News Bits: AMD Shrike Notebook Platform, Intel Ultra Small-SSD, Toshiba Qosmio G40

Windows Vista is the #1 tech disappointment of 2007

What a surprise! PCWorld has put Vista at the top of its "15 biggest tech disappointments of 2007". "No Wow, No How" reads the title. Many innovations that were supposed to make Vista good like a more efficient file system and better communications did not make it as Microsoft struggled to put something together. The User Account Control is more irritating than anything, and incompatibilities, although not as common as when the OS first came out, are still abundant. The $339 list price for Vista Ultimate does not help matters at all. It is hard to find a new PC on the market that does not come without Vista preinstalled, which is disappointing.

Read More (PCWorld.com)


AMD Shrike notebook platform for 2009 unveiled

AMD will release its "Shrike" notebook platform in 2009 featuring an Accelerated Processing Unit (APU), which has general-use CPU cores with specialized accelerator cores on one chip. AMD's first APU will have AMD "Stars" CPU cores and a GPU core. The Swift chips will be manufactured on a 45m process and use DDR3 system memory.

Read More (Laptoping.com)


Intel debuts ultra-small solid state drive

Intel has released a tiny solid-state drive for portable products like smartphones, mobile Internet devices, and UMPCs. It is smaller than a penny and weighs less than a drop of water, and but is fast, low-power, and rugged. The Intel Z-P140 is the smallest SSD in its class, 400 times smaller in volume than a 1.8-inch hard disk drive, and at 0.6 grams is 75 times lighter.

Read More (Brighthand.com)


Toshiba Qosmio G40 has world's first HD DVD-RW drive

Toshiba has introduced the world's first HD DVD-RW drive in a laptop, housed in the top-of-the-line Qosmio G40. It is priced at about $3,530 with high-end specifications including a 17-inch WUXGA high-definition display.

Read More (Engadget.com)
NotebookReview.com review for the Qosmio G40/G45


Faster chips leaving software behind

Today's software is having trouble keeping up with faster chips. Newer processors with more than one core require complex software that breaks the data up into chunks that can be processed simultaneously. Microsoft executives are planning on manycore CPU chips with eight cores or more to transform the world of personal computing; they are working hard on developing software that will take advantage of multiple processors.

Read More (NYTimes.com)

 

Shrike? Interesting codename . AMD always thinks up interesting codenames .

And it is amazing how many "Worst of 2007" lists Vista has made onto .

 

Isn't Intel's new SSD just a micro SD card? maybe? kinda? just a litte?

 

HMMMM does it sound like an old friend is coming back? AMD? But yeah seriously about time for them to come out with something. I am still loyal to Intel though.

 

PCWorld and Vista:
Boring, boring "click bait".

AMD's Shrike:
AMD eventually needs a performance king. They can't keep on bleeding forever. What's DASH?

Toshiba Qosmio G40 HD DVD-RW drive:
Early adopters pay the most and experience the most problems with the tech, but they get it first. HD DVD could fail. Is the computer HDCP compliant, so when the next stage of DRM is activated, will it be fully usable? What drives can read the burnt discs?

Intel SSD
This looks like something useful in cellphones if it works.

Faster chips leaving software behind:
Microsoft has already done this with Vista. It's quite sad that computing power has to be wasted with no major improvements in functionallity (ex. a GUI, web browsers, 3D graphics, MP3 encoding) to be "taken advantage" of.

 

does it say how much the intel card holds?

 

AMD has died about 1.5 ago, even shrike can't help it.

 

Shrike reminds me of Dan Simmon's Hyperion . Maybe its that dude with the scary looking avatar above hrmmm

 

"Initially it is available in a 2 GB version -- large enough to store a mobile operating system, applications, and data -- and a 4 GB version will be available in mid-2008. It will eventually be available with 16 GB of capacity."

 

Well, at least AMD is good at something....Though, Skulltrail is still the best codename ever devised. Bar none. Jai Intel

As for the Vista thing, that was just PC World putting a negative spin on every single big story in the tech world this year. iPhone, Vista, Leopard, Facebook, its all there. Except for the wireless provider industry, that was completely justified.

And in truth, Vista really isn't that bad, I don't know why people are ripping on it so much.

 

yeah seems a kind of - mobile phones allready have ability to use microSD and they are very small and light:

http://www.pqi.com.tw/product2.asp?oid=177&catE1=177&PROID=330

 

Good point - surprisinly Google didn't make the list. Guess they're saving them for next year.

Compared to XP and with so long to develop, Vista is a disappointment, but I don't think anyone really expected it to be revolutionary after all those features had been dropped.

I'm in the skeptic camp as to the possibilities of mutlicore computing. Not only is parallel coding not easy, but so much depends on one thing being finished before another. Based on today's software, I'd rather take a Core 2 Duo with 130W TDP running at 4.5 GHz than a Core 2 Quad with 130W TDP running at 3 GHz - of course there are eventual limitations, but I don't think a Core 2 64 running at 250 MHz is what anyone wants right now.

 

i guess it's a disappointment to some if you make a laundry list of features and compare it with leopard or whatever. but considering 95% of user only use their computer for web-browsing/music/movie/office etc does it even matter? i'm sure not everything is vista's fault, meaning the problem could lie on the user end. since vista's user base is larger i'm guessing the idiot-user base is presumably larger as well

 

Hmmmm.... Vista isn't that bad at all. Furthermore, with SP1 UAC is hardly a bother now. I do agree with PCWorld that MS can do much better however considering the amounts of time they spent on Vista.

 

hm.......maybe intel is eyeing the mobile market now

well vista being a dissapointment somehow doesnt suprise me
it was bound to happen
some love vista and then some hate it

 

From a developer perspective I must say that Microsoft is going into the right direction now with a declarative language (LINQ / PLINQ for that matter). Besides declarative programming separates the men from the boys, there is a very good reason that LISP and other declarative programming languages were used in high performance computing every since and celebrate their comeback into the multi-cored mainstream. (And those reasons would be for example synchronization (ie threading) issues, compiler optimization,...)

 

I'd call Vitsa worst of the decade and its still ain't over

Amazing how they shove it down your throat when you buy a new laptop ,
my next laptop will need to have XP driveres .

 

Synchronization is a big issue in todays compiler and programming technology, but parallel computing has a lot to offer. Compilers try a lot to optimize code, ie loops can sometimes be split up into parallel processing parts by the compiler (Intels C++ compilers can do so for example). But most optimization techniques are really obscure to the programmer, analyzing software and performance behaviour is a tedious and error-prone job.

Microsoft is going for the right direction with (P)LINQ. Declarative programming languages have high potential to solve these issues (in fact they always did).

And I may be slightly off topic, but let me say this: I don't like Vista, but I feel a bit sorry for MS that everybody thinks Apple is doing so much more innovation. They have taken a f** metric ton of advantage when they took bsd (was it freebsd?) for their OS.
Where would they be if they'd developed their next gen OS from ground up on their own?
Indeed they do a good job in putting all these things togther, but hey, they would be nowhere near in a position to sell the earth's most-expensive mobile phone (which is a nice piece of engineering methinks, but looking at my 27€ Nokia E61i that I got with my contract, and all software from Apache to IM+, TomTom navigation etc I think that this Apple hype needs an end. You can expect that for such a price - but besides Apple there seems no such hyped brand these days, which is a pity).

 

Intel has no choice but to pay attention to the mobile market now -- with sales of notebooks and ultra portables overtaking the sale of desktops, it's only a matter of time before Intel focuses all their attention towards the on-the-go and mobile gaming market.

And maybe, just maybe, they can help resurrect PC gaming somewhere in the process.

 

UAC isn't a bother if you TURN IT OFF.

Vista was originally supposed to have some new features, like a different file system that was a lot more innovative (tagging...), but these features got axed to get the release date up. They had finished part of it, but MS simply did not have the time to get the bugs out, so they just axed these parts. Thats why Vista seems dissapointing. I don't get what everyone is screaming about - if you have a decently new computer it will be fine. Yes, it doesn't like single core processors (P4s...), but then, XP didn't like P3's either, so its not really any different from before.

 

Even if Intel's latest SSD news may not sound too exciting at first, I welcome any development within the area of SSDs/Flash memory. The more the better, as the technology will then become more readily available sooner. Meaning you will get larger capacity for less money. The perfect combination

 

Shrike vs Nehalem. Who will get my money? I know who...

 

Gosh, AMD is slow... at development, too slow... at this rate they will never catch up to Intel...

I am really thinking they should merge with Samsung or IBM, which is their biggest two "huge" technology partners. And both companies, Samusng and IBM, makes processors for UMPCs and other computer related products, so if Samsung or IBM can buy AMD and ATI that would be better future for AMD instead of struggling to develop "outdated Intel technology" to catch up

 

(with their low... low fund and amount of (lack of) engineers)

 

If they did that, Intel would axe AMD's x86 license, and then both AMD and the company it merged with would be really screwed, even more so than they are now.

 

Wasn't X86 open source to develop? Cause over 15 companies made microprocessors based off of X86 architecture, and not seeing any problems yet =P

And also, Samsung is bigger then Intel, and has their own design of microprocessor, so you never know =D

 

AMD took a Hammer to Intel once, when they had a LOT less resources than they do now. They can do it again.