Archive for the 'Computer Hardware' Category

October 6, 2009

Double-Digit Mac Ownership (Finally) In The U.S.

A 2009 study by the NPD Group indicates that 12% of households in the U.S. own a Mac. That’s a 3 percentage point gain in one year. W00t — double-digit numbers. It’s Back to the Eighties time!

The study contains some other interesting Mac Owner Superiority Characteristics which I can proudly affirm:

“Multiple computer ownership is a common thread in Apple computer households, with 66 per cent of households owning three or more computers, compared to just 29 per cent of Windows PC households.” So true. We have 4 at home — 5 if you count my son’s school-provided laptop.

“Apple owning households are decidedly more mobile as well, with 72 percent of them owning a notebook, whereas only 50 percent of households that have a Windows PC own a notebook.” Four of our 5 computers are laptops. One’s a netbook, which is — surprising, at least to me — coveted by everyone in the house.

“Not only do Apple computer owners own more computers (and more mobile computers) than the norm they also tend to own more types of electronics, and more of them, than typical computer owning households. For example, while 36 per cent of total computer owning households have an iPod, 63 per cent of Apple households have one.” I’ve lost track, but I think we have 2 iPods, plus 4 phones that can play music.

“And while almost 50 per cent of Apple owners own some type of navigation system, only about 30 per cent of all computer households own one.” We’ve got 2 GPS-enabled phones, which are sort of useless in the car because if you have an accident while you’re using them, you’ll be accused of texting while driving.

I was doing so well. Then they lowered the boom on me:

“Thirty-six percent of Apple computer owners reported household incomes greater than $100,000, compared to 21 per cent of all consumers.” [Sound of buzzer] I’m a liberrian. Six figures is a dream. Sigh.

Link via 9to5 Mac.

Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
on October 06, 2009 - 8:35 am

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August 14, 2009

China: That Whole “Green Dam” Thingie Was Just a Misunderstanding

The plan by the Chinese government to require computer makers to install Internet censoring software called “Green Dam-Youth Escort” is apparently dead-on-arrival. The software was to have been installed on new PCs in China starting July 1, but the plan was delayed because of the insane time crunch it caused manufacturers. And now, according to the NY Times:

“The industry and information technology minister, Li Yizhong, said the notion that the program, called Green Dam/Youth Escort, would be required on every new computer was ‘a misunderstanding’ spawned by poorly written regulations.”

Riiiiight. I think that’s what we call “saving face”.

Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
on August 14, 2009 - 3:07 pm

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August 6, 2009

Lenovo Had a Lousy Quarter, Too

(Just like Microsoft.) Lenovo lost $16 million.They made $110 million the same quarter last year.

And what are we to make of this? They’re both squeezed on the low end by netbooks, and on the high end by Apple. My guess is that they’re just counting down the days until October 22.

Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
on August 06, 2009 - 7:55 am

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July 8, 2009

I’m Ready. Just Tell Me When I Can Download It.

First, there was Android. Now Google has announced the Google Chrome Operating System. It’ll be free, open source, and linux-based (actually “Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel”).� According to the Big G, it’ll be:

“… fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web.”

And what would an OS announcement be without a shot at Microsoft?

“We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear — computers need to get better. People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up. They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them. They want their data to be accessible to them wherever they are and not have to worry about losing their computer or forgetting to back up files. Even more importantly, they don’t want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates.”

Google says their new OS will be available in about a year. I’ll convert my new netbook to GCOS as soon as I can. Where’s the link? I’m ready to download.

Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
on July 08, 2009 - 9:58 am

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June 30, 2009

China Cuts PC Makers Some Slack

China’s Xinhua News Agency reports that PC makers will not be required to install the “Green Dam-Youth Escort” filtering software on new PCs as of July 1. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said that the “massive installation demanded extra time”.

As if 23 days wasn’t enough time.

Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
on June 30, 2009 - 11:42 am

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June 8, 2009

China Outsources the Whole Justice Potter Stewart “I Know It When I See It” Pornography Thing [UPDATED]

The Chinese government has announced that all new PCs sold in China must have a porn filter installed on them. They’ve given the PC manufacturers all of 2 1/2 weeks to comply — the law takes effect July 1.

The software, called “Green Dam-Youth Escort” regularly checks a list of banned sites so that it can “[construct] a green, healthy, and harmonious Internet environment, and preventing harmful information on the Internet from influencing and poisoning young people.”

The software was created by a company with “ties to China’s security ministry and military” says the Wall Street Journal (sub required). So will the filter limit itself simply to blocking sites with adult content? Given China’s track record, I think not. But at least the Chinese have given the PC makers a sort of plausable deniability. They can claim to have loaded the porn filter while having no responsibility over which sites get blocked. It’s the price you have to pay to access the huge Chinese market.

UPDATE, June 10: Oh, Chinese surfers are just thrilled by how Green Dam works.

Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
on June 08, 2009 - 1:53 pm

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June 3, 2009

Stuff Only An Operating System Geek Could Love

Item 1: Acer plans to sell an Android-based netbook this year. For an idea of what a phone-based OS will look like on a netbook, here’s a clip of an ASUS Eee PC running Android.

Item 2: Windows 7 will ship on October 22 in 5 different versions: Starter, Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate. I wanted to say something snarky here, but I’m actually enjoying running Win 7 on the Frankenbox. And Win 7 went 3-2-1 (as in win-loss-tie) in Lifehacker Gina Trapani’s feature-by-feature showdown with Mac OS X.

Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
on June 03, 2009 - 2:07 pm

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May 19, 2009

My First Week With a Netbook

I’ve been interested in netbooks since last autumn. I didn’t buy one at the time because I wound up getting my mitts on a T-Mobile G1 smartphone. Last week I pulled the trigger — I got the Acer Aspire One.

For me, it was an impulse purchase. I stopped into my local Micro Center (aka Valhalla) ostensibly to look at the Lenovo S10. I swear I was just gonna look. Then I saw the Aspire for $279 and thought, “What the heck. If it croaks after 6 months I’m not out that much money.” My wife was like, “$279 is nothing if it makes you shut up about netbooks.” So, boom, the deal was done.

Pros:

It’s soooooo light — under 2.5 pounds — less than half the weight of my office laptop. And the power brick is light, too.

It’s got 1GB of RAM and a 160 GB drive — plenty of capacity for what I want it to do.

No probs connecting wifi at home, Jenkins, or at Drexel.

Ditto for powering 2 different LCD projectors. (If it wasn’t able to do that, it would have been a deal-buster. I’d have had to return it to Micro Center and take a 15% hit on the restocking fee. Whew!)

Cons:

No LCD drive, so I can’t play DVDs or CDs. (I can buy a USB drive for like $65 if I want/need to, say, reinstall Windows.)

Some reviewers say the fan’s noisy. I can hear it when it kicks in, but it’s not bad.

The battery life is short — around 3 hours. That’s still plenty to get me through a class at Drexel or a presentation at a conference.

My big beef? The left- and right-buttons on the mousepad sound/feel tinny and cheap. I don’t think they’ll break any time soon, but if I was a betting man, I’d put my money on them failing first.

Final note:

The Acer’s running Windows XP. I decided to go without antivirus (but did turn on the Windows firewall), ’cause I’m just sooo tired of having it slow me down. I decided to stick exclusively with Google Chrome because it’s way safer than IE and even Firefox. We’ll see how it goes.

Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
on May 19, 2009 - 10:47 am

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February 24, 2009

Netbooks, Revisited

Netbooks are all the rage. I’ve blogged about them before. I haven’t followed up on that original post, because most of the articles I’ve been reading are written by propeller heads who argue about cache speeds or screen refresh or some other esoteric thingie that 99.99999999% of computer users do not know or care about. But Wired has a quite interesting article about the Netbook Effect. Here’s one quote that jumped out at me:

“For years now, without anyone really noticing, the PC industry has functioned like a car company selling SUVs: It pushed absurdly powerful machines because the profit margins were high, while customers lapped up the fantasy that they could go off-roading, even though they never did. So coders took advantage of that surplus power to write ever-bulkier applications and operating systems. What netbook makers have done, in effect, is turn back the clock: Their machines perform the way laptops did four years ago. And it turns out that four years ago (more or less) is plenty.”

So true. And even though I have 2 pricey — at least by *my* standards — Macs at home, I am quite fond of my 6 year-old, hand-me-down Dell Inspiron 1100 running CrunchBang linux.

Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
on February 24, 2009 - 2:35 pm

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February 13, 2009

They Stole My Headline

Wired reports that today at 6:31:30 PM EST, Unix time, which is the number of seconds since January 1, 1970 — don’t ask why, Unix guys are just different, trust me — will be 1234567890.

Our IT guy Ken tipped us off about this on Tuesday. I was going to post using the title “We’re gonna party like it’s 1234567890,” but Wired beat me to it. I guess it’s all for the best — I’d have gotten a C&D notice from the RIAA or maybe even one of its clones.

Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
on February 13, 2009 - 9:09 am

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