David Lieberman
USA Today

NEW YORK — Peace may be at hand in the nearly three-year battle to provide HDTV owners with an affordable DVD player that can handle any movie that shows off high-def’s vivid video and rich surround sound.

During the last six weeks, Hollywood studios, consumer electronics companies and retailers have given Sony’s  Blu-ray format a seemingly insurmountable edge over its rival high-definition DVD format: Toshiba’s HD DVD.

This week Best Buy, the No. 1 consumer electronics chain, said that it will feature Blu-ray players and software and will advise customers to buy them instead of HD DVD products.

Separately, online rental firm Netflix said that it will buy only Blu-ray discs and phase out HD DVDs by year’s end.

Both companies acted after Warner Bros., the No. 1 video distributor, announced that beginning in May it will drop HD DVD and sell its high-def movies and TV shows only on Blu-ray — joining a group that includes Disney, Fox, Lionsgate and Sony’s film studio.

“Warner’s jump was the last straw to break the camel’s back,” says Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment President Bob Chapek. “The format war’s over.”

Well, maybe. The HD DVD camp — which includes Universal, Paramount, DreamWorks Animation and Microsoft— hasn’t raised a white flag yet.

But it also isn’t predicting victory.

“There are a lot of other product areas where different formats coexist,” says Jodi Sally, vice president of marketing for Toshiba’s digital AV group. “Look at gaming (where Nintendo and Microsoft compete with Sony). There are discs that won’t play in each other’s machines. Apparently that is the current scenario” for high-def DVDs.

Her view chills executives and technophiles who say that most consumers won’t buy two machines — or a pricey combo player — so they can enjoy HD versions of Disney’s Ratatouille as well as DreamWorks’ Shrek the Third, or Sony’s Spider-Man and Paramount’s Mission: Impossible.

“We interview consumers, and over the last year 60% didn’t want to buy either format until there was a clear winner,” says Envisioneering Group director Richard Doherty.

With consumers reluctant to buy into the new technology, Hollywood studios are left selling conventional DVDs — which have grown tired after 12 years in the market. Spending on sales and rentals last year fell 3.1% to $22.9 billion in 2007, according to trade magazine Video Business.

That also opens the possibility that HDTV owners will wait until they can download the movies they want.

Comcast  CEO Brian Roberts demonstrated at last month’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas a cable Internet technology his company will begin rolling out this year that makes it possible to download a high-def movie in four minutes.

There’s still time for high-def DVDs to take off.

“There are an awful lot of pieces that have to come together” before downloading becomes practical, says Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis at research firm NPD. “This stuff takes a lot longer to get started than we think it should. But once it gets started, it catches on a lot faster than we think it will.”

With the window of opportunity for high-def DVDs starting to close, though, analysts say that retailers may soon pick a winner.

“If you’re Best Buy, you want people to keep coming to your store for the packaged media — not just the player,” Doherty says. “Same thing with Target. And there’s no exit strategy for (the DVD format split) that is consumer-friendly. The one who’ll be left holding the bag is the retailer.”

Here’s where things stand:

Blu-ray and content

The Blu-ray camp says consumers buy movies — not formats — and will go with whoever has the best selection.

If it’s correct, then there’s no contest: Now that Warner has signed on, studios backing Blu-ray accounted for more than 66% of last year’s DVD rentals and sales.

Disney and Panasonic are making that point to consumers, and featuring Blu-ray’s gee-whiz high-def pictures and bonus features, in a show-and-tell presentation at eight major shopping malls called “Disney’s Magical Blu-ray Tour.” The studio also will promote the technology in October when it releases its first classic animated flick on Blu-ray: Sleeping Beauty.

Viewers less interested in family-friendly fare may be swayed by the leading distributor of porn DVDs — an important, if often overlooked, force in home video.

“We’re going to be phasing out HD DVD and going straight to Blu-ray,” says Ali Joone, founder of Digital Playground, which says it accounts for more than 80% of the adult videos sold in high-def.

It wasn’t just because of Warner. The makers of the software that Digital Playground uses to prepare its DVDs and menus said last month that it will continue to develop enhancements for Blu-ray but not for HD DVD.

“It’s going to be much more painful to stay in the HD DVD arena than going into the Blu-ray arena,” Joone says.

HD DVD and price

But the HD DVD camp says Blu-ray supporters pay too much attention to Tech Alley and not enough to Main Street.

“The real competitor here is that consumers are satisfied with DVD,” says Toshiba’s Sally. “It’s really price that’s the motivating factor for consumers” to buy either high-def DVD format.

To address that, and to try to create a groundswell of consumer support for HD DVD that Hollywood and retailers can’t ignore, Toshiba on Jan. 13 slashed the price of its high-def disc players.

The least expensive one costs $120 — about $200 less than the cheapest Blu-ray model — and comes with seven free HD DVDs; The Bourne Identity and 300 come with the unit, and consumers can pick five others from a list of 15.

“I know for a fact that since we made our price move, our weekly sales are twice the rate of the weekly average that they were in 2007,” Sally says.

Will consumers consider that money badly spent when they start to see more high-def movies released on Blu-ray?

Not to worry, she says.

The studios will continue to release all of their movies as conventional DVDs. And HD DVD players — as well as Blu-ray ones — use a technology that can convert them to what she says is almost high-def quality.

That may work just fine for people who don’t have elaborate home-theater systems.

“If you have a 37-inch TV, you probably wouldn’t see a huge amount of difference because the screen size is so small,” says Paul Erickson, director of DVD and high-def market research at research firm DisplaySearch. “As you start getting to 46-inches, sure, you can tell a difference.”

But Blu-ray supporters say that it’s a dead-end strategy to sell a high-def DVD player as a jazzy conventional DVD player.

“If we’re trying to build a business, then it’s going to be built primarily on people understanding the benefits of a high-def experience,” says Sony Chief Marketing Officer Andrew House. “We’re focused on delivering the very best experience for the consumer.”

They add that prices for Blu-ray players will fall as the market shifts from early adopters who pay top dollar for cutting-edge toys to ordinary consumers looking for value.

“If people are price-sensitive about the player, they might want to wait a little while,” says Pioneer Home Entertainment Group’s Andy Parsons, who’s also chairman of the Blu-ray Disc Association Promotions Committee.

Consumer confusion

Content and price won’t matter if consumers are frozen by their inability to figure out each format’s technological strengths and weaknesses.

Blu-ray supporters say their format wins in delivering no-compromises video and audio.

Discs can handle long movies and abundant bonus features; each disc holds 50 gigabytes of data vs. 30 GB for HD DVD and less than 10 GB for a conventional DVD. Since a two-hour high-def movie can use up 25 GB, that leaves more room on Blu-ray for bonus features and games.

“It’s the best-quality picture out there, and the boundless data capacity makes this a future-proof technology,” House says. “HD DVD is version 1.1, and Blu-ray is 2.0.”

But Blu-ray’s best customers are gamers: Sony’s PlayStation 3 comes with a Blu-ray player built in. PlayStations account for more than 85% of the Blu-ray players sold.

Those looking for a stand-alone Blu-ray player have to decide what features they want.

Older models won’t accommodate picture-in-picture, a new feature that Blu-ray calls BonusView. Discs and players that offer BonusView can, for example, show a movie director in the corner of the screen commenting on a particular scene.

Buyers also will have to wait until later this year if they want a player with an Internet connection capable of handling features Blu-ray calls BD Live.

Supporters say that’s no big deal. All players handle the main event: movies.

“Once we get to the mass market, which is where I think we’ll be in the next couple of years, all of that (confusion) will be behind us,” Chapek says. “Then, the people who are less technophilic will not have to deal with it.”

HD DVD backers say there’s no need to wait. Their format “has been a consistent specification since Day 1,” Sally says. For example, all players have Internet ports. They enable users to download cellphone ring tones, send friends favorite scenes from a movie, play games or see material on a studio’s website.

Unlike with Blu-ray, there’s no region coding. Overseas travelers can buy and play any HD DVD they find.

Most HD DVD discs also have a conventional DVD on the flip side, making them playable on ordinary DVD players including on laptops and automobile backseat entertainment systems.

Despite the differences in the formats, and the complications with the launch of a new generation of DVDs, both sides agree that consumers are ready for a new video technology.

“We’re seeing a strong sea change, a generational shift, where people are embracing high definition,” House says. “Once you’ve seen that kind of picture, you can never go back.”

 

Microfibre produces enough power to run cellphone

Sun

CHICAGO — U.S. scientists have developed a microfibre fabric that generates its own electricity, making enough current to recharge a cellphone or ensure that a small MP3 music player never runs out of power.

If made into a shirt, the fabric could harness power from its wearer simply walking around or even from a slight breeze, they reported Wednesday in the journal Nature.

“The fibre-based nanogenerator would be a simple and economical way to harvest energy from the physical movement,” Zhong Lin Wang of the Georgia Institute of Technology, who led the study, said in a statement.

The nanogenerator takes advantage of the semiconductive properties of zinc oxide nanowires — tiny wires 1,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair — embedded into the fabric. The wires are formed into pairs of microscopic brush-like structures, shaped like a baby-bottle brush.

One of the fibres in each pair is coated with gold and serves as an electrode. As the bristles brush together through body movement, the wires convert the mechanical motion into electricity.

“When a nanowire bends it has an electric effect,” Wang said in a telephone interview. “What the fabric does is it translates the mechanical movement of your body into electricity.”

His team made the nanogenerator by first coating fibres with a polymer, and then a layer of zinc oxide. They dunked this into a warm bath of reactive solution for 12 hours. This encouraged the wires to multiply, coating the fibres.

“They automatically grow on the surface of the fibre,” Wang said. “In principal, you could use any fibre that is conductive.”

They added another layer of polymer to prevent the zinc oxide from being scrubbed off. And they added an ultra-thin layer of gold to some fibres, which works as a conductor.

To ensure all that friction was not just generating static electricity, the researchers conducted several tests. The fibres produced current only when both the gold and the zinc oxide bristles brushed together.

So far, Wang said the researchers had demonstrated the principle and developed a small prototype.

“Our estimates show we can have up to 80 milliwatts per square metre of this fabric. This is enough to power a little iPod or charge a cellphone battery,” he said.

“What we’ve done is demonstrate the principle and the fundamental mechanism.”

Wang said the material could be used by hikers and soldiers in the field and also to power tiny sensors used in biomedicine or environmental monitoring.

One major hurdle remains: zinc oxide degrades when wet. Wang’s team is working on a process that would coat the fibres to protect the fabric in the laundry.

© The Vancouver Sun 2008

 

Touch screen lets you control home entertainment system

Jim Jamieson
Province

With the number of electronic entertainment devices steadily growing in our living/TV rooms, most of us acknowledge we’re fighting a losing battle with clicker sprawl.

How many times have you cursed as you sifted through that midden of remotes on the coffee table in an attempt at making your new video-game console work with the surround-sound system?

Electronics maker Logitech wants to make the digital life easier for you, and that’s the intention behind the Harmony One, the latest release in the company’s line of remotes.

The Harmony One’s 2.2-inch colour touch screen uses capacitive technology, which responds to tiny electrical charges from the fingertips rather than pressure.

The touch screen provides control of any home entertainment device with an infrared receiver, including digital video recorders, high-definition TVs and other household appliances.

It can also display icons of specified TV stations for quick access to favourite stations.

It’s not hard to see why the product recently received the CES 2008 Design and Engineering Award: Best of Innovations in Home-Entertainment Accessories.

The Harmony One can automate nearly everything about firing up your various electronic components in the right order.

For example, you simply touch “Watch a DVD” on the touch screen and the Harmony One turns on the TV, the DVD player, and the A/V receiver.

Available at electronics retailers.

What is it? Logitech Harmony One universal TV remote control

Price: $279.99

Why you need it: You had to knock out a wall in your TV room to accommodate the growing number of remotes.

Why you don’t: You’d rather play musical remotes than put out $300 just to control your TV.

Our rating:

© The Vancouver Province 2008

Michael Liedtke
USA Today

SAN FRANCISCO — Unshaken by a two-year losing streak, Yahoo  is poised to take its biggest gamble yet by rejecting Microsoft’s  unsolicited bid to buy the slumping Internet icon for $44.6 billion.

Yahoo’s board decided to spurn the takeover bid, originally valued at $31 per share, after concluding the company is worth substantially more, a person familiar with the situation said Saturday. The person didn’t want to be identified because the reasons for Yahoo’s snub won’t be officially spelled out until Monday morning.

With the rebuff, Yahoo is betting that it can placate its exasperated shareholders by either extracting a higher bid from Microsoft or finally engineering a long-promised turnaround that will boost its market value beyond $45 billion.

Rejecting Microsoft also raises the risk of a disruptive takeover battle that could culminate with Yahoo’s 10-member board being bounced from their jobs later this year.

A hostile showdown between Yahoo and Microsoft could end up working in the favor of Internet search leader Google Inc., whose dominance of the lucrative online search and advertising markets triggered Microsoft’s takeover offer in the first place.

Although it’s not directly involved in the deal, Google could still play a significant role in the final outcome. Leery of Microsoft expanding its turf on the Internet, Google already has offered to help Yahoo avert a takeover and urged antitrust regulators to take a hard look at the proposed deal.

Yahoo’s board decided to spurn Microsoft after exploring a wide variety of alternatives during the past week, according to the person who spoke to The Associated Press. Microsoft and Yahoo declined to comment Saturday on the decision, first reported by The Wall Street Journal on its website.

Most analysts suspect Microsoft held back on its initial bid, knowing Yahoo would hold out for more money. “No one believes Microsoft has put its best and final offer on the table,” said Ken Marlin, an investment banker specializing in technology and media deals. “It’s a bit of Kabuki dance at this point.”

The big question now is just how much higher Microsoft is willing to go. The consensus among industry analysts seems to be about $50 billion, or $35 per share, but Yahoo seems to have its mind set on at least $56 billion, or about $40 per share.

If the world’s largest software maker doesn’t want to raise its bid, Microsoft could try to override Yahoo’s board by taking its offer directly to shareholders.

Pursuing that risky route probably will require Microsoft trying to oust Yahoo’s current 10-member board, an ordeal that would be expensive and foster hard feelings that would make it more difficult to blend the two companies together if the deal went through.

Yahoo’s board concluded Microsoft’s offer is inadequate even though the company couldn’t find any other potential bidders willing to offer a higher price.

Without other suitors on the horizon, Yahoo has had little choice but to turn a cold shoulder toward Microsoft if the board hopes to fulfill its responsibility to fetch the highest price possible, Marlin said. “You would expect Yahoo’s board to reject Microsoft at first. If they didn’t, they would be accused of malfeasance.”

But by spurning Microsoft, Yahoo risks further alienating shareholders already upset about management missteps that have kept the company in a prolonged financial funk. Before Microsoft made its bid public in Feb. 1, Yahoo’s stock had plunged 55% from its highs in early 2006, erasing about $35 billion in shareholder wealth.

Seizing on an opportunity to expand its clout on the Internet, Microsoft dangled a takeover offer that was 62% above Yahoo’s stock price of just $19.18 when the bid was announced. Yahoo shares ended the past week at $29.20.

Led by company co-founder and board member Jerry Yang, Yahoo now will be under intense pressure to lay out a strategy that will prevent its stock price from collapsing again. What’s more, Yang and the rest of the management team must convince Wall Street that they can boost Yahoo’s market value beyond Microsoft’s offer.

This isn’t the first time that Yahoo has spurned Microsoft. The Redmond, Wash.-based company offered $40 per share to buy Yahoo a year ago only to be shooed away, according to a person familiar with the matter. The person didn’t want to be identified because that bid was never made public.

Microsoft’s decision to raise its Yahoo bid may be tempered by Wall Street’s negative reaction to the initial offer. The company’s stock price already has slid 12% since the bid was made, reflecting concerns about the deal bogging down amid potential management distractions, sagging employee morale and other headaches that frequently arise when two big companies are combined.

Mountain View-based Google is the main reason Yahoo is being pursued by Microsoft.

Yahoo has struggled largely because it hasn’t been able to target online ads as effectively as Google.

Microsoft believes Yahoo’s brand, engineers, audience and services will provide the company with valuable weapons in its so far unsuccessful attempt to narrow Google’s huge lead in the lucrative Internet search and advertising markets.

As it examined ways to thwart Microsoft, Yahoo considered an advertising partnership with Google — an alliance long favored by analysts who believe it would boost the profits of both companies. Not long after Microsoft announced its bid, Google CEO Eric Schmidt reportedly called Yahoo to extend a helping hand.

It was unclear Saturday if Yahoo’s plans for boosting its stock price include a Google partnership, which would probably face antitrust issues.

A Microsoft takeover of Yahoo would also be scrutinized by antitrust regulators in the United States and Europe. The antitrust uncertainties could be cited as one of the reasons that Yahoo’s board decided to spurn Microsoft.

 

Sun

USB Comfish Aquarium, $35

Didn’t we already think there wasn’t one more thing you could hook up with a USB cable? So we were wrong — who’d have thought up next would be a computerized aquarium? Has climate control heat for tropical fish, LED lighting and water oxygenation. If watching fish swim around on your screen saver doesn’t float your boat, try this mini aquarium. Just don’t blame us if the boss says pets aren’t allowed on your desk.

Yamaha RH10MS Professional Monitor Headphones, $160

They promise to send sounds “around” the listener’s head, not just into it. For those of who you are content with those little ear bud headphones that can blast deafening music straight in your ears, this is a more sophisticated listening solution that is said to have an effect that simulates listening to speakers that are several feet away. The headphones are compatible with all audio devices and come with a one-inch adapter.

Nokia 6300 mobile phone, in red, $15 with three-year Fido agreement

Ring in the Chinese New Year with this red Nokia phone from Fido that comes with a limited number of reserved numbers considered to be lucky in the Chinese culture. (Did we tell you about the friend who played the numbers on the back of a cookie fortune with a lottery ticket and won $1,900 — don’t you be discounting this lucky number business so cavalierly.) The good fortune phone numbers will be available for a limited number of customers who buy before Feb. 14. The phone itself, besides being red, is a bar-style with a two-megapixel camera with an eight times digital zoom and video recorder, MP3 player and FM radio and expandable memory with support for up to two gigabyte microSD cards.

TableTurns, Flud Watches $65

For the deejay who has everything. From Flud Watches comes the TableTurns which copies every detail of the deejay’s turntable and puts it in a trendy timepiece to go on your wrist. Available with a leather strap or a steel band. Not only handy for keeping track of the time, as Flud points out, “this watch is bound to scratch the surface of more than just a few conversations.”

Check it out at

© The Vancouver Sun 2008

 

Meter lets user measure electricity used by any appliance

Jim Jamieson
Province

Saving the environment has become the cause du jour in the new century, but it isn’t just about international treaties and government incentive programs.

Individuals must also buy in on the personal level, and that’s the concept behind the Watts Up meter.

This handy little device allows users to gauge the power usage of the electrical appliances around their home and then calculate how much it’ll cost to power something over a short or long span of time.

In other words, it will allow you to do a survey of what kind of power drain is being generated by your various electrical and electronic devices and then make the call as to which ones need to see reduced usage.

Simply plug any standard 120-volt AC electric device into the Watts Up, and the meter will display the wattage and the electrical usage cost of the appliance.

The device is capable of displaying 16 electrical measurements and values.

Some of its other features:

– It helps identify problems, measure line voltage and diagnose voltage drops.

– Included PC software allows memory (in the Pro model) to be downloaded into charts and tables.

– Cost rate from $0.001 to $2.00 per kilowatt-hour can be entered.

The Watts Up meter, which comes in three different classes of units, is available online at Cable Organizer (cableorganizer.com).

What is it? Watts Up electrical watt meter

Price: $99.99; Pro model, $130.99

Why you need it: You want to go green, one household appliance at a time.

Why you don’t: You drive an SUV and don’t consider how much power your blender uses to be a big issue.

Our rating: 3 out of 5

Phone: 604-605-2296

© The Vancouver Province 2008

 

Sun

OTTAWA – Software giant Microsoft has made an an unsolicited $44.6 billion US bid for Internet media company Yahoo! Inc.

Microsoft, the world’s biggest software maker, offered $31 US a share in cash or stock for Yahoo!, a 62 per cent premium over the stock’s closing price Thursday.

“We have great respect for Yahoo!, and together we can offer an increasingly exciting set of solutions for consumers, publishers and advertisers while becoming better positioned to compete in the online services market,” said Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft.

“We believe our combination will deliver superior value to our respective shareholders and better choice and innovation to our customers and industry partners.”

The online advertising market is expected to double from $40 billion in 2007 to $80 billion by 2010, Microsoft said in announcing the offer.

It said the resulting benefits of scale, along with the associated capital costs for advertising platform providers, make this a time of industry consolidation and convergence.

Although the market is dominated by Google, Microsoft said the combined companies can offer a competitive choice.

© Canwest News Service 2008

Byron Acohido
USA Today

REDMOND, Wash. — Microsoft  Friday made an unsolicited takeover offer of $44.6 billion for Internet portal Yahoo in a bold bid to leapfrog Google  as the dominant player in the fast emerging Internet advertising market.

Yahoo’s senior executives and board of directors played coy, issuing a statement that the company will “carefully and promptly” study Microsoft’s bid.

“We’ve made a great offer to Yahoo shareholders and we respect the fact that their management and board have a lot to consider,” said Kevin Johnson, Microsoft’s president of platform and services, in an interview. “Our strong preference is working collaboratively with Yahoo.”

Microsoft’s offer of $31 a share for Yahoo stock — a 62% premium to Yahoo’s closing stock price Thursday — should get the attention of disgruntled Yahoo shareholders. Yahoo’s share price dropped to a four-year low earlier this week, and a new management team has not said much publicly about how they intend to compete against Microsoft and Google through 2008.

The announcement sent Yahoo’s share price surging, while Google’s fell sharply; Microsoft shares slipped.

“Microsoft’s MSN properties and Yahoo are very similar, and Yahoo makes wide use of Microsoft technology, so the merger technically shouldn’t be that difficult,” says tech analyst Rob Enderle, of the Enderle Group. The merger could make the combined companies “a force to be reckoned with and prevent Google for obtaining nearly unlimited monopoly power,” he says.

In a letter to Yahoo’s board of directors, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer revealed that Yahoo had rebuffed a previous overture a year ago, saying it had a turnaround in the works. But he pointedly noted that Yahoo’s situation since then has deteriorated significantly.

“A year has gone by, and the competitive situation has not improved,” Ballmer said.

Microsoft’s previous offer was rebuffed by Terry Semel, who stepped aside last year as chief executive under pressure from shareholders.

Microsoft sent its latest takeover offer to Yahoo late Thursday, shortly after Semel resigned as the company’s chairman. The letter is addressed to Semel’s successors, Chairman Roy Bostock and the current CEO, co-founder Jerry Yang, who is also one of Yahoo’s largest shareholders.

“Microsoft’s consistent belief has been that the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! clearly represents the best way to deliver maximum value to our respective share holders, as well as create a more efficient and competitive company that would provide greater value and service to our customers,” Ballmer wrote.

Under terms of the proposed deal, Yahoo shareholders could choose to receive cash or Microsoft common shares, with the total purchase consisting of 50% each cash and stock.

Microsoft said it sees at least $1 billion in cost savings generated by the merger, and it intends to offer significant retention packages to Yahoo engineers, key leaders and employees. The software giant says it believes the takeover would receive regulatory clearance and close in the second half of this year.

The Justice Department responded to the proposed deal, saying it is “interested” in reviewing antitrust issues associated with such a merger.

If the deal goes through, analysts expect scrutiny from Congress, Justice and other enforcement agencies, but they say any concerns about search engine or online advertising market power may not be significant enough to stop the transaction.

Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., chairman of the Senate antitrust subcommittee, said the same issues that prompted lawmakers to review the Google-DoubleClick deal exist in a potential Microsoft-Yahoo combination, including examining how it affects consumers, advertisers and businesses “who increasingly use the Internet for their news, commerce and entertainment.”

If Yahoo accepts Microsoft’s offer, the subcommittee expects to hold hearings to “explore the competitive and privacy implications of the deal,” Kohl said.

 

Sun

Netscape Navigator, the web browser that launched the consumer Internet and changed the way humanity seeks information, will be euthanized Friday.

After years of neglect and indifference since it was mortally wounded by Microsoft Corp., parent company AOL decided it’s not worth keeping it alive with security updates.

It will die at 13 years of age.

As people discovered the Internet through the ’90s, Netscape became synonymous with this powerful new network.

Its iconic blue helm, and later the “N” ascending from the Earth, was a fixture of the early wired home, alongside the screech and hiss of the dial-up modem.

Netscape rose to and held its dominance until Microsoft offered Explorer for free in Windows 95.

With this battle salvo, PC users quickly switched to IE, and the grounds were laid for a historical antitrust trial that convicted Microsoft of monopolistic behaviour.

AOL continued to put out new versions of Netscape, but Jon Stewart, research director at Nielsen Online, says the company stabbed itself in 2000 with Netscape 6, which was a nightmare for web developers who wanted their websites work on both browsers.

© The Vancouver Sun 2008

 

Edward C. Baig
USA Today

Apple has earned a sterling reputation designing beautiful products that usually perform as splendidly as they look.

The MacBook Air laptop that CEO Steve Jobs unveiled last week turns heads. And now that I’ve used this Twiggy-thin, 3-pound marvel for several days, I can also report that it’s a remarkably sturdy-feeling machine, especially given its size and weight.

The skinny — the word can’t be emphasized enough — $1,799 (and up) computer will make students and frequent business travelers gush. Encased in aluminum, Air has a comfortable-to-type-on full-size keyboard, widescreen 13.3-inch display and an iSight video camera.

But with too few ports, a sealed battery that you can’t replace on your own and no built-in CD/DVD drive, Air is not the ideal laptop for everyone. And while battery power is impressive, it pooped out in my tests well short of the best-case, five-hour scenario Apple has been touting. Here’s the skinny:

• Thin is in.

There are other small and slender computers on the market. Only none as sexy. Air measures an astonishing 0.16 inches at its skinniest point and is just three-quarters of an inch at its thickest.

Little things make a big impression. Air opens and closes with a magnetic latch. The wide, backlit LED screen is lovely. The keyboard keys light up the dark — there’s a built-in ambient light sensor. Just below the keyboard is a spacious track-pad on which you can “pinch,” “swipe” and apply other iPhone-like touch gestures. You can resize pictures, for example, by placing your thumb and forefinger together.

• What’s inside.

As with all new Macs, Air has the latest virus-resistant OS X Leopard operating system. (It puts Windows Vista to shame.) The top-notch iLife multimedia suite includes iPhoto (for photo management) and iMovie (video editing).

The basic unit I tested comes with 2 gigabytes of RAM standard and a 1.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor (upgradeable to 1.8 GHz). That’s plenty of muscle for conventional computing. You’ll want a machine with a more robust processor for doing, say, heavy video editing. You’re unlikely to notice, but Air’s chip is the weakest Core 2 Duo in the Mac portable lineup; the entry-level $1,099 MacBook has a 2.0 GHz version.

At $1,799, the base configuration is fairly priced, though the 80 GB hard drive isn’t generous by today’s standards. A version with a faster processor and 64 GB “solid-state” drive — with no moving parts, it’s supposed to be more durable — costs $3,098 (ouch).

Air includes Bluetooth and state-of-the-art Wi-Fi, the only path to the Internet without an accessory.

Air does not come with the built-in ability to connect to a speedy wireless data network run by various cellular carriers. Jobs told me last week that Apple considered it but that adding the capability would take up room and restrict consumers to a particular carrier. Through a USB modem, he says, you can still subscribe to wireless broadband with your favorite carrier.

• Making sacrifices.

Air has no internal CD/DVD drive for installing software or watching movies. Some of you can live without an internal drive. Software can often be downloaded from the Web. A wireless migration assistant feature lets you transfer files and programs from an old Mac to the Air.

A new Remote Disc feature lets you install programs from a DVD in another computer, including a Windows PC. Via Remote Disc, I wirelessly loaded Microsoft Office for the Mac by placing the installation disc on an iMac in my house. I ran into initial snags trying to remotely install software from the DVD drive in a Dell PC, until tweaking settings in Windows. Apple says Remote Disc doesn’t currently support all third-party firewall software, but it says it’s working with the companies to try to resolve compatibility issues.

You won’t necessarily need a DVD drive to watch movies, either. Apple now wirelessly rents flicks directly from iTunes. But The Cooler that I rented occasionally hiccupped as I watched on the Air.

Apple sells an external USB SuperDrive for $99 that plugs in with a cable. The drive is thin and compact in its own right. Still, it’d be kind of awkward to use with Air as you sit in coach on an airplane.

You can run Microsoft Windows on Air through the Boot Camp feature in Leopard. But you’ll need the physical DVD drive, since you have to supply your own fresh copy of Windows.

There are other compromises. Air has only three ports or connectors, including just one USB port. A headphone jack lets you connect to stereo speakers (Air’s built-in speaker is mono). Another lets you connect to an external display. These are concealed behind a flip-down door on the right side.

But there’s no FireWire connector for folks wanting to hook up digital camcorders, or ethernet jack for tapping into the Internet when Wi-Fi is unavailable or poky. Apple sells a $29 ethernet accessory with a short cord that connects to the USB. But that adds another little doohickey to throw in your bag.

•Juice.

Air’s battery life is decent. I got about three hours and 40 minutes as I surfed the Web, used Remote Disc and wrote. The battery died an hour sooner when I watched The Cooler, but I made it through the movie. On a long flight, it would be nice to carry a spare, but unfortunately you can’t replace a battery yourself. Apple sells and installs batteries for $129.

Given the compromises, I don’t expect anyone to use Air as their only computer. But it is a yummy machine for people who spend a lot of time traveling.