The idea behind Snapkeys isn’t new; the company says it has been working on it for more than 10 years.

A snapshot of Snapkeys' redesigned keyboard.

But the more recent emergence of touchscreen devices — and the complaints from even avid users about typing on them — means that Snapkeys’ research and development has been serendipitously well-timed.

“We think the end user is finally ready for an upgrade to the old Qwerty keyboard, after almost 150 years,” said Ryan Ghassabian, a Snapkeys business development manager. “Today, there are just too many new devices — phones, tablets — that are changing everything.”

“And Qwerty is just not meant to be on touchscreen devices,” he added.

Snapkeys is just one of a growing number of devices and applications that aim to change the way users interact with the traditional keyboard.

That doesn’t necessarily mean altering the layout of the Qwerty keyboard. The popular keyboard add-on Swype, recently acquired by Nuance, uses a standard layout, but lets users trace a word with their fingers.

While many companies work on technology for onscreen keyboards, still others are trying to create smart, ultra-portable or “invisible” keyboards.

Celluon's Magic Cube laser-projected keyboard.

Korea-based Celluon, which works on portable input applications, has introduced a “Magic Cube” device that connects wirelessly to an iPad or iPhone and projects a laser keyboard image onto an opaque surface for users to “type” on. The idea is that the user would only have to tote the palm-sized, battery-operated cube around, instead of a full keyboard.

Mozilla Labs’s Seabird project uses two Pico projectors to spit out keyboard imagery on either side of a smartphone to establish a full keyboard for typing.

Others believe the answer to typing on touchscreens lies in somehow adding a tactile set of keys — ones that people can actually feel, as they’re accustomed to — to those sleek glass displays.

Part of this stems from the simple fact that many consumers find typing on raised keys easier than typing on touchscreens. A study conducted last year at the University of Washington’s Information School in conjunction with Microsoft Research found that when users typed on a flat surface lacking tactile feedback, they were subject to inadvertent touches, and typing speed was 31 percent slower than it was with a physical keyboard.

Five years ago, manufacturers like Nokia and Samsung were trying everything from vibrating screens to sensor pads underneath keys to create the sensation of keys you could feel on touchscreens.

And consumers seem to want options beyond just attaching a full keyboard to a mobile phone or tablet. Last fall, two Seattle-based designers received $201,400 dollars in pledges on crowdfunding site Kickstarter, after having set an initial goal of just $10,000. Their product: A thin, light keyboard overlay called the TouchFire that goes over the iPad’s touchscreen and creates a sense of keys.

But tactile touchscreen tech still hasn’t made its way into the mainstream.

While physical buttons certainly have their advantages, software keyboards, in the meantime, are showing a tremendous amount of potential. For example, keyboards can simply be reconfigured based on context. When in a browser, dedicated keys can be presented for “www” and “.com”. If the entry is for a ZIP code, a screen with only numbers can be offered.

Also, soft keyboards can do interesting things using prediction. Based on what the next character is likely to be, the software can actually assume which letter is likely to be pressed next, making those keys bigger, either physically or just by favoring those keys.

Above all, software keyboards, unlike physical ones, disappear entirely when they are not needed. The trend away from physical keyboards, which began with the iPhone, has continued unabated, with full touchscreen smartphones making up a steadily increasing portion of the market.

Chris Harrison, a Ph.D. candidate in Carnegie Mellon’s Human Computer Interaction Institute, says that while tactile feedback is “kind of the holy grail of input,” we’re still years away from tech that offers true tactility on touchscreens. “Right now, there are ways you can take really inaccurate input and make it usable — look at something like BlindType — so that’s what you’ll see getting pushed out in the next two or three years. Maybe in five years or more, we’ll see the technological breakthrough of ‘shape-shifting’ the keys on touch surfaces, so people can feel them.”

OmniTouch: A new kind of "Palm" phone?

Harrison has spent the past two and a half years working with Microsoft on skin-sensory computing technology, called Skinput. The technology includes specialized sensors that gauge vibrations happening inside of the human body and enable graphical multitouch. The idea, basically, is that by tapping a projected image on your forearm, you can tell your computer — or another electronic device, like your TV — what to do.

More recently, Harrison and Microsoft have retailored the tech, which is now called OmniTouch, to use it on variety of surfaces — not just the epidermis, but also walls, tables, and notepads.

And while Harrison is laser-focused on changing the way we input information, he expressed a different sentiment than Snapkeys does it when it comes to the keyboard.

“The physical keyboard is an amazing thing, and the fact that it hasn’t changed much in almost 150 years is a good thing,” he said. “If you brought back an old keyboard, people will still be able to type just as well, and there aren’t many technologies as durable as that.”

Readers, which do you prefer for typing: Touchscreens or tactile keys?

(Magic Cube photo courtesy of Flickr/AsiaClassified)

AllThingsD’s Ina Fried contributed to this report.

First, Acer introduced what it is touting as “the world’s thinnest ultrabook” (it will be interesting to see if Acer can still lay claim to that title by week’s end): The Aspire S5, which measures just 15mm at its thickest point. It weighs less than three pounds and comes with a 13.3-inch LCD display screen. It also comes with an interesting “MagicFlip” port panel that’s hidden below the hinge of the laptop. Users can open the hinge to reveal a panel of ports, including HDMI, USB 3.0 and a 20 gigabyte Thunderbolt port.

The Acer Aspire S5 Ultrabook

The Aspire S5 laptop has an Intel Core processor, a solid state drive, extended battery life and a chiclet keyboard. It’s expected to ship in the second quarter of 2012; the expected price is still TBD.

With its Aspire Timeline Ultra laptops, Acer says it is expanding on the Ultrabook it rolled out in September. The Timeline Ultra is available in 14-inch and 15-inch models; the laptops are 20mm thin, boast eight hours of battery life, have solid state and hard disk drive options, as well as HDMI and USB 3.0 ports. They feature an Intel Core processor. So again, not totally different from other Ultrabooks we’ve seen and are expecting to see more of. The Timeline Ultra does, however, have a DVD-Super Multi optical drive, which some Ultrabooks do not have, depending on their thinness and innards. The Aspire Timeline Ultra is expected to ship this quarter.

But Acer’s cloud service offerings looked a lot like a “me-too” to what Apple showed off at WWDC last June. Due to a technical glitch during the press event — and the greatest ironies of tech conferences, aside from dependably terrible cellular and Wi-Fi service, are the technical glitches — we weren’t able to get a good look at Acer’s cloud media service for syncing music and other entertainment files.

Acer’s PicStream (demonstrated via a slide that looked like Apple’s iCloud slide), promises to share photos seamlessly from smartphones to Windows-based PCs and other devices; AcerCloud Docs is designed for syncing and sharing personal and professional documents via the cloud (although it seemed Acer was mainly targeting professionals with this service). Acer stressed that these services will support Windows-based and Android devices.

Lastly, in an odd but not uncommon press conference move, Acer’s Campbell Kan quickly showed off one more tablet and offered just two bits of information about it — it has a quad-core processor and a 1080p display — before concluding the event. Last week, my colleague Ina Fried wrote about Acer’s efforts to remain relevant in the tablet market by introducing a budget-priced, 10-inch, Android-based tablet, the Acer Iconia A200.

MORE CES NEWS:

• Complete coverage
• HP’s Former CTO: Ultrabooks Are Nothing New, webOS Still Has Life Yet
• Walt Shows Off CES Gadgets for Fox Business News (Video)
• What Kind of Web Video Plans Does Sony Have? (Video)
• Fujitsu Seeking Way Into Crowded U.S. Smartphone Market
• Why Rhapsody Is (Probably) Bigger Than Spotify — In the U.S.
• Microsoft Beefing Up CeBit Presence Even as It Pulls Back on CES
• Inside the CES Lost & Found
• FCC Chairman Has New Tablet, but Same Script: More Spectrum!
• Verizon Wireless: We Want to Connect Five Devices for Every Subscriber
• Ultrabooks From HP and Lenovo That Are (Kinda, Sorta) Different
• Walt and Katie Take a Tour of CES (Video)
• Schmidt-Storm Alert: The Google Chairman Didn’t Like Your Question
• T-Mobile Expands Bobsled Messaging Service
• Intel Shows Just How It Plans to Get Into Phones (Video)
• Motorola CEO: We’re Going to Release Fewer Phones This Year
• Kinect Helps Keep Aging Xbox at the Top of Its Game
• More From T-Mobile CEO: On Pricing, LTE and That Ever-Elusive iPhone
• Exclusive: New Boss Acknowledges Windows Phone Still Has “Awareness Problem”
• And You Thought Jawbone UP Was Going to Miss the CES Party!
• Interview: T-Mobile CEO Says No Second AT&T Deal Out There
• Grover Is at CES and I Am Missing It
• BlueStacks Bringing Android Apps to Windows 8
• Why the Future of TV Won’t Be Here Soon
• Nvidia’s Tegra 3 Tries to Save Battery in All Sorts of Different Ways
• Dynamic Dual Coverage: Ballmer’s Last Act in Vegas and the BCS Championship in 3-D
• Microsoft Phoning In Its Last CES Keynote
• Myspace — Yes, Myspace — Says It’s Going to Sell You Web TV
• Samsung Unveils “Super” 55-Inch OLED TV
• Nokia Unveils That LTE Windows Phone It’s Been Dying to Share
• Steve Ballmer Gives Ralph De La Vega a Very … Vigorous Greeting (Video)
• Interview: AT&T’s De La Vega on LTE, Tablets and Life After T-Mobile
• AT&T’s De La Vega: Shared Data Plans Still in the Works
• LG: 55-Inch Glasses-Free 3-D Screen Is on the Way
• LG Pushes 4G Smartphone Through Verizon: The LG Spectrum
• Live: AT&T’s Vegas Act Stars LTE and, Making Her Return to the Stage, Nokia
• CES Notebook: The Constant Search for Power and Vegas’ Worst-kept Secret
• Belkin Bringing Mobile TV to Lots of Cellphones, Will Anyone Tune In?
• Acer Introduces “World’s Thinnest” Ultrabook and a “Me-Too” Cloud Service
• There Better Be Some Cool Stuff at CES, Because CE Holiday Sales Data Bytes!
• CES 2012: Snooki and Bieber Are In, Gaga Is Out!
• Coming to a Smartphone Near You: Gorilla Glass 2
• RIM Hopes Next PlayBook OS Will Impress at CES
• Ultrabooks, the Ultra-Fancy New Name for Laptops
• At CES, Expect More Gadgets Telling You to Get Off the Couch
• Intel to Detail Its Phone Plans at CES Next Month
• Microsoft Pulling Out of CES After Upcoming Show
• Intel to Detail Its Phone Plans at CES Next Month
• Dell Will Drop the Flashy Vegas Act for CES This Year
• Ultrabook Conga Line Preps for CES 2012

The Irvine, Calif., company, which ranks as one of the top sellers of televisions in the U.S., plans to show a line of thin laptop computers and all-in-one desktop PCs running Microsoft Corp.’s Windows software next week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Which app do you recommend for using on the iPad 2 for opening Microsoft Office files (Word, Excel, PowerPoint?)

A:

If you literally just want to open the documents to read them, you don’t need any apps. The iPad comes with built-in viewers for Microsoft Office files. However, for opening, storing and editing the files, I like two products. One is called Quickoffice Pro HD, which costs $20 and handles all three types of files you cite, and more. The other is the tablet version of Apple’s iWork suite, which is sold as three separate apps for $10 each—Pages for word processing, Numbers for spreadsheets and Keynote for presentations.

This also would be a good place to note that there are reports, unconfirmed by the company, that Microsoft is considering releasing an iPad version of Office itself. I have no evidence this will happen.

Q:

Do any of your recommended Ultrabooks run Office?

A:

All Ultrabooks run Microsoft Office. While Ultrabooks are thin and light, they are full-blown Windows laptops running the latest Intel processors, and in my tests, they ran Office very well, just as well as many heavier, thicker laptops I’ve reviewed.

Q:

My son was told by an Apple phone representative that the iCloud service cannot handle our full iTunes library of 6,000 songs, and it will only sync with your hand-held, wireless devices.

A:

That’s inaccurate. ITunes Match handles 25,000 songs and syncs with Macs, PCs (if they’re running iTunes), the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

Walt is on vacation and his Personal Technology column will return Jan. 5. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

Product strategists in the PC industry are gearing up for 2012 to be the year of the “ultrabook” — very thin, very light laptops, usually with solid-state drives (SSD), that compete with Apple’s MacBook Air — such as the Asus Zenbook and Lenovo U300s. We agree that ultrabooks’ lighter, thinner form will appeal to many consumers. Already, 21 percent of U.S. online consumers say they’re interested in owning one, according to a Forrester Research survey fielded in September. But we see the ultrabook as an evolution of the laptop rather than an entirely new form factor. So what is the next big thing in consumer computing?

The “next big thing” is likely to be many things — we anticipate accelerating form factor diversification beyond the desktops, laptops, netbooks, tablets and smartphones we have today, as we advance deeper into the Post-PC Era. Based on what we see in research and development labs, new products beginning to come to market and gaps in consumer computing experiences, we’ve identified these five form factors as the best candidates for what comes next:

• Wearables: Wearable devices, or “wearables” for short, are devices worn on or near the body that sense and relay information. Many wearables, like the heads-up display (HUD) contact lenses in development at the University of Washington, are years from marketability. But other wearables are already available as consumer products, for uses such as communication and health and fitness. An increasing number of wearables in the health-and-fitness space interact with Apple iOS devices, such as the Lark Technologies vibrating wristband that doubles as an alarm clock and a sleep sensor; and BodyMedia FIT Armbands, which have four sensors to track activity, sleep and calorie intake. WIMM Labs, a Foxconn-funded start-up in Los Altos, Calif., has designed multifunctional wearables, based on Google’s Android software, that it will license to other companies.
• Embedded devices: We define embedded devices as physical objects that incorporate computing processors and sensors, excluding those worn on the body, which we classify as wearables. Like wearables, embedded devices are diverse in form, ranging from devices such as Livescribe smartpens that fit into your pocket, to LG Thinq refrigerators that sit in your kitchen. Embedded devices may or may not have a display — Livescribe pens don’t; the LG Thinq appliances do. Today, embedded devices are widely used in industrial automation and automotives, and they have emerging consumer uses in home automation, entertainment and productivity.
• Surfaces: Surfaces are large interactive displays, which may incorporate multitouch, voice and gesture control, facial recognition, near field communication (NFC), quick response (QR) codes or other input/output mechanisms. Today, surfaces are found mostly in public places such as hotels (Microsoft Surface tables in Sheraton bars) and conferences and events (Obscura Digital’s custom multitouch video installations), as well as in education (interactive whiteboards) and news media (red state/blue state maps), but we see potential for additional uses, especially in retail and marketing. For example, retailers such as Victoria’s Secret have commissioned the design firm frog design to create interactive displays for their retail stores. In Seoul, South Korea, retailers use surfaces to extend their reach beyond their stores: Tesco Homeplus, the No. 2 grocery retailer in South Korea, built “virtual malls” in subway stations to reach more customers without building more stores. Commuters take pictures of QR codes under the groceries they want to buy, and the groceries are delivered to their homes.
• Flexible displays: Flexible displays are computing screens that can be rolled, folded or flexed. Flexible devices can take the form of personal devices, such as an e-reader, or larger surface displays, such as furniture or wallpaper. Flexible displays are likely the farthest from becoming commercialized products because of the lack of a defined use case or customer: Polymer Vision, a spinoff of Philips Electronics, promoted its flexible eBook Reader for years, but declared bankruptcy before bringing the device to market. HP has been developing printable Mylar displays that it imagines could be used for candy wrappers, armband computers for the military or living room wallpaper, but the displays are still several years from commercialization.
• Miniprojectors: Miniprojectors are small devices that project a larger image onto another surface or, in the case of holographic projection, into 3-D space. Miniprojectors can be combined with cameras that recognize gesture to become interactive, similar to the Microsoft Kinect for Xbox 360. Today, miniprojectors such as the Brookstone Pocket Projector are gaining in popularity as iPhone accessories. But they’re still niche products, as consumers must purchase them separately. Apple has already filed a patent to embed interactive projectors into its iPhones, iPads and Macs. Embedded miniprojectors would appeal primarily to information workers, but there could be broader consumer uses as well, such as impromptu photo slide shows or YouTube viewing in a group.

It’s easy to read about computing wallpaper, or contact lenses with embedded heads-up displays, and think that these form factors have no bearing on what product strategists are doing today. But product strategists who see what’s coming can anticipate disruption — or even innovate and become disruptors themselves. As you think about what’s coming in 2012 and beyond, know that none of these devices will operate in isolation. The most successful products will work with other products — for example, wearables that talk to smartphones and TVs; surfaces that are activated by the presence of your smartphone. We’re living in a multidevice, multiconnection world, and the best experiences will be those that work across devices and platforms. In that sense, the next phase of the Post-PC Era doesn’t look so different from today.

Sarah Rotman Epps is a senior analyst at Forrester Research, serving consumer product strategy professionals. Follow her on Twitter at @srepps

If you envy Apple’s sleek, speedy MacBook Air laptop, and yearn for something like it that comes with the Microsoft Windows operating system, your wish has been granted. It’s a new type of Windows laptop called Ultrabook. A handful already are available, and more are likely to arrive in the new year.

The Ultrabook concept, which is being driven by giant chipmaker Intel, is governed by a set of specs covering everything from thinness to battery life to start-up times. But it is basically an effort to emulate the MacBook Air, which has been a hot product in a challenging market despite selling for double what some bulkier, but capable, Windows laptops fetch. (Apple doesn’t disclose sales of specific Mac models.)

Ironically, the MacBook Air, which came out in 2008 and now starts at $999, uses the same Intel processors Ultrabooks do, and can, if its owner wishes, run Windows capably along with the Mac operating system. But it now will have much more competition.

The Lenovo IdeaPad U300s, with a sturdy aluminum body, has a superb keyboard and roomy touch pad.

I’ve been testing a couple of the new Ultrabooks, from Lenovo and Toshiba, to get a feel for the category, and I’m a fan. I love the idea of a machine that combines low weight with good speed and battery life, yet doesn’t compromise on keyboard and screen size.

I found some drawbacks to both machines, and to Ultrabooks in general. For instance, like the Apple, they lack internal DVD drives and removable batteries, things that will bother some folks. And, at least for now, the Ultrabooks mostly tend to cluster at around $1,000, which rules them out for shoppers on a tight budget. But, overall, I think the advent of the Ultrabook is a good thing for consumers.

In general, I preferred the Lenovo, but the Toshiba has some advantages as well, and you won’t go wrong with either. In my tests, neither did as well as the Apple in such measures as battery life or start times. But both cost less than the comparable Apple model.

Toshiba’s Portege Z835 is lighter and has more ports, including an Ethernet port, than the comparable Lenovo IdeaPad or MacBook Air.

The idea behind the Ultrabook is to make a light, thin laptop that has a full-size screen and keyboard—unlike a cramped netbook—yet also gets strong battery life, starts up and resumes quickly, and is powerful enough to handle a wide variety of common consumer tasks. It is meant to be good enough to be your main computer, but it isn’t aimed at those who need extra horsepower for things like hard-core gaming.

To be clear, there have been thin and light Windows laptops for many years, but these machines have typically been so expensive that few people could buy them, and they often had poor battery life and other serious compromises.

I tested the Lenovo IdeaPad U300s and the Toshiba Portege Z830, and also compared them with the latest, comparable MacBook Air. Both have 13-inch screens, are made of metal, weigh under three pounds, and use a solid-state drive—storage chips—instead of a hard disk. This improves speed, reliability and battery life, but limits storage capacity.

The Lenovo starts at $1,095 with a 128 gigabyte drive, 4 GB of memory, and Intel’s mid-range i5 processor. The Toshiba starts at around $900 for a model with the same specs except for the processor, which is a less powerful chip called an i3. However, both Toshiba and Best Buy have recently put this machine on sale, and I found it on Best Buy’s website for $700.

By contrast, the 13-inch MacBook Air with the same amount of solid-state storage and memory, and the i5 processor, costs $1,299.

Beyond their price and processor differences, I found each machine had its strengths and weaknesses.

The Toshiba weighs just 2.47 pounds, versus 2.91 for the Lenovo and 2.96 for the Apple. It also boasts the most ports, including three USB ports versus two for the others and an Ethernet port the others lack. But I found its magnesium body felt more fragile than the other two, which are aluminum and sturdier.

I also disliked the fact that on Toshiba’s keyboard, using the keys for common things like brightness and muting required you to hold down a second function key. And the Toshiba came in last among the three in my tests of battery life, cold start-up time and reboot time. Plus, Toshiba has pre-loaded an annoying Best Buy promotional app that pops up at launch.

The Lenovo feels sturdy and has a keyboard I found superb, and a roomy touch pad. Unlike the other two, it isn’t tapered at the edges, and my test unit sported an orange color, though it also comes in gray. Also, like the Apple, but unlike the Toshiba, Lenovo offers a roomier, 256 GB solid-state drive for extra money.

However, the Lenovo froze once during my tests; the others didn’t. And, unlike the others, it lacks a slot for memory cards.

Both Ultrabooks did fine at all the common tasks I threw at them. But their screen resolution is less than the Mac’s, meaning less material can be seen without scrolling. The Mac also felt sturdier to me than even the Lenovo.

Both Ultrabooks claim battery life of up to eight hours or so. In my battery tests, where I turn off all power-saving features, crank the screen brightness up all the way, leave the Wi-Fi on, and play a continuous loop of music, they fell well short of that. The Toshiba lasted 4 hours and 36 minutes and the Lenovo 4 hours and 50 minutes.

Still, these are respectable numbers in my harsh tests, and suggest to me that in more normal use with power-saving on, you could get six hours or so easily on these machines. However, the MacBook Air did much better, lasting 5 hours and 51 minutes on the same test—suggesting users would likely achieve Apple’s claimed seven hours of battery life in more normal use.

The two Ultrabooks booted up and rebooted much faster than most Windows laptops I’ve tested in the past, reaching a ready-to-use state, with Wi-Fi fully connected, in about 30 seconds when booting from scratch and under a minute on a reboot. They recovered from sleep in under 10 seconds. But the Mac beat them handily on all three measures.

For Windows shoppers who can afford to spend a little more this season, I believe Ultrabooks are a great choice.

Write to Walter S. Mossberg at walt.mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111214/ultrabooks-bring-speed-and-light-to-windows/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111212/youth-is-wasted-on-the-young-and-so-are-consumer-electronics/ http://allthingsd.com/20111212/youth-is-wasted-on-the-young-and-so-are-consumer-electronics/#comments Mon, 12 Dec 2011 17:46:58 +0000 Lauren Goode http://allthingsd.com/?p=152878 When it comes to consumer electronics buying this holiday season, it turns out age is everything but a number.

According to a new survey from Parks Associates, an international market research firm, age will be the biggest factor in tech purchases made between Nov. 1 and Jan. 1. Young adult consumers — defined as those between 18 and 34 years of age — are more likely than others to purchase laptops, smartphones, tablets and LCD flat-panel displays this season. Also, households with children are much more likely to purchase laptops and LCD flat-panels.

Image courtesy of David Boyle/Flickr

Not surprisingly, tablets are the product of choice for big spenders, with higher-income households more likely to buy iPads and Android tablets. Some other interesting notes from the survey: Apple’s ecosystem of music, media and apps continues to drive interest in hardware, with 17 percent of consumers surveyed saying they’re looking to buy Mac laptops, trailing only Dell at 22 percent of intended purchases.

And in the smartphone category, there’s more bad news for BlackBerry: 83 percent of current iPhone users intend to buy an iPhone again this holiday season; 81 percent of Android OS users said the same, but only 41 percent percent of BlackBerry users intend to buy RIM’s iconic handheld device again this season.

The data, which comes from a survey of 2,000 U.S. heads of household and factors in purchases to date this year, as well as buying intentions, offers a somewhat optimistic outlook for consumer electronics this holiday season, with purchase intentions rebounding to near-2009 levels after a steep decline in 2010. Almost 50 percent of U.S. broadband-connected households intend to purchase a CE product from early November to Jan. 1, compared to 38 percent last year.

The fact that consumers began shopping earlier than usual this year may be giving retailers a longer window to move products, researchers note. Consumers also indicated that mobile shopping and mobile wallet options are increasingly appealing.

But it’s not all good news in gadgetland, as the economy continues to weigh on consumer confidence. Other data suggests that 2011 may still be a weaker than expected year for consumer electronics spending. Research firm IHS iSuppli recently reduced its consumer electronics growth outlook for the year, cutting expected revenue to $357.3 billion, a 1.5 percent rise from revenues in 2010, compared to its previous forecast of 6.4 percent growth for the year.

Parks Associates’ director of research John Barrett calls the slight boost in spending intentions this season the “keeping-it-home” phenomenon, noting that the people surveyed were more likely to make purchases for themselves this year, or for someone in their own household, rather than for gift-giving outside of the home. “The number of people buying something has gone up, but so have all the economic worries,” Barrett notes.

Readers, have you bought, or do you intend to buy, consumer electronics this holiday season?

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111212/youth-is-wasted-on-the-young-and-so-are-consumer-electronics/feed/ 6 http://allthingsd.com/20111212/samsung-launches-series-5-ultra-ultrabooks/ http://allthingsd.com/20111212/samsung-launches-series-5-ultra-ultrabooks/#comments Mon, 12 Dec 2011 15:02:25 +0000 Lauren Goode http://allthingsd.com/?p=152799 The ramp-up toward The Year of Too Many Ultrabooks continues: Now Samsung is getting into the game.

Today, on its Web site, the Korean electronics company unveiled the Series 5 Ultra, a 14-inch, 20.9mm aluminum laptop that’s large enough to accomodate an optical disc drive. It offers up to a terabyte of hard disk space, as well as solid-state drive storage options, reports The Verge.

It’s not the most lightweight of ultrabooks, though, in an emerging category of laptops known for thinness and portability: It weighs 1.8 kg, compared to the standard 1.5 kg. But the Series 5 Ultra comes equipped with both HDMI and Ethernet ports, as well as an option for a Radeon HD 7550M GPU.

The 14-inch model costs $1,345; Samsung is also offering a 13-inch Series 5 Ultra, just 14.9mm thick, for $1,300. The laptops are launching first in Korea, and are expected to ship in late December. No word on when these will become available in the U.S., but with the annual Consumer Electronics Show coming up in January, more info can’t be far behind.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111212/samsung-launches-series-5-ultra-ultrabooks/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20111115/ipad-3-coming-soon/ http://allthingsd.com/20111115/ipad-3-coming-soon/#comments Tue, 15 Nov 2011 23:27:27 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=144562 Q:

I am in the market for an iPad, but have been advised to wait for the iPad 3, which rumors suggest will be arriving shortly. What do you advise?

A:

I have seen similar rumors, but I have no confirmation of them and no information on the timing or details of the next iPad. If I had to guess, I’d guess the next iPad will be announced in March or April, which is when the last two were announced.

Q:

I would like to purchase a laptop for use only with my stock brokerage firm, my mutual-fund company, my bank and my local credit union. No email, music, photos, games, surfing the Web, online purchases, video chat, etc. I think this will cut down greatly on the chances of my financial information being stolen. Am I mistaken?

A:

This approach might help, but I believe you may be overestimating its benefits. You have to go online, via a Web browser, to perform financial transactions, and you will have to use email in order to do things like confirm sign-up information. Once you are using a Web browser and email, you are open to identity theft if you are careless. Obviously, avoiding any website or online activity where malware or spyware might lurk will help, but you’d still need to be very careful, and—especially if it’s a Windows PC—to install strong security software.

Email Mossberg’s Mailbox at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111115/ipad-3-coming-soon/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111031/hps-touchpad-the-tablet-that-refused-to-die/ http://allthingsd.com/20111031/hps-touchpad-the-tablet-that-refused-to-die/#comments Mon, 31 Oct 2011 12:45:16 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=138253 Hewlett-Packard’s TouchPad is back for sale at Best Buy.

Unceremoniously killed under HP’s prior CEO on Aug. 18 after disappointing sales, the device quickly found a market after retailers and HP itself slashed the prices on remaining stock.

This time, according to a Best Buy press release, a 32 gigabyte TouchPad is going for $149, with the purchase of an HP- or Compaq-branded notebook or desktop PC. Sold separately, the price jumps to $599.99.

HP, for its part, has sold out of its internal stock of the device, according to a statement on the company’s Web site. TouchPads can, however, still be found on Amazon and on eBay.

By bundling the TouchPad with PCs at its biggest retail partner, HP is giving itself an arguable edge against Acer, Dell and Toshiba in what is sure to be a cutthroat holiday season for PC and tablet sales. After about a month on the market, and before the product wound up on the chopping block, Best Buy sold less than 10 percent of the 270,000 TouchPads it had in inventory.

It’s hard to know how long the deal can last. Sources familiar with HP’s build plans say the initial TouchPad order was for between 1.8 million and two million units, though a third source disputed that number without elaborating. Regardless of the number ordered, sources familiar with the deal say that HP’s decision to kill the product had no immediate effect on the build plans, as components had already been purchased and manufacturing was under way. A source familiar with the matter says the manufacturer is Taiwan-based Inventec, not Compal, as has been previously reported. HP was contractually obligated to take delivery on the remaining units in the pipeline.

That means the TouchPad is now officially a loss leader. As an IHS iSuppli teardown analysis in August showed, HP’s cost to build a 32GB TouchPad is $328.65. At $149.99, HP takes a paper loss of more than $178 per unit.

HP isn’t exactly crying over the lost money. Remember that as part of the hot mess of news it announced on Aug. 18, the company included plans for a $1 billion charge to account for costs related to shutting down the TouchPad and webOS hardware business.

Whatever happens, this is probably the last hurrah for the TouchPad — for real this time. That is, unless no one takes advantage of the offer to buy one along with a PC. Any stock left over after the holiday season rush will probably wind up in Best Buy’s equivalent of the bargain bin.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111031/hps-touchpad-the-tablet-that-refused-to-die/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111019/jonney-shih-asiad/ http://allthingsd.com/20111019/jonney-shih-asiad/#comments Thu, 20 Oct 2011 01:06:41 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=133847

Little known outside of Asia a few years ago, Asus burst onto the scene with its Eee PC, the product that ushered in the era of the netbook.

With netbooks losing popularity in favor of tablets, Asus has responded with the Eee Pad, its own line of tablets that includes a convertible model with an optional keyboard dock. Asus is just one of many players in the space, though, and doesn’t have that first-mover advantage.

Chairman Johnny Shih is joining Walt Mossberg onstage at AsiaD to talk tablets, laptops and more.

9:07 am: Jonney’s on stage with the company’s new Ultrabook. “As you can see, it is very thin,” Shih said. Walt notes it is a good response to the MacBook Air.

Even with such thinness, we didn’t compromise the performance, Shih said, noting it has an Intel core i7, a next-generation solid-state drive and USB 3.0

It weighs 1.2 kilograms, Shih said. Siri tells me that equals 2.65 pounds.

“Talk to me about laptops versus tablets, Walt says. “What’s going on in the industry?”

Shih talks about the role of ubiquitous cloud computing. That means different kinds of screens, all connected to information.

9:15 am: Where are you putting your bets, Walt asks. Tablets? PCs?

“We believe that we have to bet on both,” Shih said.

There are places for tablets, such as on the couch or in bed, but there are other times when a keyboard is needed. The company has models with plug-in keyboards and slide-out keyboards. But the boundaries between smartphones, laptops and notebooks are blurring, he said.

Netbooks are evolving, too, Shih said, and they, too, will be thinner and more cloud-connected.

9:21 am: “The laptop side also has to respond to this tablet trend,” Shih said.

Shih said Asus is trying other things to make its laptops stand out, such as Bang & Olufsen sound in its Ultrabook.

9:24 am: Moving to Android, Walt asks what is holding things back on the tablet side.

“We still think there is a great opportunity there,” Shih said. He still hopes to sell two million this year, with the Eee Pad Transformer.

“I still believe Android is improving very fast.”

9:26 am: Shih also teases that he has some “top secret” gear in his briefcase that he is going to show in a bit.

9:27 am: What about Ice Cream Sandwich? Will it be on tablets by the end of the year?

“Maybe earlier than that,” Shih said.

9:27 am: It’s briefcase time.

Shih pulls out what looks like a new tablet.

9:28 am: 8.3-milimeter thin 10-inch screen. It’s the next generation of the Transformer with its plug-in keyboard.

9:29 am: It will have Nvidia’s quad-core processor.

9:31 am: USB, mini-HDMI ports.

When will this come out?

Shih said folks will have to wait until the formal announcement on Nov. 9.

“Today is only for a sneak preview,” he said.

“I thought you were giving these away to everyone,” Walt quipped.

9:35 am: The Verge’s Joanna Stern asks about another device Asus has talked about — the Padfone, a combination phone and tablet.

The phone is already powerful enough to be a tablet, Shih notes, saying the only thing really missing is the display. That’s the idea behind the device, which Asus talked about at Computex.

“That’s the whole concept of the Padfone.”

We still have to go through the carriers and testing, Shih said. The timing is around the first quarter of next year and will run Ice Cream Sandwich. “That’s our current timing.”

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111019/jonney-shih-asiad/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111018/gogobot-goes-mobile-with-new-iphone-app/ http://allthingsd.com/20111018/gogobot-goes-mobile-with-new-iphone-app/#comments Tue, 18 Oct 2011 16:00:30 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=133344

The innovative social travel site Gogobot is unveiling its Apple iPhone app today, which will give users of the service the ability to post from a location immediately and also to see where friends have been.

In an interview with me last week, co-founder and CEO Travis Katz said that the move is an important one for the Silicon Valley start-up, since on-the-go trip recommendations using smartphones have become increasingly important to travelers.

“You live away from your laptop most of your time, and especially on trips,” he said. “But you also want to preserve those experiences.”

The new travel app, which is now only available on the Apple iPhone, populates to Gogobot’s Trip Portfolio, a scrapbook experience via collections about different destinations. You can also send postcards from the app — a la Instagram — to your collections.

Gogobot, which launched late last year, has raised $4 million in venture funding from Battery Ventures, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors and angel investors Chris DeWolfe, Keith Rabois and Oren Ze’ev.

Katz said Gogobot would eventually build on other mobile platforms, such as Google Android.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111018/gogobot-goes-mobile-with-new-iphone-app/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110824/jobs-leave-a-legacy-of-changed-industries/ http://allthingsd.com/20110824/jobs-leave-a-legacy-of-changed-industries/#comments Thu, 25 Aug 2011 01:18:37 +0000 Walt Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=113653

Steve Jobs’s resignation as chief executive officer of Apple is the end of an extraordinary era, not just for Apple, but for the global technology industry in general. Jobs is a historic business figure whose impact was deeply felt far beyond the company’s Cupertino, Calif., headquarters, and who was widely emulated at other companies.

And now, for the first time since 1997, he won’t be the company’s chief executive.

To be very clear, Jobs, while seriously ill, is very much alive. Extremely well-informed sources at Apple say he intends to remain involved in developing major future products and strategy and intends to be an active chairman of the board, even while new CEO Tim Cook runs the company day to day.

So, this is not an obituary. But his health is reported to be up and down, and even an active chairman isn’t the same as a CEO.

CEOs resign every day, so why is this departure so meaningful?

Most people are lucky if they can change the world in one important way, but Jobs, in multiple stages of his business career, changed global technology, media and lifestyles in multiple ways on multiple occasions.

He did it because he was willing to take big risks on new ideas, and not be satisfied with small innovations fed by market research. He also insisted on high quality and had the guts to leave out features others found essential and to kill technologies, like the floppy drive and the removable battery, he decided were no longer needed. And he has been a brilliant marketer, personally passionate about his products.

In his first act at Apple, the company he co-founded in 1976, he helped envision and catalyze the personal computer revolution. The Apple II computer he developed with Steve Wozniak wasn’t the only mass-market PC released in 1977, but it was the one that had the most enduring impact.

In 1984, he again upended computing by leading the development of the Macintosh, the first commercially successful computer to use a mouse and graphical user interface. It cemented the template for how every computer works today, even though Apple was handily bested in the PC sales wars by archrival Microsoft.

After being forced out of Apple in 1985, it’s well known that Jobs ran an unsuccessful computer firm called NeXT. But he also did a couple of game-changing things during that exile. First, NeXT developed an operating system that later morphed into the excellent Macintosh operating system, called OS X, and also the operating system that drives Apple’s mobile devices, called iOS.

In addition, he purchased Pixar, a small computer animation firm which he was able, over years, to turn into one of the world’s most successful movie studios and later sell to Disney for billions. It changed animation forever.

In his most recent act, he returned in 1997 to take over as CEO of Apple as part of that company’s purchase of NeXT. What he found was a diminished company which was reputedly only months from bankruptcy and saddled with mediocre products.

Fourteen years later, the company is a highly profitable behemoth, the most financially valuable and influential technology company in the world, whose every product is eagerly anticipated, snapped up quickly by consumers, and aped by competitors, even though they are often priced higher than rival devices.

While CEO of the revived Apple, he introduced the dominant digital music player, the iPod, and created the most successful digital media service, iTunes. He introduced the first super-smartphone, the iPhone, and the only truly successful tablet computer, the iPad, which is in the process of replacing the laptop, at least in part. And he built the world’s largest app store.

One almost forgets that he built a phenomenally successful chain of retail stores, too.

Apple’s devices and software services have dramatically changed the mobile phone industry, the music industry, the film and TV industries, the publishing industry and others.

Meanwhile, even while declaring that we are in the “post-PC era,” Jobs resuscitated his early baby, the Mac. While it may never become the world’s biggest selling computer, it is lusted after worldwide, and its sales have outgrown those of the overall PC industry for five years running. Plus, with models like the sleek, solid-state MacBook Air, he’s actually merging the tablet and the PC.

Now, rumors are rife that Apple is working on re-inventing another common device: the TV. The secretive company won’t say a word about that, but nobody should be surprised if it happens, just based on Jobs’s track record.

And that’s why the day Steve Jobs resigns as CEO of Apple isn’t like the day a typical CEO resigns.

Here is a video of me taken recently, talking about Jobs’s career:

Related posts

• Steve Jobs Resigns as CEO of Apple; Cook Takes Reins
• Steve Jobs’s Resignation Letter: “I Have Made Some of the Best Friends of My Life at Apple.”
• Apple Stock Falls After Jobs Announcement
• Steve Jobs Live on Stage in 2010 (Video)
• Tim Cook as Apple CEO: A Tested and Steady Hand
• Essay: Jobs’s Departure as CEO of Apple Is the End of an Extraordinary Era
• What Happens Next at Apple?
• Mossberg on Jobs (Video)
• Analysts Confident in Apple’s Prospects
• Apple Shares Bounce Back
• Tim Cook: Apple Will Continue to Make the Best Products in the World
• Does Tim Cook Need His Own Tim Cook?

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110824/jobs-leave-a-legacy-of-changed-industries/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110727/lion-with-office/ http://allthingsd.com/20110727/lion-with-office/#comments Thu, 28 Jul 2011 01:02:29 +0000 Walt Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=103542 Q:

I have been warned on the Web that Microsoft Office won’t work on Apple’s new Mac operating system, Lion. Is this true?

A:

In my tests, and also according to Microsoft, Office for the Mac does work in Lion, though some relatively minor features won’t work right. Also, you must be using one of the two latest versions of Office.

In my tests, using the current version, Office 2011, all features I tested worked fine, though of course I wasn’t able to test every one of the thousands of features. I even wrote my entire Lion review in Word 2011 on a Lion-equipped Mac. According to Microsoft, the 2008 version also works, though the 2004 version doesn’t.

However, Microsoft hasn’t updated Office for Mac to take advantage of Lion’s new features. More information on Mac Office compatibility with Lion is here and here.

Q:

Can you point me in the right direction for a purchase of a tablet? I am a home inspector and presently use a Toshiba Satellite laptop with a special Windows software program for my job. I need a tablet with a screen size of 12 inches or more. USB ports would be essential.

I am willing to spend up to $3,000. I need it to be visible in daylight, because I must walk around the property.

A:

You may have trouble finding a tablet that meets all your criteria. If you need to run special Windows software on a tablet with a USB port, you might consider one of the Windows 7 models, aimed mainly at businesses. A good example is the $1200 Asus Eee Slate EP121. I haven’t tested it, but it has a 12″ screen, dual USB ports, and works with either finger or stylus input. The only problem is that it uses a backlit, laptop-type screen, and these aren’t typically great for viewing in direct sunlight.

Q:

An Apple store employee told us that each Apple mobile device battery should be depleted to 0% once per month to keep its battery healthy. Is this necessary?

A:

That’s correct. Here’s part of the company’s advice on iPhone batteries: “For proper maintenance of a lithium-based battery, it’s important to keep the electrons in it moving occasionally. Be sure to go through at least one charge cycle per month (charging the battery to 100% and then completely running it down).”

In its advice on laptop batteries, the company states, in part: “Apple does not recommend leaving your portable plugged in all the time.” It adds that, if you don’t drain and recharge your Mac laptop in the course of normal usage, “Apple recommends charging and discharging its battery at least once per month.”

Email mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110727/lion-with-office/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110713/tablet-strives-to-plug-into-laptops-port-abilities/ http://allthingsd.com/20110713/tablet-strives-to-plug-into-laptops-port-abilities/#comments Thu, 14 Jul 2011 01:03:55 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=97920 While Microsoft and Apple are working to bring aspects of tablet computing to the next versions of their computer operating systems, one big computer maker, Toshiba, is going the other way: It is introducing a tablet that emulates a laptop in some key respects.

Unlike other well-known tablets on the market, the new Toshiba Thrive, a 10-inch Android model available this month, sports a full-sized USB port that works with a wide variety of devices and files; a removable battery; and a file manager application like those on PCs. It also includes a full-sized SD slot for flash memory cards and a full-sized connector, called an HDMI port, that can use a standard cable for linking to a high-definition TV.

Some tablets, such as Acer’s Iconia, have a few of these features, but I haven’t previously tested a tablet with all of them. And they aren’t built into the tablet that dominates the market, Apple’s iPad.

Like Acer, Toshiba is trying to differentiate the Thrive from the iPad with a lower price. The base model of the Thrive will cost $430, which is $69 less than the entry-level iPad 2. However, there’s a catch: It only has half the memory, 8 gigabytes, versus the base $499 iPad 2′s 16 gigabytes. A Thrive model with 16 gigabytes of memory will cost $480, or just $19 less than the comparable iPad 2.

This first tablet from Toshiba is Wi-Fi only. But the company plans a model with cellular connectivity in the fourth quarter.

I’ve been testing the Thrive for about a week, and found it to be a mixed bag. Its laptop-like features, especially the USB port, worked very well and will be welcomed by users who have yearned for an easier, more standard way of getting files into and out of a tablet.

Like many laptops, the Thrive, above, has full-size USB and HDMI ports.

Like most tablets introduced this year, it is thick and heavy compared with the iPad. Like all Android tablets, it offers only a tiny fraction of the tablet-optimized apps available for the iPad, which claims 100,000 such programs.

And in my standard tablet battery test, its performance was weak, only a bit more than half of the iPad 2′s.

Design

The Thrive, which has rounded edges, weighs in at 1.6 pounds. It’s 0.62 inch thick, and about 11″ long by 7″ wide—shaped to optimize viewing of widescreen videos. That means it’s best used in landscape mode. Its back, which is rubbery and ribbed, feels comfortable, and snaps off, to provide access to the removable battery.

Extra batteries cost $80 each, and the company offers a variety of colorful replacement backs for $20 each.

The edges offer an array of switches and ports—some hidden behind little covers—including a mini-USB port for connecting to a PC or Mac. There’s a proprietary connector for attaching the Thrive to two optional docks. The device includes front and rear cameras.

The standard case, above, is very bulky.

There are also a couple of optional cases. I found the standard case to be very bulky. Also very bulky is the included AC adapter, for charging the Thrive, that’s the size of a small laptop charger.

USB

I focused a lot of my testing on the USB port, which worked very well. In my tests, I was able to successfully connect a variety of small flash drives and access their files, or copy them to the internal memory, using the File Manager app. Toshiba also includes a Media Player, which handles music, photos and videos, regardless of whether they are in internal memory or external storage.

I was also able to easily connect a variety of other devices to the USB port, including a camera, a wired keyboard and mouse. The USB port handled an external hard drive as well, once I converted it on a computer to the only hard-disk format the Thrive recognizes, which is called exFAT.

I was even able to simultaneously use a flash drive and a wired mouse with the Thrive by plugging in a small USB hub—a gadget that’s like a power strip for USB devices.

SD Card and HDMI Port

The Thrive can handle SD cards up to 128 gigabytes in capacity—though the largest of these currently cost around $300. In fact, Toshiba justifies the low internal memory on its base model Thrive by noting that users can add memory via SD cards. In my tests of several SD cards, all worked fine.

I connected my HDTV to the Thrive via a plain-vanilla HDMI cable and it played videos, photos and music through the TV without any problems.

Battery Life

The Thrive fared poorly in my standard tablet battery test, in which I set the screen brightness at 75%, leave the Wi-Fi connected and collecting emails in the background, and play videos back to back until the juice is gone. It managed just 5½ hours before shutting down, compared with slightly over 10 hours for the iPad 2 during the same test.

Toshiba claims the Thrive’s battery will last up to 11 hours in more general and varied use, and, while I couldn’t test such a vague claim, I was able to go a couple of days between charges while doing intermittent Web surfing, emails, social networking, book reading and game playing. But the screen— which sucks power on all tablets—was off for hours at a time during this period.

Performance

In general, the Thrive performed crisply, handling almost everything I tried and running numerous programs at once.

However, it crashed multiple times. The tablet spontaneously rebooted once when I removed a flash drive and the popular game “Words With Friends” crashed twice. Several other apps also crashed.

Unlike the iPad, the Thrive will play Adobe Flash videos and websites, but, as with other Android tablets, this capability varies unpredictably. Some Flash videos played well, others poorly or not at all. A couple crashed the browser. And the beautiful Picnik photo-editing website, which depends on Flash, wouldn’t work at all.

Cameras and Sound

Both cameras worked OK for stills and videos. But the sound, which Toshiba says is superior to that on other tablets, was tinny on several songs compared with the sound on the iPad.

Trial Software

One more similarity, alas, that the Thrive has to laptops is that it comes pre-loaded with craplets, limited or trial apps you may not want. Its bundled version of QuickOffice, a productivity program for viewing and editing Microsoft Office documents, can only view files, not edit them. A security program works only for 30 days before you must pay for it. A printing program will only print five pages before payment is required.

Bottom Line

The Thrive is a good alternative to the iPad for people who place high value on having standard ports, especially a USB port, and a removable battery. While it suffers from many of the downsides of other non-Apple tablets, it is closer to a laptop, and that will please people looking for laptop features in a tablet.

Email mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110713/tablet-strives-to-plug-into-laptops-port-abilities/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110712/steve-ballmers-dr-hyde-and-mr-jekyl/ http://allthingsd.com/20110712/steve-ballmers-dr-hyde-and-mr-jekyl/#comments Tue, 12 Jul 2011 13:43:44 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=96722

Whenever I know Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is going to speak at a major public event, I get two feelings at once: Excited anticipation that the chances are high that he’ll say something controversial and dread that the chances are high he will say something, well, controversial.

Which is just what happened at his opening keynote speech yesterday at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, which is taking place in Los Angeles this week.

At the event, Ballmer got off several good ones, which always happen when he makes fun of himself or Microsoft products.

Most effective was the tiny market share of the very laudable Windows Phone 7, which replaced its failed Windows Mobile efforts.

Said Ballmer with verve about the situation: “We’ve gone from very small to very small…”

Funny, right? Especially when he also made it clear that he thought Microsoft had made the right bet in moving to Windows Phone 7, which was a deft way of both poking fun at the company and praising it at the same time.

Of course, like the skunk at the garden party he often can be, Ballmer also could not resist dragging out his oldest chestnut about how much bigger that PC market is than that of its longtime rival, namely Apple.

But because he’s Ballmer, he plays it cute and can’t ever seem to bring himself to actually say the name of the company that has always been top of mind at Microsoft and always has remained the target of grumbly frustration.

The solution? Pretend Apple does not exist by belittling the competitor’s weakest point.

Thus, he trotted out the usual stats about how big the PC market is in comparison — about 350 million units with the Windows operating system compared to about 20 million of Brand A.

All true, except it only makes Ballmer look petty and backward-thinking, since those 20 million represent so much more than just laptop computers.

In fact, when talking about Apple, it also means smartphones — where the iPhone dominates Windows Phone 7 handily — and also tablets, a market where there is no contest between the iPad and anyone else so far.

And it also leaves out the excitement and thrill that Apple always manages to engender among consumers, the media and techies alike when it launches new products, which will be happening just a week from now with Apple’s new MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs debut.

Because, while Ballmer can make fun of Apple’s laptop sales all he wants, it only makes him look silly rather than witty.

In fact, when you’re as big a company as Microsoft, it’s only funny when you are shooting at a behemoth like yourself over failings. Best of all, you never run out of material.

And, if you do, there’s always Google to kick around.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110712/steve-ballmers-dr-hyde-and-mr-jekyl/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110626/how-to-control-your-laptop-with-your-eyeballs-tobiis-d9-demo-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20110626/how-to-control-your-laptop-with-your-eyeballs-tobiis-d9-demo-video/#comments Sun, 26 Jun 2011 14:52:51 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=91107 Look, Ma, no hands!

OK, some hands: Tobii’s astonishing eye-tracking technology doesn’t allow you to operate all of your computer using your eyeballs alone. But it allows users to manipulate part of the machine, hands free.

This stuff is already in some specialized machines but widespread adoption could be a few years out, Tobii general manager Barbara Barclay said at the D9 conference this month.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110626/how-to-control-your-laptop-with-your-eyeballs-tobiis-d9-demo-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110622/google-unveils-a-laptop-with-its-brain-in-the-cloud/ http://allthingsd.com/20110622/google-unveils-a-laptop-with-its-brain-in-the-cloud/#comments Thu, 23 Jun 2011 01:05:02 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=89903 Would you buy a laptop that comes with only one major program—a Web browser—and doesn’t allow you to install widely used software such as Microsoft Office, Apple’s iTunes, Adobe Reader, or, in fact, any other locally installed program?

Are you ready for a laptop that has almost no storage space to hold your personal files, photos and videos, and is designed around the idea that you’ll keep all that precious personal stuff on remote servers?

How about a laptop that can do almost nothing unless it has an active Internet connection; for instance, one that wouldn’t let you read and write email, or check your calendar, offline? Would you buy that?

Google is hoping you will. This month it introduced a line of just such radical machines, in partnership with two laptop makers, Samsung and Acer. They are called Chromebooks, after Google’s Chrome Web browser, which is the gateway for everything they do. And they are meant to challenge the two dominant computer platforms, Microsoft’s Windows and Apple’s Mac OS X.

These laptops are “cloud” computers—essentially full-screen Web browsers designed to do everything via the Internet. Instead of using traditional programs, you will rely on “Web apps” accessed through the browser—email programs, word processors or photo editors, for example.

Series 5 Chromebook by Samsung, one of Google’s partners on the new laptop.

I’ve been testing one of the Chromebooks, the Samsung Series 5, a handsome, relatively light machine with a 12-inch screen. It costs $430 for a Wi-Fi version and $500 for a model that also includes a built-in modem for cellular Internet connectivity, which requires a monthly fee if you exceed the modest amount of free data Google gives you.

My verdict is that, while the Chromebook is a bold idea that may be a harbinger of the future of computing, it’s too limited and buggy today to be the main computer relied upon by mainstream users. I can’t recommend it over a standard laptop, except perhaps as a secondary machine for techies or early adopters.

The Chromebook does have some advantages over Windows and Mac laptops. But Google concedes these traditional laptops can run all the same Web apps as a Chromebook, in addition to running local programs, storing all your files and operating offline. Even tablets, like Apple’s iPad and competitors based on Google’s Android operating system can run hundreds of thousands of locally installed apps and Web apps as well. And they can run offline and store files locally. The Chromebook offers only about 5,000 Web apps today. Plus, tablets weigh less than half the 3.3 pounds of the Samsung Series 5, and are much slimmer, though they have smaller screens and lack the Chromebook’s physical keyboard.

As for price, there are numerous Windows laptops that cost the same or less. You can buy a Toshiba Satellite with a 15-inch screen, three gigabytes of memory, and a 320 gigabyte hard disk for $400. And it’s powered by one of Intel’s latest and most powerful processors, while the Samsung Chromebook uses the wimpy Intel Atom processor, primarily found on inexpensive netbooks.

But Google is a smart, forward-looking company and there’s a logic to the Chromebook, which it sees as the first laptop designed for the Internet era. And it does have some attractive advantages over PCs and Macs:

• Cloud computing is here to stay and many people already rely daily on Internet-based software, like Web mail programs or streaming video services. So a cloud-centric computer isn’t a crazy idea. To help find useful Web-based apps, the Chromebook has a Web app store, similar to the app stores on tablets and smartphones. (The same store is built into the Chrome browser on PCs and Macs.)
• The Chromebook starts up almost instantly—in 10 to 15 seconds in my tests—much more quickly than most Windows machines. This is partly because it’s really just a big Web browser. In my tests, Apple’s MacBook Air started just about as quickly, but it costs twice as much.
• The Chromebook claims very long battery life—a whopping 8.5 hours for the model I tested. I didn’t do a formal battery test, but I was able to go for several days of intermittent use without charging it.
• Because all your apps, settings and files are stored in the cloud, if you lose your Chromebook, or wish to use someone else’s Chromebook, you can just log into your Google account and all your stuff will appear on the new machine.
• Google automatically updates the operating system, so you don’t have to deal with manual updates.
• Google claims that, because every app runs in a tab in the browser, and those tabs are walled off from the rest of the system, the Chromebook is much more secure than other computers and doesn’t require security software. The system even checks to see if it has been tampered with every time it starts.
• As for the offline problem, Google provides a small amount of memory to which you can save some files. You can insert a flash memory card or USB flash drive containing files. Some of these files, like images and PDFs, can be viewed offline in the browser, but not edited.

And the machine contains crude built-in music and video players, and a simple note-taking function, which work offline. Google says a handful of Web apps today work offline as well, and it is planning this summer to bring the same offline functionality to its own Gmail, Google Docs and calendar apps.

Top left, you can log into someone else’s Chromebook and find all your stuff there; while the keyboard is nice, the touch pad was clumsy to use.

But there are problems. For instance, I found watching a live baseball game to be a jerky, halting experience. Google blames this on the weak processor it’s using. And Netflix doesn’t work at all. Google says it’s working on this.

Also, while the keyboard is nice, and even includes special keys for switching between Web pages and browser windows, I found the touch pad on the Samsung to be imprecise and clumsy to use.

The Chromebook also crashed on me four times, mostly because of a “memory leak” problem Google says it will fix.

Printing, which only works over Google’s “cloud print” service and can’t be done via a cable, worked only some of the time for me.

And common files don’t automatically open in Web apps, though Google says it is also working on that.

It’s important to note that when you use a Chromebook you are trusting Google with the privacy and security of your data, and the company has run into occasional issues on both counts.

The bottom line: The best and most numerous programs are still designed for Windows and the Mac, and we still live in a world without ubiquitous, speedy, low-cost, unlimited wireless connectivity. So typical laptop users are better off with computers designed for the current hybrid world, where both robust offline and online functions are needed.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos at the All Things Digital website, walt.allthingsd.com. Write to him at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110622/google-unveils-a-laptop-with-its-brain-in-the-cloud/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110420/picking-out-a-laptop-in-the-brave-new-world-of-tablets/ http://allthingsd.com/20110420/picking-out-a-laptop-in-the-brave-new-world-of-tablets/#comments Thu, 21 Apr 2011 01:02:19 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/?p=1868 It is too soon to replace my twice-yearly laptop buyer’s guides with tablet buyer’s guides, but some days it feels like I should. Much of the energy that companies once poured into laptop designs and advances seems to have been drained off into a massive race to create tablet computers.

Still, while tablets are important, they don’t fully replace laptops, at least not yet. There remains huge value in the portable, clamshell-shaped computer with a physical keyboard, lots of ports, plenty of storage and more horsepower than tablets offer. So, here is my annual spring laptop buyers’ guide, a basic cheat sheet to the most important factors in the shopping process.

While I’ve focused on laptops, much of this advice also applies to desktop computers, a fading species. As always, these tips are for average consumers doing the most common tasks. This advice doesn’t apply to businesses or to hard-core gamers or serious media producers.

Timing

The first thing to consider is that you may want to wait to replace your laptop. Apple’s iPad, and the tablets coming in its wake, have put the computer industry in reset mode. If you own a tablet, you are likely to rely on your laptop less often, extending its useful life. And if you don’t, you’ll probably find over the next year or two that more interesting choices will appear as companies try to bring tablet qualities to laptops and laptop features to tablets.

Some early inklings: Apple’s MacBook Air and the Windows-based Samsung Series 9 start almost instantly, like tablets, and use chips for file storage, like tablets do, instead of hard disks. Also, Apple will soon roll out a new Macintosh operating system, called Lion, that displays programs as if they were tablet apps, and it already has an iPad-like app store for the Mac. Microsoft is working on a version of Windows, likely to appear next year, that fuses tablet and PC concepts. This software will run on some current computers, but new hardware, more tailored to these systems, will be coming.

As for tablets, some companies are working on designs that go beyond the iPad template to somehow integrate physical keyboards and traditional ports. This would certainly blur the lines and make for new, intriguing choices if you wait.

Tablets vs. Laptops

Laptop shoppers now need to consider if a tablet will suffice—especially if they are looking for a highly portable, secondary machine, as I noted in my last guide. The new iPad 2, which still starts at $499, has at least twice the horsepower of the original model, and now boasts 65,000 tablet-optimized apps. It is gradually morphing into a productivity platform—able, for instance, to edit videos. And it has now been joined by similarly powerful competitors running a new tablet version of Google’s Android operating system and by the $499 PlayBook, the first tablet from Research in Motion, which boasts speedy hardware and a new operating system. Hewlett-Packard’s new tablet, based on Palm technology, is coming soon.

Tablets tend to beat small, low-cost laptops in weight, start-up speed and battery life. And they are competitive for lots of common tasks, such as Web browsing, email, social networking, and viewing or playing documents, photos, videos and music.

But laptops still win for intensive work like creating long documents, or doing anything that requires precision and benefits from a physical keyboard. They also are more compatible with printers and external disks.

If you can’t wait, or don’t want a tablet, you’ll find relatively little has changed in laptop-land in the past six months or so. Here’s a rundown of what you should look for in a laptop.

Windows vs. Mac

As always, capable Windows 7 laptops cost less and offer much more variety than Mac laptops. The latter start at $999, while a few basic, full-size Windows machines can be had for $300 and the decently equipped Windows models are in the $500-to-$800 range. And Apple refuses to make tiny netbooks, leaving that dwindling category to the Windows guys. But Apple laptops combine sleekness, durability and strong battery life with well-regarded customer service. Macs can run Windows, at extra cost, if you need to use a program that is Windows-only, and they come with better built-in software. Finally, Mac users generally needn’t worry about malicious software, since it’s nearly all designed to run on Windows.

Memory

I recommend 4 gigabytes of memory, or RAM, on a new Windows computer, though a Mac will perform well on 2 gigabytes, unless you’re designing complex graphics. A new Windows machine should be labeled “64-bit” for best performance.

Processors

The newest, and most advertised, chips in consumer laptops are Intel’s i3, i5, and i7 Core models. But a PC with chips from rival AMD, which usually cost less, or older Intel dual-core chips, will do fine for most users.

Graphics

Pay attention to this, even if you aren’t big into video or games. Many computers offload nongraphics tasks to potent graphics chips for speedier operation.

In general, less-expensive machines have wimpier graphics hardware, and costlier ones have more-powerful graphics. Some have both and can switch between the two as needed.

Hard Disks

A 320 gigabyte hard disk should be the minimum on most PCs, though 250 gigabytes are fine for many average users. Solid-state disks, which lack moving parts and use flash memory, are costlier but faster and use less power. However, they usually have less capacity. As more data are stored online, huge amounts of local storage will be less crucial.

Ports

Many PCs now come with a port called HDMI, which makes linking to a high-definition TV easy. There is a new, much faster USB port, called USB 3.0, but so far, few peripheral devices can use it. And Apple has introduced yet another high-speed connector that has little practical use so far, called Thunderbolt.

Again, with the industry in flux and tablets on the rise, if you can wait to buy a laptop, do so. But if you must take the plunge, don’t buy more laptop than you need.

Find Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos at the All Things Digital website, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110420/picking-out-a-laptop-in-the-brave-new-world-of-tablets/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110406/samsungs-series-9-makes-a-statement/ http://allthingsd.com/20110406/samsungs-series-9-makes-a-statement/#comments Thu, 07 Apr 2011 01:02:43 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/?p=1856 I am writing these words on an extremely thin and stylish, but very light, laptop made of metal. Despite its slender body, it has a full-size screen and keyboard, good performance and claims strong battery life. Like a tablet, it uses solid-sate memory instead of a hard disk and wakes up almost instantly, ready to resume work when you open the lid, even if it has been idle for days.

You might assume I’m using one of Apple’s alluring MacBook Air machines, introduced in 2008 and revamped last October. But you’d be wrong. Instead, I’m using the first real Windows-based competitor to the Air. It’s the new Samsung Series 9, a gorgeous black machine with a super-bright, vivid 13-inch screen.

I’ve been testing the Series 9, and my verdict is that it is a solid, beautiful, speedy laptop that provides Windows users a good alternative to the MacBook Air. It bests the Air in some respects and trails it in others, but overall, I found the Series 9 satisfying to use.

Prospective buyers of the Series 9, however, should prepare to pay a lot—more than what even premium-priced Apple charges for the Air. And, based on my tests, I suspect they will see noticeably less battery life than Samsung claims, and significantly less than on the comparable MacBook Air.

Samsung officials consider the Series 9 a premium “halo product,” the kind of item a company produces when it wants to make a statement about the work it can turn out. Though Samsung is a giant company, it hasn’t been selling computers in the U.S. for long and it sees the Series 9 as a way of drawing attention to its brand in PCs.

The Samsung Series 9 laptop

In my experience with the Series 9, it did very well. I tested the consumer model, which runs Windows 7 Home Premium. It handled everything I threw at it with aplomb, and never crashed. I was able to simultaneously run Microsoft Word, Mozilla Firefox, Windows Live Mail, Adobe Reader, the TweetDeck Twitter reader and Apple’s iTunes with no problem. High-definition videos looked great.

The comparison with the MacBook Air, also a halo-type laptop, is inescapable. Unlike most Windows laptops, but like the Apple, the new Samsung has a large touch pad with no buttons—the entire pad is a button. Unlike most Windows laptops, but like Apple’s machines, it uses a sealed battery that isn’t designed to be replaced by the user. And, like the MacBook Air, it omits a built-in networking port, requiring you to plug in an adaptor to connect to a wired network. Neither machine includes a DVD drive.

The two laptops are about the same size and weight. The Samsung is a tad longer and narrower, and is two hundredths of a pound lighter. The Series 9 is a bit thinner by one measure. It’s 0.64 inch at its thickest point, versus 0.68 inch thick for the 13-inch MacBook Air at its thickest point. The more-severely tapered Apple is thinner at its thinnest point.

The price difference is larger. The consumer model of the Series 9, with the same base 128 gigabytes of solid-state storage as the entry-level 13-inch MacBook Air, costs $1,649, which is $350 more than the base Air. An 11-inch model of the Series 9 is due soon at $1,199, or $200 more than Apple’s base 11-inch Air.

One reason for the price gap is that the Series 9 has some newer or better components than the MacBook Air does. It is powered by Intel’s latest processor, while the Air uses the prior Intel chip. One of its two USB ports is a new version capable of higher transfer speeds. Its keyboard is backlit, unlike the latest Air’s. It has four gigabytes of memory versus two gigabytes on the Apple. It boasts a screen whose maximum brightness is a third higher than the Mac’s. And the screen is matte, not glossy, so it reflects light less.

But better specs don’t always translate into a better experience. For instance, in my tests, I found that the Mac was typically ready to work a couple of seconds faster than the Samsung and that, while the Samsung booted up and rebooted very quickly for a Windows PC, the Mac started and restarted in about half the time.

But the biggest difference, in my experience, was battery life. Both companies claim their competing laptops can get up to seven hours of use between charges. But my tests suggest that Samsung falls well short of that claim, while Apple meets or exceeds it.

In my longstanding battery test, I shut down all the power-saving features, turn up the screen all the way, leave on the Wi-Fi to collect email in the background and play an endlessly repeating loop of music until the computer runs out of juice. The Samsung Series 9 lasted just under four hours on that test, suggesting in normal use, with power-saving on, you’d likely get five hours or maybe 5.5 hours. By contrast, on the same test last fall, the 13-inch MacBook Air lasted over six hours—more than two hours longer. I estimated that, in normal use, you’d likely meet, or beat, Apple’s seven-hour claim.

Samsung explains the difference by noting that its screen is brighter, and takes more power to run. In fact, when turned up all the way, the Series 9 screen is brighter than the Air’s or any other laptop screen I can recall. But the Air’s screen, though the same size, has a much higher resolution, so you can see a lot more material without scrolling.

There were a couple of other things about the Series 9 that I found lacking. Instead of a slot for a standard SD camera card, it only has a slot for a smaller micro-SD card. There is no outside light to tell you the status of the battery.

But, all in all, this is a beautiful, capable laptop, as long you can live with its high price and mediocre battery life.

Find Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos at the All Things Digital website. Email mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110406/samsungs-series-9-makes-a-statement/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110330/verizons-lte-network-for-voice/ http://allthingsd.com/20110330/verizons-lte-network-for-voice/#comments Thu, 31 Mar 2011 01:11:53 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://mailbox.allthingsd.com/?p=883 Q:

I live in an area where the cellular voice service is very poor. I was going to buy the Verizon ThunderBolt LTE phone since the network map indicates I am in the LTE (4G) coverage area, so I thought my call problems would be over with. But based on your article, it sounds like my voice calls would remain the same. Do you have any insight as to when voice will move to LTE?

A:

As I noted in the column, Verizon is using its fast new LTE 4G network for data only. It still routes voice calls over its older networks, which are highly rated for voice, but work poorly for you.

International standards for voice calling over LTE are still being developed. Verizon only made its first test voice call over LTE in February. The company says it hopes to offer LTE voice calling sometime next year.

Q:

I am interested in using the iPad for photo viewing and do not wish to download photos directly from the camera. My camera uses a CF memory card. Can the iPad camera connection kit be used with this card, or might a thumb drive be used for data downloads through this additional hardware?

A:

Apple’s $29 iPad camera connection kit can handle either direct USB transfer of photos via a cable from the camera, or photo transfers from an SD memory card. To my knowledge, it isn’t compatible with the CF type of memory card.

And although it does have a USB port, Apple has limited that port to handling cameras. In my tests, it wouldn’t work with thumb drives, though a reader recently wrote me saying you can make it work with such drives, at least for photos, if you use a techie workaround—a powered USB hub. I haven’t tested this.

Q:

Can I use my Toshiba laptop to connect an iPad and an iPhone?

A:

It depends on what you mean by “connect.” If you mean somehow linking or merging the two Apple devices, the answer is no. If you mean connecting each separately to the Toshiba for syncing and backup with iTunes, the answer is yes.

Whether you are using a Windows PC or a Mac, the same copy of iTunes can be used to manage multiple iPhones, iPads and iPods, and you can have different content on each.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns at the All Things Digital website, http://walt.allthingsd.com. Email mossberg@wsj.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110330/verizons-lte-network-for-voice/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20110330/bp-our-data-blowout-preventers-dont-work-properly-either/ http://allthingsd.com/20110330/bp-our-data-blowout-preventers-dont-work-properly-either/#comments Wed, 30 Mar 2011 16:12:01 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=59483 Another messy spill for BP. The energy company has lost a laptop containing the personal information of thousands of people who filed claims related to last year’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Lost on a business-related trip in early March, the laptop held the names, Social Security numbers, phone numbers and addresses of some 13,000 claimants. And the only security measure protecting them was a password.

Evidently BP’s culture of risk, noncompliance and incompetence extends to IT management as well. At least it’s consistent.

“There is no evidence that the laptop or data was targeted or that anyone’s personal data has in fact been compromised or accessed in any way,” BP said in a statement. “We have sent written notice to individuals impacted by this event to inform them about the loss of their personal data and to offer them free credit monitoring services to help protect their personal information.”

So no harm, no foul, right? Just don’t ask us to explain why the personally identifiable information of 13,000 Gulf disaster victims were on an unencrypted laptop in the first place.

If this is the sort of care BP gives to claimant data, the company’s just bolstered the case against it for negligence.

Can’t wait to hear what BPGlobalPR has to say about this one.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110330/bp-our-data-blowout-preventers-dont-work-properly-either/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20110323/deleting-a-facebook-account/ http://allthingsd.com/20110323/deleting-a-facebook-account/#comments Thu, 24 Mar 2011 01:19:03 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://mailbox.allthingsd.com/?p=875 Q:

How can I permanently delete my Facebook account?

A:

Facebook doesn’t make it easy. The company tries to hang on to defecting users by promoting a halfway measure called “deactivating” an account, which merely hides you from the Facebook membership but keeps your information on the social network’s servers in case you wish to “reactivate” later. This process can be performed with a few clicks. Facebook says this is the default choice because “many users deactivate their accounts for temporary reasons” and then wish to restore them. But permanent, irreversible deletion of an account requires you to submit a request and wait for Facebook to act on it. The company deliberately delays acting on such requests “in case you change your mind,” according to the site. Details are at: http://on.fb.me/5NCCC0.

Q:

Our daughter will be entering a middle-school program next year which will allow her to do a lot of independent work with assignments completed in a word-processing program and turned in online. Can you recommend a durable, inexpensive, user-friendly first laptop or netbook?

A:

I’d recommend either the 13″ MacBook or the 11″ MacBook Air, which are very durable, easy to master, speedy and highly unlikely to ever get infected with malicious software. Each costs $999. They come with the best built-in suite of software in the industry and a superb operating system, plus Apple’s support is highly rated. If they cost too much, there are similar-sized Windows alternatives for less, hovering around the $600-to-$700 range. Netbooks, of course, can be even cheaper, but there are fewer of them these days, and their reliability can be iffy.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns at the All Things Digital website, http://walt.allthingsd.com. Email mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110323/deleting-a-facebook-account/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20110316/ipad-2-for-techies-and-virtual-keyboards/ http://allthingsd.com/20110316/ipad-2-for-techies-and-virtual-keyboards/#comments Thu, 17 Mar 2011 01:23:18 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://mailbox.allthingsd.com/?p=870 Q:

In your iPad 2 review, you recommended it over all other tablets for “average, nontechie users.” Does this mean you don’t recommend it for techie users?

A:

No, not at all. I merely phrased it that way because mainstream, average, nontechie users are my target audience, and I don’t review products through the eyes of techies, enthusiasts, hobbyists, or corporate IT departments. I never have. I have used similar phrasing in other columns over the years. I’m sure many people who consider themselves techies would find the iPad 2 to be the best tablet as well.

Q:

I intend to buy an iPad 2, but I also have an iPhone 4, which can be used as a Wi-Fi hotspot. Will this hot-spot feature work with an iPad 2? Does it mean I don’t need to get the model with the cellular network feature?

A:

Yes. I tested this scenario with a Verizon version of the iPhone 4 that had the hot-spot feature set up, and the iPad recognized it as a Wi-Fi network. And this method isn’t limited to Apple phones. I also tested the iPad 2 successfully with the hot-spot feature of an Android phone.

Q:

I’m thinking about replacing my old laptop with an iPad 2 but am somewhat reluctant considering that tablets do not have physical keyboards. How do you think the lack of a physical keyboard affects the use of a tablet vs. a new laptop?

A:

My own experience, with both iPads and other tablets that use virtual keyboards, is that they are just fine for things like email or short documents, once you get used to typing on glass.

However, if you never get the hang of that, the iPad works with wireless Bluetooth keyboards, and some iPad cases come with built-in physical keyboards. You would have to be the judge of whether this is a better solution for you than a small, light laptop like a MacBook Air, or a Toshiba Portege R700 series.

Email mossberg@wsj.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110316/ipad-2-for-techies-and-virtual-keyboards/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20110218/your-next-laptop-may-not-be-a-macbook-air-but-it-will-probably-look-like-one/ http://allthingsd.com/20110218/your-next-laptop-may-not-be-a-macbook-air-but-it-will-probably-look-like-one/#comments Fri, 18 Feb 2011 12:00:01 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=58066 It might not run Mac OS X or the sport the Apple brand, but chances are your next laptop will look a lot like the MacBook Air. This according to Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, who thinks the future of laptop design looks a lot like the one Apple revealed last October.

“You’ll have trouble finding one that doesn’t look like the MacBook Air,” he told Cnet. “I think the Macbook Air is a good mental image of what a clamshell laptop will look like. They’ll be thin because you won’t need any heat pipes, the fan, and extra batteries to lug around.”

That’s not a particularly original observation; Apple’s been touting the Air as the “Next Generation of MacBooks” since it first debuted. But it’s interesting that we’re now hearing it from C-level executives outside of Apple who seem perfectly willing to concede that the Air has redefined the concept of portable computers and parrot a theory put forth by Steve Jobs when he introduced the Air’s latest iteration: “We think all notebooks will look like these one day.”

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