French communications-equipment maker Alcatel has agreed to acquire US-based rival Lucent Technologies for US$13.4 billion to gain market heft and broaden its product mix.
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Sony’s Whole In One
For your ultimate viewing pleasure, Sony’s 19″ multi-functional LCD monitor offers it all in one box… ideal for work, rest and play.
Remember music centres from the 70’s? Amply demonstrating just how rubbish ‘multi-function’ kit can be, they shoehorned a record deck, cassette player and tuner into an oversized box and had all the audio prowess of a wet bath towel. Thankfully, Sony’s latest multi-function screen is nothing like this whatsoever.
One step ahead of the LCD game, the MFM-HT95 uses Sony’s X-Black technology. Yes, we know it sounds more like the sort of thing you’d see taking to the skies around Area 51, but it’s actually a revolutionary, high-brightness LCD system. Unlike conventional LCD panels, which only transmit two per cent of the light from their rear lamps to the viewer’s retinas, X-Black screens pack a whole lot more punch. But this core technology is only the start of a very impressive feature list.
The screen addresses a major constraint for humankind in that people can generally only be in one place at one time. So, if you want to check your email during the adverts of your favourite TV programme, you have to get off the sofa, go next door to where the PC is and hope you make it back in time before the programme restarts. The MFM-HT95, however, can cater to all your viewing needs without you needing to move a muscle, apart from the ones in your index finger.
But is it PC? Well, as a PC monitor, the 19in screen offers a pin-sharp 1,280 x 1,024 pixel display. Without a lot of the anti-reflective grilles and other gubbins of regular LCDs, it’s actually a lot more pin-sharp than you’d expect. The X-Black system also makes for more vivid colours, better contrast and extra detail, especially in dark areas of a screen image. Switch
to sRGB mode and the screen is simply fabulous for digital photo editing, as well as all your workaday PC chores.
At the flick of a switch on the generously-featured wireless remote control, the screen becomes a fully functional TV set. True, it’s not widescreen and the equivalent screen size is only about that of a conventional 21in TV, but the picture quality is gorgeous. As you’d expect from a device whose alter ego is that of a PC monitor, its high resolution display is also ready, willing and able to accept all popular HDTV formats. And there’s no need to fire up a PC with a TV tuner/graphics card before you can watch television programmes, because the Sony has its own built-in tuner, complete with Teletext.The monitor is also perfect for all of us who prefer keeping an eye on the TV when we should be working. The PiP (Picture-in-Picture) display means that you can
bore yourself rigid with the humdrum of word processing and spreadsheets, while at the same time reviving your spirits with much needed entertainment value from a TV show.
The possibilities don’t end with humble TV and PC connectivity either as the Sony also features composite, S-Video and component video inputs, any of which you can select from the remote control. This expands the range so that you can feed the monitor directly with camcorders, digital cameras, games consoles, DVD players, or anything else with a video or Scart output. Whichever you choose, we found that the fast 12ms response time was more than able to keep up with pacey gaming or movie action.
Equally at home in the living room as it is in the home office, the screen is immaculately finished and has curvaceous styling. High maximum brightness and contrast specifications (450cd/m2 and 1,000:1) make for comfortable viewing from across the living room, as well as when you’re up close and personal using it as a PC.
Sound quality is one area of almost universal disappointment when it comes to flat panel displays. The Sony is certainly no match for a dedicated sound system, but its SRS WOW-enhanced sound system is a lot beefier than the pathetic speakers fitted to most LCDs, and is reasonably listenable.
Looking full in the one-size-fits-all face of multi-functionalism, we’d have to say that the outright picture quality of the MFM-HT95 is not quite as supremely perfect as on Sony’s new standalone 19in X-Black SDM-HS94P computer monitor. However, it’s an amazingly close second and is mightier than conventional LCDs.
As a multi-function screen, this little all-rounder is by far and away the best we have seen yet.
Sony MFM-HT95 | $1599 |
For: True versatility without the drop in quality of most multi-function devices.
Against: We’d have preferred widescreen format and sound quality isn’t spectacular.
Verdict: Unlike almost any other multi-function device we can think of this one really excels in everything it does.
Tablet PC’s To Replace Text Books
Bill Gates believes that tablet pc’s will replace text books in the future.
According to IDG in Tokyo the uphill battle that tablet computing continues to face in winning favor with consumers hasn’t dampened Bill Gates’ enthusiasm for the technology. Microsoft’s chairman and chief software architect said Friday that someday tablet PCs will replace textbooks for all students.
 Click to enlarge |
| Acer Tablet PC |
“We do see, over time, that the ink input for the tablet and speech input will become as important as the keyboard, not replacing it but equally important.” Gates said at a news conference here.
“In fact, we see a day where every student, instead of their textbooks, will simply have their tablet computer connected up to the wireless Internet,” he said. “And so the teacher can customize the material, they can quiz the student. That student can have that tablet with them wherever they go and it’s actually lighter than the textbooks and more flexible, richer in terms of what it can offer.”
Still a Believer
Tablet computing has long been a technology in which Gates has believed.
After some early trials of the technology Microsoft gave it a major push in 2001 when at the Comdex trade show Gates launched the tablet PC platform. “It’s a PC that is virtually without limits and within five years I predict it will be the most popular form of PC sold in America,” he said.
The first tablet PCs came on the market in 2002. However, the original dream of Microsoft and hardware makers to push the technology into the mainstream never came true. Today, tablet PCs remain in several vertical markets but have yet to break out to the average consumer.
Now, the technology is about to get another chance.
The most recent iteration of the technology is Microsoft’s Origami platform, which is based around a tablet version of Windows XP. The software is used in Ultra Mobile PCs (UMPC), a small form-factor computer platform developed by Microsoft and Intel that is intended to sit between a laptop computer and PDA.
JB Hi-Fi: Why We’ll Beat Vendors Direct-Selling
As JB HiFi profits soar, CEO Terry Smart tells CN why it will beat vendors direct-selling, and how its stores are a “destination” for PC lovers.
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The retailer today announced HY13 net profit up 3% to $82.1m and sales rising 3.1% to $1.82 bn, with online up a staggering 40%, although accounts for just 2% of all sales.
“We have seen good growth across the board,” JB Hi-FI CEO Smart said in an interview with CN.
“Accessories and PCs have been strong, however, we did see a downturn in PC sales in October due of the launch of Windows 8.”
“We believe that JB Hi Fi is now a key destination for consumers buying a PC as we’re able to offer range and excellent pricing.”
When questioned about future growth and the emergence of vendor retail stores and the possible elimination of second hand game sales, Smart said:
“Consumers are still going to research their purchase but the one thing we can offer is choice, and a range of products.
“As part of their research, consumers are going to check the price that a vendor is selling at in their own stores, so we are confident that consumers will still come to JB Hi Fi stores because of the service, range of products we offer and prices.”
Talking about the emergence of expensive branded products such as $20,000 4K TVs JB’s boss said: “brands are important and always will be.
“We sell both the high end branded products and budget products, we still have to sell and demo both. What has become important is merchandising instore and we are currently expanding our brand merchandising instore across all our locations.”
“A lot of products today are tied to an ecosystem where one device communicates with another. We have to bring this to life instore and demo it.”
CN recently visited JB’s new store in North Sydney which has smartphones, tablets and laptops from Samsung and Apple displayed in the one counter area to show the Android and iOS ecosystems respectively at work, as well as fully kitted out audio area with headphones hooked up to audio players streaming music.
Incidentally, JB said sales of its Now music service continues to “grow steadily” and will enable it to expand further into additional digital content categories.
“As a result, we are beefing up our internet WiFi operations instore, while still delivering excellent service and pricing,” Smart added.
CN understands from Telstra sources that JB HiFi is working with the carrier to deliver fibre to as many of the JB Hi Fi stores as possible with a new IP network tipped to be operational by year end.
Microsoft touts PC-like portable “Origami” device
A new portable media device that allows users to listen to music, play video games, browse the Internet and jot hand-written notes is the initial vision of a product in development by Microsoft and its partners, the software giant said on Monday.
Intel ViiV To Be Revealed At CES
Intel is set to launch its reference platform Viiv at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in January 2006. The event will be covered extensively by SmartHouse Magazine.
Intel has been pitching the PC as the perfect home entertainment system. The Viiv chip set will be found inside several devises other than PC’s. The digitisation of media is certainly an opportunity for Intel. But there are some significant barriers. Traditional PC form-factors are not well suited to living rooms, at least not as part of the kit that sits alongside or underneath the TV. Attempts to build PCs into living-room friendly cases have stumbled either because of noise, size and, often, ugliness. Their price hasn’t helped, either.
Most of these factors can be solved through better industrial design and smarter construction. But there’s a deeper question: is the PC suitable for this kind of role in the first place? Yes, digital media can be managed and displayed on a PC, but for playback alone and maybe even management too, you don’t need anything as powerful as a typical media PC. Intel’s answer is that the PC does more than display media; it can be used to create it too. But then you’re back to the need for a keyboard, mouse and the kind of UI you need to sit up close to use.
Internet and email access require a keyboard too, but again are low-power apps that simply don’t require high spec systems to run. No one’s going to do word processing on a 2m UI.
Media Center PCs are better equipped for gaming, it’s true, but crucially they cost much more than consoles, and you have to understand how to install software – you can’t just slide in a disc and play the game as you would on a consumer-friendly console.
You can tell Intel appreciates these points from the way it’s positioning Viiv. Having been burned before, when it has touted slimline form-factors as the future for the consumer PC, Intel this time isn’t stressing the case design but the function. Indeed, it envisages a wide variety of form-factors for Viiv systems, from towers to compact computers and entirely new designs.
The problem is, that simply defines the platform too broadly. A mini-tower may have essentially the same components as a DVD player-like Media Center Edition machine, but their roles – their “usage models”, as Intel likes to call them – are very different.
The Viiv initiative is different from Intel’s past attempts to talk up the entertainment PC in as much as the company is now committed to spending money to market the brand and encourage a software infrastructure to grow around it. Before it’s simply relied on Microsoft to push its Media Center OS, and for OEMs to design and promote their own home PC systems.
Intel’s model for Viiv is Centrino, but the two programmes aren’t directly comparable. Centrino’s usage model is clear: unlimited mobile computing. The differentiation is the ability to work away from wires. There are different Centrino form-factors, but nothing that diverges from the classic clamshell casing. In short, it’s easy to grasp what makes a Centrino notebook different from other laptops.
Viiv, on the other hand, has no clear usage model and, as we’ve seen, no clear form-factor. Intel talks about digital media delivery, but since Viiv PCs are as likely to be ‘classic’ desktops as slimline home entertainment devices, they inherently encompass a wide array of usage models: gaming, personal productivity, Internet and communications, content creation, content consumption and more. Such a broad definition will not only make it hard to convince buyers that a Viiv-based PC is different from any other PC, but to get them to understand what exactly Viiv stands for. Intel is ready to makes some suggestions, but they’re all far less clear-cut than Centrino’s raison d’etre.
In short, Viiv is defined too broadly and lacks a clear differentiator. Is it a living-room system, or is it a desktop? Is it a Pentium Extreme Edition system, or is Pentium M? About the only thing you can say is that it’s wired, not wireless, and it has 5.1 audio. Viiv may be slightly more tightly defined than the phrase ‘personal computer’, but it’s certainly no more proscriptive than ‘Intel inside’. We’re sure Intel’s marketing will be sufficiently full-on to convince plenty of folk they need a Viiv PC rather than a regular PC, but it’s questionable whether it will win the company any more business than it would have gained anyway. Viiv will simply become the default.
Intel could have saved itself a lot of effort if it had simply decided not to call the platform a PC. It could have more tightly specified the form-factor, functionality and, conversely, been less restrictive about what system software it should have.
It’s ironic that, when talking about form-factor, Intel Digital Home Group general manager Don MacDonald says “it’s not Intel’s job to be prescriptive”, yet he’s quite willing to foist exact operating system and hardware specifications on Viiv manufacturers.
There’s no reason at all why living room systems can’t be based on Intel processors, system logic and connectivity chips. But it’s not necessary to claim that because they do, they are PCs.
TiVo’s boxes which are popular in the
But Intel, it seems, can’t bear the idea that its platform is not a PC. It just has to mandate a Microsoft operating system, make the whole thing more complex and – yes, it’s true – more functionally powerful than it needs to be.
The irony is, Intel accepts it’s not a strong CE player. But every time it tries to be, it starts shaking and, to calm down, has to start talking about PCs again. Its solution is to try and position the PC as a CE device, but PCs are general-purpose devices and CE kit typically addresses just one or two applications.
There’s no reason why a general-purpose device can’t be used more narrowly – think of a Windows PC being used solely for email or IM. But to be truly ready to run a wide variety of tasks, a device needs sufficient processing power to run anything from Notepad to Photoshop, along with a sufficiently complex OS to manage everything. That inherently opens it up to all the threats Windows is heir to, and makes it complicated and thus difficult for non-technical consumers to master and maintain. That’s the antithesis of CE.
Intel’s cart-before-the-horse solution to spend money on software to dumb Windows down to the level of CE kit – essentially to bypass all the technology Microsoft puts in to make its OS more powerful. So much effort could be saved if Intel simply realised PC does not equal CE.
Intel should pursue the CE market aggressively, and it should do so with its x86 products. The current generation of Pentium 4 and Pentium D processors may not be suitable, but its next-generation micro architecture has some very strong benefits for CE devices. It should – obviously – pursue the PC market too. There is plenty of room in consumers’ so-called digital lives for both kinds of product
The ideal solution I believe is a Cisco Kiss box with Intel chipset that communicates with other devices also running a Viiv chip.
Linksys Kiss Secrets Revealed
Only weeks after Cisco aquired Danish technology company Kiss it has emerged that there’s more behind Cisco Systems’ acquisition of the company than just a way to give its Linksys division a broader portfolio of home networking gear.
The new products could help resellers and digital integrators tap the revenue stream of the growing market for capturing, viewing and listening to movies, music and voice content beamed into homes and small medium businesses.
The US$61 million purchase will also see the foundation of a new home integrator channel by Linksys. Nigel Williams, Linksys’ newly appointed vice president of service provider and channel operations claims that Linksys will focus on four new channel programs: one designed for home technology integrators, a service provider channel program, a distribution-oriented program aimed at the small business market and a consumer products channel program.
Graham Reardon Regional Manager for Linksys in Australia has just returned from the US. He said “We are pushing hard to get these products and programs for Australia. The market is mature enough for us to role these programs out similar to what they are doing in the USA.
Because of Linksys’ emphasis on home networking technology, relationships with service providers that pipe content, ranging from VoIP to music and video, will be central to practically all of Linksys’ channels, Williams says. About 80 percent of Linksys’ sales are related to the home market, with the balance flowing into SOHO environments, he says. To help compile details for its new channel programs, Linksys is revamping its business intelligence system to gain a better understanding of its integrator partners serving the markets.
Meanwhile, Linksys plans to add many new reseller partners to tackle market opportunities in the home, SOHO and small business segments. Williams says he will improve communications with channel partners. Linksys also plans to add an array of new Web-based partner tools, increase its technical support resources and improve its call center operations to generate more leads, Williams says.
Linksys sees itself at the receiving end of the content feed from service providers and wants VARs to fulfill the services and hardware installation portion of the food chain, Williams says. Nothing recently epitomizes this desired paradigm like Cisco’s purchase in July of KiSS Technologies for $61 million, he says. Once the KiSS deal closes around October, Linksys will have the Denmark-based vendors’ arsenal of networked entertainment devices that span the categories of DVD/media players and recorders, and monitors and plasma displays.
With KiSS, Linksys plans to court service and content providers with the hopes of becoming the kingpin of home entertainment platform management.
“We will be the player to work with the content providers,” says Janie Tsao, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Linksys. “It gives the users a reason to get into broadband connectivity, and the service providers will be very interested in these types of services.”
A CEDIA member said recently of the KISS deal “One of the best things that could come from Linksys improving its channel efforts would be the addition of more product and solution certifications. “I’d like to see you need to be certified to be a Linksys VAR,” Peters says. “Unlike other specialised lines you can buy without really knowing how to make them work, Linksys certifications would lend more credibility. ”
Integrators are right in the middle of the content coming in from the service providers and the hardware from Linksys, says Tsao, who explained the overall result of the KiSS acquisition will “open up that particular VAR channel to go into the home and do the installation and maintenance.”
That paradigm works for Peters, whose company routinely installs top-end home audio, video and computer networks. Because service providers often subcontract interior installation jobs to integrators, Peters says even if service providers directly sell customers KiSS-style boxes from Linksys as part of a content delivery offer, he can still upsell other entertainment and networking products while garnishing those sales with installation services.
The first Linksys-branded products resulting from the KiSS acquisition will likely arrive by January, in time for CES, Tsao says.
D-Link Speeds Things Up
The whole of the world is going wireless. Get there first by de-cabling courtesy of D-Link’s networking bridge.
The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Or, with wireless networks, the faster they are, the more havoc microwaving soup in the next room causes.
With so-called Super G wireless devices, such as this bridge, the mooted promise is 108Mbps speeds – a shameful exaggeration, of course, but it is almost twice as fast as its precursor, 54Mbps vanilla G. Unless the microwave’s on, then that speed goes through the floor. But, for when you’re not preparing ready meals, our real world tests had this D-Link and a Netgear DG834GT router copying 300MB of data between two PCs in just over two minutes, as opposed to G’s five minutes.
Not quite justification enough to use the word “blistering” with impunity, but a vast improvement nonetheless.
Yet this is neither wireless access point nor receiver, but a bridge aimed primarily at fooling games consoles or printers into thinking they’re hooked up to the web by an ethernet connection, so they don’t need to be in the same room as your phone point or router. And because a console only needs a standard 512kbps broadband connection, most of this bridge’s capabilities go unused – a PCI or PC card makes better sense if you just want to bless your PC with Super G.
Setup is, in theory, straightforward, but in practice the D-Link’s ugly but simple interface tends to hang mid-configuration, while hitting the top speeds took a lot of settings tweaking. Compatibility is a greater concern: many Wi-Fi devices claim speeds of 108Mbps, but they don’t all use the same technology. Be sure your other kit uses the same Atheros chipset as this, otherwise you’ll be stuck with plain old 54Mbps speeds.
D-Link DWL-G810 | $179.95 | 
For: Impressive speeds, doubling those of its predecessor; pleasingly small.
Against: Ropey interface – lots of tweaking required; limited compatibility.
Verdict: A definite speed boost, but with Wireless-N on the way, you may want to wait.
The Route To Success
Getting online while not getting trapped to the wall socket in your hotel room, once meant lugging around a full-size router with your laptop. But no more.
There’s now an entire catalogue of tiny ‘travel’ routers from Netgear, 3Com, SMC and this, the DWL-G730AP, is the smallest yet. It’s smaller than a deck of playing cards, yet creating a secure 802.11g connection with it is certainly no game of poker.
This is a surprisingly decent router and access point. It’s all firewalled up, has a wired Ethernet port as well as wireless (not all travel routers have this), and it can even be powered through a USB connection to your PC. As a router with a LAN port, you could also, of course, connect a VoIP device – a fine solution to avoiding those ridiculous hotel phone bills. Add the half-decent configuration tools, and this is as simple to configure as routers get.
Nothing’s been compromised in terms of protection either. You’ve got all the usual mechanisms to keep out hackers and viruses: SPI firewall, port forwarding, domain blocking and a demilitarised zone between you and the enemy (that’s used for placing your own tanks if you have multiple computers connecting to the router).
And that’s not all. The simple configuration interface gives you options
to limit transmission range and to assign trigger ports (which is useful for gaming). While in client mode it can be used to connect everything from PlayStations to network printers.
The only let down of the D-Link is its range. About 20 metres away in a line of sight, throughput speeds had already fallen to around 3Mbps when we put it to test. But unless you’re staying in the two-storey rooms at the Burj al Arab in Dubai, this is still an adequate range for most hotel rooms and other travel uses.
Crikey, it even comes complete with a lovely leather travel case. Bargain.
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D-Link Airplus-G | $179.95 |
For: Usability, security, portability, price – just about everything really.
Against: Short transmission range, although adequate for most hotel rooms.
Verdict: Small yet perfectly formed. Our pick for both size and functionality of travel router catalogue.
Router With The Lot
It’s the router that has it all – ADSL, wireless, Voice over IP, and a face only a mother could love.
The Zyxel Prestige is serious business. You can tell by the no-nonsense black breezeblock design, the baffling array of flickering green and yellow ’60s sci-fi LEDs, and the way this router kicks out enough heat to mildly blister an unwary hand. There’s none of the shameless Apple-aping of rival networking products, or even the remotest interest in lounge-friendly miniaturisation. This fella’s here to do its job, not to show off.
Indeed, actions speak far louder than stylish silver casings, and this plastic colossus has a lot of action. ADSL modem, LAN router, wireless access point, firewall and Voice Over IP are all crammed into its room temperature boosting frame. There’s no end of rivals that include those first four features, but VoIP – in this case even enabling you to plug in a conventional analogue phone – is a relative newie that we’re expecting to become increasingly common. Being able to use a proper telephone instead of an unwieldy PC headset and an on-screen control panel is a refreshing improvement. Better yet, you can attach two different telephones, each with their own SIP (sesssion initiation protocol) account and phone number; no more second phone lines.
This makes the Prestige especially ideal if you work from home and want an office number and a personal number. Unfortunately, the VoIP support is for the SIP standard, rather than current net call darling Skype, so you’ll have to plump for a lesser known service such as Sipgate (www.sipgate.co.uk). SIP is arguably the cheaper and better method, but lacks the ease of Skype.
Speaking of ease, if you’re not particularly au fait with setting up routers or broadband modems, you’re likely to struggle with the complicated configuration interface of the Prestige. Granted, it all works and offers a staggering amount of control, but brace yourself for a long night reading help files. The complexity comes with one exception: a zero configuration mode for getting the Zyxel to work with your broadband account. If your ISP doesn’t require any more complicated settings (Wanadoo, we’re looking at you and your oh-so-specific DNS servers), as soon as you connect PC to router and load up your browser, you’re simply presented with a box asking for your ADSL username and password. If you don’t want to set up firewall rules, wireless or VoIP, you’ll never have to worry about dealing with the terrifying setup interface – but then buying this particular router would have been essentially futile.
It’s a doozy of a wi-fi router, too. While not up to the range of Belkin’s MIMO Pre-N router, the dual antennas means your wireless network will cover more of the building. It’s also remarkably feature-packed, ideal for home offices – but just keep in mind, your interior decorator will stop talking to you if you buy one.
Zyxel Prestige 2602HW $339
For: Myriad of functions; exhaustive setup options; good range
Against: Setup is a complete dog; not for novices; very expensive
Verdict: Everything under one roof, although Zyxel really needs to work on its aesthetics.