ForbesOnTech

Why I Love My Ultrabook--Plus Some Reasons Why the Platform Outshines MacBook Air

 

Travelling with a Wintel ultrabook has been a totally Déjà vu experience. Every time I pull it out of my back pack and open its lid, it’s awake and ready to go. And it’s so reliable that I haven’t once had to worry
about losing work, or more importantly the flow of information I often put into
my detailed OneNote files. That’s saying lot.

Until I reviewed my first ultrabook—an Acer S3 my best small
form factor portable experiences had come from two families of machines—HP’s firstthree iterations of its OmniBook line and a Toshiba Portage that had a slice
battery which provided me with my first transcontinental computing
experience—Narita to LAX, then a three-hour layover/recharge and a tedious hop
from LAX to Dublin.

The HP OmniBook 300 through 600 Series machines were transformational. They were text-book sized power houses I used everywhere. Hit the power key and they came alive—most times. I learned to love “instant on”
with OmniBook and I also quickly adapted to using its IR link to send files—and
snarky quips to colleagues across a conference table. I learned two other
things—information sent on short range IR links could be intercepted (big
“Woops!”) and battery life comes at the expense of travel weight.

My Acer S3 6646 lets me work for almost seven hours on
battery power and has fast booting local storage for those rare instances when
I need to start my machine from a cold boot. But it’s light and unobtrusive
enough to have quickly become an indispensable tool I use every day. It’s been
a very long time since I I’ve been as tightly bonded to a portable computer as
I am my ultrabook.

I briefly considered an Apple MacBook Air before committing
to an ultrabook.

Three factors won me over to Intel’s ultrabook platform. I
need local storage. My experience with SAPs like Google’s Docs and Spreadsheets
has been hampered by high traffic wireless venues such as college campi or
conferences where everyone jumps on the network and my cursor lags my keyboard input, which in my world is an axiomatic game ender.

Also I need to store large digital files—specifically
topographical or quarter-sectional maps I annotate with information I’m collecting fora writing project. The hybrid drives used in most ultra-books is fast enough topop up my maps and the multicore processor in my ultrabook zips through the computations needed to support my applications.

But what’s really kept my ultrabook by my side is its extreme portability and reliability. The system cases of every ultrabook I’veexamined are stunning examples of reference designs made for mass manufacturing. Unlike earlier thin and light notebooks, there is no flex in the
display case and the hinges connecting the screen to the system case are sturdy
and very well engineered.

Intel's ultrabook reference design is much more task-oriented
than Apple’s MacBook Air, which appears to be a thin box built for a
cloud-centric world that hasn’t arrived, just yet.

Running side by side, I prefer the ultrabooks 13-inch screen to that of the MacBook Air. I have nodifficulty reading or interpreting complex digital maps of the California Gold Country on my S3 ultrabook and it has the unbridled horse power needed to draw anddisplay the charts I create from Excel spreadsheet data. A larger screen would be attractive, but 13.3 inches works nicely for me.

The biggest reasons I love ultrabooks however are they are
light enough to be a a constant companion and durable enough that I don’t have
to worry that they won't to be destroyed in my back pack. And six hours battery
life is enough for my needs.

But the real kicker to my recommendation is its pricing—often much less than comparable Apple ultrabooks .

At last a portable thatdoesn’t impose restrictions on how or where I work. And that’s how I feel aboutUltrabook portables.. No go out and find out for yourself why I’m started toget excited about portable computing again.—Jim Forbes on 03/04/2009.

Google's Android Tablet problem-- It's Going to Need Content Porting Tools to Succeed Against Apple or Others.

Over at Churbuck.com there’s a thoughtful short post on Chinese-manufactured slate computers that are being selectively shown now and a potential problem Google faces in the tablet market. The point of Mr. Churbuck’s post is that small foot print Google operating systems represent a good choice for content consumption computers—an argument I completely agree with.

What makes the post at Churbuck.com particularly worth recommending is the author’s former position with a Chinese portable maker and his involvement in an ultraportable cloud-centric computer that was shown at CES but which has since been withdrawn.

As I read the piece I realized that this was the first time I’ve critically considered operating systems in portable computers.

I don’t really care if it’s an Apple or a Microsoft product, I just want it to help me get my job done and to run properly and efficiently each and every time I boot up my computer. With its institutional emphasis on cloud computing, I suspect Google, not Microsoft or Apple can be the real winner in any contest for future portables that are designed from the outset for cloud-based SAAP institutional deployment

Mr. Churbuck asks a rhetorical question in his post that’s very important. Can Google attract content providers by providing tools that simplify content delivery for forthcoming ndroid-based tablets?

While I do not yet own a slate computer, I’ll expect to make that leap of faith in the coming nine months.

But go ahead and read Dave Churbuck’s well-reasoned pos. it’s right here.

HP's ePrint architecture Delivers on promise of Remote Printing

Hewlett Packard’s ePrint strategy is a major fulfillment in the decades-long promise of mobile computing.

Details on how ePrint—first announced about two years ago-- would be implemented have only recently emerged.

Hp’s new strategic direction for its printer business—specifically its all-in-one families of printers, faxes and scanners is to give each device an unique IP address linking printers, and users via e-mail , allowing true remote printing  to any ePrinter architecture-capable printer, world wide.

HP isn’t the first company to equip printers with IP addresses—a distinction that goes to another technology pioneering, Tektronics in Oregon. Furthermore, remote printing has also been possible using software designed for handhelds as well as portable computers that were launched in the 1990’s at technology showcases such as DemoMobile.

What appears to set HP ePrint feature apart is: the assignment of individual names and IP addresses to specific printers, the ability to you email your files to any ePrint capable printer from any location, Worldwide; and the ability to remotely prioritize printing jobs.

ePrint supports a wide variety of common data types and can be used with Google’s cloud-based word processor and other applications, in which case it can print directly from remote virtual storage space, without launching an underlying applications program.

HP’s introduction of technology severing hard physical connections between the notebook user and their printers is important. It won’t be long now before you return your seat back and tray table to their original upright and locked position, check into your hotel where a 15 page proposal has been printed, handed to you by a desk clerk and you got to sleep with one less task to worry about.

And that’s a good thing—Jim Forbes on 06/11/2010.

 

disclosure: I was the founding producer of DemoMobile.

Lenovo's Skylight Smartbook--The Birth of a new Portable Category

 

 

What does it take to get me to jump in my car at 9 in the morning and drive 337 miles to a trade show in Las Vegas, just for the sake of finding a new portable computer to blog about? Three words: category smashing products. First on my list is a new compact portable from Lenovo called Skylight.

Skylight is the first new small factor notebook computer that’s forced me to rethink how and what I expect in a portable Right up front I have to say that Skylight doesn’t fit the image of “portable computers that have everything you expect in a desktop.”

Lenovo’s Skylight uses Qualcomm’s Snapdragon ARM processor and rather than a conventional elctromechnical hard disk drive, its uses local storage is based on solid state memory. This sub two-pound portable is the first notebook I’ve seen designed expressly for the cloud-based use, including SAAP personal productivity, social media and storage. Skylight uses Windows7, but has a proprietary interface that lets its users quickly jump between applications. Moving between Social media apps like Twitter or Facebook has never been easier than when they are running on a Lenovo Skylight.

This portable boasts rock solid persistent Internet connectivity and comes with WiFi as well as optional WAN connectivity to national cellular data networks such as AT&T’s. Starlight is expected to cost about $500 without carrier subsidies when it begins shipping later this year. Although I was only able to use Starlight for a few minutes, the environment where I put it through its paces had about 30 other machines attached to the same WiFi network. Despite the network loading, the Starlight delivered great network throughput. This new portable offers a first-tier user experience that’s hard to beat and its Qualcomm Snapdragon processor never  bogged down, despite the fact that it was the first demonstration I’d seen of Flash 10 running on an ARM processor.

The ten-inch screen is bright and responsive. In fact I preferred Skylight’s display to the ones used on several other netbooks I looked at while I was at CES.

Lenovo’s recipe for Skylight ensures persistent connectivity experience with cloud-based productivity and social networking applications.

Approaching Skylight for the first time I had a brief “oh no” moment when I saw what I thought were giant Chiclet style keys. My peanut aversion quickly passed however, when I began using the keyboard to compose something on Twitter. Skylight uses a new type of keyboard that’s based on “island keys”. The keyboard on this portable powerhouse is laid out well enough to eliminate or forestall serious criticism and I like its island style keys.

Another feature of Skylight I like is a hinged USB connector in the space between the top of the keyboard and the screen case. So far that slot has been shown occupied by an external solid state memory stick, but I can see no reason why it couldn’t also be used for a USB-based GPS device or wireless phone for services such as Skype.

Lenovo and its CPU partner for the Skylight platform, Qualcomm, both claim the new machine will have more than 10 hours of battery life. I can find no reason to disbelieve their claim, even when Starlight is used by chatty posters on sites such as Twitter or Facebook.

Seeing and briefly using Lenovo’s Starlight was one of the genuine jaw-dropping moments I’ve experienced in the last several decades. My reaction to it is stronger than the feelings I had when I saw the one sub-compact that’s been my standard setter for the last 20 years, the original HP Omnibook 300.

After using Skylight in Lenovo’s demonstration room at the Venetian Resort and Casino I came away hoping corporations with large number of sales or technicians deployed in the field see this new platform. Most of all, I hope SalesForce.com, or any other company that uses a similar business model recognizes the value of a machine designed for cloud-based computing.

There will be some people who view the monthly connection charges to cell data networks as a real impediment to this machine. I don’t agree, given the success of Apple’s iPhone and the Google Android architecture. I believe Lenovo has taken a bold step with a new design that could become an iconic machine for the early 21^st Century. And I’m planning on purchasing one expressly for a project I hope to begin this summer—a book on contemporary gold mining that will see me in the field, researching the story for up to six weeks at a time. With a battery life of 10 hours and the ability to connect to WiFi and cell based networks, I’ll be that person you see hunched over a small smartbook at a public campground in the California motherlode, beyond the hills of Placerville, where the wind that powers my jury-rigged windmill/bicycle headlight generator and gold can still be found.—Jim Forbes on 13 January 2010.

Gwabbit Software Hops Into New Markets-- Making a Good Thing Better

Some of the best entrepreneurial startups are those that are not microwaved in the media spotlight, but instead allowed to simmer to develop their entire flavor.

That’s the case of a called Gwabbit, launched earlier this year at Demo09.

Gwabbit is one of the biggest improvements in contact management software I’ve seen in years. It lets its user quickly update contact information with little user intervention, thus turning simple contact records into valuable content.  Initially focused on Microsoft Outlook, its Gwabbit’s developers have beefed up their stock recipe by adding new platforms while expanding the application's underlying capabilities.

When I first saw Gwabbit I didn’t limit my focus to a technology that helped me keep my contact data for my cousins’ current email addresses. Rather I thought, “this would be the secret ingredient distributed work forces could use to improve their productivity and target objectives.”

And since its introduction at Demo 09, Gwabbit has steadily been enhanced to make it more suited for the enterprise, by adding underlying support for popular platforms such as the enterprise version of Research In Motion’s popular BlackBerry communications/address books.

Enterprise

blackberry is just one of several corporate standard and other distributed platforms Gwabbit is supporting, according to the firm’s founder, Todd Miller.

One of Gwabbit’s new features could be make life a lot easier for sales and other professionals whose business transactions may involve multiple people at different tiers within an organization;. Called “Network ID Trace,” the new feature lets Gwabbit users associate friends from diverse “networks,” which lets Gwabbit’s installed base develop layers of associated contacts connected to an original data record.

In addition to enterprise BlackBerry contact management, Gwabbit is also adding Facebook as another of its supported platforms.

In an industry where entrepreneurs scramble for diminishing venture funding, Gwabbit is somewhat unique: it was funded by the sale of its founder’s, (Todd Miller), previous concern, a web-based office automation suite used by legal professionals called “Webfeat.”

When I first saw Gwabbit, the first thing I thought was: “it could be a boon in the SMB market where field professionals live and dye by the\ accuracy of their contact data for all members of an organization involved in the purchase of goods or services.

More recently I’ve come to believe Gwabbit could be a strategic bundle for netbook or cell network providers that want to drive a deep stakee in the SMB market, which according to some recent studies hasn’t seen as much of a slow down in sales as the enterprise market.

Initially Gwabbit has met with widespread success among trial users, an astounding 35 percent of which have converted from 14-day free trial to paid subscriptions, according to Mr. Miller.

The best thing about getting back in touch with Gwabbit was the chance to get the company’s founder to do his Elmer Fudd imitation---Jim Forbes 07/26/2009.

Rethinking Bundling-- Cloud-Based Bundles Could Drive Netbook Success!

Dominance in the emerging netbook category could be subject to an old, overlooked play by manufacturers:software bundling. Bundling is as old as the computer market but an adverse reaction to so-called shovel-ware has cast a pall over the practice. Despite this, well thought out bundles designed for persistently connected netbooks could be a determining factor in the long term success or failure of this category.

Let’s look at where netbooks are today. Superficially, most of the news driving netbook coverage has been entirely too predictable and based on the mundane: manufacturers releasing machines with the latest processor and core logic; incremental enhancements such as larger keyboards and screens, the addition of discrete graphics, or support of WAN cellular modems and deals with national cell networks.

What’s been overlooked; however, is usability and suitability, areas where netbooks designed around one or more cloud-based software suites can assume leadership positions.

Today, netbooks are not pitched at corporate IT except to the extent that corporate IT has deployed individual test systems or in limited evaluations of web based applications. The market netbook manufacturers miss right now are medium sized organizations using Software as application-based solutions (SAAS) such as those provided by entities like SalesForce.com. And there’s a lot of light space in Sales Force.com’s cloud, because it’s never tried to be an office automation software supplier.

This is where Google or (a mightily revamped Microsoft) can shine through. Both have stakes in office automation software. And Google’s cloud-based word processing, spreadsheet and presentation graphics have been evaluated by most major corporations (which represents the figurative pot of gold at the end of the cloud-based SAAS and netbook rainbows).

Google may be the most obvious supplier of such a suite, but even that company has patchy holes in its cloud cover when it comes to software as an application. While Google has a strong SAAS suite, there’s enough wiggle room in its strategy for other companies to squeeze in and grab Google while profiting from the net book phenomena. Specifically the opportunity for Google is sales automation software that includes rugged contact management with rock solid synchronization.

Another part of the equation belongs to the cell networks. By definition, persistent connectivity is the backbone of mobile workforces equipped with netbooks. Any hardware maker that wants to succeed in netbooks will need a cell network partner. And it’s those partners who can assemble the alliances needed for an effective cloud-based strategy to large, medium-sized or other businesses.—Jim Forbes 09/13/2009

Cloud Storage and Netbooks-- Follow Dexin on Twitter now

One of the primary purposes of my blogging has been to keep abreast of mobile computing trends. And one of the most important trends in mobile today is the development and evolution of netbooks.

As I’ve discovered, netbooks have the potential to reshape how, when and where we use computers.  Their diminutive size and shape seem ideally suited for all types of professionals, but the size also means that this new class of computers creates a real demand for emerging technologies such as Software As An Application (SAAP) and moving features that were once local up into the clouds.

If you talk to netbook product managers you find they’ve already compiled and are ready to recommend various cloud-based applications. But there is still a couple of flies in the cloud-based ointment. The most obvious may be the search for secure, reliable long-tern cloud-based storage solutions.

I have yet to have a netbook product manager answer a fundamental question:  “What cloud-based storage provider can provide storage for remote employees and provide corporate managers who want to deploy netbooks with assurances that the data will be both secure and available when it’s needed in the years to come?”

The answers to these straight forward questions may provide key marketing messages for any future cloud-based storage provider. They also could force such providers into incredibly transparent relationships with customers.

I’ve turned to twitter searching for background information on strategic issues in cloud computing and found someone whose posts have helped me gain a better understanding of what’s on the horizon and how various vendors and analysts are defining this important category.

The best resource I’ve found so far is a young Chinese woman in Silicon Valley with a master’s in public administration who's on  top of cloud computing. She posts under the twitter name of Dexin here. If you want great information on cloud computing, I recommend you follow her, now.—Jim Forbes 02/19/2009