A few years ago we moved our company completely off of Internet Explorer to Firefox because you wrote in your column that IE had security holes and lacked speed. Our IT Services provider has told us that IE9 has solved all the pitfalls of previous versions, it’s the safest yet, and there are many business-oriented sites that are much friendlier to IE. So is it OK to go back?

A:

I haven’t done a comparative browser review in a while, but I do agree that Internet Explorer has improved tremendously in speed, security and features. I think IE9 is a good browser and a reasonable choice, assuming you are a 100% Windows shop. IE is the only major browser that lacks a Mac version.

Some caveats: Each of the major browsers has improved, and, by some measures, some competitors beat IE in speed. A new, fast-rising contender since I wrote that old column is Google’s Chrome, which I find to be fast and reliable. IE’s market share, while still the highest, has shrunk dramatically and the browser market is more balanced. Finally, the number of business-oriented sites that require or do better in IE has been greatly reduced from, say, five years ago.

At the Consumer Electronics Show, the company is showing how each Android app can appear as its own Metro-style app in Windows 8’s new start screen. BlueStacks plans to offer its Android-on-Windows app for Windows 8 as soon as the new operating system ships, and is also working deals to have its App Player software preloaded on some new PCs.

BlueStacks is positioning itself as helping to fill the inevitable gap that will occur as Microsoft tries to move its developers to a whole new style of application.

Opinion within Microsoft is divided on BlueStacks, said CEO Rosen Sharma. Some are happy to see lots of apps that run in Metro, even if they are Android apps. Others, though, would prefer developers write apps directly to Windows.

As for computer makers, Sharma said that many are happy to have an option that allows them to offer up Android and Windows together.

And Mac fans, rest assured, BlueStacks wants to reach you, as well, and hopes to have something ready to show soon. “We are working on the Mac version,” Sharma said.

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

I wrote then:

“The unvarnished fact is that the networked society to which we’ve become accustomed in the last several years has a soft, vulnerable underbelly.

And the more we rely upon it, the more people with a combination of advanced technical skills and repugnant motivations are going to look for ways to turn it against us.

Some will do so as a means of making a personal profit. Others may see it as a way of advancing a political or ideological agenda.

But others will want to use theirs skills to do serious harm to innocent people on a large scale.”

Part of these predictions or ruminations or whatever you care to call them makes me think of the hijinks of the group that started out in the spring variously known as LulzSec, Anonymous and later adopted the moniker AntiSec. This loosely affiliated group emerged from the wake of the various attacks against Sony, and seemed to have nothing to prove but that it could make mincemeat out of whatever security measures had been put in place by Sony or whatever video game outfit it had targeted on a given day.

Sony’s Playstation Network was a favorite target, and its service was at least partially offline during two months ended in July.

Then, as summer dawned, the group’s members became aware of global politics and teamed up with Anonymous, the Wikileaks-allied band of hackers known for their campaigns of digital civil disobedience. Together they declared “immediate and unremitting war” on governments and corporations, and said their top priority would be to steal and leak any classified government information, including but not limited to email and documentation. They attacked an Arizona police agency as a way of making a statement against anti-immigrant laws in that state, and published the names and home addresses of several officers.

Later they sought to earn some street cred by stealing “secret” documents from NATO, only to learn after the fact that the documents they released had not only been released before, but weren’t even really all that secret to begin with. It wasn’t long before alleged members of the group started showing up in handcuffs, which seemed not to faze them. The prospect of body bags and real-world violence during a confrontation with Mexican drug cartels, however, did.

Yet for all the headlines they garnered and the headaches they caused, the LulzSec/Anonymous/AntiSec gang wasn’t anywhere near the scariest thing to appear on the computer security landscape in 2011. To my mind, one of the top three scariest things was the disclosure of Operation Shady RAT, which Intel-unit McAfee said appeared to be the biggest large-scale compromise ever, affecting 72 organizations and governments around the world, including the U.S., Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, Canada and India — some of them dating back as far as 2006. McAfee said the attacker was a “state actor,” though it declined to name it. The candidate highest on the short list was, naturally, China.

The second truly scary incident was the attack carried out against RSA Security, a unit of the IT company EMC, the maker of the popular SecurID tokens that so many people have on their keychains and use to create an added layer of security that goes beyond the password. Months later, the U.S. defense contractor Lockheed Martin was attacked with duplicate SecurID tokens.

Finally, the Stuxnet Trojan (used by parties officially unknown, but probably Israel with a little help from the U.S.) continued to fascinate and confound security researchers in 2011. Having caused nuclear centrifuges in Iran to explode in an attempt to set back that country’s nuclear weapons research program, Stuxnet was found to have a sibling called Duqu. Unlike Stuxnet, which messed with industrial control computers and made them do things they wouldn’t normally do, Duqu’s mission was much simpler: Steal everything in sight.

And after that, it was discovered by researchers at Kaspersky labs that Stuxnet and Duqu are part of an even bigger family, with at least three more siblings still undetected by researchers, and that all five were created by the same people and with the same tools. Chances are we’ll see at least a few of those final three in 2012, particularly as tension with Iran heats up.

So while there was much to consider scary happening on the Internet in 2011, I’m grateful for being wrong on one key prediction: That we didn’t see a significant computer attack used to physically harm innocent people on a large scale. That’s one prediction I hope to miss for years to come.

An expected software update on a slow day at the end of December is hardly big breaking news. But for start-up company Boxee, it signals a shift away from its software for PC browsers and a focus on Internet-connected TVs: The company says version 1.5 of the software will be its last Boxee update for PCs, Ubuntu and Mac computers.

It will be launched along with a Live TV dongle for the Boxee Box later in January.

Version 1.5 of the downloadable software on the Web will include better file support, a new onscreen display, search functionality, HTML5 WebKit-based browser, and will support multiple languages. It will run on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 (32 bit and 64 bit), Mac OS X 10.6 and higher, Linux Ubuntu 11.10, and will be available on Boxee.tv through the end of January.

And for those who would rather develop their own software for Boxee: The company is also releasing an open source version of its software.

The update won’t, however, offer PC users access to the same apps that are available on the Box, such as Netflix, Pandora and VUDU.

Boxee first launched in January 2010 as a Web application for watching Internet video online. In November 2010, it launched its awaited Boxee Box device, which came with a nifty Qwerty-style remote and offered a variety of apps — but it launched amid a growing market of Internet-connected TV boxes, including Apple TV, Google TV, Microsoft’s Xbox and the competitively-priced Roku box. At the time of the Boxee’s hardware launch, about 1.5 million people were using the Boxee software.

Boxee explained its shift away from Web software by saying it believes the future of TV will be driven by Internet-connected boxes, connected TVs and second screen devices like tablets. “While there are still many users who have computers connected to their TVs, we believe this use case is likely to decline as users find better alternatives,” Boxee wrote.

The company also said that the lack of premium apps on the downloadable version of Boxee was due to extensive DRM and certification requirements.

If you haven’t made your contributions to spurring the U.S. economy yet, here are 10 apps that can help you get your last-minute shopping done in record time:

Price Check by Amazon: Meant to be used in stores, Amazon’s Price Check app goes beyond just bar-code scanning. It enables users to compare prices on Amazon, using voice, text or by snapping a picture of an item in a store. The free app is available for iOS and Android devices. Its picture-matching feature doesn’t always bring up an exact match, and the fact that all points lead back to Amazon may make you wonder why you even left your couch. But with Amazon being a low-price leader with quick-shipping options, you probably won’t want to shop without it.

Google Shopper: Like Amazon’s Price Check, Google Shopper allows users to search for items using pictures, text, voice and bar-code scanning. But instead of directing shoppers to only one online source, it brings up millions of search results from across the Web. The latest version of the app includes the option to subscribe to Google Offers, Google’s answer to the daily deals offered by Web companies like Groupon and LivingSocial. So the latest update of Google Shopper should provide more local search results than previous versions of the app did, a common complaint from some users. The app is free in the iTunes App Store and, naturally, in the Google Android marketplace.

EBay’s Half.com: Limited to media purchases like books, movies, CDs, videogames and game consoles, eBay’s Half.com app offers items at fixed prices, based on a UPC; sellers are required to ship any item within a few days of sale. The app uses Speedy Checkout, rather than PayPal, for purchasing. Regular eBay users have griped about the inability to see more information about the seller, condition of the product or competitive prices, so if you’re looking for more than just a quick buy, or have a quirkier gift in mind, you might want to check out eBay’s standard app. This one is available for free on iPhone and Android phones.

RedLaser: Also owned by eBay, RedLaser is a popular, free, bar code and QR code scanning app that works on iOS, Android and Windows 7 phones. It’s been around for a couple of years now, but it has two new features that may be worth checking out: iOS app users that are also American Express cardholders can use AmEx rewards points to buy things in the shopAmex store, as we reported recently. And users can now search for price point and product information by scanning pictures from their phone’s camera roll.

Shopkick: Unlike apps that offer immediate comparative pricing on the Web — which have increasingly put pressure on brick-and-mortar retailers — Shopkick emphasizes local shopping, and turns it into a kind of game. The app offers “kicks,” or rewards, for stepping into stores like Target, Macy’s, Best Buy and others. Shopkick points can then be converted into store vouchers, iTunes gift cards and movie tickets. Additional points may be earned by scanning items in stores, even if you have no intention of buying them right away. The free app, which launched in 2010, is available on the iPhone and Android platforms.

Goodzer: Another app for local shopping, Goodzer culls results from more than half a million stores — and not just small shops, but national retailers like Wal-Mart, Sears, T.J. Maxx, Bloomingdale’s and Sephora. The latest version of Goodzer claims to work all over the U.S., even in tiny towns, and offers the ability to save product listings for later viewing and comparison. Available for iPhone only — version 4.0 or later — Goodzer offers fast results for in-store buying, as well as some online options.

Consumer Reports Mobile Shopper: Many apps allow users to scan more bar codes than a grocery store checkout clerk. But what if you’re also looking for product ratings from a trusted source? Enter the Consumer Reports Mobile Shopper app, available for both iPhone and Android OS. Earlier versions of the $4.99 app were buggy, but Consumer Reports says its recent update improves performance and the user interface.

WalkSafe: Ever hear the song “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer”? She was actually walking home from Best Buy, not our house, according to people familiar with the situation. Too bad Grandma wasn’t using WalkSafe, an app created by researchers from Italy’s University of Bologna and the Smartphone Sensing Group at Dartmouth. The app uses the smartphone’s sensors to keep an eye out for oncoming traffic, so you can browse your phone and comparative shop to your heart’s content. WalkSafe is free in the Google Android market; note that it’s currently not available for iOS devices.

NORAD Tracks Santa: This doesn’t have anything to do with shopping. Consider it a bonus holiday app.

You see, back in the days when people trudged to school in three feet of snow — uphill, both ways — they didn’t have search engines like Google and Bing to answer every question. Now, with the click of a mouse, kids can run searches to find out whether Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and Kim Jong Il are real.

For the more dubious members of your household, you can point them to a number of Santa-related apps. One of our favorites is from NORAD, the U.S.-Canadian military organization in charge of aerospace and maritime defense, which offers a free iPhone/Android app to help users “track” Santa Claus’s activity.

Parents can also download a free app called Postcards from Santa in both the Apple App Store and the Android market, and send personalized postcards from the big guy for $1.99.

You’re welcome.

(Image credit: iStockphoto | mattjeacock)

Motive

As the saying goes, people are motivated by either greed or fear. I think for many big companies, it’s more the latter. And Microsoft has a lot to be scared about.

If you poke behind its $71 billion in revenue and 39 percent operating margins, 30 percent of the goldmine comes from multiyear volume licensing agreements, which Microsoft calls Enterprise Agreements (EAs). According to industry analyst firm Forrester Research, “these profitable agreements bring in the kind of regular revenue preferred by financial-market analysts that monitor Microsoft’s performance.”

What motivates a customer to sign up for an Enterprise Agreement instead of simply buying Microsoft products, like Office, off the shelf? Well, historically, Microsoft pitched EAs as a way to ensure you can cover your workforce with Microsoft products at a discounted price level.

With companies investing in post-PC devices like smartphones and tablets, and evaluating alternatives to Microsoft productivity solutions, such as Google Apps or Salesforce.com, CIOs are starting to wonder whether renewing their EA is still a top priority.

In response to this threat, Microsoft is now pushing its Software Assurance (SA) licensing model, which allows customers to upgrade to newer products and also use its cloud services. The reason for the possible shift, Forrester says, is that “the twin revolutions of client mobility and cloud servers will kill device-based licensing, which is Microsoft’s existing model.”

So if Microsoft doesn’t embrace the cloud in a big way, the EA gravy train could come to an end.

Means

Apple is cool. Facebook is friendly. And Google isn’t evil. Yet look across a sea of computers in a typical company, and you’ll still see Microsoft everywhere.

And I’m not just talking about Windows. Microsoft has two key assets that will help it win the enterprise cloud:

• Office: While the Web and Web-based apps are fabulous for consuming content and even collaborating around it, Microsoft Office is still the standard in productivity to create corporate content. Love or hate those PowerPoint presentations, but they are still how most companies run. And for flexible analysis, Excel is unmatched. Heck, the Macintosh Business Unit at Microsoft (which is primarily Office for Mac) is a $350 million business on its own.
• Outlook/Exchange: For many workers, Microsoft Outlook (with Microsoft Exchange Server on the backend) is the first thing they boot up to start their workday, and the program they remain in all day long. According to industry analyst firm Radicati, 301 million corporate mailboxes used Outlook in 2010. Indeed, some companies have switched from Microsoft Outlook/Exchange to Google Apps and back, because users are too addicted to the interface and functionality of Microsoft Outlook.

So Microsoft still owns two of the key ways “knowledge workers” work with knowledge.

Opportunity

Microsoft isn’t working from a standing start. It actually jumped into the cloud relatively early in 2008 with its Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), a hosted platform for collaboration. While BPOS suffered from many challenges, mainly because it was based on a platform that wasn’t designed for the cloud, Microsoft made it clear several years ago that they are “all in” as a company in the cloud.

This year, after many delays and much anticipation, Microsoft finally announced its first platform built for the cloud, Office 365. The new version of Exchange is finally on par with its on-premise alternative. Microsoft SharePoint Online is now flexible enough to meet many enterprise use cases. And Microsoft Lync Online, a real-time chat and videoconferencing system, could be a game changer for company productivity.

In parallel, Microsoft is working away on Windows 8, its big bet on the tablet revolution. With all of Microsoft’s failed past attempts at mobility and tablets, some level of cynicism is expected. But some believe Microsoft’s conviction is real. If Microsoft even gets it 80 percent right on tablets, they will likely win in enterprises that are used to the manageability of Windows, and will be attracted to the inevitably deeper Office integration.

Conclusion

Don’t get me wrong: The innovation in the cloud is coming from all over, mainly from start-ups. For many of these start-ups and other non-enterprise organizations, a non-Microsoft approach will likely be the winner. But for the millions of you working in corporate America, Microsoft is probably the one bringing the cloud to a desktop near you.

Nick Mehta is CEO of LiveOffice and has served in senior operating roles in the enterprise and consumer technology markets for much of his career. He spent more than five years at Symantec Corporation and Veritas Software Corporation (now Symantec), where he served as vice president and general manager of the Enterprise Vault information archiving and discovery software business.

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/20111207/microsofts-steven-sinofsky-on-the-move-to-set-up-a-store-within-windows-8/ http://allthingsd.com/20111207/microsofts-steven-sinofsky-on-the-move-to-set-up-a-store-within-windows-8/#comments Wed, 07 Dec 2011 11:00:39 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=150661 Although Windows 8’s built-in app store represents a big shift for how developers sell their wares, Microsoft’s top operating-system executive characterized it as a natural evolution.

Users had been accustomed to scouring retail store shelves, but Windows President Steven Sinofsky said expectations have shifted, and consumers are looking to download the programs they need.

“What has dramatically changed over the years is digital distribution of software,” Sinofsky told AllThingsD in an interview Tuesday, shortly after Microsoft announced its plans for the marketplace at an event in San Francisco.

The Windows Store is a key component of Microsoft’s biggest overhaul in years for its flagship operating system. In addition to changing the way apps are sold, Microsoft is also changing the way they are programmed, and expanding the types of chips on which programs will run.

Microsoft is looking to deliver the operating system in fairly short order — on Tuesday, the company said a beta would be available in late February. Windows 8 is widely expected to arrive late next year, though Sinofsky declined to say anything about when the final version would ship.

Well, I asked, is it fair to say that things are going well?

“I always feel great,” Sinofsky said. “I get to come to work every day and see the build from the night before, and every day we do more stuff.”

I also got clarifications on a few nerdy details.

First of all, Microsoft has not changed its plans to make the store mandatory for developers looking to sell new-style Windows 8 apps to individuals. Businesses and developers will have their own means for delivering programs to users, though Sinofsky said Microsoft is not yet ready to detail just how that will work.

“When we get to beta, we will detail the mechanism,” he said.

Sinofsky also clarified that the Windows Store won’t be ported backward to run on older Windows versions. Though understandable, given that the marketplace is designed for all-new apps, the move means that Microsoft will have to build from the ground up when it comes to recruiting developers and building a user base.

That leaves Microsoft vulnerable to a chicken-or-egg problem at launch, though it can count on the fact that hundreds of millions of machines are sold each year, with the vast majority running the latest version of Windows.

Sinofsky would not address a question that has been making the rounds on Windows sites in recent days — whether Windows 8 machines running ARM processors will be able to run classic desktop-style applications.

Microsoft has demonstrated a classic desktop running on an ARM chip, though the company stressed that was merely a technology demonstration; Sinofsky declined to comment on Microsoft’s plans in that area.

And while Microsoft detailed the cut it expects to take from the Windows store (30 percent on apps or 20 percent once they generate $25,000 in sales), the company isn’t offering any guesses on just how big that business could be.

At last January’s CES, Microsoft confirmed its plans to have Windows 8 run on the ARM-based chips that power smartphones and tablets, along with the Intel and AMD chips that have traditionally been used. At our D9 conference in June, Sinofsky showed off the new look of Windows 8; the company added further technical details and issued an early preview release at its Build developer conference in September.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111207/microsofts-steven-sinofsky-on-the-move-to-set-up-a-store-within-windows-8/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111206/do-you-really-want-a-3-d-laptop-hp-hopes-so/ http://allthingsd.com/20111206/do-you-really-want-a-3-d-laptop-hp-hopes-so/#comments Wed, 07 Dec 2011 00:01:50 +0000 Lauren Goode http://allthingsd.com/?p=150914 Over the past couple of years, 3-D has been making its way onto PCs faster than consumers can say, “Wouldn’t it be great to watch a two-hour movie on my laptop while wearing battery-operated glasses?”

Tomorrow, Hewlett-Packard is launching the newest version of its HP Envy 17 with 3-D capabilities, alongside the new HP Envy 15 and Envy 17 notebook PCs, available through HP Direct.

For gamers, a 3-D PC offers different kinds of gaming options, and on a larger screen than a handheld device has. But do consumers — hardcore gamers aside — really want a 3-D PC? Let’s take a look at some of the technical specifics and other factors to consider when it comes to computers with 3-D options:

Hardware and glasses:
As the technology gets more advanced, more 3-D laptops are expected to come to market with autostereoscopic (glasses-free) screens. Toshiba, for example, recently introduced the Qosmio F750 (in Europe) and Qosmio F755 (North America); both laptops run Windows 7 and feature a 15.6-inch Toshiba TruBrite 1080p autostereoscopic 3-D display.

But most 3-D laptops — such as the Sony VAIO F 3D, the Origin EON15 3D, the Dell Alienware M17x R3 and the Dell XPS 17 with optional 3-D screen — currently have stereoscopic screens, which means users have to wear glasses to experience the 3-D effect.

Nvidia’s 3D Vision kit is commonly bundled with these laptops and includes a pair of the necessary glasses, as well as a 3-D vision USB controller/emitter.

The kinds of glasses consumers are supposed to wear vary, as well: There’s the “active” kind versus the “passive” kind. Nvidia’s 3-D glasses, for example, are active-shutter lenses (read: battery-operated) that create the 3-D image by rapidly shuttering the left eye and then the right eye. Passive — a.k.a. polarized — 3-D glasses are cheaper, look a lot like sunglasses, and work by allowing different levels of light into each eye. Note that these are different from the anaglyph cardboard glasses you might have worn at the movies as a kid.

So, if the 3-D viewing doesn’t give you a headache, the lack of standardization in this industry just might.

Content: It’s the chicken-or-the-egg problem: Hardware makers can’t sell 3-D products well without enough 3-D content for people to watch and play; content creators are hesitant to invest in making 3-D material when the format hasn’t yet been adopted on a mass scale.

But games may indeed be the shining star when it comes to 3-D on PCs. Game developers have been creating games with inherent 3-D capabilities for many years now; consumers just didn’t have the display options they now have to view the games. And 3-D PCs often include super-fast graphics cards that are optimal for game viewing.

In terms of content volume, Nvidia says its 3D Vision Kit includes software that converts “hundreds” of standard 2-D games to 3-D, including popular titles like Call of Duty: Black Ops, Batman: Arkham Asylum and Battlefield 3.

Price points: Despite the fact that slowing demand for PCs has been pushing netbook and notebook prices down for consumers, 3-D laptop pricing still ranges on the high side. Dell’s Alienware M17x R3 and XPS 17 (with 3-D screen), Toshiba’s Qosmio F755 and the Sony VAIO F 3D all currently retail for around $1,500.

The bottom line: laptops with 3-D capabilities tend to be more expensive at a base price. Add in the cost of active-shutter glasses when they’re not bundled in — anywhere from $40 to $150 — and consumers are paying even more.

Where does the new HP Envy 17 3D fit in?: The new HP Envy 17 3D does have some nice features, such as a 17.3-inch 3-D, LED Radiance display with full 1080p HD viewing, backlit keys, an upgraded touchpad and a Blu-ray and 12.7mm DVD-RW slot. It runs Windows 7, has an Intel Core i5-2340M processor, and its list price is $1,599.99, which includes one pair of 3-D glasses (it does not work with the Nvidia 3D Vision kit). Hopefully, battery life will show improvement from the last Envy 17 3D, which some reviewers complained was short-lived.

Readers, what do you think: Would you buy a 3-D laptop?

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111206/do-you-really-want-a-3-d-laptop-hp-hopes-so/feed/ 9 http://allthingsd.com/20111206/microsoft-promises-windows-store-will-offer-a-bigger-bite-of-the-apple/ http://allthingsd.com/20111206/microsoft-promises-windows-store-will-offer-a-bigger-bite-of-the-apple/#comments Tue, 06 Dec 2011 23:43:46 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=151035 Microsoft is set to offer more information later on Tuesday about the app marketplace that will be built into Windows 8.

Windows watchers might also get an update on just when to expect a full-fledged beta of the software. An early technical preview was released at the company’s Build developer conference in September.

AllThingsD will have live coverage of the event starting just before 4 pm PT.

In the meantime, check out our story from earlier this week, as well as from when Microsoft first debuted Windows 8 at our D9 event in June.

And now, the Windows 8 store event:

4:02 pm: Folks are still milling about. Guessing start time will be closer to 4:15.

4:08 pm: The event is at a swank Mission District art gallery, a perfect spot for those aspiring to hipness.

4:13 pm: Still waiting, though there are plenty of vegetarian crepes and chicken empanadas if anyone is hungry.

4:17 pm: Still no people on stage, though I do count five laptops.

Windows President Steven Sinofsky and Windows Web Services VP Antoine Leblond are on hand.

4:25 pm: We’ve been given the five-minute warning. (I threatened to call it the first Windows 8 delay if things don’t start soon.)

4:30 pm: Things are kicking off, with Leblond taking the stage.

4:31 pm: Leblond says he has five things to talk about: The store’s design, reach, business model, transparent terms for accepting apps and the economics.

“We’re going to give you a bigger bite of the apple,” Leblond said, promising the best economics of any app store.

4:33 pm: Leblond is recapping what Microsoft has said about Windows 8 — it works on ARM and x86 chips, small and big computers. “It’s the biggest and most significant developer opportunity ever,” he promises.

4:35 pm: Key difference will be that Windows Store will offer free trials. “The best advertisement for your app will be the app itself,” Leblond says.

4:38 pm: Demo time. So far, it’s the expected, with things like “top rated,” “top paid,” “top free,” “top new releases” and “rising stars.”

First partner mentioned is Disney, which is bringing its online books and magazines to Windows 8. I’ve also seen tiles for Evernote and Wordament, a Boggle-like game previously made for Windows Phone.

4:42 pm: A demo shows the game Cut the Rope being converted from trial to paid without out a second download and with the user’s place being saved.

4:43 pm: “We’re super excited to have this app on Windows,” Leblond says, adding that the Windows version, unlike Android and iOS versions, was all written in HTML5 and JavaScript. ‘You can build hardcore games using these technologies,” Leblond says.

4:46 pm: Windows Store apps will be able to be deep-linked to, and will show up in search engines, Leblond says. Also, the new version of Internet Explorer, IE10, which will be built into Windows 8, will add a button to the browser for apps that are in the Windows Store.

“Apps aren’t just locked inside the store,” Leblond says.

4:48 pm: Leblond is trying to make the case for the scale of Windows, noting there are 1.25 billion PCs on the planet.

“It’s a ridiculously huge number,” he says, noting it exceeds the count of cars on the planet.

He adds that there will be 400 million new x86 PCs in the next 12 months. Of course, for developers, the key will be the number of Windows 8 machines.

Leblond is now comparing Windows numbers to Apple and Android numbers, using sales over the last two years. “Apples to apples to apples,” he says.

Microsoft has shipped 500 million Windows PCs since Windows 7 shipped, compared with 247 million Android devices, 152 million iOS devices and 30 million Macs. “The reach of Windows is just so much bigger,” he says, noting that all of those rivals combined don’t add up to the number of Windows machines sold. “That’s what you get to participate in by developing Metro-style Windows apps.”

4:54 pm: Getting a demo now of the Chinese store, with an app from Renren that uses various touch gestures.

4:55 pm: Leblond: We will localize the store in all the languages Windows is localized in, (more than 100) payment mechanisms in 230 markets. In the top 40 markets, we will have local pricing and will pay developers in 20 different currencies.

4:57 pm: Next, Microsoft is showing how the store works with enterprise apps.

5:01 pm: Enterprise apps can apparently be used without going through the store. But, according to Microsoft’s past statements, all other Metro apps have to be sold through the app store. Not clear if that has changed or if there is only an exception for IT-deployed apps.

5:02 pm: On to business model talk. Rivals have too many constraints, Leblond says, pointing specifically to how Apple stands between publishers and their customers and takes 30 percent.

“We’re going to take a different approach,” Leblond says. There will be mechanisms for in-app purchases and trial apps built into the store, but you won’t have to use them if you don’t want to, Leblond says.

5:04 pm: Demo of Animoto, a video editing and production app with a mix of free tools and those that require upgrading to a paid version.

5:08 pm: Next demo shows a publisher, the Daily Telegraph, able to handle its own subscription back end using its authentication and purchasing mechanisms (something Apple doesn’t allow).

“It’s not an app you could have on the iPad,” Leblond says — at least not without giving Apple a cut and using their authentication and payment mechanisms.

Next example is eBay, which uses PayPal for payment.

5:12 pm: Next up is Wordament, an example of an ad-supported app. Developers are free to choose whichever ad platform they want, Microsoft says.

5:14 pm: Leblond is on to the process Microsoft will use for approving apps. Leblond says there are two extremes, the Android Market with virtually no checks ahead of launch; and Apple, with its stringent, sometimes opaque processes.

Methinks Microsoft is going to position itself in between. Yep, so says Leblond.

To do that, Microsoft will offer developers the tools Microsoft will use to check their code. “It is the same checks that we are going to use.” Microsoft showed some of this at its Build conference in September. Developers can see where they are in the process, including time estimates on how long each stage typically changes.

Microsoft will also offer developers some download and sales stats, and other usage information, including how often one’s app has crashed and where those crashes are occurring. “We’re going to show you all that stuff,” Leblond says.

5:18 pm: We’re still waiting for the big question — just what cut Microsoft plans to take.

Here we go.

Leblond said the goal was to return the most money to developers. Pricing can be from $1.49 to $999.99. “A thousand bucks is just too much for an app,” he says.

Microsoft will start out with taking a 30 percent cut, but Redmond’s cut will drop to 20 percent as soon as the app makes $25,000 from sales and in-app purchases .

Google’s Chrome Web Store, though, takes just 5 percent.

Apple, meanwhile, gets a 30 percent cut for its Mac and iOS app stores.

5:25 pm: Store will debut with a beta of Windows 8 in late February 2012. Free apps only at first. App submissions will be by invite only, it says.

“We want great apps, and we want great apps in our store,” Leblond said, wrapping up the event.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111206/microsoft-promises-windows-store-will-offer-a-bigger-bite-of-the-apple/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111202/why-today-is-a-very-good-day-to-update-java-on-your-computer/ http://allthingsd.com/20111202/why-today-is-a-very-good-day-to-update-java-on-your-computer/#comments Fri, 02 Dec 2011 13:45:03 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=149758 Consider yourself warned: Today is a very good day to update the version of Java running on your computer. This applies to you whether you run Windows, Mac OS X or Linux. If you’ve noticed your machine suggesting that you update Java, do it right away.

The reason? A scary vulnerability in Java that was detected over the summer, and which Oracle has subsequently fixed, is being exploited by people who create the malware and crimeware that causes so many headaches for home users and corporate IT departments.

The risk is especially acute at large companies with big fleets of desktops and notebooks to manage. If you’re a home user, the patch is easy to install. But most employees don’t have administrative privileges on their work desktops or notebooks, so someone from the IT department has to come and install the patch for them.

That’s a big, time-consuming process, says HD Moore, chief security officer at Rapid7, a Cambridge, Mass-based company that specializes in helping companies stay ahead of new computer security vulnerabilities. He’s also the chief architect of Metasploit, which Rapid7 owns.

One of the reasons this particular vulnerability is so bad is that even after it was detected and fixed, it wasn’t fully understood how dangerous it is, Moore says. Crimeware creators somehow figured it out ahead of most security researchers, and started adding code to Web sites designed to take advantage of it. And that’s especially dangerous at this time of the year, when people are shopping online both at home and the office. “It’s kind of like a perfect storm,” Moore told me yesterday. Add to that the fact that many companies have IT staff taking vacation during the holiday season, and the timing couldn’t be worse.

Enterprise is historically bad at patching Java vulnerabilities anyway, because it doesn’t have the same automatic update tools that Windows or Adobe Flash does. “The tools for patching Java aren’t that great,” Moore told me. “A Java update just isn’t treated with the same fervor as a Windows update.”

So how bad is this one? The National Vulnerability Database rates it a 10 out of 10 on the severity scale, and also rates it as “low” on the access complexity scale — meaning it’s really easy for the bad guys to carry out an attack using it.

Security blogger Brian Krebs discovered the vulnerability being “weaponized,” that is, built into the software that computer criminals buy on the black market. For instance, those who have bought something called the Blackhole Exploit Kit, a $4,000 software toolkit used to target Windows machines, are getting automatic updates that include tools to take advantage of the Java vulnerability.

What to do until you can get all your machines updated with the latest version of Java? Simple, really: Disable it and block it at the firewall, until all the machines on the network that need the update have it, Moore says.

Rapid7, incidentally, is a security company on the rise. Just last month it raised a $50 million series C round of funding, led by Technology Crossover Ventures and joined by previous investors Bain Capital Ventures; Tim McAdam, a TCV partner, joined Rapid7′s board.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111202/why-today-is-a-very-good-day-to-update-java-on-your-computer/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111130/apple-itunes-match-review/ http://allthingsd.com/20111130/apple-itunes-match-review/#comments Thu, 01 Dec 2011 02:03:21 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=148916 One of the more interesting ideas in the new wave of cloud-computing services is the music locker. This is a service that lets consumers store their music collections on a remote server and access them from any device, either by streaming the tunes or downloading them.

Amazon and Google offer such locker services. But they have a big downside: You have to upload all your music to your locker first. If you have a collection of several thousand songs or more, that can take days as most home Internet connections have slow upload speeds, even if their download speeds are decent.

Now, Apple has introduced a locker service that mostly eliminates that problem by doing away with the need to upload the vast majority of your music, while still allowing you to populate your locker with your songs quickly and easily. It’s called iTunes Match, and it’s the last piece in the company’s rollout of its massive iCloud initiative, which includes things like wireless synchronization of contacts and calendars.

Here’s how it works. Instead of making you upload your song files to Apple’s servers, iTunes Match scans the iTunes library on your Macs or Windows PCs, then matches the titles you have with the 20 million songs Apple has the right to distribute via its iTunes store. If your songs are included in that 20 million, Apple simply places them in your online locker. In almost all cases, users will be left with only a small remnant of songs to upload—such as recordings by garage bands. (ITunes Match works only for digital music, not movies, TV shows or audiobooks, even if they’re available in iTunes.)

Once the songs are in the cloud, they also appear in your library in iTunes on computers, or in the Music apps on iPads, iPhones and iPod touch devices. You can stream the music, or press an icon with a downward arrow inside a cloud to download it. You can include up to 10 devices in iTunes Match. Plus, iTunes Match—which costs $25 a year for up to 25,000 songs—covers any song you own, regardless of how you obtained it. That includes songs purchased from non-Apple music services or imported from CDs, or even those that were downloaded illegally.

Pressing the cloud icon beside a song downloads it to a device.

I’ve been testing iTunes Match on several Macs, a Windows PC, and on an iPad and an iPhone. In general, I found Match delivers on its promises, despite some limitations and glitches, several of which Apple told me it will remedy via software updates.

Because of Match, my music collection is now complete and essentially identical on all my computers and on my iPad and iPhone, allowing me to access any of my songs from any of these devices, without manual synchronization via a cable, or paying more than once for the same song. My Match locker is even accessible from my Apple TV device.

Match is an optional addition to an existing free service called iTunes in the Cloud, which covers only songs you bought from Apple’s iTunes store, or which you buy there in the future. Songs bought from the iTunes store don’t count against the 25,000-song limit in iTunes Match.

Google’s music locker is currently free, but limited to 20,000 songs. Amazon is now offering unlimited music storage for $20 a year as part of a broader plan that allows storing various types of files in the cloud.

One nice aspect of iTunes Match is that even if your songs are in a lower-quality format before they go into your iTunes Match locker, Apple streams or downloads them in a relatively high-quality format.

In my tests, I scanned and matched the iTunes libraries on several computers containing all my music—about 5,500 songs, a number Apple says is fairly typical for iTunes users. The process took under an hour, including the time needed to upload the minority of songs Apple couldn’t match. However, I have a mostly commercial collection and a fast Internet upload link in my home. I have heard from at least one colleague with a larger library and a slower Internet broadband link, who says it is taking forever to upload his nonmatched songs to Apple.

In my case, some of my songs weren’t accepted by iTunes Match, and were marked with cryptic icons that Apple doesn’t adequately explain. A handful were declined because of an unspecified “error.” Apple later told me these files were corrupted, sometimes so subtly that it didn’t affect playback. Others were declared “ineligible.” Mostly, these songs had been imported from CD years ago at a quality rate of lower than 128 kilobits per second. Also ineligible are things like audiobooks or PDF booklets Apple sells with some albums.

In my case, these exceptions were reasonable and few, but Apple needs to explain them better. The company says it is working on doing just that. In the case of the subtly corrupt files, Apple says a new version of iTunes coming soon will be more liberal about disqualifying a song.

I also ran into two Match problems on my iPhone and iPad that Apple says are bugs that will be fixed in an upcoming release of the operating system for those devices. One bug scrambles the alphabetical order of songs, albums and artists. Another causes album art to either never appear, or to show up only when a song is almost done playing. Apple won’t say when the bug fixes will be ready.

There are a couple of issues that Apple has no intention of changing. One: If a person has more than 25,000 songs, Match won’t allow the user to designate a subsection for storage in the cloud.

The other: On iPhones and iPads, Apple downloads the whole of any cloud-based song you’re streaming, even if you don’t want it on your device. Apple says it does this for smooth playback, and for playback when you’re offline. It adds that all songs stored on your hand-held devices are now placed in a special cache from which old or rarely played songs are automatically removed periodically to make room for new ones.

In all, I like iTunes Match, and can recommend it to digital music lovers who want all their tunes on all their devices. It’s another nice feature of iCloud, priced reasonably.

Write to Walt at walt.mossberg@wsj.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111130/apple-itunes-match-review/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111123/seven-questions-for-seagate-ceo-steve-luzco-about-the-effects-of-the-thailand-floods/ http://allthingsd.com/20111123/seven-questions-for-seagate-ceo-steve-luzco-about-the-effects-of-the-thailand-floods/#comments Wed, 23 Nov 2011 13:45:10 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=147007 Name an executive of any company that makes any kind of computing hardware that contains a hard drive, and you can bet they’re worried about Thailand.

The country is now beginning the arduous job of cleaning up from the floods that killed upwards of 600 people and dealt a body blow to its industrial and manufacturing base.

One industry hit especially hard is the computer business. The world relies on factories in Thailand to turn out critical components used to build hard drives, and factories there are out of commission for now. This is not a trivial problem — the factories in question are not easy to replace, retool and restart once they dry out. Nor is the answer simply for the hard drive manufacturers to build new factories somewhere outside the flood zone.

This is the kind of supply chain disruption that the computer industry hasn’t seen in many years. I had a chance to talk with Steve Luczo, the CEO of Seagate Technology, for his view of the situation. Seagate has been relatively lucky in that its factories haven’t been directly impacted like those of Western Digital and Toshiba. But many companies that supply Seagate with necessary components have been hit, and it will be some time before they’re back on their feet.

Luczo told me that the computer industry as a whole — including companies who make PCs, servers, workstations and any other device that contains a hard drive, whether a set-top box or an enterprise storage device — can expect acute supply-chain disruptions to last well into 2012, and that it will take until the end of 2013 for the industry to return to its pre-flood operating posture. You read that right: It will be two years before the supply of hard drives is anywhere near “back to normal,” and there are simply no easy solutions for getting it fixed.

An estimate by the market research firm IHS iSuppli pegs the available supply at 125 million units, which is about 29 percent short of demand of 175 million units. By its reckoning, more than one-quarter of the world’s hard drive manufacturing capacity has been disrupted in one way or another, including 45 percent of the capacity devoted to making hard drives for personal computers. I spoke with Luczo by phone yesterday, and tossed in an extra eighth question because of the importance of the subject.

AllThingsD: Steve, at a high level, I think everyone understands the problem. There’s been a terrible flood in Thailand, and a lot of factories that make crucial parts for hard drives are out of commission. To that end, I think people expect this to be a temporary problem that works itself out in a couple of months. But you say it’s a much more complex problem than most people realize. You’re tracking this situation day to day, and probably hour by hour. So, how bad is it, really? And what’s likely to happen?

Luczo: What’s surprising to us is that even with all the data out there — we’re six weeks into it — there are a lot of fairly sophisticated companies that haven’t fully come to grips with the depth of the problem and the duration that is likely to occur. What is going to happen in the next couple of weeks is that the real shortage begins to show up right about now. There was already a lot of built inventory and a lot of finished goods moving through the system. And now all that is gone, and I think customers are starting to see shelves of parts go empty, and realizing that they’re not going to be filled for anywhere from one to two months. So the concern is heightened.

We heard Meg Whitman talk about this on HP’s earnings call Monday. She said HP stepped in and started doing some strategic buying. She says HP is going to see effects at least through the first half of next year. Apple talked about it on its earnings conference call, too. Are you hearing from them?

Tim Cook at Apple was way in front of this. I saw Tim the first week it happened, and took him through the situation, and in 15 minutes he understood the magnitude of it. Meg was on the second week of her job as CEO when I went to see her, and she got it right away. HP’s procurement VP, Tony Prophet, was also early to understand this. Companies like that reached out to us early on, because they understood that this is going to be an extended problem. They started asking for longer supply agreements. Deals that would typically last about a year, they’re now asking for two years.

How bad is it really going to be? What’s your outlier worst-case scenario, and then what do you think is a little more realistic?

If you think pre-flood, a mix [of products] that the customers need, the industry had the capacity to ship about 190 million units a quarter. Pre-flood, we expected the demand to be pretty consistent at about 180 million a quarter, with a bump in September 2012 for Windows 8. We now believe the March quarter is going to much more difficult than the December quarter, and December is going to be about 120 million or so. We think the March quarter will be about 120 million, in the best-case scenario. And that’s with customers mixing down pretty aggressively; and by that, I mean companies like Western Digital, who don’t have access to the sliders [a critical component in a drive], are shipping one- and two-headed devices so they can ship more units. So instead of shipping a drive that contains two disks and four heads, which is what the market needs right now, they’ll be shipping a one-disk, one-head or one-desk, two-head product. They’ll be maximizing the units they can sell, rather than shipping the product the customer actually needs. … So we see something like 130 million for March on the optimistic side, and then 150 million for June, 170 for September and then 190 million for December. And so by the end of 2012 you’re back to being close to industry demand. But even then, you’ve not included the impact of that missed 100 million units. And that will take another year to absorb, because it’s not like the industry is building new factories to chase that demand. We can’t over-invest to meet some bubble and then get stuck with excess capacity.

I think, intuitively, people expected companies like Seagate to just build more factories outside of the flood zone, but it’s not that simple, is it? Would this not be a moment to add capacity?

There are some in the investment community who think that’s what is going to happen, and that there will end up being a supply glut after all this is over, but it’s not the case. For us, it’s more a function of how to recover the supply chain and then work with the customer to get a good read on what their needs are for the next several quarters. If we see a multiquarter shortage that goes beyond what I described before, then we would think about maybe putting some capital in place. But we’re not going to do that to solve a temporary problem, because we end up being stuck with the excess capacity. Now if it turns out there is no recovery, and then the industry is more constrained than I first described — and that, by June, the industry is still 30-40 million units short and looks like it will be for the next six quarters — we might revisit. But then we’d want longer-term commitments to make sure we’re not overinvesting. But we’re not to that point yet.

What is this doing to prices? And what does that mean to the person who wants to buy a computer or server this year or next year?

If you look at a 10-year moving average trend, the industry has in general seen prices come down about 2 to 3 percent a quarter, and that is for a particular product. In 2009, there was a little price erosion, and that was because the storage industry recovered quickly from the recession. And there had been massive capital cutbacks, so there were big shortfalls through all of 2009 and into 2010. Then, when the Greece crisis happened, that put a big flatline on a lot of growth, and the industry had put in a lot of capital because everyone expected there would be growth. So, since spring of 2010, the price erosion has been higher than normal, which would show that supply is greater than demand. And what this flood has done is drive the supply curve down, while the demand curve has stayed constant. For OEMs [original equipment manufacturers, or the PC and server manufacturers like Apple, HP and Dell, who buy directly from Seagate], you’re seeing an average increase of about 20 percent, and in the channel [resellers who sell parts to smaller PC and server vendors], probably much higher. So all the sensational quotes you see about pricing are about those that occur in the channel, where we have no control whatsoever.

The markups in the channel are much higher? Are the channel guys taking advantage of this?

Yes, they’re higher, but I don’t think they’re taking advantage. I’ve heard stories about drives that we sell to OEMs for $60 that show up in the channel at $105. Normally the channel price is within about 10 percent of the OEM price. It’s just the law of supply and demand. They can’t get supply. The channel is getting about a third, at most, of the supply they would typically get. The OEMs are the ones with the supply agreements, so everyone in the channel is way short. In some market segments, supply is about 70 percent below what the demand is. And so those shortages are very acute. The channel is selling the few drives that are out there to whoever needs them the most and is willing to pay for them.

So what does all this mean for Seagate, specifically?

For us it’s a different story, because we’re going to be driving more volume than our competitors, because we’re not as directly affected, and we’re going to be making some  technology transitions. When we do that, it lets us take cost out of our product, so we can offer more capacity for the same or fewer parts. That helps us drive down pricing. Our goal is to recapture some of the more aggressive pricing of the last eight quarters, in order to sort of get our business back in balance. Our long-term business model calls for gross margins of 22 to 26 percent. And we use our manufacturing expertise to drive down our costs and then pass that on to our customers. This quarter, end users really won’t see it, because product has been built and has been on the shelves. As the shortages just started occurring, you’re starting to see prices increase in the channel. And then at the OEM there will be shortages in some high-value areas like enterprise storage or cloud computing. You’re going to have to see price increases, because there’s such big shortages.

One thing that occurred to me when I first wrote about this a month or so ago is that it represents an opportunity for the flash memory chip companies to make some inroads against hard-drive guys like you, mainly on notebooks. Is there a threat that flash could pick up some of the demand?

Some of it, but not very much. I think to the extent that there is a high value purchaser who can afford to pay $200 for 100 gigabytes, then that market will expand from 1-2 percent to 3-4 percent. Of the 35 to 40 percent shortage that exists, could you see a little of that get absorbed by silicon? The answer is yes. But there’s a cap. There’s just not enough of a raw supply of silicon to meet all the demand. Our industry will ship 400 exabytes this year. We would have shipped 450, were it not for the floods. Of that, 180 exabytes is notebooks. Reduce that by 30 percent, and you get about 55 or 60 exabytes. If you were to take all of the capacity from Samsung’s newest state-of-the-art flash factory, and dedicated it just to notebooks, it would only put out 7 exabytes a year. Plus, there are already other markets demanding flash, like  tablets and cellphones and other things. So it’s not like you can steal from those other markets. You’re not going to take a $32 product and replace it with a $350 product. Can you do it at the edges of the market? Sure. But the threat is capped by the amount of silicon available and the price point for flash storage, which is still an order of magnitude higher.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111123/seven-questions-for-seagate-ceo-steve-luzco-about-the-effects-of-the-thailand-floods/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111116/hewlett-packard-dons-its-ultrabook-suit/ http://allthingsd.com/20111116/hewlett-packard-dons-its-ultrabook-suit/#comments Wed, 16 Nov 2011 17:11:23 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=144802 It’s been about three weeks since Hewlett-Packard announced its decision to keep its PC division, formally known as the Personal Systems Group, or PSG. Today marked the first serious batch of new PC introductions from HP since that decision.

The one getting all the attention is an offering in the Ultrabook category that’s priced at $900. It’s called the HP Folio¹³, and aside from its price, its headline feature is that it delivers a full nine hours of battery life.

The Ultrabook is a concept primarily being pushed by Intel, so much so that Intel even owns the trademark rights to the name. Inside the Folio¹³ are the latest Intel Core processors. It represents the hopes of a PC industry that has seen anemic sales with little sign of a bounceback, though that depends on whom you ask.

Major challenges have been the continued popularity among consumers of Apple’s iPad, and to a lesser extent other tablets, and the impressive sales of Apple’s MacBook Air, which now accounts for nearly a third of Apple’s notebook sales. It may not be an Ultrabook technically, but conceptually the similarities are substantial: Thin, light, sporting solid-state drives and speedy boot-up times.

And while the MacBook Air is a big winner for Apple, there’s as yet little evidence that there’s much demand for a similar product running Windows. Last month, it emerged that Acer and Asus expect to sell only 100,000 each by the of 2011, which would amount to between one third and one half of what they originally hoped.

Yes, it’s early days for Ultrabooks — machines that support Intel’s full design vision won’t be on the market for another several months. And the industry is just now starting to bang the drum seriously for the Ultrabook. Asus Chairman Jonney Shih talked about the category in an interview with Walt Mossberg at AsiaD last month.

In its press releases, HP expressed the hopes of an entire industry when it quoted IDC analyst Crawford Del Prete saying he expects PC makers — including HP — to sell 95 million Ultrabooks by 2015. At their current levels, there’s nowhere to go but up.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111116/hewlett-packard-dons-its-ultrabook-suit/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111109/a-guide-for-pc-buyers-not-looking-for-a-tablet/ http://allthingsd.com/20111109/a-guide-for-pc-buyers-not-looking-for-a-tablet/#comments Thu, 10 Nov 2011 02:02:27 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=142638 If you’re shopping for a laptop this autumn, you’ll find most of the capabilities and prices in the sluggish market unchanged. You’ll still likely be considering whether it’s time to get a tablet instead of a new laptop.

But if you’re focused on a Windows machine, and you look carefully, you’ll see that a new class of portable PC is beginning to appear. It’s called the “ultrabook,” and is essentially the Windows version of Apple’s popular, nearly four-year old MacBook Air—an ultraskinny, light, speedy, versatile laptop with long battery life.

The arrival of the ultrabook is a welcome development, not only because it spices up the market, but because I consider the MacBook Air the best all-around consumer laptop available, and anything that emulates it is a good idea, if done well.

There are only a few ultrabooks available this season and they aren’t for everybody. Most have limited storage and, like the MacBook Air, are priced near the $1,000 range—rich territory in a tight economy where Apple buyers seem comfortable, though not many others. Still, this new class of Windows laptop is the only fundamentally fresh choice in the laptop market.

If the price is too high, you should be able to get a capable major-brand laptop for between $500 and $800, with plenty of storage and memory.

My annual fall laptop buyers’ guide today offers tips for wading through the technobabble in computer ads, and in online and physical stores. As always, these tips are for average consumers doing common tasks, such as email, Web browsing, social networking, general office productivity, photos, music, videos and simple games. This guide isn’t meant for corporate buyers, or for hard-core gamers or serious media producers.

The recently unveiled Asus Zenbook

The tablet question: Tablets like Apple’s iPad 2 and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 can perform many, though not all, of the functions of a laptop. Most tablet lovers find themselves reaching for their laptops less often to do things like email. If your budget is limited and you’re thinking of shelling out $500 for a full-size tablet, consider whether you can put off getting a new laptop this year instead of buying both.

Future Windows: If you’re shopping for a Windows laptop, be aware that in 2012, Microsoft will offer a new version of Windows, called Windows 8, with a radical new multitouch interface that makes use of a touch screen. The software giant stresses that Windows 8 won’t require such a screen, and will still work with a mouse or touch pad. But unless you have a laptop with a multi-touch screen, you won’t be able to take advantage of the Windows 8 touch-screen features.

Ultrabooks: Four companies make this class of laptop: Acer, Lenovo, Asus and, shortly, Toshiba. These machines are under 0.8 inch thick, weigh less than three pounds, and generally claim long battery life and almost-instant startup times. All run Windows 7; none has a touch screen. Like the MacBook Air, they use solid-state drives (though some combine these with standard hard disks) and have screens of either 11 inches or 13 inches. Prices generally run from around $900 to $1,100.

Windows vs. Mac: Mac laptops cost more and offer less variety than Windows laptops. The least expensive Mac laptop is $999, while a few stripped-down Windows portables can be had for under $300. Well-equipped Windows laptops start at $500 to $600. But Apple laptops combine beauty, ruggedness and long battery life with good customer service. Macs also come with better built-in software, including the new Lion operating system, which includes some tablet-like features. And they can run Windows, at extra cost.

Finally, Mac users don’t fear viruses and other malicious software, because virtually none work on the Mac.

Memory: Get at least 4 gigabytes of memory, or RAM, on a new Windows computer. On a Mac, most consumers can get away with 2 gigabytes.

Processors: Intel’s latest chips are the i3, i5, and i7 Core models. But a laptop with chips from rival AMD, or older Intel dual-core chips, also is OK.

Graphics: Usually less expensive machines have wimpier graphics hardware, and costlier ones have more powerful graphics. Better graphics can make your whole machine faster, because more and more software is designed to offload general processing tasks onto the graphics chips.

Hard disks: A 320-gigabyte hard disk should be the minimum on most PCs. Solid-state disks, like those in the new ultrabooks or the MacBook Air, generally come in sizes of 128 GB or 256 GB. They omit moving parts and use flash memory to store your files, as on a smartphone or tablet. They are costlier, but faster, and use less power.

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 few peripheral devices can use it. And Apple has introduced yet another high-speed connector that has little practical use so far, called Thunderbolt.

As always, be wary of sales pitches and don’t buy more laptop than you need.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111109/a-guide-for-pc-buyers-not-looking-for-a-tablet/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111029/hewlett-packard-one-messy-piece-of-business-cleared-up-but-many-to-go/ http://allthingsd.com/20111029/hewlett-packard-one-messy-piece-of-business-cleared-up-but-many-to-go/#comments Sat, 29 Oct 2011 20:16:49 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=137829

“Glad that long national nightmare is over.”

That was the comment — paraphrased from Gerald Ford’s inaugural address upon the close of the Nixon presidency — that I received in an email from an industry source on Friday. The quote was sent in reference to the now-concluded business surrounding Hewlett-Packard’s exploration of “strategic options” concerning its Personal Systems Group.

Now that HP CEO Meg Whitman has concluded that the company is stronger with PCs than without them, there remains a fair bit of unfinished business from the dog’s breakfast of changes announced on Aug. 18.

First and foremost are the questions about the future — or lack thereof — of HP’s webOS business.

The only thing we know for certain is that HP is out of the business of hardware that runs the operating system it picked up in last year’s $1.2 billion acquisition of Palm. HP killed that business after sales of its TouchPad tablet device proved initially disappointing, only to see reduced prices spark a surge in interest from buyers.

During a conference call with analysts earlier this week, Whitman conceded that HP “needs to be in the tablet business” — and that it intends to participate in that business using Microsoft’s tablet-friendly Windows 8 operating system. She also said a long-term decision regarding the webOS software business is forthcoming within the “next couple of months.” HP has already carried out a round of layoffs in that division.

Another not very encouraging sign amid the ongoing uncertainty is the departure of Richard Kerris — who had headed up HP’s webOS developer outreach efforts — for a similar Windows-related job at Nokia.

And related to that is the fate of Jon Rubinstein, the former CEO of Palm and former head of Apple’s iPod business unit. Once the public face of webOS — and of Palm before that, as its final CEO — he has not been visible at all during any of HP’s recent upheavals.

That said, rumors have been almost nonexistent about Rubinstein seeking or being recruited for a job elsewhere. It’s not like he needs the work, but his apparent future is about as cloudy as that of the webOS itself. Currently he’s a product guy without a product; his role at HP is unclear. In July, he was bumped from his title as general manager of the webOS unit and moved into an iffy “product innovation role” within PSG.

One thing is true: Rubinstein has a close relationship with Todd Bradley, who leads the PSG unit.

At least Bradley’s fate is cleared up: The high-profile exec has been the subject of numerous reports and rumors, including a March report in The Wall Street Journal that said he had been recruited by chipmaker Intel. Since then, Bradley has been regularly asked about his future plans.

It was an open secret in Silicon Valley that Bradley feuded with HP’s prior CEO, Léo Apotheker, and was not consulted about the PSG spinoff plan before it was floated to the public.

Still, he stood the best chance of being named the CEO of whatever new company emerged from the plan. Yet Bradley’s voice was heard solidly behind Whitman’s yesterday, both on the conference call and in an interview with AllThingsD.

Bradley made it clear he intends to stay with HP for the forseeable future. His tone, both in public comments and in that joint interview with Whitman, seemed sincere — meaning he has likely arrived at some understanding with Whitman that will keep him at HP.

And Whitman can’t afford to lose a key member of an important business unit just now. (Although, as he has been passed over three times for HP’s top job in recent years, any lingering hopes that Bradley may have harbored of ever being CEO are probably now dashed.)

Outside of the consumer and PC space is the matter of Autonomy, the British software firm for which HP paid $11.7 billion, in a deal also announced on Aug. 18. There’s no question that the purchase price was high, representing a 64 percent premium above Autonomy’s share price, for starters. Many investors have frowned upon the deal, and some have even gone so far as to sue HP over how it was handled, mainly because HP shares cratered after it was announced. What is still to be fully explained is how HP extracts enough value from Autonomy — and if enough value can be extracted to justify the price paid.

Finally, there’s the matter of HP’s results in the coming quarter. With the company in a quiet period ahead of its Nov. 21 earnings announcement, there are few hints as to whether or not HP will meet its already reduced expectations for the quarter. Whitman insisted that no major announcements are expected before then, suggesting that there won’t be any negative pre-announcements.

But much will depend on the tone of the forward guidance HP gives as it looks to 2012. With its shares down nearly 33 percent so far this year — they closed Friday at $27.94, up 85 cents, or more than 3 percent, following Thursday’s decision — it can’t afford to miss another quarter. Once a tech company known for the stability it has given investors, HP has had nothing but unpleasant surprises for the last 14 months.

Now that one piece of the evolving story of the new HP is settled, many more are still in motion.

I talked about this and many of HP’s issues on The Wall Street Journal’s online “Markets Hub” show on Friday, and have embedded it here:

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