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
Kneber botnet catches 2,500 companies worldwide
About 75,000 personal computers in almost 2,500 companies and government agencies worldwide have been caught in a botnet based on a new variant of the ZeuS Trojan About 75,000 personal computers in almost 2,500 companies and government agencies across the globe have been caught in a botnet uncovered by a researcher at the US-based NetWitness network forensics firm. Hackers were able to collect logins and passwords for Facebook, Yahoo, Hotmail and other accounts, including online banking sites. They were also able to access some corporate servers used to store confidential data, including one used for processing credit-card payments. Companies reportedly attacked include Paramount Pictures, Merck, Juniper Networks and Cardinal Health in the US, but affected computers in more than 200 countries including Egypt, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Turkey. The Wall Street Journal reported that Merck and Cardinal Health said they had isolated and contained the problem, and Merck said "no sensitive information was compromised". NetWitness's Alex Cox uncovered the botnet while installing monitoring software to help a large corporation deal with cyberattacks. He found a 75GB cache of data generated by the botnet, which NetWitness has called Kneber after a username linking the infected systems. NetWitness said in a statement: "Disturbingly, the data was only a one-month snapshot of data from a campaign that has been in operation for more than a year." The PCs in question, almost all running Microsoft Windows XP or Vista, had been compromised by a new variant of the well-known ZeuS Trojan, which is one of the "top five" in its class. Cox told the SearchSecurity.com site that the variant used in the latest attacks had a detection rate of less than 10% among antivirus software.
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Kneber botnet catches 2,500 companies worldwide
HP boosts computer industry with rising profit
The technology industry breathed a sigh of relief on Wednesday, after the world's largest computer manufacturer, Hewlett Packard, announced a 20% jump in quarterly profit. The Californian company said that revenues and income had risen significantly from this time last year, in what many saw as the strongest sign yet that the economic slump's impact on technology spending was almost over. Revenues for the first quarter of 2010 were up 8% to $31.2bn (£19.9bn), with profits rising to $2.3bn - up from $1.9bn a year ago. The company also said it was expecting more signs of recovery in the coming year, with projected earnings narrowly ahead of expectations. "HP is well-positioned to outperform the market," said chairman and chief executive Mark Hurd, who has worked to cut costs at the company since taking over in 2005. The growth largely came from HP's computer and printer manufacturing businesses, as consumers - who had been reticent about purchasing during the downturn - started buying again. While figures released by industry analysts Gartner suggested that shipments in western Europe were flat, the company experienced what Hurd called "accelerating market momentum". That could be partially due to the impact of Microsoft's Windows 7, which launched last autumn and gave many PC manufacturers a boost by encouraging shoppers to purchase new hardware. The company's services business - which expanded significantly in 2008 with the $12.6bn purchase of EDS - did not enjoy a revival, however, with revenue falling by 1%. HP's results will please investors and analysts, but they have not been without its costs. The company has cut tens of thousands of jobs in the past two years, including 25,000 as a direct result of the EDS acquisition, and plans a further 8,600 by October. Last month more than 1,000 HP staff who work for the Department of Work and Pensions took strike action in protest at job losses. Shares rose marginally in after hours trading, to 50.12.
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HP boosts computer industry with rising profit
Getting an entertainment laptop, or a desktop PC for watching TV
Jack Williamson's Toshiba is on the way out, but should he get another laptop (from the category known as "desktop replacements") or a desktop or something else? I've got a Toshiba Satellite Pro M70 laptop. It's now four years old and, basically, it's full. (I got a 500GB external hard drive but I think the issue is bigger than that.) My partner has a two year old Samsung R60 Plus: it's not full. We would like to be able to watch TV in our study, including downloaded programmes. Should I buy a bigger laptop with Windows 7 -- I was thinking of the HP Pavilion dv7-2215SA -- or should I carry on with my current laptop and buy a new desktop PC? Jack Williamson PS I've always liked your column and I really miss the Thursday tech section first thing. Going online is just not the same. There are a lot of different options, and picking the best one for you is probably a matter of taste. My preference would be to get a decent desktop PC running Microsoft Windows 7, which has outstanding media centre software, and plug it into a big monitor or LCD monitor/TV (see below). Desktops are better value than laptops. However, I fear the Toshiba Satellite Pro M70 is approaching the end of its useful life. It was never the snappiest PC (1.73GHz Pentium M 740) and if yours has the 60GB hard drive, it's no surprise if it's full. If you need to replace the old Tosh, then the HP Pavilion dv7-2215SA would be a good choice. It might not be quite as solidly made, but it has a very big screen (17.3 inches) and a decent specification for a low price. However, it's being replaced by the HP Pavilion dv7-3101sa (£599.99), and you should be able to get one from 15 March. I'd wait for that. If you do not need to replace the old Tosh, then you could get a touch-screen all-in-one PC with a built-in TV tuner.
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Getting an entertainment laptop, or a desktop PC for watching TV
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
Microsoft is cutting the cost of Office, but will more people buy it?
Office 2010 will be cheaper, which could reflect its reduced value in an era where online apps are free, or Microsoft's attempt to expand its paying customer base, or both of these and more…. Microsoft announced the UK prices for Microsoft Office 2010 this morning and, like the US prices unveiled last month, they're down. (For details, see: Microsoft Office 2010 priced from free .) There are plenty of reasons for this, though it's hard to know which have been most influential. The main ones may be the arrival of online office suites and competition from Open Office, both of which are free. Limited as they are, they must reduce the perceived value of Office, to some extent. But there has also been the huge success of the cheap Home and Student version, which you can install on three PCs. At Christmas, this was one of Amazon.com's top three best-sellers. Indeed, Microsoft says Office has been the top selling PC software product, including games, at US retail for the past seven years. That success has led to the launch of the Office Home and Business version at £239.99, which might have the same effect. That is, it could encourage more Office users to pay a reasonable price for a proper copy, rather than use a pirate version. And, to be frank, if you reckon you can't afford to pay roughly £1 a week (assuming the usual Amazon discount) for five top class programs then you're not being entirely honest with yourself. Another factor is the prospect of a reduction in the cost of packaging and distribution
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Microsoft is cutting the cost of Office, but will more people buy it?
From a .doc to a .vem - a Sony USB memory stick problem
Jonathan Haslam loaded some Word .doc files onto his USB stick only to find that they were unreadable .vem files on his home PC I put a load of Word documents on a Sony MicroVault and have just tried to open them on my home PC. The files have all come out with the ".vem" suffix. Web searches don't give a clear answer on how to open or convert back to Word. Is there a driver I need to open them? Jonathan Haslam It appears that some Sony MicroVault USB drives compress files automatically, to save space. In that case they should also uncompress files automatically, but it seems your home PC does not have the decompression program installed, and does not recognise them. The MicroVault support site has a FAQ that mentions two programs, Virtual Expander and Decompression.exe, both of which run in Microsoft Windows. It says: "The Virtual Expander is only available in the MicroVault models that are pre-installed with the software." However, "the decompression program 'Decompression.exe' can also be used in other environments without the MicroVault." Both VirtualExpander_26.exe (719K) and Decompression_v26.exe (372K) are available for download. If you download Decompression_v26, I expect you will be able to uncompress the .vem files and retrieve your .doc files. Word, PowerPoint and similar files compress easily, and built-in compression must have seemed like a good idea when USB drives had relatively small storage capacities. It's generally not very useful today, so see if you can disable this feature on your MicroVault. You could still compress PowerPoint and similar files in Windows before moving them over, but use a more common format, such as Zip. Some files are not worth zipping, such as .wmv, .mp3 and .jpg files, because these formats are already compressed. Computing Windows Sony 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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From a .doc to a .vem - a Sony USB memory stick problem
BETT 2010: Trend spotting products at Olympia
Visiting BETT is one way to find out which way the education market is heading, though it might not be moving all that quickly… It would be a mistake to assume that what's on show at BETT represents what's actually in schools, but it certainly shows what the ICT industry is currently trying sell. And that is, most obviously, Microsoft Windows 7 on both desktops and netbooks. I might well have missed a few smartbooks running Google Android or some other version of Linux, but I only found one prototype smartbook. My assumption that CES would herald a flood of the things was wrong. Actually, there were two prototype smartbooks on the Vye PC stand: one running Android on a Tegra (ARM-based) chip and the other running Microsoft Windows CE. People with long memories will know this was Microsoft's cloud-based computing solution a decade ago, and that it was used in later versions of Psion's NetBook, aka Series 7. It also appeared in numerous pen-based tablets, and versions include Windows Mobile, used on some smartphones, and the automotive version in Ford and other cars. There was also a shortage of tablet or slate computers exploiting Windows 7's multi-touch functionality -- at least, I didn't see any -- though there were plenty of convertible PCs, including Intel Classmate designs. In fact, I only saw two Windows 7-based notebook PCs with multi-touch screens: a Dell Latitude XT2 convertible, and a Toshiba Satellite U500. The latter was preloaded with some Microsoft Surface-type demo-ware, including Virtual Earth, the fishy screen saver and three games. Dell also offers a 21.5 inch SX2210T multi-touch monitor with webcam , which I saw on Microsoft's stand. However, I suspect multi-touch screens will be more popular on all-in-one PCs like the HP TouchSmart, Sony and Medion models. Another trend I expected to see is the use of Intel Atom chips in desktops, especially as dual-core Atom chips become more common
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BETT 2010: Trend spotting products at Olympia
Hands on the world’s thinnest laptop, the Adamo XPS from Dell
I've been playing with a wide range of notebook PCs at CES, and Dell's Adamo XPS is not just the thinnest, it's one of the most innovative. Steve Ballmer did show it in his opening keynote, but he could have made much more of it… Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer ran quickly through a number of innovative Windows 7 PCs during his keynote , and one that got slightly more attention than most was Dell's Adamo XPS . This is billed as being the world's thinnest laptop, and at 9.9mm it's thinner than many mobile phones. It also has a very nice unlocking system, where you simply stroke the front of the lid so you can open it. Then, once you have opened it, it sits up, with the keyboard tilted at a more ergonomic typing angle. The Adamo XPS has an excellent 13.4 inch LED widescreen, which shows the now-almost-standard (for ultraportables) 1366 x 768 pixels. One of the interesting innovations is that the motherboard and 128GB solid-state drive are behind the screen, not beneath the keyboard
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Hands on the world's thinnest laptop, the Adamo XPS from Dell
Tech Weekly at CES 2010: Microsoft on the future of tech
Bobbie Johnson presents the first of our podcasts from the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Bobbie Johnson Scott Cawley
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Tech Weekly at CES 2010: Microsoft on the future of tech