News Bits: Panasonic Makes Safe Battery, Hotel Wi-Fi is Hit or Miss, Vista an OS X Knockoff?

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Matsushita develops safer laptop battery

Better known as Panasonic, Matsushita announced Monday that it has developed a safer notebook battery based on lithium ion technology. The company said they began shipping the battery in April, and it is ready for mass production.

To prevent overheating, a heat-resistant insulator has been added to the battery cell. A normal Li-ion battery has only a thin separator, which can be punctured by a short circuit and can lead to fires and explosions. The heat-resistant insulator Matsushita has put into their batteries prevents such occurences from happening, even if there is a short circuit.

Matsushita put extra efforts into making certain that these batteries are not contaminated. They said in a statement: &quot;MBI has taken measures to prevent lithium-ion batteries from contaminating with electrically conductive materials by eliminating foreign substances from battery materials and creating a clean environment in the battery factory.&quot;

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Hotel Wi-Fi service is hit or miss

The number one priority for many travelers is getting consistent, reliable Internet access at a hotel, without regard to the connection type or the cost. Complaints vary, from weak or no signal strength, too slow of a download speed, or incorrect security settings. As for troubleshooting these problems, most hotels provide an 800 number to the hotel's Internet service provider, which doesn't always go smoothly.

Will Allen III, a hotel goer, is quoted as saying, &quot;We can't stay at a hotel unless the Internet works. It's like oxygen--we have to have it.&quot; He also says that wireless in hotels is simply not reliable enough yet, and he prefers wired connections. One issue causing unreliable access is that often, hotels use many different ISPs. Hilton Hotels Corporation is doing their best to bring the situation under control by bringing the management and customer support parts of its Internet service in-house. The program is called Stay Connected @ Hilton. According to the vice president of broadband services at Hilton, John Flack, the program was designed to make it easier for customers to get connected.

Vice president for operations at Ritz-Carlton, Brian Gullbrants, said that they are moving away from relying on a single 'technology butler,' and is training most on-site employees to be able to answer basic connectivity questions. Gullbrants said, &quot;You don't have to be a tech expert to figure it out, but you have to understand how our system works.&quot; Complicated problems are handled by the technology staff.

Additional problems contributing to unreliable wireless connections include building materials - concrete, steel, and glass can all block wireless signals - an insufficient number of IP addresses, and not enough antennas to handle the increasing bandwidth traffic.

Travelers do not want to worry about getting reliable Internet service. One hotel goer said, &quot;If I'm staying in a Tier 1 hotel, I should expect a Tier 1 experience. I might be working in my hotel for 12 to 14 hours one day. To me, that hotel is an extension of my office--it's not just a place to sleep and shower.&quot;

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Vista just a ripoff of Mac OS X?

David Pogue, a tech columnist for the New York Times, implies that Windows Vista is a ripoff of Mac OS X and Microsoft is a copy machine. It should be noted that this author enjoys being satirical and humorous. He posted a video, which does show some similarities between Vista and OS X.

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Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.1 update now available

December 18^th - Mozilla today released the first update to its Firefox 2.0 browser, 2.0.0.1. It is expected to be available sometime today. There are no details available as to what is fixed in the update, although there is a high probability that a fix for the password flaw found last month will be included.

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Production cost of Optimus keyboard is over $1,000

The upcoming Optimus 103 keyboard has higher than expected production costs. Art Lebedev wrote in the Optimus blog that finding displays small enough to fit the individual keys is harder and more expensive than anticipated. Each of the displays for the 103 keys costs about $10, which puts the cost of the displays alone over $1,000. The previous estimate for one OLED key was $1. Other company expenses include the $100,000 in tooling costs necessary to produce the displays. The displays are expected to be available in Spring in sample numbers.

Production of the Optimus keyboard is still ongoing. The most recent change to the keyboard includes an ambient light sensor to automatically adjust the brightness of the keys.

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Man ever since i heard about that optimus keyboard I have wanted it. Its to bad it will probably out of reach financially speaking

 

Dell needs to buy those batteries

The technology market is a copycat in itself. When something good works, people use it. So I don't blame Microsoft for trying to make everything easier and more user friendly, since that is what Mac is famed for.

That keyboard is awesome looking. There is no way I would pay over $100 for a keyboard though, let alone $1000. I'll just stick to my laptops plain black keys for now.

 

most of the stuff mentioned Apple stole from other companies first, the search was developed by Microsoft and used in Mac first. etc. etc. etc. I am surprised a NYTimes columnist would even go there.

 

Loved the video Chaz! By the way, if they can make a Windows Boot Camp program for Apple computers why not a Mac OS X Boot Camp for Non-Apple Computers? I'd buy it as OS X looks like a killer operating system.

 

When I stay in a hotel I'll frequently find that the Wi-Fi is so darn slow that the Verizon mobile card I have is faster. If people really are in a situation in which the internet is "like oxygen" for their business, I have to ask why they won't pay $80 a month for an EV-DO card. EV-DO is expensive for consumers, but it's peanuts for a business that relies on being able to turn a million dollar sale via email communication.

 

they do have something where you can take the intel version of mac os 10.4 or whatever you use i on a Pc, yet there is no affiliation from apple or microsoft to mass produce a product design to let you do just that, but there are other third party programs and such to allow you to do this, as far as copying mac os x... well the only i really see that stands out to me (yet to fool around with vista fully so im not aware of other similarities with os x) are the drop shadows with the windows areo on the different windows, You can notice that they are shadows at the end of each corner of the window. Mac os x orginal had this idea and put it to use with there system making it very easy to determain what window is where

 

lappyhappy, Apple deliberately does not license Mac OS X to any manufacturer but themselves to keep it exclusive. If they were going to licence Mac OS X away, they would've done that years ago.

There's no way Apple would make a Mac OS X Boot Camp for non-Apple computers.

Want Mac OS X? Get a Mac.

EDIT: Or you can cheat, and get some expert to install Mac OS X on a PC. But that's not recommended, supported or even legal.

 

I agree with you, circa86. Widgets were developed by Konfabulator (did I spell that right?), and a lot of the features in Mac OS X Tiger/Leopard, Microsoft had already announced before Mac OS X Tiger even existed. Its just Microsoft was delayed horribly.

 

That's exactly what I was thinking. Would I pay that for my own personal internet connection? Probably not. But my business would in a second if it meant better productivity/revenue.

 

It's because if OS 10 is installed on anything other than a Mac, it's illegal says Apple. Something to do with the copyright stuff.

 

lol Porcelain

 

It is possible to get OSX to run on "Windoze" PC's but it is quite harder than getting Windows on Mac PC's, I do wish it was that easy for us Windows people though. I've never tried OSX and its piquing my interest greatly.

 

The last two times I've stayed at a Hilton brand of hotel. (Don't snicker at me!),They were both the fastest and most realiable I had experienced at a hotel. It surprised me, I had much lower expectations given the normal experience with hotel wireless. Maybe it's because both were not in areas that would be big destinations for tourists or business folks.

I posted a thread about that keyboard before. I thought it was cool. to bad it's going to be so insanely expensive. Not that it suprises me.

 

For fear of running further afoul of the censors, let me put it graciously. Pogue's manner of presentation is not my cup of tea. I find him to be condescending and smug. It defeats the (more than likely somewhat valid) point he is trying to make if you get the urge to just punch him in the face before he's even halfway done talking.

 

the reason Apple doesn't license OSX to anyone else is because if they do than they have to deal with hardware compatibility with every computer in the world, as Microsoft has to do, it is easy to have reliable hardware, when you only have to deal with your own hardware, but they still aren't bulletproof unfortunately.

 

Is the Optimus keyboard in the same category as Liebermann Computers? Who has in fact seen a working prototype of this keyboard?