Intel has decided to simplify their low-power 45nm chipsets for ultraportables with sexier, more car-like names. The technology formerly known as Silverthorne and Diamondville, from this day forward, shall be known as “Atom.” And Menlow products shall be known as “Centrino Atom.”
You have roughly 48 hours to hold your newly found knowledge over everyone’s head in the IT department. Enjoy. [PCWorld]
The chaps over at Hot Hardware have put the Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 processor, which belongs to the (45nm) Wolfdale line, through its paces, and they sure were impressed. From their extensive testing, the processor did not seem to make any massive changes on an architectural level, however, small adjustments had a great overall effect. The 6MB of L2 cache brought an impressive speed boost, while the power consumption and heat production levels both fell.
Indeed, the Core 2 Duo E8500 was comparable in performance to lower clocked quad-core chips, proving the viability of the Wolfdale architecture. The chip is likely to retail at the +$300 mark and that seems to be the only drawback—it is a little on the steep side. Regardless, the Hot Hardware fellows were still willing to give the Core 2 Duo E8500 the highly coveted “Recommended” badge, and if their test results ring true, we would not disagree. Hit the link to check out the extensive testing [Hot Hardware]
If you’ll recall, we already witnessed a pre-production Wolfdale CPU outpace its competition back in August of last year, but the real deal has finally arrived. Over at Hot Hardware, the folks were able to crack open a retail Core 2 Duo E8500 processor, which comes in at 3.16GHz and features 6MB of L2 cache, a 1,333MHz FSB speed and is built on 45-nanometer technology. When put to the test, reviewers found this luscious piece of silicon to be quite the performer, noting that it was probably a better choice for gamers than a low-end quad-core chip. Still, with an expected price of just under three bills, it wasn’t exactly seen as the greatest of values, but if you’ve got the coin and happen to fit the market, the “Recommended” badge tells you everything you need to know.
Nick Carr has a lead on the story that we all knew was coming eventually: Key Microsoft applications, including Office, may be moving online, soon. Carr’s source says to look for enterprise applications to move online as web services with Salesforce-like usage fees, popular PC applications to move online with advertising support, and expansion of its data center network to provide storage for everything.
In short, they’re responding to Google Apps and Google Docs, which now account, according to analysts, for up to 2-3% of Google’s total revenue (call it $400m a year, up from $40m a year ago) (note: I can’t find a source for this, but it was quoted to me by a senior Google employee last week). That’s still pennies compared to Microsoft’s $16b or so in annual Office revenue, but the trend is pretty clear - users like free, and they like the ability to collaborate on documents. Today, Google offers what is in many ways a superior product to Office and they don’t charge users for it.
That’s created a textbook Innovator’s Dilemma for Microsoft. And the people up in Redmond are probably smart enough not to simply roll over and die.
The obvious time to do it is at the Mix conference later this week. Where, we hear, Microsoft may also be announcing an offline version of Silverlight to compete with Adobe Air. Would Microsoft release online versions of office via the Silverlight platform? Perhaps… Adobe has their own version, called Buzzword.
In the middle of this sits Salesforce, the king of software on demand. At some point Google or Microsoft will make a serious move to acquire them, and at that point the other will respond with a counter. That at least partially explains why Salesforce continues to be valued by the market at an absurd P/E ratio of over 600 (their continued revenue growth is another reason).
Designer Nuno Teixeira has redesigned the iMac, giving it a curved screen, second display at the back (not sure what that’s good for—educating the mice who live behind the skirting board in the office, perhaps?) and a second webcam. Apparently, he was inspired by the wraparound Cinerama screens from the Fifties. [Yanko]
Okay, try not to let your mind get blown by the possible time-space paradox we’re about to illustrate, but MSI’s supposedly introducing a new ECOlution motherboard at CeBIT with an “air powered cooler” that transforms the thermal output of its chipset into the kinetic energy necessary to power that same chipset’s fan. Of course, as the fan cools the heatsink it deprives itself of energy, supposedly the piston affixed to the crankshaft pulls back down, giving it another potential surge when its heat rebuilds. Supposedly it works at 70% efficiency, so we’ll just let the thermodynamics geeks in the audience mull over the possibility and audacity of it all — they certainly seem to have given up on Steorn at this point.
What’s that? You didn’t take the risk and upgrade your PC to some crappy Intel-based machine Microsoft may or may not have known wouldn’t run Vista as promised? Well, at least now you can get in on the latest version of Windows a little cheaper than yesterday: Ultimate full looks to be officially headed down to $320 from $400, and the upgrade is down to $220 from $260; Home Premium is now at $130 from $160. Will the dip be enough to entice plenty of new OS upgraders? Perhaps, but we think most of those that haven’t already upgraded will probably just wait until their next PC so they can get Vista “free”. But if you’re looking to buy it boxed though, give it a bit for the new prices to propagate through the retail network — not even Microsoft’s site reflects the new Vista price points.
Windows only: Freeware application Zorro aims to take distractions like flashy ads out of your online video watching experience. It does so by blacking out all content that isn’t your video, including your browser window, so it’s just you and your video. Zorro is brilliant in its simplicity: it’s basically a see-through application window, so you launch it, resize it so whatever you want to isolate is inside Zorro’s boundaries, and hit escape to black out everything outside the Zorro window. It could even work as a distraction-stopper for any application you want to bring focus to, like the many distraction-free word processors. Zorro is freeware, Windows only.
If you thought plumber’s crack was bad, imagine a gamer in crawling under his desk to turn on his PC. He’ll never have to do that again if he grabs one of these Sharkoon PC Jump Start Buttons, which hook up via USB to his PC and allows him to not only start a computer, but plug in two USB devices and a mic/headphone as well.The gadget plugs right into your motherboard, which means you’ll have to do a bit of internal jiggery, but makes your life easier in the end. The plumber spends most of his days being active (fixing your toilets), where the gamer just sits there. Whose ass would you rather see? We thought so. Available soon for 15 Euros ($22) [Sharkoon]
So now that the “Vista Capable” lawsuit is a full-blown class action, the judge has unsealed all 158 pages of emails between Microsoft execs trying to sort out what went wrong with the sticker program. While bits and pieces have been blacked out, what remains is still fairly incredible — although Intel’s 915 chipset was initially rejected as compatible with Vista, MS execs flatly admit that “In the end, we lowered the requirements to help Intel make their quarterly earnings so they could continue to sell motherboards with the 915 graphics embedded” and “We are caving to Intel. We worked the last 18 months to drive the UI experience and we are giving this up.” On top of that, it seems that the company was getting direct feedback from retailers that the stickers were confusing, with Wal-Mart appealing directly to HP to pull Vista Capable stickers from low end machines, and an MS exec saying that “I was in Best Buy listening to people and can tell you this did not come clear to customers. We set ourselves up.” That’s pretty damning, if you ask us — and the complete emails, linked below, are full of similar bombshells. Looks like this case may have some serious legs after all.
Disclaimer: Nilay’s a lawyer, but he’s not your lawyer, and none of this is legal advice or analysis.
Read - Seattle Post-Intelligencer coverage of the case
Read - PDF of all the emails
