News Bits: Laptops in Taxis, JVC Mini Note, Actius MP30, Laptops in College, AMD 2006 Plans

Thousands of Laptops Left in Taxi Cabs for Joy Rides

Next time you jump into a taxi cab in a rush with your laptop in tow, please remember to exit the cab with the laptop in your posession still.

Jump out of the cab, pay your fare, and remember your laptop laying in the backseat!

A recent study conducted innine countries over the past six monthsindicates thatworldwide tens of thousands of mobile devices were simplyleft behind in cabs. The studyhighlights one particular cab company in Chicago, who saw the worst numbers, 85,619 phones, 21,460 PDAs and 4,425 notebooks were left behind in the six month studyperiod. And this is just one cab company in one city!

The study, sponsored by Pointsec Mobile Technologies was conducted among licensed taxi drivers to gauge the frequency and ease with which small mobile devices are lost in transit. Pointsec first commissioned the study four years ago in London; this year's results indicated a significant worsening in the problem, with 71% more laptops being left behind in that city than in 2001.

But it's not all bad, globally an average of 80% of the phones left behindwere re-united with their owners, along with 96% of the PDAs and notebooks. In most cases the cabbies tracked down the owners themselves. Australia was the worst when it came to reunions, 46% got their phones back, but only a staggering 18% retrieved their notebooks.

More: http://www.pointsec.com/news/news_pressrelease.asp?PressID=2005_January_24

JVC Mini Note Review

TrustedReviews.comhas published a review of the JVC ultraportable notebook, the Mini Note (sold in the U.S. as the JVC MP-XV841US). The cool thing about this notebook is that it is tiny (8.9-inch screen) and lightweight (3lbs 4oz with battery) yet it still has a built-in optical drive that other competing ultraportable notebooks such as the IBM X40 and Sony X505 do not have. However, the JVC Mobile Mini Note only has 256MB of memory on board, which is really low considering the graphics are integrated and will be stealing some of this precious resource too. The memory is upgradeable to 768MB however.

JVC Mini Note

TrustedReviews gave the JVC Mini a thumbs up for the fact it has a widescreen aspect and doubles nicely as a portable DVD player, but performance for this device is somewhat lacking -- even for an ultraportable where you expect to sacrifice speed:

Link to Review: http://www.trustedreviews.com/article.aspx?head=36&page=2193

TrustedReviews Conclusion:

JVC has done a good job with the Mini Note and created a small and light machine that lends itself well to mobile entertainment. Unfortunately, some users may find the keyboard too small to cope with and the screen resolution slightly limiting. The bulky clip-on battery also spoils the overall look of the machine. However, if you're looking for a slim and light mobile computer, that doubles as a widescreen portable DVD player, the Mini Note will fit the bill.

Sharp Actius MP30 Review

The Sharp Actius MP30 is another ultraportable notebook, but instead of being powered by an Intel processor this one has a Transmeta processor. Sharp does it right by including 512MB of RAM standard, none of the 256MB garbage as the JVC Mini Note comes with. Also, the Sharp MP30 has instant on DVD playback, meaning you don't have to boot up the Windows Operating System to watch a movie -- a very nice feature and one that lends this device to being a great ultraportable entertainment machine too.

CNET concludes that the MP30 is a nice machine but, as is usually the case with ultraportables, it's poor on the performance and hard to use the keyboard for typing due to the small size.

More: CNET Sharp Actius MP30 Review

US College William and Mary Requires Freshman of 2006to Buy Notebooks from School

Apparently the IT guys at William and Mary College in Virginia got tired of trying to support a myriad of laptop brands and so the college is now initiating a program called myNotebook in which all incoming students will be required to buy a specific laptop brand and model from the university and then use this notebook to do their schoolwork and store lessons and reading material. It is estimated that 99% of incoming freshman to the school buy a notebook or desktop PC before starting, so standardizing what students buy will make it possible for the IT department to provide free support to the students.

Link to myNotebook Program: http://www.wm.edu/mynotebook/index.php

According to theW&M website: After reviewing the benefits of notebook computer ownership, we believe the time is right to adopt a notebook requirement for students entering William and Mary. Convenient access to computer technology is essential for academic success, and we anticipate that academic computer use will increase dramatically for the foreseeable future.

There is no indication as to what laptop the school will standardize on yet.

AMD 2006 Processor Roadmap Published, then Removed

The fansite www.tweakers.net published an image of an AMD processor roadmap that stretched into 2006, but they were then forced to take the image down (was found here originally: http://www.tweakers.net/ext/f/49970/full.gif). Currently the map available on the AMD website only shows plans into 2005: http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoom/0,,51_104_608,00.html

Apparently the roadmap for 2006 showed that AMD intends to release dual core processors at the beginning of 2006, just as Intel intends to also do. The mobile version of the dual-core processor AMD will be releasing is dubbed "Taylor". A dual-core processor for desktop replacement style notebooks is dubbed "Trinidad". These new AMD processors will support fast DDR2 memory. These chips are still a long way out of course and before that time AMD will be releasing a set of processors targeted at notebook computers that are being called part of the "Turion" platform.

Intel will also be releasing dual-core processors in 2006. The Intel plan for dual-core processors is being dubbed "Yonah", see more about Yonah in an earlier NotebookReview.com article.

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