed to be shadows, indicating a varied terrain. The dark areas appeared to be flooded or to have been so at an earlier time.
A third image taken at the surface showed several large white chunks - boulders or blocks of water ice - in the foreground and a stretch of gray surface behind them.
"There aren't too many planets with liquid," Tomasko said. "There's Earth, and now there's Titan."
Titan is the first moon other than the Earth's to be explored. Scientists believe its atmosphere is similar to that of the young Earth, and studying it could provide clues to how life arose here.
"I think all of us continue to be amazed as we watch our solar system unveil," NASA science administrator Alphonso Diaz said as the extraordinary images were displayed on screens at mission control in Darmstadt.
"It challenges all our preconceptions that all these planets are static places. Seeing a planet emerge that has dynamics and complexity to it is just amazing."
Huygens was spun off from the Cassini mother ship on Dec. 24 before its descent to the surface of Titan. The mission is a joint effort among NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian space agency.
Scientists say they received more than three hours of data from Huygens' descent, and more than 10 minutes of data from the surface itself.
"I'm shocked. It's remarkable," said Carolyn Porco of the Cassini Imaging Center. "There are river channels. There are channels cut by something ... a fluid of some sort is my best guess."
"This mission has been like a fantasy come true," she told CNN. "It's a great moment not only for science but for humankind."
Applause erupted at mission control in Darmstadt at news of the data transmission from the probe.
"The scientific data we are collecting now shall unveil the secrets of this new world," said Jean-Jacques Dordain, ESA's general director. "This is a fantastic success for Europe."
The heart of the mission was the probe's 2 1/2-hour parachute descent, taking pictures and sampling the atmosphere before landing on Titan, where temperatures are estimated at 292 degrees below zero.
Early signals confirmed it had powered up for entry and deployed the parachute, and officials were confident it had made a safe landing because Huygens was designed to go on transmitting from the surface for at least three minutes before its batteries died - a total transmission of less than three hours. But the signal kept coming for more than five hours.
Mission officials - who have waited since 1997 for Huygens to reach its destination - had tears in their eyes as the first signal was picked up, indicating the probe was transmitting to the Cassini mother ship.
Named after Titan's discoverer, the 17th century Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens, the probe carries instruments to explore Titan's atmosphere and find out whether it has the cold seas of liquid methane and ethane that have been theorized by scientists.
Timers inside the 705-pound probe awakened it just before it entered Titan's atmosphere. Huygens is shaped like a wok and covered with a heat shield to survive the intense heat of entry.
The probe was designed to shed its heat shield during descent and use a special camera and instruments to collect information on wind speeds and the makeup of Titan's atmosphere for transmission back to Cassini and relay to NASA's Deep Space Network in California and to ESA controllers in Darmstadt.
Titan is the only moon in the solar system known to have a significant atmosphere. Rich in nitrogen and containing about 6 percent methane, its atmosphere is believed to be 1 1/2 times thicker than Earth's.
Alphonso Diaz, science administrator for NASA, said Titan may offer hints about the conditions under which life first arose on Earth.
"Titan is a time machine," Diaz said. "It will provide us the opportunity to look at conditions that may well have existed on Earth in the beginning. It may have preserved in a deep freeze many chemical compounds that set the stage for life on Earth."
Part of a $3.3 billion international mission to study the Saturn system, Huygens is also equipped with instruments to study Titan's surface upon landing.
The Cassini-Huygens mission was launched on Oct. 15, 1997, from Cape Canaveral, Fla., to study Saturn, its spectacular rings and many moons.
---
On the Net:
http://saturn.esa.int
http://saturn.jpl.nasa .gov
http://www.nasa.gov /cassini
© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
All content © Copyright 2001 - 2005 WorldNow and CBS 46. All Rights Reserved.
For more information on this site, please read our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.
This is one of the first raw images returned by the ESA Huygens probe during its successful descent.
January 14, 2005
DARMSTADT, Germany (AP) -- A European space probe Friday sent back the first detailed pictures of the frozen surface of Saturn's moon Titan, showing stunning black and white images of what appeared to be hilly terrain riddled with channels or riverbeds carved by a liquid.
One picture, taken about 10 miles above the surface as the Huygens spacecraft descended by parachute to a safe landing after a seven-year voyage from Earth, showed snaking, dark lines cut into the light-colored surface.
"Clearly there is liquid matter flowing on the surface of Titan," said scientist Marty Tomasko of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, in Tucson, which made the probe's camera.
He said the liquid appeared to be flowing into a dark area at the right side of the image.
"It almost looks like a river delta," he said. "It could be liquid methane, or hydrocarbons that settled out of the haze" that envelops Titan.
Another image, taken about five miles above the surface, showed light and dark masses, which Tomasko said seemed to be shadows, indicating a varied terrain. The dark areas appeared to be flooded or to have been so at an earlier time.
A third image taken at the surface showed several large white chunks - boulders or blocks of water ice - in the foreground and a stretch of gray surface behind them.
"There aren't too many planets with liquid," Tomasko said. "There's Earth, and now there's Titan."
Titan is the first moon other than the Earth's to be explored. Scientists believe its atmosphere is similar to that of the young Earth, and studying it could provide clues to how life arose here.
"I think all of us continue to be amazed as we watch our solar system unveil," NASA science administrator Alphonso Diaz said as the extraordinary images were displayed on screens at mission control in Darmstadt.
"It challenges all our preconceptions that all these planets are static places. Seeing a planet emerge that has dynamics and complexity to it is just amazing."
Huygens was spun off from the Cassini mother ship on Dec. 24 before its descent to the surface of Titan. The mission is a joint effort among NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian space agency.
Scientists say they received more than three hours of data from Huygens' descent, and more than 10 minutes of data from the surface itself.
"I'm shocked. It's remarkable," said Carolyn Porco of the Cassini Imaging Center. "There are river channels. There are channels cut by something ... a fluid of some sort is my best guess."
"This mission has been like a fantasy come true," she told CNN. "It's a great moment not only for science but for humankind."
Applause erupted at mission control in Darmstadt at news of the data transmission from the probe.
"The scientific data we are collecting now shall unveil the secrets of this new world," said Jean-Jacques Dordain, ESA's general director. "This is a fantastic success for Europe."
The heart of the mission was the probe's 2 1/2-hour parachute descent, taking pictures and sampling the atmosphere before landing on Titan, where temperatures are estimated at 292 degrees below zero.
Early signals confirmed it had powered up for entry and deployed the parachute, and officials were confident it had made a safe landing because Huygens was designed to go on transmitting from the surface for at least three minutes before its batteries died - a total transmission of less than three hours. But the signal kept coming for more than five hours.
Mission officials - who have waited since 1997 for Huygens to reach its destination - had tears in their eyes as the first signal was picked up, indicating the probe was transmitting to the Cassini mother ship.
Named after Titan's discoverer, the 17th century Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens, the probe carries instruments to explore Titan's atmosphere and find out whether it has the cold seas of liquid methane and ethane that have been theorized by scientists.
Timers inside the 705-pound probe awakened it just before it entered Titan's atmosphere. Huygens is shaped like a wok and covered with a heat shield to survive the intense heat of entry.
The probe was designed to shed its heat shield during descent and use a special camera and instruments to collect information on wind speeds and the makeup of Titan's atmosphere for transmission back to Cassini and relay to NASA's Deep Space Network in California and to ESA controllers in Darmstadt.
Titan is the only moon in the solar system known to have a significant atmosphere. Rich in nitrogen and containing about 6 percent methane, its atmosphere is believed to be 1 1/2 times thicker than Earth's.
Alphonso Diaz, science administrator for NASA, said Titan may offer hints about the conditions under which life first arose on Earth.
"Titan is a time machine," Diaz said. "It will provide us the opportunity to look at conditions that may well have existed on Earth in the beginning. It may have preserved in a deep freeze many chemical compounds that set the stage for life on Earth."
Part of a $3.3 billion international mission to study the Saturn system, Huygens is also equipped with instruments to study Titan's surface upon landing.
The Cassini-Huygens mission was launched on Oct. 15, 1997, from Cape Canaveral, Fla., to study Saturn, its spectacular rings and many moons.
---
On the Net:
http://saturn.esa.int
http://saturn.jpl.nasa .gov
http://www.nasa.gov /cassini
© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
All content © Copyright 2001 - 2005 WorldNow and CBS 46. All Rights Reserved.
For more information on this site, please read our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.
Friday, January 14, 2005
PC Magazine > Spy Sweeper 3.5 REVIEW DATE:Â 01.12.05
Spy Sweeper 3.5
REVIEW DATE: 01.12.05
Total posts: 2
$29.95
By Konstantinos Karagiannis
The best just keeps getting better. Webroot's Spy Sweeper, which shared the spotlight with Lavasoft's Ad-Aware SE Plus as our picks for the best antispyware products of 2004, is now the sole champ of the antispyware arena. The latest version, 3.5, with its slight but effective improvements, is easily the best choice for protecting PCs from spyware and for cleaning infected machines.
Scan time is improved in the new version. We ran both versions 3.0 and 3.5 against the same test system, and verified that Spy Sweeper 3.5 is approximately 30 percent faster, in line with Webroot's claims. Accuracy is up as well; the program got perfect scores on all but one of our tests.
Other improvements include the ability to remove both CoolWebSearch and TV Media completely. Older versions of Spy Sweeper required manual removal stages that proved difficult. We found one pest that remains less than fully curable, however. Spy Sweeper was unable to delete a key component of Istbar, although it did block the spyware bar from working. Spy Sweeper wrongly suggests that a user can delete the file; Windows claims Istbar is in use, making deletion via Explorer impossible. You need to kill Istbar either via a command line, by removing dependencies on the file, or with Spybot Search & Destroy. Even the best occasionally needs a little extra help.
Of course, with all its Shields active, Spy Sweeper will prevent Istbar and almost every other pest from getting on your system in the first place. If version 3.0 got on your nerves with frequent requests for user interaction, you'll like 3.5's ability to block browser-hijack attempts without constantly asking for advice.
Many antispyware packages offer users the ability, on a case-by-case basis, to block a program from running. However, users may find this tiresome and end up simply deleting the pesky app. This poses a problem should the deleted program be needed by another app, such as one for file-sharing. As a safeguard against this, Spy Sweeper gives users the option of blocking apps permanently instead.
When looking at traces found during a scan, you can still take advantage of the expandable tree view, complete with summary information about each threat. A previous gripe of ours has been resolved, too: You can now ignore tracking cookies, thereby making it easier to focus on the more immediate threats posed by spyware apps.
We're eager to see the next incremental revision. We'd like to see Spy Sweeper update its abilities to handle Istbar and a couple of other pests that weren't part of our official test batch, and get better at cleaning annoying desktop shortcuts and folders deposited by adware. This product is so close to five stars we can taste it.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1750883,00.asp
REVIEW DATE: 01.12.05
Total posts: 2
$29.95
By Konstantinos Karagiannis
The best just keeps getting better. Webroot's Spy Sweeper, which shared the spotlight with Lavasoft's Ad-Aware SE Plus as our picks for the best antispyware products of 2004, is now the sole champ of the antispyware arena. The latest version, 3.5, with its slight but effective improvements, is easily the best choice for protecting PCs from spyware and for cleaning infected machines.
Scan time is improved in the new version. We ran both versions 3.0 and 3.5 against the same test system, and verified that Spy Sweeper 3.5 is approximately 30 percent faster, in line with Webroot's claims. Accuracy is up as well; the program got perfect scores on all but one of our tests.
Other improvements include the ability to remove both CoolWebSearch and TV Media completely. Older versions of Spy Sweeper required manual removal stages that proved difficult. We found one pest that remains less than fully curable, however. Spy Sweeper was unable to delete a key component of Istbar, although it did block the spyware bar from working. Spy Sweeper wrongly suggests that a user can delete the file; Windows claims Istbar is in use, making deletion via Explorer impossible. You need to kill Istbar either via a command line, by removing dependencies on the file, or with Spybot Search & Destroy. Even the best occasionally needs a little extra help.
Of course, with all its Shields active, Spy Sweeper will prevent Istbar and almost every other pest from getting on your system in the first place. If version 3.0 got on your nerves with frequent requests for user interaction, you'll like 3.5's ability to block browser-hijack attempts without constantly asking for advice.
Many antispyware packages offer users the ability, on a case-by-case basis, to block a program from running. However, users may find this tiresome and end up simply deleting the pesky app. This poses a problem should the deleted program be needed by another app, such as one for file-sharing. As a safeguard against this, Spy Sweeper gives users the option of blocking apps permanently instead.
When looking at traces found during a scan, you can still take advantage of the expandable tree view, complete with summary information about each threat. A previous gripe of ours has been resolved, too: You can now ignore tracking cookies, thereby making it easier to focus on the more immediate threats posed by spyware apps.
We're eager to see the next incremental revision. We'd like to see Spy Sweeper update its abilities to handle Istbar and a couple of other pests that weren't part of our official test batch, and get better at cleaning annoying desktop shortcuts and folders deposited by adware. This product is so close to five stars we can taste it.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1750883,00.asp
Friday, January 07, 2005
Pocket PC Magazine > The Emergence of True Convergence, and Is Speed-Boosting Firefox Wrong?
The Emergence of True Convergence, and Is Speed-Boosting Firefox Wrong?
ARTICLE DATE: 01.06.05
By Alice Hill and Bill O'Brien
Not wishing to disillusion any of those who believe pundits typically talk for their own benefit, we decided the first column of the new year deserved some forward-looking guesstimation. See that PC you're sitting in front of? Don't get too accustomed to it. You won't have it for very long.
Maybe we should begin at the beginningÂ….
For several years now, IBM and Microsoft have been hard at work in back rooms, redefining personal computing. Actually, they've been trying to erase it. Personal computing is a "masses" approach that promotes hardcore consumerism, which in turn enforces competition, discounting, and low profit margins. (Trust us, IBM isn't selling its PC business because it's making money with it.) Can we prove this? Only by inference.
IBM has been making a massive push to promote grid computing. By its nature, grid computing removes the restriction of individual system performance, relying on the aggregate resources of a grid, or network, of computers to achieve ultimate processing power. There is no larger grid than the entire population of computers.
Microsoft, slowly but surely, has been redefining Windows from an operating system for single PCs to an OS capable of embracing the Internet. You have Web views for your desktop; you can carry your desktop with you, and if it's properly configured, sit at any PC, making it look like your own. The automatic operations a PC can perform in the background—software updates and e-mail transfers to mention just two—make user intervention less than essential. And the Internet is just a huge grid of computers.
Convergence ad infinitum
For the idea to work, the current PC must become an essential item, in a closed loop, but also disappear as an "item." Why not imbed a "mainboard" in each house and apartment, then use something like Wi-Fi to connect televisions, e-mail and game stations, refrigerators, telephones, lighting, environmental controls, even cars.
Don't laugh. Using technology like RFID to help your car identify you will surely cut down on theft. And if reprogrammed for multiple IDs, the settings of a car's equipment—from radios to seats to mirrors—will automatically adjust for each individual. Travel directions? Forget traditional GPS. Your car can download them. If you need a "computer" in the traditional sense, you just pick up a keyboard and sit down in front of any screen in your house or apartment. Naturally, the keyboard will have an imbedded trackball or mouse for navigation.
The mainboard (or mainboards, depending on how large a spread you have) handles everything, and its dual-core processors will give it immensely expanded capacity. When your domicile's asleep or running at lower-than-peak levels, its unused capability is added to the grid. (The system is a lot like the one used for distributing electricity, but not quite.) That, in fact, is one of the ways this technology makes a profit. You're charged for your usage, and you and others are charged additionally for "shared" processing. Better still, once your place is built and configured, you're not going to upgrade via mail order. You'll have a contract and a service fee, and all those other good revenue producing items.
Continue reading...
Is Speed-Boosting Firefox Wrong?
When you live on the tech edge, especially in the online world, you take chances. Last column, for example, we discussed what happened when we accidentally violated Google's AdSense policy by asking users to click on our blog's ads. (Short answer: it made Google very, very angry and got a lot of our readers here up in arms as well.)
SoÂ…what if we told you that this week we found a way to boost browser performance in Firefox (and Mozilla) to a level you literally won't believe? The update takes two minutes, requires no add-ins or purchases, and blows your hair back when you surf even the most dog-slow Web sites.
The instructions are being posted as we speak on blogs all over the Internet. I saw them on ForeverGeek.com, but the exact text is posted on blog after blog, so my apologies to the original author. Here's the bottom line. To boost Firefox, simply do the following after launching your browser.
1. Type "about:config" into the address bar (no spaces) and hit Return. Scroll down and look for the following entries:
--network.http .pipelining
--network.http.proxy .pipelining
--network.http .pipelining.maxrequests
Normally the browser will make one request at a time to a Web page. When you enable pipelining, the browser will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.
2. Alter the entries as follows:
Set "network.http.pipelining " to "true"
Set "network.http.proxy .pipelining" to "true"
Set "network.http.pipelining .maxrequests" to some number like 30. (This tells the browser to make 30 requests at once.)
3. Lastly, right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it "nglayout.initialpaint .delay" and set its value to "0". This value is the amount of time the browser waits before acting on received information.
Okay. That's all it takes. But now let's dig into the controversy that is foaming up discussion boards across the land. The term the hard core use for opening 30 server calls at one time is not pretty, but says it all: server raping. Taking up 30 simultaneous sessions is a major don't, since most servers bomb out at around 100. If four people using this tweak hit a page at the exact same time, they would crash everything, warned many a geek.
But not so, according to the other camp, who explain that pipelining is not about opening multiple sessions but simply changing how a single session pulls down information. The irony is that most developers gave up on pipelining after broadband became more widespread, and browsers today ship with this default set to "Off" or "False" to protect servers from throwing up bugs during a rapid pipeline burst.
We have to say that we have been using our jacked-up Firefox and have not crashed sites or been denied access because our browser's action was confused for a flood attack. We did see some bad code, though in third-party ads, mostly. Not in Google ads—and whatever you do, don't think we just told you to click on them!
So, give this a try, and report back in the discussion areas. We would love to hear from some hardcore pipeline guys and gals and figure this out once and for all. Is the hysteria just hype as we suspect, or is boosting Firefox technically bad for the Internet?
Saturday, January 01, 2005
Wall Street Journal > Security, Cool Features Of Firefox Web Browser Beat Microsoft's IE
December 30, 2004
By WALTER S. MOSSBERG
Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser is one of the most important, and most often used, programs on the world's personal computers, relied upon by more than 90% of Windows users. But Microsoft hasn't made any important functional improvements in Internet Explorer for years.
The software giant has folded IE into the Windows operating system, and the browser only receives updates as part of the "Windows update" process. In recent years, most upgrades to IE have been under-the-hood patches to plug the many security holes that have made IE a major conduit for hackers, virus writers and spyware purveyors. The only visible feature added to IE recently: a pop-up ad blocker, which arrived long after other browsers had one.
Meanwhile, other people have been building much better browsers, just as Microsoft itself did in the 1990s, when it challenged and eventually bested the then-dominant browser, Netscape Navigator. The most significant of these challengers is Firefox, a free product of an open-source organization called Mozilla, available for download at www.mozilla.org. Firefox is both more secure and more modern than IE, and it comes packed with user-friendly features the Microsoft browser can't touch.
Firefox still has a tiny market share. But millions of people have downloaded it recently. I've been using it for months, and I recommended back in September that users switch to it from IE as a security measure. It's available in nearly identical versions for Windows, the Apple Macintosh, and the Linux operating system.
There are some other browsers that put IE to shame. Apple's elegant Safari browser, included free on every Mac, is one. But it isn't available for Windows. The Opera browser is loaded with bells and whistles, but I find it pretty complicated. And NetCaptor, my former favorite, is very nice. But since it's based on the IE Web-browsing engine, it's vulnerable to most of IE's security problems.
Firefox, which uses a different underlying browsing engine called "Gecko," also has a couple of close cousins based on the same engine. One is Netscape, now owned by America Online. The other is a browser called Mozilla, from the same group that created Firefox. But Firefox is smaller, sleeker and newer than either of its relatives, although a new Netscape version is in the works.
Firefox isn't totally secure -- no browser can be, especially if it runs on Windows, which has major security problems and is the world's top digital target. But Firefox has better security and privacy than IE. One big reason is that it won't run programs called "ActiveX controls," a Microsoft technology used in IE. These programs are used for many good things, but they have become such powerful tools for criminals and hackers that their potential for harm outweighs their benefits.
Firefox also has easier, quicker and clearer methods than IE does for covering your online tracks, if you so choose. And it has a better built-in pop-up ad blocker than IE.
But my favorite aspect of Firefox is tabbed browsing, a Web-surfing revolution that is shared by all the major new browsers but is absent from IE. With tabbed browsing, you can open many Web pages at once in the same browser window. Each is accessed by a tab.
The benefits of tabbed browsing hit home when you create folders of related bookmarks. For instance, on my computer I have a folder of a dozen technology-news bookmarks and another 20 or so bookmarks pointing to political Web sites. A third folder contains 15 or so bookmarks for sites devoted to the World Champion Boston Red Sox. With one click, I can open the entire contents of these folders in tabs, in the same single window, allowing me to survey entire fields of interest.
And Firefox can recognize and use Web sites that employ a new technology called "RSS" to create and update summaries of their contents. When Firefox encounters an RSS site, it displays a special icon that allows you to create a "live" bookmark to the site. These bookmarks then display updated headlines of stories on the sites.
Firefox also includes a permanent, handy search box that can be used to type in searches on Google, Yahoo, Amazon or other search sites without installing a special toolbar.
And it has a cool feature called "Extensions." These are small add-on modules, easy to download and install, that give the browser new features. Among the extensions I use are one that automatically fills out forms and another that tests the speed of my Web connection. You can also download "themes," which change the browser's looks.
There is only one significant downside to Firefox. Some Web sites, especially financial ones, have chosen to tailor themselves specifically for Internet Explorer. They rely on features only present in IE, and either won't work or work poorly in Firefox and other browsers.
Luckily, even if you switch to Firefox, you can still keep IE around to view just these incompatible sites. (In fact, Microsoft makes it impossible to fully uninstall IE.) There's even an extension for Firefox that adds an option called "View This Page in IE."
So Firefox is my current choice of a Windows Web browser. It is to IE in 2004 what IE was to Netscape in 1996 -- the upstart that does a better job.
Write to Walter S. Mossberg at mossberg@wsj.com
By WALTER S. MOSSBERG
Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser is one of the most important, and most often used, programs on the world's personal computers, relied upon by more than 90% of Windows users. But Microsoft hasn't made any important functional improvements in Internet Explorer for years.
The software giant has folded IE into the Windows operating system, and the browser only receives updates as part of the "Windows update" process. In recent years, most upgrades to IE have been under-the-hood patches to plug the many security holes that have made IE a major conduit for hackers, virus writers and spyware purveyors. The only visible feature added to IE recently: a pop-up ad blocker, which arrived long after other browsers had one.
Meanwhile, other people have been building much better browsers, just as Microsoft itself did in the 1990s, when it challenged and eventually bested the then-dominant browser, Netscape Navigator. The most significant of these challengers is Firefox, a free product of an open-source organization called Mozilla, available for download at www.mozilla.org. Firefox is both more secure and more modern than IE, and it comes packed with user-friendly features the Microsoft browser can't touch.
Firefox still has a tiny market share. But millions of people have downloaded it recently. I've been using it for months, and I recommended back in September that users switch to it from IE as a security measure. It's available in nearly identical versions for Windows, the Apple Macintosh, and the Linux operating system.
There are some other browsers that put IE to shame. Apple's elegant Safari browser, included free on every Mac, is one. But it isn't available for Windows. The Opera browser is loaded with bells and whistles, but I find it pretty complicated. And NetCaptor, my former favorite, is very nice. But since it's based on the IE Web-browsing engine, it's vulnerable to most of IE's security problems.
Firefox, which uses a different underlying browsing engine called "Gecko," also has a couple of close cousins based on the same engine. One is Netscape, now owned by America Online. The other is a browser called Mozilla, from the same group that created Firefox. But Firefox is smaller, sleeker and newer than either of its relatives, although a new Netscape version is in the works.
Firefox isn't totally secure -- no browser can be, especially if it runs on Windows, which has major security problems and is the world's top digital target. But Firefox has better security and privacy than IE. One big reason is that it won't run programs called "ActiveX controls," a Microsoft technology used in IE. These programs are used for many good things, but they have become such powerful tools for criminals and hackers that their potential for harm outweighs their benefits.
Firefox also has easier, quicker and clearer methods than IE does for covering your online tracks, if you so choose. And it has a better built-in pop-up ad blocker than IE.
But my favorite aspect of Firefox is tabbed browsing, a Web-surfing revolution that is shared by all the major new browsers but is absent from IE. With tabbed browsing, you can open many Web pages at once in the same browser window. Each is accessed by a tab.
The benefits of tabbed browsing hit home when you create folders of related bookmarks. For instance, on my computer I have a folder of a dozen technology-news bookmarks and another 20 or so bookmarks pointing to political Web sites. A third folder contains 15 or so bookmarks for sites devoted to the World Champion Boston Red Sox. With one click, I can open the entire contents of these folders in tabs, in the same single window, allowing me to survey entire fields of interest.
And Firefox can recognize and use Web sites that employ a new technology called "RSS" to create and update summaries of their contents. When Firefox encounters an RSS site, it displays a special icon that allows you to create a "live" bookmark to the site. These bookmarks then display updated headlines of stories on the sites.
Firefox also includes a permanent, handy search box that can be used to type in searches on Google, Yahoo, Amazon or other search sites without installing a special toolbar.
And it has a cool feature called "Extensions." These are small add-on modules, easy to download and install, that give the browser new features. Among the extensions I use are one that automatically fills out forms and another that tests the speed of my Web connection. You can also download "themes," which change the browser's looks.
There is only one significant downside to Firefox. Some Web sites, especially financial ones, have chosen to tailor themselves specifically for Internet Explorer. They rely on features only present in IE, and either won't work or work poorly in Firefox and other browsers.
Luckily, even if you switch to Firefox, you can still keep IE around to view just these incompatible sites. (In fact, Microsoft makes it impossible to fully uninstall IE.) There's even an extension for Firefox that adds an option called "View This Page in IE."
So Firefox is my current choice of a Windows Web browser. It is to IE in 2004 what IE was to Netscape in 1996 -- the upstart that does a better job.
Write to Walter S. Mossberg at mossberg@wsj.com
Saturday, December 25, 2004
New York Times > Chinese Buyer of PC Unit Is Moving to I.B.M.'s Hometown
By DAVID BARBOZA
BEIJING - Inside the shimmeringheadquarters of the Lenovo Group,China's largest computer maker,workers are carting birthday cakes overto three office cubicles.These days, every employee here getsa birthday gift, something amultinational company might beexpected to do in this age of feel-goodcorporate management.The problem is that people in China donot traditionally celebrate birthdays.But that is changing. And so is Lenovo.It is trying to become a global companywith its purchase of I.B.M's personalcomputer business for $1.75 billion,and handing out birthday cakes is justpart of the process of evolving into amultinational corporation.To further globalize the company,however, Lenovo will do somethingeven bolder: it will move itsheadquarters to Armonk, N.Y., whereI.B.M. is based, and essentially handover management of what will becomethe world's third-largest computermaker, after Dell and Hewlett-Packard,to a group of senior I.B.M. executives.American multinational companiesoutsource manufacturing to China. Whycan't a Chinese company outsourcemanagement to the United States?Executives at Lenovo - which getsabout 98 percent of its $3 billion inrevenue from China - are, in effect,acknowledging that they do not havethe necessary global experience to runthe new company."The most valuable asset we haveacquired through I.B.M.'s PC businessis its world-class management teamand their extensive internationalexperience," says Liu Chuanzhi,chairman of Lenovo and one of thecompany's founders.Indeed, few executives at Lenovo seemdisappointed by the move. In fact,many seem pleased to be buying into ablue-chip American corporation.After all, Lenovo - formerly known asLegend - may be the biggest computermaker in China, but the company is stillvirtually unknown outside of Asia.And top executives at Lenovo say theyare eager to learn how to run a globalcompany from their new colleagues atthe PC unit of I.B.M., which operates inmore than 150 countries and had $9billion in revenue in 2003.Preparations are already under way inBeijing. For the last few months, allvice presidents have been required tostudy English for at least one hour aday. The chairman says he has readbooks about Bill Gates and AndrewGrove. And the chief executive ofLenovo has agreed to give upday-to-day management of thecompany to assume the role ofchairman.His task will be to fly back and forthfrom Beijing to New York to consultwith Lenovo's newly named chiefexecutive, Stephen M. Ward Jr., thesenior vice president and generalmanager of I.B.M.'s Personal SystemsGroup.Many analysts were surprised byLenovo's decision to outsource itsmanagement to New York."I admire what Lenovo is doing," saidJoe Zhang, a UBS analyst who followsLenovo. "Many Lenovo executives havedecided to do this at the expense oftheir careers. They're putting personalego behind for the greater good of thecompany."People involved in the negotiations withI.B.M. said that Lenovo officials saw noother choice. They recognized thatLenovo could not simply take over amuch bigger I.B.M. PC unit and run itfrom Beijing.That is why a major theme of the talkswas how to keep business as usualafter the deal was completed, thosepeople say.While I.B.M. is full of M.B.A.'s, Lenovo -which is still partly government owned- has only two members of the seniormanagement team with an M.B.A. Andnone of the top executives have everworked for a multinational corporation.But analysts also say that Lenovo is nopushover. The company is consideredone of China's most successfulcorporations. For years, for example,Lenovo's brand has outsold Dell,Hewlett-Packard and I.B.M. computersin China.And even though it began as astate-owned enterprise, Lenovo hasalways been entrepreneurial, analystssay. It was one of the first companieshere to list its shares in Hong Kong. Itwas among the first to reward itsemployees with stock options, whichhave turned some of its top executivesinto millionaires.The company's identity was shaped, inpart, by its visionary chairman, Mr. Liu,who in 1984 helped found Lenovo witha group of scientists from the ChineseAcademy of Sciences.Early on, it was the hard-charging Mr.Liu who persuaded the Chinesegovernment to give the companygreater control over its hiring andsalary decisions, allowing thestate-owned company to raise capitalfrom outside investors and essentiallyoperate like a private company.Later, Mr. Liu won governmentapproval to list the company's stock inHong Kong and for Lenovo to startproducing its own computers, ratherthan simply marketing Western brands.By 1997, with its own brand of low-costChinese-character-friendly computers,Lenovo was suddenly China's biggestcomputer maker.Mr. Liu, a military academy graduatewho suffered through China's brutalCultural Revolution, said he often ranthe company with an iron fist, scoldingworkers who showed up late formeetings and pushing scientists andexecutives to deliver on their promises."All the people were scientists in thosedays," Mr. Liu recalled. "They werevery casual. They'd always be late formeetings and they'd make theirpromises. So we decided that if anyonewas late they'd stand up for oneminute."Along the way, Mr. Liu also groomed acadre of loyal and fierce executives,including Yang Yuanqing, 42, who isnow the company's chief executive, andMary Ma, 52, Lenovo's highly respectedchief financial officer.But just how the new company'smanagement will take shape in Beijingand New York is still unclear.Though he will step down after themerger, Mr. Liu, 60, will continue toserve as a member of the board.Mr. Yang, a serious-minded executivewho helped fire up the company's salesforce, will become chairman. Ms. Ma,who led the talks to acquire I.B.M.'s PCunit, is expected to remain as chieffinancial officer.Lenovo's challenge will be to meldradically different corporate cultures."Neither culture should be the de factoculture," said Martin Gilliland, ananalyst at Gartner Research. "Theyhave to start a new one. Can theydevelop a new Lenovo businessculture? That's one of the keys tosuccess."In recent years, Lenovo officials say thecompany's corporate culture hasevolved from what some companyofficials called the "semimilitary"culture that prevailed in the early days,to a more easy-going and hip high-techculture.These days, Lenovo's new corporateheadquarters in Beijing's "SiliconSuburb" is teaming with young 20- and30-somethings, casually dressed,chattering into mobile phones andlooking confident.The halls are decked with employeerecognition plaques, business schooltheorems and New Age philosophy:"Happiness," reads one workplaceposter. "Work hard and live art," readsanother.Newcomers to Lenovo are even trainedin the same kind of teamworkprograms that can be found atAmerican business schools, right downto the leaps of faith - the backwardfalling employee who is caught by ateam of supportive co-workers.And for those who need a jolt, eachmorning at 8:30 the Lenovo themesong is broadcast on loudspeakersthroughout the headquarters, urgingworkers to guide the corporate shipthrough perilous waters."Lenovo, Lenovo, Lenovo," one linegoes, "we are sailing through thewaves to lands far away. Lenovo,Lenovo, Lenovo. We are building a newsplendor."Lenovo is also seeking the best outsideadvice it can get, hiring a client rosterthat includes Goldman, Sachs;McKinsey & Company, the consultingfirm; Weil, Gotshal & Manges, the NewYork law firm; and Ogilvy, the publicrelations firm.And the new language for the companyis English, company officials say.Lenovo officials say they are studyingAmerican business history, and thechief executive lists The HarvardBusiness Review as part of his regularreading.In fact, like other computer andsoftware giants, Lenovo is even fanningits own myths. In 1984, the companywas formed in a small, concretesecurity guard's booth that became itsfirst laboratory and headquarters.The booth - part of the ChineseAcademy of Sciences - was torn downin 2001 to make way for a newbuilding. But it was soon rebuilt andnow sits like an empty artifactalongside the headquarters of Lenovo'sparent company, Legend Holdings.Critics now worry that Lenovo must finda way to preserve I.B.M.'s traditions ina PC industry of increasing competitionand commodity manufacturing.But Mr. Yang, Lenovo's current chiefexecutive, says not to worry."We are going to stick to the principlesof I.B.M. as a high-premium, high-valueimage, " he said. "We're not going tomake any compromises on this."www.nytimes.comChinese Buyer of PC Unit Is Movingto I.B.M.'s HometownBy DAVID BARBOZABEIJING - Inside the shimmeringheadquarters of the Lenovo Group,China's largest computer maker,workers are carting birthday cakes overto three office cubicles.These days, every employee here getsa birthday gift, something amultinational company might beexpected to do in this age of feel-goodcorporate management.The problem is that people in China donot traditionally celebrate birthdays.But that is changing. And so is Lenovo.It is trying to become a global companywith its purchase of I.B.M's personalcomputer business for $1.75 billion,and handing out birthday cakes is justpart of the process of evolving into amultinational corporation.To further globalize the company,however, Lenovo will do somethingeven bolder: it will move itsheadquarters to Armonk, N.Y., whereI.B.M. is based, and essentially handover management of what will becomethe world's third-largest computermaker, after Dell and Hewlett-Packard,to a group of senior I.B.M. executives.American multinational companiesoutsource manufacturing to China. Whycan't a Chinese company outsourcemanagement to the United States?Executives at Lenovo - which getsabout 98 percent of its $3 billion inrevenue from China - are, in effect,acknowledging that they do not havethe necessary global experience to runthe new company."The most valuable asset we haveacquired through I.B.M.'s PC businessis its world-class management teamand their extensive internationalexperience," says Liu Chuanzhi,chairman of Lenovo and one of thecompany's founders.Indeed, few executives at Lenovo seemdisappointed by the move. In fact,many seem pleased to be buying into ablue-chip American corporation.After all, Lenovo - formerly known asLegend - may be the biggest computermaker in China, but the company is stillvirtually unknown outside of Asia.And top executives at Lenovo say theyare eager to learn how to run a globalcompany from their new colleagues atthe PC unit of I.B.M., which operates inmore than 150 countries and had $9billion in revenue in 2003.Preparations are already under way inBeijing. For the last few months, allvice presidents have been required tostudy English for at least one hour aday. The chairman says he has readbooks about Bill Gates and AndrewGrove. And the chief executive ofLenovo has agreed to give upday-to-day management of thecompany to assume the role ofchairman.His task will be to fly back and forthfrom Beijing to New York to consultwith Lenovo's newly named chiefexecutive, Stephen M. Ward Jr., thesenior vice president and generalmanager of I.B.M.'s Personal SystemsGroup.Many analysts were surprised byLenovo's decision to outsource itsmanagement to New York."I admire what Lenovo is doing," saidJoe Zhang, a UBS analyst who followsLenovo. "Many Lenovo executives havedecided to do this at the expense oftheir careers. They're putting personalego behind for the greater good of thecompany."People involved in the negotiations withI.B.M. said that Lenovo officials saw noother choice. They recognized thatLenovo could not simply take over amuch bigger I.B.M. PC unit and run itfrom Beijing.That is why a major theme of the talkswas how to keep business as usualafter the deal was completed, thosepeople say.While I.B.M. is full of M.B.A.'s, Lenovo -which is still partly government owned- has only two members of the seniormanagement team with an M.B.A. Andnone of the top executives have everworked for a multinational corporation.But analysts also say that Lenovo is nopushover. The company is consideredone of China's most successfulcorporations. For years, for example,Lenovo's brand has outsold Dell,Hewlett-Packard and I.B.M. computersin China.And even though it began as astate-owned enterprise, Lenovo hasalways been entrepreneurial, analystssay. It was one of the first companieshere to list its shares in Hong Kong. Itwas among the first to reward itsemployees with stock options, whichhave turned some of its top executivesinto millionaires.The company's identity was shaped, inpart, by its visionary chairman, Mr. Liu,who in 1984 helped found Lenovo witha group of scientists from the ChineseAcademy of Sciences.Early on, it was the hard-charging Mr.Liu who persuaded the Chinesegovernment to give the companygreater control over its hiring andsalary decisions, allowing thestate-owned company to raise capitalfrom outside investors and essentiallyoperate like a private company.Later, Mr. Liu won governmentapproval to list the company's stock inHong Kong and for Lenovo to startproducing its own computers, ratherthan simply marketing Western brands.By 1997, with its own brand of low-costChinese-character-friendly computers,Lenovo was suddenly China's biggestcomputer maker.Mr. Liu, a military academy graduatewho suffered through China's brutalCultural Revolution, said he often ranthe company with an iron fist, scoldingworkers who showed up late formeetings and pushing scientists andexecutives to deliver on their promises."All the people were scientists in thosedays," Mr. Liu recalled. "They werevery casual. They'd always be late formeetings and they'd make theirpromises. So we decided that if anyonewas late they'd stand up for oneminute."Along the way, Mr. Liu also groomed acadre of loyal and fierce executives,including Yang Yuanqing, 42, who isnow the company's chief executive, andMary Ma, 52, Lenovo's highly respectedchief financial officer.But just how the new company'smanagement will take shape in Beijingand New York is still unclear.Though he will step down after themerger, Mr. Liu, 60, will continue toserve as a member of the board.Mr. Yang, a serious-minded executivewho helped fire up the company's salesforce, will become chairman. Ms. Ma,who led the talks to acquire I.B.M.'s PCunit, is expected to remain as chieffinancial officer.Lenovo's challenge will be to meldradically different corporate cultures."Neither culture should be the de factoculture," said Martin Gilliland, ananalyst at Gartner Research. "Theyhave to start a new one. Can theydevelop a new Lenovo businessculture? That's one of the keys tosuccess."In recent years, Lenovo officials say thecompany's corporate culture hasevolved from what some companyofficials called the "semimilitary"culture that prevailed in the early days,to a more easy-going and hip high-techculture.These days, Lenovo's new corporateheadquarters in Beijing's "SiliconSuburb" is teaming with young 20- and30-somethings, casually dressed,chattering into mobile phones andlooking confident.The halls are decked with employeerecognition plaques, business schooltheorems and New Age philosophy:"Happiness," reads one workplaceposter. "Work hard and live art," readsanother.Newcomers to Lenovo are even trainedin the same kind of teamworkprograms that can be found atAmerican business schools, right downto the leaps of faith - the backwardfalling employee who is caught by ateam of supportive co-workers.And for those who need a jolt, eachmorning at 8:30 the Lenovo themesong is broadcast on loudspeakersthroughout the headquarters, urgingworkers to guide the corporate shipthrough perilous waters."Lenovo, Lenovo, Lenovo," one linegoes, "we are sailing through thewaves to lands far away. Lenovo,Lenovo, Lenovo. We are building a newsplendor."Lenovo is also seeking the best outsideadvice it can get, hiring a client rosterthat includes Goldman, Sachs;McKinsey & Company, the consultingfirm; Weil, Gotshal & Manges, the NewYork law firm; and Ogilvy, the publicrelations firm.And the new language for the companyis English, company officials say.Lenovo officials say they are studyingAmerican business history, and thechief executive lists The HarvardBusiness Review as part of his regularreading.In fact, like other computer andsoftware giants, Lenovo is even fanningits own myths. In 1984, the companywas formed in a small, concretesecurity guard's booth that became itsfirst laboratory and headquarters.The booth - part of the ChineseAcademy of Sciences - was torn downin 2001 to make way for a newbuilding. But it was soon rebuilt andnow sits like an empty artifactalongside the headquarters of Lenovo'sparent company, Legend Holdings.Critics now worry that Lenovo must finda way to preserve I.B.M.'s traditions ina PC industry of increasing competitionand commodity manufacturing.But Mr. Yang, Lenovo's current chiefexecutive, says not to worry."We are going to stick to the principlesof I.B.M. as a high-premium, high-valueimage, " he said. "We're not going tomake any compromises on this."
BEIJING - Inside the shimmeringheadquarters of the Lenovo Group,China's largest computer maker,workers are carting birthday cakes overto three office cubicles.These days, every employee here getsa birthday gift, something amultinational company might beexpected to do in this age of feel-goodcorporate management.The problem is that people in China donot traditionally celebrate birthdays.But that is changing. And so is Lenovo.It is trying to become a global companywith its purchase of I.B.M's personalcomputer business for $1.75 billion,and handing out birthday cakes is justpart of the process of evolving into amultinational corporation.To further globalize the company,however, Lenovo will do somethingeven bolder: it will move itsheadquarters to Armonk, N.Y., whereI.B.M. is based, and essentially handover management of what will becomethe world's third-largest computermaker, after Dell and Hewlett-Packard,to a group of senior I.B.M. executives.American multinational companiesoutsource manufacturing to China. Whycan't a Chinese company outsourcemanagement to the United States?Executives at Lenovo - which getsabout 98 percent of its $3 billion inrevenue from China - are, in effect,acknowledging that they do not havethe necessary global experience to runthe new company."The most valuable asset we haveacquired through I.B.M.'s PC businessis its world-class management teamand their extensive internationalexperience," says Liu Chuanzhi,chairman of Lenovo and one of thecompany's founders.Indeed, few executives at Lenovo seemdisappointed by the move. In fact,many seem pleased to be buying into ablue-chip American corporation.After all, Lenovo - formerly known asLegend - may be the biggest computermaker in China, but the company is stillvirtually unknown outside of Asia.And top executives at Lenovo say theyare eager to learn how to run a globalcompany from their new colleagues atthe PC unit of I.B.M., which operates inmore than 150 countries and had $9billion in revenue in 2003.Preparations are already under way inBeijing. For the last few months, allvice presidents have been required tostudy English for at least one hour aday. The chairman says he has readbooks about Bill Gates and AndrewGrove. And the chief executive ofLenovo has agreed to give upday-to-day management of thecompany to assume the role ofchairman.His task will be to fly back and forthfrom Beijing to New York to consultwith Lenovo's newly named chiefexecutive, Stephen M. Ward Jr., thesenior vice president and generalmanager of I.B.M.'s Personal SystemsGroup.Many analysts were surprised byLenovo's decision to outsource itsmanagement to New York."I admire what Lenovo is doing," saidJoe Zhang, a UBS analyst who followsLenovo. "Many Lenovo executives havedecided to do this at the expense oftheir careers. They're putting personalego behind for the greater good of thecompany."People involved in the negotiations withI.B.M. said that Lenovo officials saw noother choice. They recognized thatLenovo could not simply take over amuch bigger I.B.M. PC unit and run itfrom Beijing.That is why a major theme of the talkswas how to keep business as usualafter the deal was completed, thosepeople say.While I.B.M. is full of M.B.A.'s, Lenovo -which is still partly government owned- has only two members of the seniormanagement team with an M.B.A. Andnone of the top executives have everworked for a multinational corporation.But analysts also say that Lenovo is nopushover. The company is consideredone of China's most successfulcorporations. For years, for example,Lenovo's brand has outsold Dell,Hewlett-Packard and I.B.M. computersin China.And even though it began as astate-owned enterprise, Lenovo hasalways been entrepreneurial, analystssay. It was one of the first companieshere to list its shares in Hong Kong. Itwas among the first to reward itsemployees with stock options, whichhave turned some of its top executivesinto millionaires.The company's identity was shaped, inpart, by its visionary chairman, Mr. Liu,who in 1984 helped found Lenovo witha group of scientists from the ChineseAcademy of Sciences.Early on, it was the hard-charging Mr.Liu who persuaded the Chinesegovernment to give the companygreater control over its hiring andsalary decisions, allowing thestate-owned company to raise capitalfrom outside investors and essentiallyoperate like a private company.Later, Mr. Liu won governmentapproval to list the company's stock inHong Kong and for Lenovo to startproducing its own computers, ratherthan simply marketing Western brands.By 1997, with its own brand of low-costChinese-character-friendly computers,Lenovo was suddenly China's biggestcomputer maker.Mr. Liu, a military academy graduatewho suffered through China's brutalCultural Revolution, said he often ranthe company with an iron fist, scoldingworkers who showed up late formeetings and pushing scientists andexecutives to deliver on their promises."All the people were scientists in thosedays," Mr. Liu recalled. "They werevery casual. They'd always be late formeetings and they'd make theirpromises. So we decided that if anyonewas late they'd stand up for oneminute."Along the way, Mr. Liu also groomed acadre of loyal and fierce executives,including Yang Yuanqing, 42, who isnow the company's chief executive, andMary Ma, 52, Lenovo's highly respectedchief financial officer.But just how the new company'smanagement will take shape in Beijingand New York is still unclear.Though he will step down after themerger, Mr. Liu, 60, will continue toserve as a member of the board.Mr. Yang, a serious-minded executivewho helped fire up the company's salesforce, will become chairman. Ms. Ma,who led the talks to acquire I.B.M.'s PCunit, is expected to remain as chieffinancial officer.Lenovo's challenge will be to meldradically different corporate cultures."Neither culture should be the de factoculture," said Martin Gilliland, ananalyst at Gartner Research. "Theyhave to start a new one. Can theydevelop a new Lenovo businessculture? That's one of the keys tosuccess."In recent years, Lenovo officials say thecompany's corporate culture hasevolved from what some companyofficials called the "semimilitary"culture that prevailed in the early days,to a more easy-going and hip high-techculture.These days, Lenovo's new corporateheadquarters in Beijing's "SiliconSuburb" is teaming with young 20- and30-somethings, casually dressed,chattering into mobile phones andlooking confident.The halls are decked with employeerecognition plaques, business schooltheorems and New Age philosophy:"Happiness," reads one workplaceposter. "Work hard and live art," readsanother.Newcomers to Lenovo are even trainedin the same kind of teamworkprograms that can be found atAmerican business schools, right downto the leaps of faith - the backwardfalling employee who is caught by ateam of supportive co-workers.And for those who need a jolt, eachmorning at 8:30 the Lenovo themesong is broadcast on loudspeakersthroughout the headquarters, urgingworkers to guide the corporate shipthrough perilous waters."Lenovo, Lenovo, Lenovo," one linegoes, "we are sailing through thewaves to lands far away. Lenovo,Lenovo, Lenovo. We are building a newsplendor."Lenovo is also seeking the best outsideadvice it can get, hiring a client rosterthat includes Goldman, Sachs;McKinsey & Company, the consultingfirm; Weil, Gotshal & Manges, the NewYork law firm; and Ogilvy, the publicrelations firm.And the new language for the companyis English, company officials say.Lenovo officials say they are studyingAmerican business history, and thechief executive lists The HarvardBusiness Review as part of his regularreading.In fact, like other computer andsoftware giants, Lenovo is even fanningits own myths. In 1984, the companywas formed in a small, concretesecurity guard's booth that became itsfirst laboratory and headquarters.The booth - part of the ChineseAcademy of Sciences - was torn downin 2001 to make way for a newbuilding. But it was soon rebuilt andnow sits like an empty artifactalongside the headquarters of Lenovo'sparent company, Legend Holdings.Critics now worry that Lenovo must finda way to preserve I.B.M.'s traditions ina PC industry of increasing competitionand commodity manufacturing.But Mr. Yang, Lenovo's current chiefexecutive, says not to worry."We are going to stick to the principlesof I.B.M. as a high-premium, high-valueimage, " he said. "We're not going tomake any compromises on this."www.nytimes.comChinese Buyer of PC Unit Is Movingto I.B.M.'s HometownBy DAVID BARBOZABEIJING - Inside the shimmeringheadquarters of the Lenovo Group,China's largest computer maker,workers are carting birthday cakes overto three office cubicles.These days, every employee here getsa birthday gift, something amultinational company might beexpected to do in this age of feel-goodcorporate management.The problem is that people in China donot traditionally celebrate birthdays.But that is changing. And so is Lenovo.It is trying to become a global companywith its purchase of I.B.M's personalcomputer business for $1.75 billion,and handing out birthday cakes is justpart of the process of evolving into amultinational corporation.To further globalize the company,however, Lenovo will do somethingeven bolder: it will move itsheadquarters to Armonk, N.Y., whereI.B.M. is based, and essentially handover management of what will becomethe world's third-largest computermaker, after Dell and Hewlett-Packard,to a group of senior I.B.M. executives.American multinational companiesoutsource manufacturing to China. Whycan't a Chinese company outsourcemanagement to the United States?Executives at Lenovo - which getsabout 98 percent of its $3 billion inrevenue from China - are, in effect,acknowledging that they do not havethe necessary global experience to runthe new company."The most valuable asset we haveacquired through I.B.M.'s PC businessis its world-class management teamand their extensive internationalexperience," says Liu Chuanzhi,chairman of Lenovo and one of thecompany's founders.Indeed, few executives at Lenovo seemdisappointed by the move. In fact,many seem pleased to be buying into ablue-chip American corporation.After all, Lenovo - formerly known asLegend - may be the biggest computermaker in China, but the company is stillvirtually unknown outside of Asia.And top executives at Lenovo say theyare eager to learn how to run a globalcompany from their new colleagues atthe PC unit of I.B.M., which operates inmore than 150 countries and had $9billion in revenue in 2003.Preparations are already under way inBeijing. For the last few months, allvice presidents have been required tostudy English for at least one hour aday. The chairman says he has readbooks about Bill Gates and AndrewGrove. And the chief executive ofLenovo has agreed to give upday-to-day management of thecompany to assume the role ofchairman.His task will be to fly back and forthfrom Beijing to New York to consultwith Lenovo's newly named chiefexecutive, Stephen M. Ward Jr., thesenior vice president and generalmanager of I.B.M.'s Personal SystemsGroup.Many analysts were surprised byLenovo's decision to outsource itsmanagement to New York."I admire what Lenovo is doing," saidJoe Zhang, a UBS analyst who followsLenovo. "Many Lenovo executives havedecided to do this at the expense oftheir careers. They're putting personalego behind for the greater good of thecompany."People involved in the negotiations withI.B.M. said that Lenovo officials saw noother choice. They recognized thatLenovo could not simply take over amuch bigger I.B.M. PC unit and run itfrom Beijing.That is why a major theme of the talkswas how to keep business as usualafter the deal was completed, thosepeople say.While I.B.M. is full of M.B.A.'s, Lenovo -which is still partly government owned- has only two members of the seniormanagement team with an M.B.A. Andnone of the top executives have everworked for a multinational corporation.But analysts also say that Lenovo is nopushover. The company is consideredone of China's most successfulcorporations. For years, for example,Lenovo's brand has outsold Dell,Hewlett-Packard and I.B.M. computersin China.And even though it began as astate-owned enterprise, Lenovo hasalways been entrepreneurial, analystssay. It was one of the first companieshere to list its shares in Hong Kong. Itwas among the first to reward itsemployees with stock options, whichhave turned some of its top executivesinto millionaires.The company's identity was shaped, inpart, by its visionary chairman, Mr. Liu,who in 1984 helped found Lenovo witha group of scientists from the ChineseAcademy of Sciences.Early on, it was the hard-charging Mr.Liu who persuaded the Chinesegovernment to give the companygreater control over its hiring andsalary decisions, allowing thestate-owned company to raise capitalfrom outside investors and essentiallyoperate like a private company.Later, Mr. Liu won governmentapproval to list the company's stock inHong Kong and for Lenovo to startproducing its own computers, ratherthan simply marketing Western brands.By 1997, with its own brand of low-costChinese-character-friendly computers,Lenovo was suddenly China's biggestcomputer maker.Mr. Liu, a military academy graduatewho suffered through China's brutalCultural Revolution, said he often ranthe company with an iron fist, scoldingworkers who showed up late formeetings and pushing scientists andexecutives to deliver on their promises."All the people were scientists in thosedays," Mr. Liu recalled. "They werevery casual. They'd always be late formeetings and they'd make theirpromises. So we decided that if anyonewas late they'd stand up for oneminute."Along the way, Mr. Liu also groomed acadre of loyal and fierce executives,including Yang Yuanqing, 42, who isnow the company's chief executive, andMary Ma, 52, Lenovo's highly respectedchief financial officer.But just how the new company'smanagement will take shape in Beijingand New York is still unclear.Though he will step down after themerger, Mr. Liu, 60, will continue toserve as a member of the board.Mr. Yang, a serious-minded executivewho helped fire up the company's salesforce, will become chairman. Ms. Ma,who led the talks to acquire I.B.M.'s PCunit, is expected to remain as chieffinancial officer.Lenovo's challenge will be to meldradically different corporate cultures."Neither culture should be the de factoculture," said Martin Gilliland, ananalyst at Gartner Research. "Theyhave to start a new one. Can theydevelop a new Lenovo businessculture? That's one of the keys tosuccess."In recent years, Lenovo officials say thecompany's corporate culture hasevolved from what some companyofficials called the "semimilitary"culture that prevailed in the early days,to a more easy-going and hip high-techculture.These days, Lenovo's new corporateheadquarters in Beijing's "SiliconSuburb" is teaming with young 20- and30-somethings, casually dressed,chattering into mobile phones andlooking confident.The halls are decked with employeerecognition plaques, business schooltheorems and New Age philosophy:"Happiness," reads one workplaceposter. "Work hard and live art," readsanother.Newcomers to Lenovo are even trainedin the same kind of teamworkprograms that can be found atAmerican business schools, right downto the leaps of faith - the backwardfalling employee who is caught by ateam of supportive co-workers.And for those who need a jolt, eachmorning at 8:30 the Lenovo themesong is broadcast on loudspeakersthroughout the headquarters, urgingworkers to guide the corporate shipthrough perilous waters."Lenovo, Lenovo, Lenovo," one linegoes, "we are sailing through thewaves to lands far away. Lenovo,Lenovo, Lenovo. We are building a newsplendor."Lenovo is also seeking the best outsideadvice it can get, hiring a client rosterthat includes Goldman, Sachs;McKinsey & Company, the consultingfirm; Weil, Gotshal & Manges, the NewYork law firm; and Ogilvy, the publicrelations firm.And the new language for the companyis English, company officials say.Lenovo officials say they are studyingAmerican business history, and thechief executive lists The HarvardBusiness Review as part of his regularreading.In fact, like other computer andsoftware giants, Lenovo is even fanningits own myths. In 1984, the companywas formed in a small, concretesecurity guard's booth that became itsfirst laboratory and headquarters.The booth - part of the ChineseAcademy of Sciences - was torn downin 2001 to make way for a newbuilding. But it was soon rebuilt andnow sits like an empty artifactalongside the headquarters of Lenovo'sparent company, Legend Holdings.Critics now worry that Lenovo must finda way to preserve I.B.M.'s traditions ina PC industry of increasing competitionand commodity manufacturing.But Mr. Yang, Lenovo's current chiefexecutive, says not to worry."We are going to stick to the principlesof I.B.M. as a high-premium, high-valueimage, " he said. "We're not going tomake any compromises on this."
Wednesday, December 22, 2004
Opinion from PC Magazine: Panic Over Spyware
Opinion from PC Magazine: Panic Over Spyware: "Panic Over Spyware
ARTICLE DATE: 12.20.04
By John C. Dvorak
Panic Over Spyware
ARTICLE DATE: 12.20.04
By John C. Dvorak
I'm chatting with the CEO of a spyware company and he tells me that he knows for a fact that Dell support lines have been getting 70,000 calls a week regarding machine performance and anomalies. Dell has been referring the callers to Web sites discussing spyware. It's spyware causing the problems. I'm thinking to myself that if Dell is getting 70,000 calls, then Microsoft must be getting 700,000 calls, since the smart money would always assume that it's a software problem. Whatever the call volume, this situation with spyware is now officially out of control.
ADVERTISEMENT
This subject is near and dear to me, since my laptop was infected via a hotel network connection recently. The culprit is the webrebates.exe Trojan horse. Like many of these pests, once it gets on your machine it starts installing loaders all over the place. These are essentially spyware spies. They all look to make sure that the spyware stays in place. If you manage to erase it one of the little drones will reinstall it. You cannot erase the drones and the spyware fast enough to prevent this simple process from continuing unless you use special software to ferret out all the drones first. Many of these pests also contaminate the Registry, and many of the drones are in subdirectories that cannot be seen using any normal process.
As an aside I should mention that I've always wondered why Microsoft Windows has weird deeply rooted directories that cannot be seen in Internet Explorer, DOS, or any tool. They are scattered all over the place. The nasty spyware drones often end up buried so deep that finding them requires lengthy deep searches by antispyware tools.
Now, if you think that the free antispyware programs are going to help with the nastiest of infections, you are kidding yourself. I've chatted with four spyware vendors over the past couple of weeks and they all agree that it's gotten so bad that the public is only partially aware of the problem. Few users know that their machines are infected.
There is now a firm belief that organized crime, including the Russian mafia, is behind much of this activity. The scene is no longer dominated by kids out for fun.
So what is the spyware used for? There appear to be four primary uses.
Continue Reading >
Market research. Yes, it's true. A lot of spyware is used just to track browsing and other online behavior for market-research companies. This was one of the two initial uses.
Employee and spousal monitoring. This is the second initial use for this stuff. Key loggers and other systems that are usually installed directly onto machines by the person or institution doing the spying. The FBI has been known to capture passwords using such software.
Spambots. The more recent use of spyware has been to create legions of spambots for spammers to rack up big numbers without taxing their own servers. There are probably millions of drone machines, sometimes called zombie PCs. At night they are brought to life to serve spam all over the world. Yet another reason why the 24/7 always-on Internet is a complete disaster.
Identity and credit-card theft. This is the latest twist and the fastest-growing trend. Last week, a new combination scam somehow got through my spam-filtering mechanism and tried to install a Trojan horse loader onto my system through the preview window of Microsoft Outlook Express. (Wasn't this supposed to be fixed?) My Kaspersky antivirus software saw the loader and stopped it cold. But what I found interesting was that this was one of those "Your account is temporarily closed" scams designed to collect personal information.
The notable thing about spyware is that because it isn't virulent like a virus and seldom spreads from your machine to another, it manages to stay out of the spotlight. The national media pay little attention to the problem, and many mainstream media tech writers are Mac users, so they don't get it. Who knows what will happen when the Mac community gets hit? They feel immune, and are for now. But when they get hit, there will be few resources to help them, since the antispyware community is busy with all the PC-related problems.
Since spyware has not spread quickly and tends to be installed via browsers one computer at a time, we are seeing slow—but relentless—growth. We can expect it to continue. I'm looking at all the spyware packages and I'll have a few to recommend in the months ahead. For now you'll probably need multiple systems to get rid of this stuff. This will be the number-one topic in the year 2005, guaranteed.
ARTICLE DATE: 12.20.04
By John C. Dvorak
Panic Over Spyware
ARTICLE DATE: 12.20.04
By John C. Dvorak
I'm chatting with the CEO of a spyware company and he tells me that he knows for a fact that Dell support lines have been getting 70,000 calls a week regarding machine performance and anomalies. Dell has been referring the callers to Web sites discussing spyware. It's spyware causing the problems. I'm thinking to myself that if Dell is getting 70,000 calls, then Microsoft must be getting 700,000 calls, since the smart money would always assume that it's a software problem. Whatever the call volume, this situation with spyware is now officially out of control.
ADVERTISEMENT
This subject is near and dear to me, since my laptop was infected via a hotel network connection recently. The culprit is the webrebates.exe Trojan horse. Like many of these pests, once it gets on your machine it starts installing loaders all over the place. These are essentially spyware spies. They all look to make sure that the spyware stays in place. If you manage to erase it one of the little drones will reinstall it. You cannot erase the drones and the spyware fast enough to prevent this simple process from continuing unless you use special software to ferret out all the drones first. Many of these pests also contaminate the Registry, and many of the drones are in subdirectories that cannot be seen using any normal process.
As an aside I should mention that I've always wondered why Microsoft Windows has weird deeply rooted directories that cannot be seen in Internet Explorer, DOS, or any tool. They are scattered all over the place. The nasty spyware drones often end up buried so deep that finding them requires lengthy deep searches by antispyware tools.
Now, if you think that the free antispyware programs are going to help with the nastiest of infections, you are kidding yourself. I've chatted with four spyware vendors over the past couple of weeks and they all agree that it's gotten so bad that the public is only partially aware of the problem. Few users know that their machines are infected.
There is now a firm belief that organized crime, including the Russian mafia, is behind much of this activity. The scene is no longer dominated by kids out for fun.
So what is the spyware used for? There appear to be four primary uses.
Continue Reading >
Market research. Yes, it's true. A lot of spyware is used just to track browsing and other online behavior for market-research companies. This was one of the two initial uses.
Employee and spousal monitoring. This is the second initial use for this stuff. Key loggers and other systems that are usually installed directly onto machines by the person or institution doing the spying. The FBI has been known to capture passwords using such software.
Spambots. The more recent use of spyware has been to create legions of spambots for spammers to rack up big numbers without taxing their own servers. There are probably millions of drone machines, sometimes called zombie PCs. At night they are brought to life to serve spam all over the world. Yet another reason why the 24/7 always-on Internet is a complete disaster.
Identity and credit-card theft. This is the latest twist and the fastest-growing trend. Last week, a new combination scam somehow got through my spam-filtering mechanism and tried to install a Trojan horse loader onto my system through the preview window of Microsoft Outlook Express. (Wasn't this supposed to be fixed?) My Kaspersky antivirus software saw the loader and stopped it cold. But what I found interesting was that this was one of those "Your account is temporarily closed" scams designed to collect personal information.
The notable thing about spyware is that because it isn't virulent like a virus and seldom spreads from your machine to another, it manages to stay out of the spotlight. The national media pay little attention to the problem, and many mainstream media tech writers are Mac users, so they don't get it. Who knows what will happen when the Mac community gets hit? They feel immune, and are for now. But when they get hit, there will be few resources to help them, since the antispyware community is busy with all the PC-related problems.
Since spyware has not spread quickly and tends to be installed via browsers one computer at a time, we are seeing slow—but relentless—growth. We can expect it to continue. I'm looking at all the spyware packages and I'll have a few to recommend in the months ahead. For now you'll probably need multiple systems to get rid of this stuff. This will be the number-one topic in the year 2005, guaranteed.
Sunday, December 19, 2004
Mozilla Firefox 1.0 review - Mozilla Firefox 1.0 Intro - Security & Utility Services - CNET Reviews
Mozilla Firefox 1.0 is the dream Internet browser you've been looking for. Featuring a host of small technical improvements, including tabbed browsing, built-in and customizable search bars, and a built-in RSS reader, Mozilla's Firefox browser is the one that should finally put a dent in Microsoft Internet Explorer's unrivaled market dominance. While its lack of ActiveX support might prevent some sites from working properly, after more than three weeks of use in our tests, Firefox 1.0 remained fast and stable and displayed an impressive range of cutting-edge browsing options. We were able to view every Web site just fine, thank you. If you're fed up with the latest Internet Explorer security patch issued from Microsoft or with the latest virus to capitalize on some flaw in IE, you should switch to Firefox--now.
Next: Mozilla Firefox 1.0
Next: Mozilla Firefox 1.0
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
The New York Times > Technology > Google Is Adding Major Libraries to Its Database
The New York Times > Technology > Google Is Adding Major Libraries to Its Database: "The New York Times
December 14, 2004
Google Is Adding Major Libraries to Its Database
By JOHN MARKOFF and EDWARD WYATT
Google, the operator of the world's most popular Internet search service, plans to announce an agreement today with some of the nation's leading research libraries and Oxford University to begin converting their holdings into digital files that would be freely searchable over the Web.
It may be only a step on a long road toward the long-predicted global virtual library. But the collaboration of Google and research institutions that also include Harvard, the University of Michigan, Stanford and the New York Public Library is a major stride in an ambitious Internet effort by various parties. The goal is to expand the Web beyond its current valuable, if eclectic, body of material and create a digital card catalog and searchable library for the world's books, scholarly papers and special collections.
Google - newly wealthy from its stock offering last summer - has agreed to underwrite the projects being announced today while also adding its own technical abilities to the task of scanning and digitizing tens of thousands of pages a day at each library.
Although Google executives declined to comment on its technology or the cost of the undertaking, others involved estimate the figure at $10 for each of the more than 15 million books and other documents covered in the agreements. Librarians involved predict the project could take at least a decade.
Because the Google agreements are not exclusive, the pacts are almost certain to touch off a race with other major Internet search providers like Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo. Like Google, they might seek the right to offer online access to library materials in return for selling advertising, while libraries would receive corporate help in digitizing their collections for their own institutional uses.
"Within two decades, most of the world's knowledge will be digitized and available, one hopes for free reading on the Internet, just as there is free reading in libraries today," said Michael A. Keller, Stanford University's head librarian.
The Google effort and others like it that are already under way, including projects by the Library of Congress to put selections of its best holdings online, are part of a trend to potentially democratize access to information that has long been available to only small, select groups of students and scholars.
Last night the Library of Congress and a group of international libraries from the United States, Canada, Egypt, China and the Netherlands announced a plan to create a publicly available digital archive of one million books on the Internet. The group said it planned to have 70,000 volumes online by next April.
"Having the great libraries at your fingertips allows us to build on and create great works based on the work of others," said Brewster Kahle, founder and president of the Internet Archive, a San Francisco-based digital library that is also trying to digitize existing print information.
The agreements to be announced today will allow Google to publish the full text of only those library books old enough to no longer be under copyright. For copyrighted works, Google would scan in the entire text, but make only short excerpts available online.
Each agreement with a library is slightly different. Google plans to digitize nearly all the eight million books in Stanford's collection and the seven million at Michigan. The Harvard project will initially be limited to only about 40,000 volumes. The scanning at Bodleian Library at Oxford will be limited to an unspecified number of books published before 1900, while the New York Public Library project will involve fragile material not under copyright that library officials said would be of interest primarily to scholars.
The trend toward online libraries and virtual card catalogs is one that already has book publishers scrambling to respond.
At least a dozen major publishing companies, including some of the country's biggest producers of nonfiction books - the primary target for the online text-search efforts - have already entered ventures with Google and Amazon that allow users to search the text of copyrighted books online and read excerpts.
Publishers including HarperCollins, the Penguin Group, Houghton Mifflin and Scholastic have signed up for both the Google and Amazon programs. The largest American trade publisher, Random House, participates in Amazon's program but is still negotiating with Google, which calls its program Google Print.
The Amazon and Google programs work by restricting the access of users to only a few pages of a copyrighted book during each search, offering enough to help them decide whether the book meets their requirements enough to justify ordering the print version. Those features restrict a user's ability to copy, cut or print the copyrighted material, while limiting on-screen reading to a few pages at a time. Books still under copyright at the libraries involved in Google's new project are likely to be protected by similar restrictions.
The challenge for publishers in coming years will be to continue to have libraries serve as major influential buyers of their books, without letting the newly vast digital public reading rooms undermine the companies' ability to make money commissioning and publishing authors' work.
From the earliest days of the printing press, book publishers were wary of the development of libraries at all. In many instances, they opposed the idea of a central facility offering free access to books that people would otherwise be compelled to buy.
But as libraries developed and publishers became aware that they could be among their best customers, that opposition faded. Now publishers aggressively court librarians with advance copies of books, seeking positive reviews of books in library journals and otherwise trying to influence the opinion of the people who influence the reading habits of millions. Some of that promotional impulse may translate to the online world, publishing executives say.
But at least initially, the search services are likely to be most useful to publishers whose nonfiction backlists, or catalogs of previously published titles, are of interest to scholars but do not sell regularly enough to be carried in large quantities in retail stores, said David Steinberger, the president and chief executive the Perseus Books Group, which publishes mostly nonfiction books under the Basic Books, PublicAffairs, Da Capo and other imprints.
Based on his experiences with Amazon's and Google's commercial search services so far, Mr. Steinberger said, "I think there is minimal risk, or virtually no risk, of copyrighted material being misused." But he said he would object to a library's providing copyrighted material online without a license. "If you're talking about the instantaneous, free distribution of books, I think that would represent a problem," Mr. Steinberger said.
For their part, libraries themselves will have to rethink their central missions as storehouses of printed, indexed material.
"Our world is about to change in a big, big way," said Daniel Greenstein, university librarian for the California Digital Library of the University of California, which is a project to organize and retain existing digital materials.
Instead of expending considerable time and money to managing their collections of printed materials, Mr. Greenstein said, libraries in the future can devote more energy to gathering information and making it accessible - and more easily manageable - online.
But Paul LeClerc, the president and chief executive of the New York Public Library, sees Web access as an expansion of libraries' reach, not a replacement for physical collections. "Librarians will add a new dimension to their work," Mr. LeClerc said. "They will not abandon their mission of collecting printed material and keeping them for decades and even centuries."
Google's founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, have long vowed to make all of the world's information accessible to anyone with a Web browser. The agreements to be announced today will put them a few steps closer to that goal - at least in terms of the English-language portion of the world's information. Mr. Page said yesterday that the project traced to the roots of Google, which he and Mr. Brin founded in 1998 after taking a leave from a graduate computer science program at Stanford where they worked on a "digital libraries" project. "What we first discussed at Stanford is now becoming practical," Mr. Page said.
At Stanford, Google hopes to be able to scan 50,000 pages a day within the month, eventually doubling that rate, according to a person involved in the project.
The Google plan calls for making the library materials available as part of Google's regular Web service, which currently has an estimated eight billion Web pages in its database and tens of millions of users a day. As with the other information on its service, Google will sell advertising to generate revenue from its library material. (In it existing Google Print program, the company shares advertising revenue with the participating book publishers.)
Each library, meanwhile, will receive its own copy of the digital database created from that institution's holdings, which the library can make available through its own Web site if it chooses.
Harvard officials said they would be happy to use the Internet to share their collections widely. "We have always thought of our libraries at Harvard as being a global resource," said Lawrence H. Summers, president of Harvard.
At least initially, Google's digitizing task will be labor intensive, with people placing the books and documents on sophisticated scanners whose high-resolution cameras capture an image of each page and convert it to a digital file.
Google, whose corporate campus in Mountain View, Calif., is just a few miles from Stanford, plans to transport books to a copying center it has established at its headquarters. There the books will be scanned and then returned to the Stanford libraries. Google plans to set up remote scanning operations at both Michigan and Harvard.
The company refused to comment on the technology that it was using to digitize books, except to say that it was nondestructive. But according to a person who has been briefed on the project, Google's technology is more labor-intensive than systems that are already commercially available.
Two small start-up companies, 4DigitalBooks of St. Aubin, Switzerland, and Kirtas Technologies of Victor, N.Y., are selling systems that automatically turn pages to capture images.
December 14, 2004
Google Is Adding Major Libraries to Its Database
By JOHN MARKOFF and EDWARD WYATT
Google, the operator of the world's most popular Internet search service, plans to announce an agreement today with some of the nation's leading research libraries and Oxford University to begin converting their holdings into digital files that would be freely searchable over the Web.
It may be only a step on a long road toward the long-predicted global virtual library. But the collaboration of Google and research institutions that also include Harvard, the University of Michigan, Stanford and the New York Public Library is a major stride in an ambitious Internet effort by various parties. The goal is to expand the Web beyond its current valuable, if eclectic, body of material and create a digital card catalog and searchable library for the world's books, scholarly papers and special collections.
Google - newly wealthy from its stock offering last summer - has agreed to underwrite the projects being announced today while also adding its own technical abilities to the task of scanning and digitizing tens of thousands of pages a day at each library.
Although Google executives declined to comment on its technology or the cost of the undertaking, others involved estimate the figure at $10 for each of the more than 15 million books and other documents covered in the agreements. Librarians involved predict the project could take at least a decade.
Because the Google agreements are not exclusive, the pacts are almost certain to touch off a race with other major Internet search providers like Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo. Like Google, they might seek the right to offer online access to library materials in return for selling advertising, while libraries would receive corporate help in digitizing their collections for their own institutional uses.
"Within two decades, most of the world's knowledge will be digitized and available, one hopes for free reading on the Internet, just as there is free reading in libraries today," said Michael A. Keller, Stanford University's head librarian.
The Google effort and others like it that are already under way, including projects by the Library of Congress to put selections of its best holdings online, are part of a trend to potentially democratize access to information that has long been available to only small, select groups of students and scholars.
Last night the Library of Congress and a group of international libraries from the United States, Canada, Egypt, China and the Netherlands announced a plan to create a publicly available digital archive of one million books on the Internet. The group said it planned to have 70,000 volumes online by next April.
"Having the great libraries at your fingertips allows us to build on and create great works based on the work of others," said Brewster Kahle, founder and president of the Internet Archive, a San Francisco-based digital library that is also trying to digitize existing print information.
The agreements to be announced today will allow Google to publish the full text of only those library books old enough to no longer be under copyright. For copyrighted works, Google would scan in the entire text, but make only short excerpts available online.
Each agreement with a library is slightly different. Google plans to digitize nearly all the eight million books in Stanford's collection and the seven million at Michigan. The Harvard project will initially be limited to only about 40,000 volumes. The scanning at Bodleian Library at Oxford will be limited to an unspecified number of books published before 1900, while the New York Public Library project will involve fragile material not under copyright that library officials said would be of interest primarily to scholars.
The trend toward online libraries and virtual card catalogs is one that already has book publishers scrambling to respond.
At least a dozen major publishing companies, including some of the country's biggest producers of nonfiction books - the primary target for the online text-search efforts - have already entered ventures with Google and Amazon that allow users to search the text of copyrighted books online and read excerpts.
Publishers including HarperCollins, the Penguin Group, Houghton Mifflin and Scholastic have signed up for both the Google and Amazon programs. The largest American trade publisher, Random House, participates in Amazon's program but is still negotiating with Google, which calls its program Google Print.
The Amazon and Google programs work by restricting the access of users to only a few pages of a copyrighted book during each search, offering enough to help them decide whether the book meets their requirements enough to justify ordering the print version. Those features restrict a user's ability to copy, cut or print the copyrighted material, while limiting on-screen reading to a few pages at a time. Books still under copyright at the libraries involved in Google's new project are likely to be protected by similar restrictions.
The challenge for publishers in coming years will be to continue to have libraries serve as major influential buyers of their books, without letting the newly vast digital public reading rooms undermine the companies' ability to make money commissioning and publishing authors' work.
From the earliest days of the printing press, book publishers were wary of the development of libraries at all. In many instances, they opposed the idea of a central facility offering free access to books that people would otherwise be compelled to buy.
But as libraries developed and publishers became aware that they could be among their best customers, that opposition faded. Now publishers aggressively court librarians with advance copies of books, seeking positive reviews of books in library journals and otherwise trying to influence the opinion of the people who influence the reading habits of millions. Some of that promotional impulse may translate to the online world, publishing executives say.
But at least initially, the search services are likely to be most useful to publishers whose nonfiction backlists, or catalogs of previously published titles, are of interest to scholars but do not sell regularly enough to be carried in large quantities in retail stores, said David Steinberger, the president and chief executive the Perseus Books Group, which publishes mostly nonfiction books under the Basic Books, PublicAffairs, Da Capo and other imprints.
Based on his experiences with Amazon's and Google's commercial search services so far, Mr. Steinberger said, "I think there is minimal risk, or virtually no risk, of copyrighted material being misused." But he said he would object to a library's providing copyrighted material online without a license. "If you're talking about the instantaneous, free distribution of books, I think that would represent a problem," Mr. Steinberger said.
For their part, libraries themselves will have to rethink their central missions as storehouses of printed, indexed material.
"Our world is about to change in a big, big way," said Daniel Greenstein, university librarian for the California Digital Library of the University of California, which is a project to organize and retain existing digital materials.
Instead of expending considerable time and money to managing their collections of printed materials, Mr. Greenstein said, libraries in the future can devote more energy to gathering information and making it accessible - and more easily manageable - online.
But Paul LeClerc, the president and chief executive of the New York Public Library, sees Web access as an expansion of libraries' reach, not a replacement for physical collections. "Librarians will add a new dimension to their work," Mr. LeClerc said. "They will not abandon their mission of collecting printed material and keeping them for decades and even centuries."
Google's founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, have long vowed to make all of the world's information accessible to anyone with a Web browser. The agreements to be announced today will put them a few steps closer to that goal - at least in terms of the English-language portion of the world's information. Mr. Page said yesterday that the project traced to the roots of Google, which he and Mr. Brin founded in 1998 after taking a leave from a graduate computer science program at Stanford where they worked on a "digital libraries" project. "What we first discussed at Stanford is now becoming practical," Mr. Page said.
At Stanford, Google hopes to be able to scan 50,000 pages a day within the month, eventually doubling that rate, according to a person involved in the project.
The Google plan calls for making the library materials available as part of Google's regular Web service, which currently has an estimated eight billion Web pages in its database and tens of millions of users a day. As with the other information on its service, Google will sell advertising to generate revenue from its library material. (In it existing Google Print program, the company shares advertising revenue with the participating book publishers.)
Each library, meanwhile, will receive its own copy of the digital database created from that institution's holdings, which the library can make available through its own Web site if it chooses.
Harvard officials said they would be happy to use the Internet to share their collections widely. "We have always thought of our libraries at Harvard as being a global resource," said Lawrence H. Summers, president of Harvard.
At least initially, Google's digitizing task will be labor intensive, with people placing the books and documents on sophisticated scanners whose high-resolution cameras capture an image of each page and convert it to a digital file.
Google, whose corporate campus in Mountain View, Calif., is just a few miles from Stanford, plans to transport books to a copying center it has established at its headquarters. There the books will be scanned and then returned to the Stanford libraries. Google plans to set up remote scanning operations at both Michigan and Harvard.
The company refused to comment on the technology that it was using to digitize books, except to say that it was nondestructive. But according to a person who has been briefed on the project, Google's technology is more labor-intensive than systems that are already commercially available.
Two small start-up companies, 4DigitalBooks of St. Aubin, Switzerland, and Kirtas Technologies of Victor, N.Y., are selling systems that automatically turn pages to capture images.
Friday, October 15, 2004
BBC > Intel shift over need for speed
The world's largest chip maker, Intel, is changing its approach to making faster computer microprocessors.
It has dropped plans to release a four gigahertz version of its flagship Pentium 4 chip.
Intel's shift reflects a change for the chip industry, which is moving away from boosts in megahertz and gigahertz.
Instead it is looking to boost chip performance in ways other than simply increasing computational brainpower, also known as clock speed.
Dual power
In the past, chip makers have been involved in a speed race, looking at ways of increasing a microprocessors clock speed.
This is a measure of how fast a chip can crunch numbers
Intel's current fastest chip processes computer instructions at speeds of up to 3.6GHz.
The promised 4GHz chip was supposed to power the fastest-ever generation of Intel-based PCs early next year.
But Intel has cancelled those plans to focus on other ways of getting more out of chips, such as its dual-core project.
This involves putting the power of two microprocessors in a single package, thus offering faster computing.
Engineers are also working on ways of tweaking chip design to squeeze more power out of them.
Intel has pushed the clock speed of its PC chips since the launch of the 5MHz 8088 processor in 1979.
Its decision marks a shift in the quest for speed. Rivals like AMD have also adopted a similar approach, looking at other ways of making chips that can handle more than one task at once, such as playing music and making a home video.
The latest change in Intel's strategy follows a series of other miscalculations by the company.
It delayed a new line of laptop chips in January, recalled a desktop chip in June and pushed back another laptop chip in July.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go /pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology /3746640.stm
Published: 2004/10/15 12:20:22 GMT
? BBC MMIV
It has dropped plans to release a four gigahertz version of its flagship Pentium 4 chip.
Intel's shift reflects a change for the chip industry, which is moving away from boosts in megahertz and gigahertz.
Instead it is looking to boost chip performance in ways other than simply increasing computational brainpower, also known as clock speed.
Dual power
In the past, chip makers have been involved in a speed race, looking at ways of increasing a microprocessors clock speed.
This is a measure of how fast a chip can crunch numbers
Intel's current fastest chip processes computer instructions at speeds of up to 3.6GHz.
The promised 4GHz chip was supposed to power the fastest-ever generation of Intel-based PCs early next year.
But Intel has cancelled those plans to focus on other ways of getting more out of chips, such as its dual-core project.
This involves putting the power of two microprocessors in a single package, thus offering faster computing.
Engineers are also working on ways of tweaking chip design to squeeze more power out of them.
Intel has pushed the clock speed of its PC chips since the launch of the 5MHz 8088 processor in 1979.
Its decision marks a shift in the quest for speed. Rivals like AMD have also adopted a similar approach, looking at other ways of making chips that can handle more than one task at once, such as playing music and making a home video.
The latest change in Intel's strategy follows a series of other miscalculations by the company.
It delayed a new line of laptop chips in January, recalled a desktop chip in June and pushed back another laptop chip in July.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go /pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology /3746640.stm
Published: 2004/10/15 12:20:22 GMT
? BBC MMIV
Monday, October 11, 2004
Monday, October 04, 2004
Brighthand > New Version of Adobe Reader for Pocket PC Released
By Ed Hardy | Editor-in-Chief
Oct 4, 2004
Adobe has released Adobe Reader for Pocket PC 2.0, a free application that allows users to view Adobe PDF files.
The latest version allows users to enter data into forms and wirelessly submit it. When working offline, the data is temporarily stored, then submitted once a connection is established.
Forms can also be submitted by e-mail or directly to the destination server using a cradle or cable.
The new version of Adobe Reader for Pocket PC allows users to read ebooks in PDF format.
In addition, it can display slide shows generated by Adobe Photoshop Album software in portrait or landscape mode.
HP iPAQ users can print PDF files directly from a handheld device to a printer via Bluetooth.
Adobe Reader for Pocket PC 2.0 requires Windows Mobile 2003, but has limited support for Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition. It takes up about 7 MB of space on the handheld.
This free application can be downloaded from the Adobe web site.
Thanks to Pocket PC Thoughts for the tip.
Oct 4, 2004
Adobe has released Adobe Reader for Pocket PC 2.0, a free application that allows users to view Adobe PDF files.
The latest version allows users to enter data into forms and wirelessly submit it. When working offline, the data is temporarily stored, then submitted once a connection is established.
Forms can also be submitted by e-mail or directly to the destination server using a cradle or cable.
The new version of Adobe Reader for Pocket PC allows users to read ebooks in PDF format.
In addition, it can display slide shows generated by Adobe Photoshop Album software in portrait or landscape mode.
HP iPAQ users can print PDF files directly from a handheld device to a printer via Bluetooth.
Adobe Reader for Pocket PC 2.0 requires Windows Mobile 2003, but has limited support for Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition. It takes up about 7 MB of space on the handheld.
This free application can be downloaded from the Adobe web site.
Thanks to Pocket PC Thoughts for the tip.
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