Peter's Technology Trumpet : Home Entertainment

Windows 7 Driving Touchscreen Evolution -- Microsoft Windows 7 -- InformationWeek

SmallCountry — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:55:56 GMT

More on the burst of touch-enabled PCs entering the market alongside Windows 7.

Windows 7 Driving Touchscreen Evolution -- Microsoft Windows 7 -- InformationWeek

Weee PC - Less is More

SmallCountry — Fri, 16 May 2008 13:26:57 GMT

Despite the tightening purse strings of the new Credit Crunch Austerity Britain, the Ferry family coffers were recently opened to purchase a new PC.

Despite regular complaints from cost centre no.1, investment in mobile phones, MP3 players and other such essential paraphernalia of modern life is a rare event.

Having finally caved in to demands from Mrs. Ferry for a laptop PC which could be used whilst travelling, I was delighted to pick up the Asus EEE 701 4G PC for a grand total of £212 incl. VAT. Its intended to be a "chuck in the bottom of the bag" laptop for Mrs. Ferry so that she is always connected

Although the EEE could be considered a very low end device in terms of performance and spec (it has a very small hard disc and a measly 512KB of onboard RAM - a laptop spec typical of 2 years ago) its 2 biggest attractions are undoubtedly its low cost, and its diminutive size.

Its only 22*16*2 cm, about half the size of an A4 notepad (see a picture of it next to its larger, and rather more expensive big brother, my Lenovo T61p). Nevertheless it still manages to have a workable keyboard and screen, a webcam, and all the usual laptop bits & pieces

So here we have a fully functional laptop, useable for Microsoft Office and email, for about the cost of a decent mobile phone.

On a trip from Aberdeen to Edinburgh last week (courtesy of National Express trains with their free wireless) I had a very productive 2 hours on the wee Asus, so I have commandeered it as a general use lightweight laptop. As I am often on my pins running customer discussions, its also been used to drive PowerPoint presentations .

There are a few compromises of course - the 7" 800*480 screen clips the view of some websites and applications, and will not suit everyone. Likewise the low price is in part due to it shipping with a customised Linux desktop equipped with Firefox and OpenOffice.

This may be useable for general note taking and home email, but after trialing it for a day, it was obvious that I, like the vast majority of business users, am too reliant on the Office applications (particularly Outlook 2007). In any case, Mrs. Ferry found the unfamiliar Linux environment unusable. As its only got a 4Gb hard disk (flash-based incidentally - no moving parts) and low end processor, its tricky to squeeze Windows Vista on it so I went for old faithful Windows XP.

Although the low-cost laptop initiatives such as one laptop per child have been targeted at education and developing nations, one could easily see devices such as the Asus appealing to the hardened road warrior/executive - enabling him to carry a laptop in situations where he wouldn't normally do so due to risk or convenience. this may be one of the factors behind the announcement of Microsoft ongoing support for Ultra low-cost personal computers . As the announcement says, this is targetted at "companion devices with limited hardware capabilities" which is how I use my Asus - its convenient for my trekking around Scotland, but like Charlton Heston and his Rifle, you could only wrest my 4GB Vista 17" widescreen Lenovo laptop out of my dying fingers.

Some will prefer more powerful fully functional Ultra-Mobile PCs which like those from Samsung, Sony, and more recently HTC with its Shift. But I believe the attraction of these small but perfectly formed devices is their "disposability" - you would think twice about checking email on your £700 small but perfectly formed UMPC whilst sipping a White Tornado in the Saracen's Head, but you might risk your £200 Asus.

Since toting my Asus around the offfices of Corporate Scotland, yours truly seems to have become a minor fashion trendsetter- with several others follwing suit. If you too want to be part of the in-crowd, follow the steps below:

Asus EE 701 4G available at Dixon's tax free at the airport for £212.
Install Windows XP - follow the instructions at eeuser.com , you can download the drivers at asus.com and there are all sorts of other useful utilities up there
Suggest installing Office 2007. The simplified Ribbon user interface uses less screen "real estate" than the many toolbars of Office 2003 - important on the Asus small screen
Since we have gone retro with Windows XP, you will need to download the indispensible Windows Desktop Search component - Office install will prompt you to do this
Instead of the hugely bloated Adobe Acrobat software, use the single exe file free PDF reader from Sumatra and save yourself the disk space
Best get yourself a Class 6 SD memory card as Windows XP and Office will fill the best part of your 4Gb hard disk. Ebuyer have a suitable 8GB SD card for £20
Since this is a "companion device" you may wish to keep data in synch with your other PC - I use the excellent Live FolderShare service to seamlessly synch up Gigabytes of data between home PC, work laptop and Asus EEE

What's at the centre of your digital home?

SmallCountry — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 18:38:00 GMT

In Bill Gates opening keynote of CES 2007 he talked about todays consumer electronics trend towards High Definition TV, proliferation of media devices, and how software could provide a seamless experience between broadcast and personal content. He also mentioned that children in the US now spend more time in front of an Internet connected PC than watching TV.

That's certainly the case in the Ferry household, which has recently upped sticks and moved 1 mile across Auld Reekie to a new house.

As the residence does not yet have a TV antenna fitted, and I have so far deprived the household of any video gaming consoles, cost centre no.1 has resorted to entertainment from a rickety old tablet PC and the virtual world of Club Penguin. She threatened to report me to Childline as apparantly this represents extreme deprivation, so there's no chance she is getting a mobile phone either.

Sadly for most UK households the television remains at the centre of the home, with mental chewing gum in the Big Brother Celebrity Dance Jungle category passing for entertainment. With viewers hooked, most households pay over £20/month for their satellite TV Subscription. But don't get me started on Mr Murdoch...

However, there is hope. I noted 2 announcements at CES will help consumers use more interesting and stimulating applications on the device at the centre of their digital home.

Firstly, HomeServer. This addresses the "Digital Amnesia" issue of households with more than 1 PC finding it difficult to share, organise and retain "digital "memories" of photos, videos and music files. According to Mr. Gates over 6 Billion digital photos were taken last year. (I'm not sure what surveillance was involved in reaching an accurate count, but I will ask him when he comes to Edinburgh at the end of January for the Government leaders forum).

HomeServer will act as useable shared storage for all PCs in the home, centralising all those digital photos, music etc. safe, backed up and available from the desktop PC or the work's laptop in the study. The media content can stream to the XBOX so you can easily watch it on the telly in the living room, in much the same fashion as with Media Center PC today. What's more, when you are away from home it will give remote access from the cafe wireless network to show your pals pictures of the kids.

Now many of these capabilities are already here in various combinations of devices, but I'm betting that the HomeServer team will pull off the usability to make it transparent and appliance like for non-geek users.

The usability acid test will be whether her indoors can make sense of it all. Mrs. Ferry does not have the best command of electronic devices, and actually stopped cooking for several years when a new kitchen came with an oven bearing push buttons rather than a dial.

Secondly, there was an announcement of useful new IPTV capabilities for XBOX 360. The popular console has shipped around 10 million units worldwide with half that number used to access the XBOX Live social community, enabling multiplayer games, online presence and voice chat.

Now this is a big boon to planned massmarket IPTV services like BT Vision. This will offer the TV-viewing punter access to broadcast and on-demand TV content from the same "set-top box" that can also play games and access the family's precious photos, videos and music - making the XBOX 360 a cheap but powerful centre to the digital home. The addition of IPTVcould make this one in the eye for Mr. Murdoch...

What's likely to make this a "must have", is bringing together the community aspect of XBOX live with the TV broadcast content. But we will have to wait for the 2007 "holiday season" to see these capabilities ready for XBOX 360.

Technorati tags: XBOX, HomeServer, IPTV, CES