Okay, so its not going to ship until May 2008, but its cool now because of what it portends. Not long ago we were oogling at 32GB SSDs with envy. Now Toshiba will soon be shipping SSDs which are pretty close in capacity to the standard platters which laptops use now. My guess (don’t bet on it, though) is that we’ll be seeing 500GB SSDs by 2009. They will also ship 32GB and 64GB versions at the same time. No word on pricing just yet.

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: mobile, technology

Oh, its no surprise. John C. Dvorak is ranting and raving again, this time about how useless and pointless Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child intiative is. It is, in fact cruel, according to him. How crass and naive we must be to think that giving a laptop to a starving child will miraculously save his or her poor life. You know, John. You’re right. A laptop won’t save a child’s life. It won’t feed them. If they are starving when they get the laptop, they will still die if they don’t get any food.

By the same token, a truckload of rice won’t educate them, either. It won’t teach them how to farm or read or give them weather information. In fact, deliveries of rice merely teaches them about loss and dependence. They don’t get fed all the time because there’s not enough to go around and they just wait for the food to come because they don’t have to do anything to get it. Deliveries of such foodstuffs to the hundreds of thousands of poor villages around the world teach the truly starving how to use crutches.

What this teaches us, the ones who can feed ourselves when we want to (and dive headlong into morbid obesity), is that there are far more than one simple thing we need to do to fix the world’s hunger problem. Providing massive shipments of rice to the hungry is certainly one important thing we can do, and we do it. Your contributions, John, have added to that. Now, however, we have a new direction we can go in to further improve the lives of these people. Education is one of the most complicated problems to solve and the OLPC directly addresses that one issue.

Tell me, John. If its so hard to feed these people how easy could it possibly be to educate them. Is it as easy to build a school, provide teachers, print and deliver text books (in various different languages), provide daily lunches, define local, regional, and state laws regarding village and school safety (think raiders and thieving warlords), eliminate war and conflict, and get ultra-rich people to give away all of their money as it is to drop off a bag of rice?

The real slap in the face of these destitute peoples is the bag of rice, John. Who decides how much rice goes where? Will there be enough to go around? Who gets fed? Who gets left to die of starvation? Who gets to say which poor villages even see deliveries or even which countries poor benefits from such programs? Someone once said that to give a man a fish feeds him for a day, but to teach him to fish is to feed him for a lifetime. The OLPC XO-1 is that teacher where, otherwise, there would be none.

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: media, news, social

Yes. Sold to Specialty Equity, CompUSSR is going to be shut down and liquidated. If you’re expecting a rash of fantastic Fire Sale-like deals, though, don’t get too excited. Gordon Brother Group, the owners of Specialty Equity, is known to hold off on steep discount deals until the 11th hour. Combine that with the fact that there are only 103 active stores, very few of which are in major metropolitan areas (check your city) and you’re not going to find much.

Two of the possible reasons behind this collapse are Apple and the market. Apple now holds anywhere from 15-20% of laptop sales and the Halo Effect (not the game) from its very, very significant iPod/iPhone business combined with Microsoft spectacular failure with Windows Vista (Blista?) have been driving upgraders to Apple’s online and retail stores better than any slick Apple advertising campaign.

Second, the market has been evolving for years and that includes people’s decreasing need for a monolithic brick & mortar establishment. Like cars, computers are being built better and, despite Microsoft’s claims that people need Vista, XP is a solid platform with proven tools and support and companies like Dell and HP are building better machines based on a wide range of improved technologies. Tie all of this together with low system prices, a drive towards portable and all-in-one systems, and it wasn’t hard to see coming.

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: business, news

Okay, kids, it just a rumor, as everything else that Apple hasn’t officially announced is, but there’s word on the street that Apple will be rolling out a new ultraportable MacBook at MacWorld in January. Jim Goldman over at CNBC says so, claiming that his contact has passed on info that very strongly suggests that the unit will be a MacBook Pro, be a mere 0.5″ thick, and (according to conflicting reports) a 12″ or 13.3″ display. The big news here is that the unit is suspected to be SSD HDD based. All this, if true, will run you around US$1,500 (if the pricing is accurate, of course).

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: macworld, mobile, news, rumor

Ok. Western Digital rocks, and hard. Not only do I believe they make the most reliable drives overall, they also offer the best value. Take WD’s new 320GB Passport USB drive for example. Clearly based on their recently introduced 320GB 2.5″ laptop drive, the new Passport is sleek and comes in several colors. But hey, it could come in Zune brown for all I care! Its a 320GB drive! Oh, and its only US$230. Yup.

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: drive, media, mobile, storage

Nicholas’ Negroponte’s pet project, the One Laptop Per Child model XO-1, has been given the green light, and Peru is apparently jumping on board right away with a 260,000 system order. Good for them (if they can clean up the rest of their human rights violations). Right now, however, you can make a difference in the life of at least one child, if not more. Head here and donate US$399 to OLPC and they will send one laptop to a child who needs one and one to you. The more you donate, the more laptops. I’m fully behind this one, so get going. Hurry, though. It ends December 31st.
You may question why a child living in a village which has no power or running water might need a laptop. You can sure bet they aren’t going to be checking in on their stock portfolio (hell, I don’t do that!) but they will be learning. In studies performed by MIT Media Lab they determined that children 6-12 who had never seen a computer before were able to start effectively using the XO-1 within three minutes! Not only that, but they move on to teach other kids. They then take the laptop home and teach their family.

This simple, clear, uncluttered, and audacious approach to improving the level of education in the world is a powerful concept, indeed. Sure, it won’t make Harvard graduates out of Nigerian children overnight, but it makes the US$2,000 status symbol laptop look more like a common phone and levels the playing field in a number of ways. Check out this great review over at the Fox News site. Make sure to read it all.

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: awareness, education, green, mobile, social

Verizon last week announced that it would be opening up its network to all phones compatible with its wireless technologies, a move which goes completely contrary to the entire market model here in the U.S. of A. Therese Poletti of CBS’ MarketWatch talks about the significant move and what it might mean for the wireless industry in America. While she indicates that it would be a good move, and references the Apple iPhone as a major contributor to the pressure, she only brushes up against what it might mean. Continue reading »

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: business, mobile, wireless

As you may have noted, we’ve been in a news blackhole since Thanksgiving. This isn’t all that surprising, but its kind of annoying nonetheless. Most energy seems to be focused on Black Friday and spinning up the X-mas Machine. Sure, there were some items in the last two weeks, but nothing of any real import. I’ve received a Palm Centro and a Duracell PowerSource Mobile 100 for review and the Apple Rumors machine is about to kick in prior to 2008 so there’s sure to be more soon. I will, however, start working on the other elements of the site when times are slow.

In actual mobile gear news, Engadget seems to be all freaked out about how odd the Wibrain UMPC is, and I agree. Its very odd looking and, despite its smallish 4.8″ display, that thing has to be really, really wide. I’m more into the OQO model of design with the sliding keyboard. I can even handle raon’s Everun arrangement. Oh well, I guess everyone has to have their “thing”.

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: mobile, mobodojo, news, umpc