Lenovo ThinkPad X100e | Technophile
The ThinkPad X100e has both good and bad points, depending on whether you see it as an overpriced netbook or a cut-price ThinkPad business notebook The IBM ThinkPad became the industry's premier notebook brand after the launch of the 700T in 1992, and its distinctive black styling and red TrackPoint became a noticeable part of business travel. ThinkPads were never cheap, but they were very durable, had outstanding keyboards, and you could get support and spare parts almost anywhere. Prices came down after China's Lenovo took over IBM's PC division, but the brand has managed to retain most of its value. I've been carrying ThinkPads everywhere for more than a decade, so I was delighted to see the Lenovo ThinkPad X100e when it appeared at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January. It was almost love at first sight. After using one (Type 2876), I'm less impressed, and my views might have tipped too far the other way. The main problem with the X100e is trying to decide what it is.
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Lenovo ThinkPad X100e | Technophile
Asus Eee PC1005PE review | Technophile
The new Asus netbook has terrific battery life, but is let down by limited processing power This year has seen the introduction of a new generation of netbooks based on Intel's Pine Trail platform. By moving to a more advanced 45nm fabrication process, Intel has been able to put the graphics and memory control circuitry on the same die as the Atom, reduce the power requirements, and provide much better battery life. A sticker on the 1005PE says it will run for 11 hours, which compares with 8.5 hours for the popular 1005HA version. Of course, it also depends on the power settings, whether you have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth turned off, and how much time you spend watching videos. However, the 1005PE should easily get you through a normal working day, and if you need more, there's another version (PU17) that claims up to 14 hours. The disappointing thing about the 1.66GHz N450 Pineview processor is that it doesn't provide a visible increase in performance compared with the old N270 and N280 chips running Windows XP. With 1GB of memory, the 1005PE runs Microsoft Windows 7 Starter responsively, but it doesn't have much to spare, and it would be worth upgrading to 2GB. I found the N450's integrated Intel GMA3150 graphics circuitry wasn't able to run high-definition YouTube movies (720p) without stuttering, though it was OK for the BBC's iPlayer. The 1005PE scores 2.3 on the Windows Experience Index, which is down to the processor. It's rated 2.7 for graphics and 3.0 for gaming graphics, with better results for the memory (4.5) and 250GB hard drive (5.8). Like the 1005HA, the 1005PE uses Asus's popular Seashell design: it's slim, tapers nicely, and has a polished lid. It weighs 1.3kg. The 10in screen is reasonable quality but not exceptional, and the 1024 x 600 pixel resolution feels a bit cramped by today's standards. The 1005PE has a new "isolated keyboard" which is also reasonably good, the main drawback being the tiny shift keys. The mouse pad is small and has a texture effect, but supports multi-touch operations. The mouse buttons are on a one-bar rocker switch, though I'd prefer two buttons. The 1005PE is not short of ports. You get a full RJ45 Ethernet port, three USB ports, an SD card slot, and a VGA monitor port. The battery is removable, of course, and there's a built-in 1.3 megapixel webcam. Like many other Asus machines, the 1005PE also includes ExpressGate and Asus's own software dock, which drops down from the top of the screen, and links to 500GB of free online storage
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Asus Eee PC1005PE review | Technophile
Converting data from PDF files to Excel spreadsheets
John Haworth wants to reliably convert a lot of data from PDF files to Excel for spreadsheet analysis. I receive a lot of data in PDF format and it would be very useful to reliably convert it for spreadsheet analysis. Currently I print files then OCR scan and save them in Excel. It needs time-consuming scrutiny to ensure reliability. John Haworth There are lots of ways to get data from Adobe PDF files into Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, and several of them should work better than the one you are using. However, I'm not sure any of them will avoid the need for "time-consuming scrutiny to ensure reliability". The best way to do that is to get whoever publishes the data in PDF to send it to you in Excel format, or in another common format such as csv (comma-separated values). Any process that involves a conversion will generally involve some level of checking, though you should be able to decrease the level as the system proves itself. Since PDF-to-Excel conversions are economically significant (possibly saving hours of re-keying and checking), there are commercial solutions such as Cogniview's PDF2XL -- which might be your best bet -- and Blue Label Soft's PDF to Excel Converter 2.4 . A search will find more. However, before buying anything, you should try some of the free online solutions, such as Nitro's PDF to Excel Online . Zamzar, a site that offers a very wide range of conversions , has recently added PDF to Excel. Before that, you could have used it to convert PDF to text and then loaded it into Excel using the Text Import Wizard -- a process that could well be more accurate than your OCR. Incidentally, if the files are commercially sensitive, you should consult your IT department first
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Converting data from PDF files to Excel spreadsheets
Microsoft’s Office 2010 review | Technophile
The latest version of Office has lots of new bells and whistles – none of which will make either Adobe or Google happy I'm writing this using the beta of Microsoft Word 2010, part of the Office 2010 suite due to hit the shelves later this year.
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Microsoft's Office 2010 review | Technophile
If you’re going to do good science, release the computer code too
Programs do more and more scientific work - but you need to be able to check them as well as the original data, as the recent row over climate change documentation shows One of the spinoffs from the emails and documents that were leaked from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia is the light that was shone on the role of program code in climate research. There is a particularly revealing set of "README" documents that were produced by a programmer at UEA apparently known as "Harry". The documents indicate someone struggling with undocumented, baroque code and missing data – this, in something which forms part of one of the three major climate databases used by researchers throughout the world. Many climate scientists have refused to publish their computer programs. I suggest is that this is both unscientific behaviour and, equally importantly, ignores a major problem: that scientific software has got a poor reputation for error. There is enough evidence for us to regard a lot of scientific software with worry. For example Professor Les Hatton, an international expert in software testing resident in the Universities of Kent and Kingston, carried out an extensive analysis of several million lines of scientific code . He showed that the software had an unacceptably high level of detectable inconsistencies. For example, interface inconsistencies between software modules which pass data from one part of a program to another occurred at the rate of one in every seven interfaces on average in the programming language Fortran, and one in every 37 interfaces in the language C. This is hugely worrying when you realise that just one error — just one — will usually invalidate a computer program. What he also discovered, even more worryingly, is that the accuracy of results declined from six significant figures to one significant figure during the running of programs. Hatton and other researchers' work indicates that scientific software is often of poor quality. What is staggering about the research that has been done is that it examines commercial scientific software – produced by software engineers who have to undergo a regime of thorough testing, quality assurance and a change control discipline known as configuration management
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If you're going to do good science, release the computer code too
We have the internet: now we need the intercloud, says Vint Cerf
With "cloud computing" growing in importance, Google's Vint Cerf thinks it's time to start working on "intercloud" standards and protocols so your data doesn't get trapped in one One of the problems with "cloud computing" is that it can work a bit like the Hotel California: you can check your data in OK, but will you ever get it out? Google is very well aware of the problem and with its Data Liberation commitment, wants to make sure people can retrieve their data. Ideally, of course, users should be able to move stuff from one cloud to another -- from Google to Amazon or Microsoft or any similar service -- but that's not possible at the moment. Vint Cerf, often known as the Father of the Internet, raised this point in an impressively coherent answer to a question at a Churchill Club meeting at SRI (Stanford Research Institute) last month, recorded by Fora.tv . Cerf says it's the same as the problem networks faced when they couldn't talk to one another: "We're at the same point now in 2010 as we were in '73 with internet." Cerf says we now need protocols and standards that will "allow people to manage assets in multiple clouds, and for clouds to interact with each other," and that mobiles could be part of that. It took five years to develop the internet protocols (and another five years to implement them for various operating systems), says Cerf. "So if we could rely on that as an indicator, maybe the intercloud problem could be solved in five years' time." Hat-tip: Fanboy Google Cloud computing Computing Web 2.0 Jack Schofield guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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We have the internet: now we need the intercloud, says Vint Cerf
Charlie Brooker | iPad therefore iWant? Probably. Why? iDunno
Apple pretends it will make your life more efficient. Come off it.
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Charlie Brooker | iPad therefore iWant? Probably. Why? iDunno
Thanks, Mr Jobs, for my new iNanny | Jemima Kiss
They said the iPod would never last, so only a fool would bet against the success of the iPad "A ll this hype for something so ridiculous! Why would they do this?! It's so wrong! It's so stupid!" "It won't sell. It will be killed off." "The reality distortion field is starting to warp Steve Jobs's mind if he thinks for one second that this thing is gonna take off." It's reassuring to know that some things never change: those were comments made on Apple fan sites as the first iPod was released in October 2001. Despite initial doubts, the iPod has become the symbol for seismic change, and very much to the benefit of Apple. The "iPod effect" boosted sales of its computers and also successfully staked out a lucrative chunk of the nascent digital music market by locking consumers into its own music store – effectively stealing the future from under the noses of the old music industry. Less than nine years later, Apple has sold 250m iPods. So what of the iPad ? Apple did no formal promotion ahead of the launch
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Thanks, Mr Jobs, for my new iNanny | Jemima Kiss
Whoops! Publishing boss leaks Apple tablet details
Terry McGraw likely to anger Steve Jobs by revealing previously unknown facts about the Apple tablet on live TV Apple is notorious for the levels of secrecy it keeps around new products - and never more so than with the impending launch of its tablet computer , which has seen the company clamp down and let only a select few pieces of information leak out. Why? Because Steve Jobs is (in his words) "a big bang guy" : building anticipation and appetite is part of the marketing game.
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Whoops! Publishing boss leaks Apple tablet details
In praise of… Tetris
Since it was first invented 25 years ago, the video game Tetris has undertaken an epic journey. Developed deep inside the Soviet Academy of Sciences by a 29-year-old artificial intelligence researcher, Alexey Pajitnov, who was playing around with mathematical puzzles, it has become, more than a quarter of a century later, the king of casual games . Tetris has travelled from the computing equivalent of the stone age – a Soviet copy of an American minicomputer – to the Nintendo Game Boy and now to the phone – recently celebrating its 100 millionth download to a mobile. The concept is so simple – a series of differently shaped blocks fall from the top of the screen, which the player has to arrange in a line without gaps – that its durability has taken everyone by surprise, not least its inventor, Mr Pajitnov . There was no scoring or levels in the original version, but once you start playing you can not stop. Operating on the basic commercial principle that if he was addicted, others would be too, Mr Pajitnov began what became a mammoth quest to get the game marketed internationally. Initially the rights were owned by the Soviet state, and without a deal with Nintendo – and the help of Henk Rogers, a Dutch game designer – the game could have faded into obscurity, as many other games of the 1980s did. Mr Pajitnov remains surprised to this day about the success of his computer doodling. But no one in 25 years has come up with anything better. Tetris Games Computing Mobile phones PC guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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In praise of… Tetris