News Bits: OLPC Shipping Info, Asus Eee PC 8G on sale, Goodbye Spam?

OLPC Give One, Get One program shipping info released

The shipping information for the OLPC's Give One, Get One has been posted. The website states that only those who ordered before Nov. 12 in the U.S. would get their machines before Christmas; orders placed after that date can expect a range of delivery dates. OLPC has stated it is trying to ship as many laptops as possible.

The donated laptops will be shipped to Afghanistan, Cambodia, Haiti, Mongolia, or Rwanda early next year.

Read More (Engadget.com)


Asus Eee PC 8G now for sale

The Asus Eee PC 8GB is now available for sale with a pricetag of $499. It has 1GB of RAM and 8GB of flash storage, and is scheduled to arrive in late December.

Read More (Daily Tech)
See our review of the Asus Eee PC


Research firms disagree on top Taiwan notebook vendor in Q3

Acer had announced it was the largest notebook maker in Taiwan in Q3 based on data supplied by Gartner and Gfk. However, a report fromIDC came out and said that Asustek was the top notebook maker in Taiwan in Q3 2007. Sources at Acer said that since two of the three research firms said Acer was in the lead, their statement was proven. However, they also said that PC rankings are always changing. Sources at Asustek said they are not going to get involved in the number game because a company's performance should also be judged not only on shipments, but also on gross margin and revenues.

Read More (DigiTimes.com)

AMD CEO downplays Intel



Despite AMD's stock price falling to its lowest levels in four years and a less-than-heartwarming reception of its quad-core Phenom X4 processor, AMD CEO Dr. Hector Ruiz had something to say about competitor Intel. Ruiz put most of the blame for the company's decline on Intel. He is quoted from a news article saying "If you look at the last five years, if you look at what major innovations have occurred in computing technology, every single one of them came from AMD. Not a single innovation came from Intel." He lated hazarded that "Intel is trying to catch up with us in that respect."

Read More (Hexus.net)


Is the end of spam in sight?

Steven T. Kirsch built a better mouse 25 years ago, and now believes he has found a better way to catch spam email. Kirsch has founded four companies based on frustrations with products and services. This year he started Abaca, a company focused on stopping spam with a new approach. The company claims it filters out 99 percent of all spam and backs the claim with a money-back guarantee. The underlying idea is to profile the recipient of the spam rather than the sender.

Read More (NYTimes.com)

 

AMD is kinda right. No Intel processor has Hypertransport, and they had to copy AMD's AMD64 with their EM64T. But AMD needs to catch up in terms of power and appeal, as well as marketing (I highly doubt that any normal person on the street would know what AMD was. It's been like that for a while).

 

I agree. Marketing is still lacking on AMD's part.

 

The best way to stop spam, IMHO, are for the email providers to "return to sender" known spammer ip addresses, or those on a block list you can customize. That way, when they send spam to your email and it comes back to them "undeliverable", they remove your address from their lists (thinking the address doesn't exist). Microsoft, yahoo, are you reading this?

 

A good part of the time, most spammers will keep the undeliverable address on the list anyway.

 

I wouldn't know for sure, but I would say most of the time not, because they keep huge lists of email addresses and would want to keep them as clutter-free as possible. I would think anyway.

 

Agreed!

If AMD were smart they'd retarget from the enthusiast market and go for the home/business sector. I'm a power user/gamer, so don't get me wrong, I LOVE performance, but the average home user and businesses are the ones who in bulk, be it off the shelf or huge order. And that's where low to mid-range takes the biggest numbers.

This is where AMD could potentially gain the most ground and recoup percentage and losses. They've proven their high end is not as high as it should be, and pound for pound they can't hold up to Intel's heavy hitters.

Trying to clean up in the middlegrounds is where you're going to gain the most ground - at least until AMD can come out with a C2D killer. Re-vamp marketing from "sheer ultimate power" to "the chip for everybody". They need to take a queue from HP's "making the computer personal again" campaign. It appealed to the average home user, and that's where the biggest battleground will be, and where price -vs- performance will hold the most sway.

 

Not necessarily. Most of the time they're just using disposable Hotmail or Yahoo accounts. All they have to do is sign up a few thousand free accounts, spam away, and dispose of the accounts afterwards. A neat and tidy inbox is hardly at the top of their list.

 

the 8GB needs a 10" LCD to justify the price.

 

yeah and for that money i'd rather get myself an iPhone. the $200 version when it was introduced was intriguing but $399 seems like it's too big of an investment for a 'neat toy to play around with.'

 

Not that I'm a big fan of the Eee, but here is an interesting mod for getting more capacity than 8GB, as well as bluetooth functionality:

http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/04/the-20gb-eee-pc-mod/

 

You have to admit though, a 10" Eee PC would be pretty cool... it would definately justify the price of $499...