If I’m preaching to the choir right now and you didn’t already know this, your jaw is likely on the floor about now. If you don’t understand what I’m talking about, then I shall explain. There are two kinds of computer graphics systems which can be installed in a computer by the manufacturer, discreet and integrated. Starting with the latter, integrated graphics is a simplified set of chips which generate video for the computer. These are installed on the mainboard and cannot be replaced. Integrated graphics also share RAM from the system, so if you have 1GB of RAM (1024MBs) and your integrated graphics system uses 256MBs of RAM, then your computer ends up with a mere 768MBs of RAM to run on. All cheap laptops and netbooks use integrated graphics.

Discreet graphics, on the other hand, is like its own separate computer whose only job it is to create the graphics for your computer. It has its own RAM and it is usually installed as a separate board which can later be replaced if necessary. In this case, if you have 1GB of RAM and 256MBs of VRAM (Video RAM) then you still have 1GB of RAM for your system. It is the discreet video systems which professionals rely on from Apple because they are powerful and are capable of things which integrated systems simply aren’t. That’s a huge part of the Pro in MacBook Pro.

What Apple has done by bringing the unibody MacBook models into the MacBook Pro fold is to bring the concept of integrated graphics into the Pro line-up. Witness on the Apple Store page or in Phil Schiller’s keynote at yesterday’s WWDC 2009 kickoff the introduction of the NVIDIA 9400M chipset in not only the 13″ models but now also the entry-level 15″ model which starts at US$1,699. If you take a closer look you will see that the 9400M integrated chipset is on every single MacBook Pro in the entire line. Sure, they are alongside the more potent, discreet 9600M GT chipset and you can select which one to use, but the game has still been changed.

Integrated video is significantly cheaper than discreet video. Apple has always charged a relatively fair price for the cost of quality components, a consistency which no other computer company has ever been able to match, and a level of reliability which isn’t fair to the competition. Two things emerge from the change. First, to call a MacBook with integrated graphics just because they look the same, have SD card slots, and can use 8GBs of RAM is more like a bait-and-switch scheme. Second, to put only integrated graphics into the larger, Pro-level 15″ model is almost lying.

Business users who don’t need the powerful graphics sub-systems didn’t have a problem with using a computer called a MacBook. I know of few people who were unhappy that they had a MacBook when they knew that what they had was what they could afford. In fact, I know quite a few MacBook users who don’t like the larger, heavier MacBook Pro line and are quite pleased with what they already have. The only thing Apple did here was arrange a little smoke and mirrors with no real updates to anything, just a name change. I suppose its possible that Apple was feeling the pressure of not delivering on Snow Leopard and only having the iPhone 3Gs to announce.

Then again, they’ve also had the pressure put on them from Microsoft about the cost of their computers compared to what Microsoft’s hardware partners offer in a recent spate of ads. Apple seems to be responding (they’ll deny it) by evening out their pricing structure. If there’s anything to be said about Apple’s product line-up now, its well spaced.

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Technically, the Insignia NS-2BRDVD is a very capable deck. Aside from the obvious Blu-Ray disc playback functions, it is also capable of playing standard DVDs. Its also capable of handling DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, CD and CD-R/RW discs and can read MP3, WMA and JPEG formats. It is also able to upconvert standard DVDs and outputs digital video in 720p, 1080i, and 1080p via the HDMI output port. Sadly, it does not come with an HDMI cable, but it does ship with a Composite set in the box.

The real business comes when you disconnect your old DVD player and plug in the BR deck using an HDMI cable. I connected the deck to my Westinghouse 32″ 1080i LCD TV. I was initially concerned that not having a 1080p capable set would limit my experience with Blu-Ray, but I was very, very wrong. I did not have to see the output of my old HDMI-capable Sony DVD deck next to the Insignia deck’s output to see the difference. It was immediately obvious to my wife and daughter and myself when I pushed in Over The Hedge.

The upconversion quality itself is astonishingly good. The colors are cleaner and sharper. The blacks are deeper. Even the surround sound is better (or that could have been in my mind). The overall clarity of the picture is just plain better without question. My PR rep had assured me that it would improve picture quality on 1080i, but now I knew for sure. What I was not prepared for, though, was an actual Blu-Ray disc. I’ll say it this way: I now feel bad that I don’t have a 1080p set of at least 42″ in size.

The picture is so good and clean and clear that I want to fill up my living room wall with it. This is the kind of good that makes you want a home theater very badly. I’m not heading in that direction any time soon, but I will definitely focus some of my energies on getting that upgrade in place as soon as I can. In the meantime, I can now marvel at the fact that I talked crap about Blu-Ray for no clear reason.

Okay, it was mostly because I’m sick of Sony constantly trying to take over existing markets with proprietary technologies which are incompatible. They couldn’t do VHS. They had to create BetaMax. They couldn’t get in CDs. They had to do the MiniDisc. They couldn’t jump on board with SD cards. They had to create the Memory Stick. It appears, however, that it was just time which would tell in the case of HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray… but I digress.

It turns out that there is something about Blu-Ray which I didn’t know; there are versions. There are versions 1.0, 1.1, and 2.0 and not all Blu-Ray players are capable of all of them. One purchaser/reviewer on Best Buy’s website stated that, while this Insignia deck has Ethernet and USB ports specifically for software updates and BDLive, the hardware is currently using Revision 1.1. If it is, I can’t tell. Of course, when I get more Blu-Ray discs I’ll likely be able to test this.

In the meantime, I’m going to deeply enjoy what I already have and see where it takes me. The one thing I would ask Best Buy and/or Insignia to do is to add about 5 oz. of weight to the remote. Either that or change from AAA batteries to the slightly heavier AA batteries. Retail price for the Insignia Blu-Ray deck is US$250, but Best Buy is offering a US$50 discount so you can the deck for US$200. Not too shabby.

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Palm has announced an invitation-only press event to be held at CES 2009 to unveil something new. I didn’t receive an invite, but I don’t feel bad, despite being a HUGE fan of Palm since Day 1 (I have a working Palm Pilot 500). I have a feeling in my gut that Palm might be on the verge of a real, viable, tangible comeback. I’m not the only one, either. Engadget got an invite, as did PalmInfoCenter.

While nothing specific is known about what Palm will be doing behind closed doors, my own personal speculation and the educated speculation from PIC strongly indicate that they will be introducing a radically updated version of their OS. I’m going to put my two cents in and state that I believe that they will also show either a working prototype or a near-term pre-release version of brand new hardware to support the new platform.

As is always the case, we just have to wait and see. I will say, however, (and this is directly at Palm) you’ve disappointed me in the past. Please, please, please, don’t do it again.

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Its not hard, however, to figure out how to make it more complicated. Convergence takes care of that, and what used to be one of the most beloved mobile messaging devices and an indispensable tool for the Federal government, the RIM Blackberry, has lost its way in a fight to remain relevant in a writhing sea of multi-functional nano devices which can play music, watch TV, fetch email from several accounts, browse the web, pick your teeth after a fine meal, and, if you’re lucky, make a call or two. They have cute, cloying names like Bold, Storm, Chocolate, Shine, and Behold, and they all (at least according to the manufacturers) do everything better than the Apple iPhone.

Until now. I introduce to you the one and only Peek. Its not an iPhone. It doesn’t play music. It doesn’t organize your life. Its not designed to make phone calls. Its more like 2G then 3G or 4G. It doesn’t sport a touchscreen, have any number of GBs of storage space, can’t find out where you are because it doesn’t do GPS, and doesn’t even take pictures. What it does do, and quite well, is email. If you can recall back to the mid-90′s when RIM’s Blackberry devices was just becoming hot with its two-way pager service on its neato 850/950 models then you might also recall that they weren’t phones back then. Not until 2001 did RIM add phone support.

The Peek brings back the concept of the old Blackberry and reboots it with a fresh, thin, clean, easy to use new device. For US$79.99 and US$20 a month you get unlimited wireless service which gives you access to up to three email accounts, unlimited SMS, and they’re adding features all the time. In the most recent update they added the SMS feature and the ability to view images attached to emails. My hope is that they add additional file types in the near future. Feature-wise, the interface is very clean. In fact, if you’re familiar with how the Blackberry works, you’ll be instantly at home on the Peek.

Setup of email accounts is very, very easy. The device itself has a number of configurations built into it, such as Gmail, AOL, NetZero, and many others. Just enter in the details and, if it recognizes the email address, it takes care of the rest. If you have your own mail server, just call up the service folk and they’ll set up the account for you. Word from their PR people is that they are working on adding Exchange access, as well. This should make some Crackberry addicts rather happy. I didn’t think to ask if they were also working on Lotus Domino and Novell GroupWise account access, though.

The hardware itself is very well made. The device is nicely this and light. The screen is 320×240 and has excellent backlighting and color. There are some things which could be slightly improved. The thumbwheel could be a moved from the traditional side of the unit to the front middle, which would make it easier to use for lefties like me. The battery cover, which is nice and solid, would benefit from having a strengthened locking mechanism. One odd choice was the placement of the extended characters which are located above the numbers across the top of the keyboard. All of the keys are backlit, but the aforementioned characters are not, so you can see what they are in the dark.

There are also some things which the Peek developers could do to improve the interface. First, there are only three built-in color themes, none of which are particularly attractive, to choose from. There’s also not font control, which I’m assured by my PR contacts they are working on now. One thing which they could fix, however, is the status bar at the top of the screen. Its quite a bit taller than it needs to be. If they could trim it down and modernize the icons and status elements there would be more room on the display for email. It would also be nice if there was user control over the colors.

The Peek is one of the nicest, simplest, cleanest devices to come out in a long time. It fills a hole which used to be filled quite nicely but has become ridiculously overwrought. It also fills the gap which the costly iPhone has created. Some people just want a simple phone to make calls a a nice way to access their email on the go. The Peek has no contracts and it comes in a few colors. The Peek is a very elegantly simple solution to a problem which doesn’t need complex solutions, and I’m happy to have one. It very quickly became one of my most used devices and I don’t foresee a time when I stop using it.

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If you see one of these under your tree this Christmas, don’t bother unwrapping it. Take it back to where it was bought from and buy yourself a Sony PSP. The new Mystic Silver PSP-3000 model which comes with a new Ratchet & Clank game and a movie sells for the same price and offers infinitely more functionality and fun. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

I won’t even bother going into the specifications or any real details about the device. I will, however, state that it is not what it says it is. The Sony mylo 2 is not a smaller version of a laptop, as Sony would like you to believe. That would suggest that its a MID, and it is most certainly a MID, just not a very good one. The reasons for why it is not good are simple and clear, and I will outline them for you here.

To be entirely frank, I don’t have many issues with the hardware itself. If I had to be picky, I’d complain about the poor range of the Wi-Fi module and the lack of Bluetooth. The slider snaps open with an annoyingly loud sound, and the unit us twice as thick as Nokia’s N810 Internet Tablet, a product its supposed to compete directly with. Sadly, where the Nokia N810 shines, the Mylo 2 falls very, very flat. One of the biggest failings the device has is the complete lack of any additional software in any way, shape, or form.

Yes. That’s right. There’s no software you can add. There’s not even a decent Mylo 2 site or, from what I’ve been able to tell, a development site for the version of Linux which the Mylo 2 uses. I’m not an expert, but I’m pretty sure that utilizing any related open source code requires that you make that source available. This means that Sony should have a developers site for the version of Linux the Mylo 2 uses. Nokia (I’m sorry I keep dragging them out, but they’re an excellent example) has a complete project for the Maemo project and almost all of the software is available in source form.

Apparently Sony has found a way around this by using Linux as the core, but designing every single bit of UI software in-house and using entirely private and proprietary code. Its possible to do this as long as they don’t use any open source code at all. What this boils down to is that Sony doesn’t have to give out the code, offer any SDK for developers, or really do anything at all. And that’s just what Sony has done… nothing.

The interface is annoying. There’s no software. There are no 3rd party developers. There are no games. There are no tools to convert media. You’re forced to use Sony’s proprietary Memory Stick for storage. There’s really nothing at all that the Mylo 2 can offer. So, either get the aforementioned PSP or go pick up an Acer Aspire One from Costco for a measley US$349. I’m serious. For once, I’m actually telling people to stay away what appears to be a very cool gadget. Please trust me.

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Where, then, does Linux come into the picture? Do you see all of these tiny little lappies hitting the market? OLPC started it with their little green bug and kicked it into gear when they started offering the Buy-Two-Get-One deal where one goes to a child in a 3rd world country and you get the other one. ASUS saw something in that and ponied up the Eee PC, a tiny little lappy with a 4GB solid state hard drive and an eensy weensy price tag. Buyers freaked and they flew off the shelves, and other fabbers took notice and made their own. They are called MIDs (Mobile Internet Devices) and are meant to be companions to your online life.

I would say that this is simply bad timing for Microsoft, but its also bad marketing. Microsoft, as usual, isn’t giving users what they want, the Redmond giant is demanding that the users do what Microsoft wants. It has numerous ways to leverage this desire, but its primary tool is its resellers like Dell, HP, Acer, and hundreds of others. Microsoft says jump, and they all ask how high, or at least they used to. At no time in Microsoft’s long history has it had to deal with a wide-open market, a bum new OS, a re-upstart in the form of Apple, the assumed arrival of Linux for end-users in Ubuntu, and a realization in end users that they don’t have to buy Microsoft to be “in the loop”.

Of course, that’s not all. The economy isn’t helping, either. People are either buying ultra cheap and sticking with Windows XP or they’re spending more on Apple, knowing that Mac OS X systems last longer and have a better resale value. Only those who honestly don’t know any better are moving to Vista, thinking that anything coming from Microsoft must be better than the previous version. However, more and more seniors are being dragged into the market by their tech-savvy children and getting into Ubuntu is very, very easy for first time users. The people behind Ubuntu have even created a new MID-specific version which has a new UI for smaller screens. There are plenty of other small screen UIs for MIDs, as well.

What’s Microsoft’s response to this major threat? To still cancel Windows XP Professional and continue to offer Windows XP Home Edition for MIDs, and it far from clear how long they’ll even do that. MIDs, by definition, are small, ultra low power devices which are not meant to be full portable systems or to replace desktop systems, so how does Microsoft expect MIDs to effectively run Vista, one of the single most resource intensive operating systems of all time. I mean, really. Considering what you can do with Vista that you can’t do with XP and what Vista sucks up just isn’t warranted. In the meantime, Linux runs faster on slower hardware, taking the utmost advantage of whatever resources it has access to.

What can’t Microsoft do, then, when faced with this threat. It can buy Yahoo!… oh, wait. That deal’s all finished, and Yahoo! is supposedly talking to Google about a team up. Hmm. I’d suggest that MS come out and say they made a mistake then take back their cancellation of XP and announce a new version of XP based on the Pro edition. Oh, and sell it retail for US$49. You’ll make bank, dawg! Everyone will get the OS they want, and even pay for it, since US$49 ain’t a high price to pay for a commercial OS. Hell, Apple users pay US$129 for each major upgrade, and happily!

I’m not sure what’s going to happen. Really. I’m just a pundit so I’m not qualified to read the future. What I can tell you, though, is that if Microsoft continues on the path it is traveling, Apple and Linux-based systems are going to start to gain some major marketshare. No, Apple isn’t going to dominate the market next year or even by 2012. Apple will have a very large marketshare, then, though. Keep that in mind. Keep watching the iPhone and the iPods which are now as necessary as underwear. Just keep watching.

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mo•nop•o•ly

n. pl. mo·nop·o·lies Exclusive control by one group of the means of producing or selling a commodity or service: “Monopoly frequently … arises from government support or from collusive agreements among individuals” (Milton Friedman). Law A right granted by a government giving exclusive control over a specified commercial activity to a single party. A company or group having exclusive control over a commercial activity. A commodity or service so controlled. Exclusive possession or control: arrogantly claims to have a monopoly on the truth. Something that is exclusively possessed or controlled: showed that scientific achievement is not a male monopoly. Exclusive possession or control: arrogantly claims to have a monopoly on the truth. Something that is exclusively possessed or controlled: showed that scientific achievement is not a male monopoly

Somehow, I just don’t see how Apple’s EULA falls into this definition.Apple doesn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, own the personal computer market. Back in the 80′s and early 90′s it may have been considered to have owned the personal and education markets, but even then Apple didn’t control corporate markets. In fact, estimates both liberal and conservative, peg Apple’s marketshare at around 5-15%. This doesn’t even fall into Microsoft’s radar for threat control.

Apple owns both its hardware designs and its operating system, Mac OS X. Apple even open sourced the core, dubbed Darwin, and the Darwin elements of certain server programs so they could have a significant foot into the FOSS community. They do not, however, open source anything else. It is well known that Apple controls everything which is customer facing in any way. If Apple controls it, they can guarantee quality.

This hasn’t worked out for them in terms of the iPhone, though. Steve Jobs somehow is able to see the writing on the wall and modify how Apple does things before they become issues. Thus, we have the iPhone SDK available which will allow developers (any developers, mind you) to create fully fledged applications for the popular handset. This is a pretty open methodology for a monopoly, is it not?

So, tell me how I’m wrong and how Apple can actually be a monopoly. I’m interested in all arguments, either for or against.

Source material for our definition of the word “Monopoly” came from these kind entities:

American Psychological Association (APA):

monopoly. (n.d.). The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Retrieved April 16, 2008, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/monopoly

Chicago Manual Style (CMS):

monopoly. Dictionary.com. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/monopoly (accessed: April 16, 2008).

Modern Language Association (MLA):

“monopoly.” The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. 16 Apr. 2008. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/monopoly>.

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If there was ever a reason to fight, Psystar thinks it has one. Personally, I don’t know the law, but when a company makes a product it is allowed to define how it gets used. Apple stipulates, not surprisingly, that Mac OS X can only be run on Apple branded hardware. Well, Psystar doesn’t like that much, so in an interview with Information Week’s Paul McDougall, a guy named “Robert” stated that Psystar would take Apple to court and challenge their EULA on the basis that it violates Antitrust laws governing monopolies. Robert declines to identify himself personally, which either means he doesn’t speak officially for Psystar or he doesn’t want Apple to target him for a lawsuit.

Robert goes on to say that Apple marks up its products 80%. Psystar is offering what it calls the OpenMac, which relies on open source EFI (the EFI replaces the BIOS) emulator to trick the Mac OS X installer into believing that the hardware is really from Apple.

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The HP iPAQ 110 Classic is one of those devices. Its not a phone, but it might as well be. In fact, it runs Windows Mobile 6, which behaves just like the Professional versions of the same OS for mobile phones. The only things lacking are the phone-specific functions. On the other hand, it does feature both Bluetooth 2.0+EDR and 802.11b\g wireless capabilities, both of which can work at the same time. I, however, digress. I should be performing a formal review, so let that begin.

The Outside

Usually I’ll wait to start working with a new device once its charged, then I dive right in. However, in the case of the 110c, I was interested to see WinMo6, so I fired it up when I plugged it in. No harm, no foul. Since I’m describing hardware right now, I’ll refrain from OS observations. Suffice it to say, the 110c is a standard PDA format device. It has a screen on the front, there are some buttons along the bottom of the screen, and there are holes and buttons elsewhere on the device.

The display itself is a 240×320 QVGA type with 16-bit color and a touchscreen interface. In today’s hi-res display climate, the 110′s screen looks a bit pixelated, but the speed of the 624MHz CPU processes video very well, so its not terrible with video. The color is very good and the brightness is excellent. Small text sizes are also very readable, though Microsoft needs to offer more controls over how text is displayed, and it would be nice if someone (anyone?!) were to pay attention to left handed people again*

On the right side (screen facing) are the Power and Voice Recorder buttons with an inset reset button between. There is a headphone jack on the top right. The buttons work, but are maybe a tad soft. It won’t turn on, though, unless you press the power buton. The stylus is badly placed on the back of the unit next to the headphone jack and lacking sufficient notching to make it easy to locate and retrieve by touch. I’m much happier with corner mounted silos.

The case overall is two materials. The front is a smooth, smoky dark silver, shined to appear like metal. The back is a curved matte black expanse which feels slightly rubbery to the touch. I rather like it as it makes the device feel more secure in the hand, though it does scuff very easily. I LOVE the original iPAQ’s from Compaq, but they were so amazingly cool that they were slippery. The “sticky-ish” backing instills confidence. This is good, too, since the device is very, very light, even with the battery loaded.

The battery itself is user replaceable, but that’s not all. This device is USB rechargable. So much so, that you can plug it into a Kensington portable battery pack and recharge it in an hour. The interesting part is that there is a power control panel which controls whether, via USB, you charge over time or quickly. I’m sure it has something to do with quality of charge.

The Inside

It may be sufficient enough for me to say this: If you want to know what Windows Mobile 6 looks like, just use a Windows Mobile Smartphone. I have a Palm Treo 700wx and the interface, while slightly different, works almost identically. This isn’t necessarily a benefit for a PDA since people don’t use PDAs the same way they use mobile phones.

One of the issues I had with the new unified interface is the functions which, at least on a mobile phone, are performed using the contextual buttons. You know, the buttons just under the screen on your phone which do what the label on the screen says. They do that on the 111 as well, but there are no physical buttons, so you have to touch the screen to activate numerous functions or step through configuration wizards.

Otherwise, its a standard WinMo device with all of the expected applications like Office, Media Player 10, Internet Exploder, and the various tools that come part and parcel. HP decided to toss in a bunch of other stuff, too. One of the nice inclusions is a copy of ClearVue PDF. They also have a pair of utilities, two of which are Today Screen plugins. One controls wireless, both 802.11 and Bluetooth, and the other gives you quick information about the rest of the device, including a backlight control.

The Wrap Up

The PDA of 2000 is dead. The idea that you can get around without a mobile phone, a digital camera, and some kind of wireless connection to the internet is also dead. Products like the iPhone prove that. The PDA is 2008, however, is alive and is, in some small way, still a player in the overall market. HP’s iPAQ 110 Classic proves that, and its clear they now know that scads and scads of models do not sell devices. You can get yours for a mere US$299, though you may want to take a look at the more expensive iPAQ 210 Enterprise just in case.

*Not since the days of the Apple Newton MessagePad and early days of Palm were there UI elements designed to be swapped for left-handed people. You have no idea how much better a user experience can be by simply placing the scrollbar on the left side of the screen.

[Editor's Note: We made a running typo in the story which transposed the "110" for a "111". Please note that this review is of the iPAQ 110 Classic. There are no other review elements which need to be changed to correct this problem. Thanks! -Ed.]

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