Technology for Mortals

Dell has just launched the Inspiron Mini 12 which is the slimmest and newest and slimmest Netbook on the market for $550, $600, and $650.  What makes this Netbook hot is the 1.1 inch thickness, superior Poulsbo chipset with full HD decode which is superior to any other Atom-based Netbook, and the 12.1″ 1280×800 LCD panel.

The $600 model looks like the sweet spot with a 1.6 GHz Intel Z530 Silverthorne processor, 60 GB 4200 RPM hard drive, 6-cell 48 watt*hour battery, and 1 year warranty.  The $650 model gives you an upgrade to a 80 GB hard drive and a 2-year warranty which also sounds like a pretty sweet deal.  The $550 model looks like a skip because you only get a 3-cell 24 watt*hour battery, a 1.33 GHz Z520 processor, and 40 GB hard drive.  All models come in Obsidian black and Alpine white.

All models have integrated 802.11g and Bluetooth which is important because external Bluetooth dongles ruin the form factor of a laptop.  In my experience, having Bluetooth is a critical feature in any notebook when you have a Bluetooth mouse like the Microsoft Notebook Mouse 5000 (which I own and love) and a $20/month 3G tethering plan for cellular data services.  You’re not always going to be able to find a hotspot and paying $10 per use for hotspot service while you wait for an airplane sucks.

On the down side, the 92% keyboard isn’t as large as it could be.  My Lenovo X200 has a 100% keyboard that stretches from edge to edge.  Furthermore, Dell seems to have loaded this thing up with a ton of crapware so it takes 2 minutes to boot and a total of 4 minutes to settle down.  My Lenovo X200 with a really fast hard drive and a clean install boots, logs in, and settles down in 45 seconds from the time I press the power button.  It sounds like you’re going to want to format the Mini 12 and start from a clean slate with Windows XP or eventually Windows 7 to get optimum performance.  Shame on Dell for going back to all that crapware.

As I have noted in the past, the Inspiron Mini 12 (previously called the Dell E Slim+ before launch) was something I was strongly considering for my personal laptop.  But I couldn’t wait and I bought myself a Lenovo X200 for $1400 including shipping which has very fast Penryn-class Intel P8600 dual-core 2.4 GHz CPUs, so there’s no point in me buying a Mini 12 now.  I also spent another $90 upgrading to a Seagate Momentus 7200.3 model ST9320421AS 320 GB hard drive which is probably the fastest laptop hard drive in the world and also happens to be more energy efficient so it would feel a little slow going back to a 4200 RPM hard drive.

Note: I got the Momentus 7200.3 320 GB at TigerDirect for $89 and they gave me really good service, but it looks like they’re not selling them and it’s only in stock at other stores for $99 right now.

But despite these advantages of the Lenovo X200 (which may have dropped to $1250) and if I was making the choice all over again, I may strongly consider the Mini 12 because it’s so much cheaper and so much thinner.  It may have even required me to flip a coin to decide which way I wanted to go.  Fortunately, I won’t need to make that hard decision because I already own the X200 and jacked up hard drive which I love.

While the performance of these Netbooks don’t come close to the ultra mobile laptops, keeping the Netbook free of Crapware and just using it for simple things like web browsing, email, and VPN means that performance doesn’t really matter.  You probably can’t run Skype video conferencing in High Quality (HQ) mode because of the processing requirements but you won’t be able to do that anyways without an external high quality webcam which ruins the convenience form factor of a small laptop.  Standard quality mode is all you’re going to get out of any built-in webcam and I don’t know a single integrated camera that’s capable of Skype HQ mode.

The thing Intel feared most when one of their executives said that the Intel Atom was three times slower than a Core 2 processor is that the Atom could cannibalize the laptop market.  While I doubt that happening on the low-end because you can get so much more performance and so much more screen size with the cheap $500 15.4″ laptops, products like the Dell Inspiron Mini 12 can threaten high margin ultra portable laptops or at least put some pricing pressures on them.

Buried in this piece regarding the return of the OLPC’s “Give one, get one” campaign making a return this year, is an interesting statement:

The XO laptop involved is the same Quanta-built netbook powered by a 700 MHz AMD Geode CPU, and the price for two is still $199 (in the UK, it’s £254.)

The only excuse that I can think of for this, is that the OLPC folks must have a humongous inventory purchased at last year’s prices that they are still chewing through. It is the only explanation. I cannot imagine any for-profit PC maker staying in business with year-old part inventory (other than what’s set aside for repairs and RMAs, of course). What does this say about OLPC’s management, that they do not simply do “just-in-time” ordering like Dell, HP, and everyone else? Am I missing something?

I’m a fan of Alan Kay and his ideas around computing, but I think that OLPC is rediculous. As George (and many others) have pointed out, for the cost of 1 OLPC, you could put 50 – 100 books in a school. Which do you think benefits needy kids in developing nations more? One laptop for a child, or 50 -100 books? Granted, textbooks are insanely expensive. Anyone who has been through college in the US can attest to that. Maybe, instead of working on an open computing platform for needy kids, they fols at OLPC can write open textbooks for these kids, and grant governments the copyrights or a license to the books, to print them at-cost for their kids. Doesn’t that make a lot more sense than selling last-year’s hardware at last-year’s price?

J.Ja

Dell will be launching a new family of Intel Atom “Netbooks” called the Dell “E”.  It’s another entry in to the cheap tiny laptop market joining companies like Asus, MSI, and Acer.  But Dell’s latest entry is actually going outside of the traditional Netbook market with a 12.1″ display which has traditionally – as if the market is that old - used 10″ or smaller displays.

I realize that some of you might think I may have made a typo in my headline to call it a sub-notebook but it was deliberate.  For me, once the display size gets in to the 10+ inch arena, it’s a sub-notebook replacement.  I realize that this probably scares the hell out of Intel and other computer makers to hear this because it cannibalizes the high-margin sub-notebook market but I’m just being honest about it. I think a lot of people who don’t have money burning a hole through their pockets probably feel the same way as I do.

For a simple office productivity computer, it’s just not going to kill me to have a 1.6 GHz Atom processor versus a high-end sub-notebook with a dual-core 1.3 GHz Core 2 Duo processor.  I realize the latter processor is probably 50 to 80 percent faster in processing power but it’s not enough of a difference to make me want to spend over $2000 on a sub-notebook when these new Netbooks cost a quarter of the money.

This had Intel so concerned that CEO Paul Otellini said that the Atom isn’t something most of us will use.  Sony executives were equally concerned when they said that this was a “race to the bottom” (of margins) and I think they were right to be concerned.  There will always be people willing to pay for the premium products because they have the money or their business has the money to spend, but I suspect a lot more people will be looking at these Netbooks as an alternative to pricy sub-notebooks.

Here are some specs on the Dell E slim and a more detailed comparison between all the Dell E models including the 8.9″ LCD versions.  Note that Dell has only stated that the entry level model will be priced at $299 so it’s anyone’s guess how much more the other models will be.  I’m hoping Dell will be aggressive and sell the highest end model in the $500 range.  Barring any horrific reviews of some serious flaw in the product, this will likely be my new “sub-notebook”.

Here are the specifications for the highest end 12.1″ Dell E Slim+ model.

• 12.1″ WXGA (probably means 1366×768 resolution)
• 1.6 GHz Intel Silverthorne Atom processor
• 2 GB DDR2 RAM
• 60 GB 1.8″ Hard Drive
• 802.11g and Bluetooth
• Camera
• Linux (trimmed down fast booting)
• BYO (Bring Your Own) Windows XP
• Not sure if Vista Drivers are available

I’m not sure if the 12.1″ model has an SDHC flash card reader yet but it’s not a show stopper for me.

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I never liked the design of the original OLPC XO laptop, but the design of the XO-2 looks fantastic and very futuristic.  It looks like two oversized iPhones connected in a clamshell design and it’s using a soft touch-screen keyboard.  It can be used in vertical book mode or in laptop mode with a virtual keyboard.

The problem is that Nicholas Negroponte still hasn’t learned from his original mistakes of over promising and under delivering.  He promised an instant booting instant loading laptop for $100 and he delivered a $200 (at quantities of 10000) laptop that took more than 3 minutes to boot and a minute to load applications.  While the original XO has switched to a workable platform with Microsoft Windows XP and Microsoft Office, the cost remains high and problems with the keyboard persists.  Now Mr. Negroponte is promising a price of $75 for the XO-2 with a delivery date of 2010 but it’s hard to take his promises seriously.  In fact I’ll come up with the following formula.

 

Negroponte pricing = 0.5 x BOM (QTY 10000) pricing

The XO-2 may avoid the mechanical failure problem in the original XO rubberized keyboards by getting rid of a mechanical keyboard altogether, but the XO will go from inadequate tactile feedback to zero tactile feedback.  That may not be a problem for casual typing and there won’t be any failed sticky rubber keys.  The touch-screen keyboard hasn’t held back the wild success of the Apple iPhone but that’s because it probably is the best soft-key system ever implemented and the other benefits of the iPhone outweigh the disadvantages.

The bigger question for the XO-2 (or devices like it) is whether it will come close to the high bar set by Apple’s iPhone.  The responsiveness of the animated and natural interface on the iPhone is not only revolutionary for Smartphones, but it puts the Windows and Mac OS X interface to shame.  For a device like this to succeed in the market place, it must be an instant-on device with instant-load applications.

As for the CPU, it may use the second generation Intel Atom CPU codenamed “Moorestown” due in 2009 which has a TDP of less than a watt including the chipset or perhaps the successor to Moorestown” in 2010.  But the raw costs of the parts alone will be more than $100 even in 2010 but then again, $100 is $50 if you’re using pie-in-the-sky Negroponte pricing.

If the XO-2 or a similar device can come anywhere close to an iPhone experience, then it will succeed in the developed world as a $200 device in and outside of the education market.  Just don’t count on this succeeding in the third world any time soon unless someone has a lot of money to donate because no country will spend the annual salary of their adults on laptops for their children or even a fraction of that.

Here’s a video clip showing Windows XP on the OLPC XO.

To get Windows XP on the OLPC XO, an additional SD flash card slot had to be added to supply enough storage for Windows.  A fully functional version of Microsoft Office is also included and I’m sure that is a huge incentive for buyers of these notebooks to choose Windows.

One thing that was relatively impressive was the 50-second boot times.  While that’s slow by normal PC standards (the Asus Eee boots in under 30 seconds), the video claims that it’s 4 times faster than the OS that originally shipped with the OLPC XO.  I don’t recall the exact boot time but I remember in 2007 that it took a few minutes to boot up so Windows XP being 4x faster on boot up than Linux and Sugar sounds about right.

The tablet mode on the OLPC XO with the e-book daylight reflective mode screen looks pretty interesting.  The video playback on the XP-powered XO looked fairly decent.  We do have to remember that this laptop is still $200 at per unit at quantities of 10,000 or more so it’s probably priced around the same price as the cheapest retail $299 Asus Eee PC.  While the Asus Eee runs a lot better, it doesn’t have as advanced a screen as the XO.

Children won’t have a say on whether Windows goes on the OLPC but so what?

My former colleagues Larry Dignan and Christopher Dawson have voiced their concerns about the OLPC foundation’s decision to offer a choice between Windows XP or Linux plus Sugar interface on the XO laptop. Both of them point out that it will be Governments and purchasing agencies that will most likely make the decision to go with Windows XP and that children won’t have a say in the decision when may instead pick the Linux plus Sugar interface. 

Christopher Dawson says: This is pandering, plain and simple. Negroponte himself is quoted in the New York Times as saying, “The people who buy the machines are not the children who use them, but government officials in most casesÉAnd those people are much more comfortable with Windows.” 

I’m assuming Christopher means that Negroponte is pandering to the people who write the checks (towards XO laptop purchases) and not factoring what the kids may want. Larry Dignan pointed out that his daughter seems to have taken a liking to the Sugar interface and voices similar concerns. As much as I respect both former colleagues, I’m going to have to disagree with them on this issue so I’m going to challenge them with the following questions. 

To Christopher I would ask the following two questions:

• Would you flip your classrooms to the Sugar interface today if I gave you absolute authority over this matter?
• How do you think your High School students would vote if they have tested both operating systems?

To Larry and Christopher I would ask the following questions:

• Do you or would you switch to running Linux plus Sugar on an XO as your primary computer?
• Would you let your child decide bed time? Or would you at least meet them halfway between your choice and their choice?
• Would you let your child decide what “educational” software, books, or websites they get to use? Even if that software or website involves mostly game play and not actual studying?
• Would you let your teenage child decide how late they can stay out is or at least meet them halfway between their choice and your choice?

Here are my choices if I had to make them:

• I would not switch classrooms to Linux plus Sugar. The XO Sugar interface might look fun to a first grader but it’s essentially a toy. Negroponte had promised an instant boot and instant-load OS while criticizing the status quo but he produced one that was worse than the status quo. Linux plus Sugar was painfully slow and dysfunctional.
• As soon as you get past the novelty factor of the Sugar interface and you figure out that Mesh networking doesn’t work in theory or in practice, it doesn’t look so appealing any more. Once you figure out that the applications that you want to run don’t work, it doesn’t look so appealing any more. The fact is that people pick and choose Windows for good reasons. This is why when Asus offers Windows XP on the Eee PC, consumers will either pick Windows XP or they will often put Windows XP on it.
• It’s one thing to ponder how wonderful Sugar is for someone else’s kid in some third world country, it’s something else entirely to drink the Kool-Aid yourself.
• I won’t let my kids pick their bed time or compromise with them a single minute. They don’t like that, but too bad.
• I won’t let my kids decide what educational software, books, or websites they get to use. I might let them pick amongst a list of choices that I and other adults picked out for them, but they don’t get to choose because I know what they’ll tend to choose. My kids don’t get a choice on whether they learn Mathematics or English or all the other essentials, they simply WILL learn them. If they choose to be starving artists later on in life, that’s their choice but they have no choice on what they’re going to learn now. That might sound cruel but it’s parental love and not having a *choice* now gives them a *choice* on what they want to do with their lives in the future.
• As with bed time, my kids don’t get to choose how late they stay out and there will be no compromise. Not now, not when they’re 14, and not when they’re 17.9. I don’t even ask them if they like my rules because you’re just asking for trouble. My rules are nonnegotiable.

So to me, the whole child choice issue in the matter of what OS to run on a laptop is a non-issue.Unfortunately, it was never about getting laptops to kids for many people on the original OLPC project and it was all about indoctrinating children with Linux. But Nicholas Negroponte initially attacked anything Microsoft or closed source and anything Intel so he had a big hand in attracting this group of people. Negroponte attracted this group of people to his movement and he used their services for years but now he wants to distance himself from them because the XO has so far been a market failure and he’s trying to salvage his baby by putting a more workable operating system on it. The rubberized keyboard on the XO is still unworkable and known to have high failure rates but at least the OS is usable now.

 

Update 5/17/2008 – Here’s what Windows XP looks like running on the OLPC XO