What is it?
It is the coupling of the Nvidia GeForce 9400M graphics card with an Intel Atom processor, into one computer that brings, for the very first time, built in high definition video playback capabilities to new netbooks and nettops.

This combination is seen in smaller portable computers adding the sadly missing HD component from the earlier devices, as they were just not powerful enough to handle this type of playback from the likes of Blu-ray video.

Beside HD playback, ION also allows for the playing of computer games with an added dimension that is normally only seen on computers with much higher specifications. All of which is possible inside these low cost computers. The average netbook isn’t capable of any of this, as they are not really designed or geared up to cater for this type of intense graphical processing.

What are the variations of the technology?
It’s been said the ION platform could also be possibly used with other Intel processors and not just with the Atom, where it is currently being used. The other Intel chips are in the form of the Celeron Core 2 Duo and other low powered processors which are all possible variations on the ION theme. These can be used to offer many more capabilities to netbooks and nettops, which are all lacking in the advanced graphical processing power in their earlier versions.

Why should I care?
For the very first time these high definition capabilities, from video playback to editing and encoding will now be possible on an affordable computer – all thanks to the 16 core offering of the ION chip pairing and at 10 times the power of the Atom processor. Also advanced graphical game play with highly intense computer games that need that processing power is possible on these devices, extending the usefulness of the netbook beyond just browsing the Internet and light office work.

The upcoming operating systems from Apple and Microsoft will both have technology built in for utilising these GPU – graphical processing units. Windows 7 and OS X ‘Snow Leopard’ will have what is known as Direct X Compute and Open CL, which accelerates the performance along with Nvidia's own technology for speeding up any graphically intense processing, making any video playback extremely smooth.

ION can accomplish all this without really impacting on the battery life or increasing the overall size of the device, as it is around one half of the current size of the Atom CPU. Therefore, it’s relatively easy for manufacturers to include this new system, offering up even greater benefits that hasn't been seen before.

Computer games such as Call of Duty 4 and Spore, which need a higher level of graphical processing, now have the possibility of being playable on netbooks, all thanks to the GeForce 9400 and the Atom in this ION platform.

What's a good example in practice?
ION has already been seen in the Lenovo S12 netbook, just as it has in Acer's new Aspire Revo nettop. Both of these devices provide the HD video prowess, even up to full 1080p high definition film playback and video processing at a low cost.

For netbooks this is a massive step forward, one in which other manufactures will soon follow. It now adds another string to the bow of the successful low power and low cost smaller computers, as intense graphics processing was simply not possible beforehand.

Is there a competing technology that I should be aware of?
Currently there is no real competition in the market place from anyone else offering such a powerful platform, for the low end systems. Netbooks and nettops are just not capable of any high-end video utilisation, they simply have to defer to their higher specification laptops and desktop computers, therefore making them not really all that versatile.

It’s the coupling of the Nvidia graphics unit and the Intel Atom CPU that provides this better type of functionality and extends the versatility of these devices, which is really only thanks to the coupling of Nvidia and Intel.

What is in store for the future?
There will be new iterations of the ION technologies in the future, at the same time there will be new versions of the graphics chips from Nvidia and new CPUs from Intel – both will still be used together for the next generation of ION.

The future for ION are more netbooks and netops coming out, all based around this technology, from a range of different computer manufactures that can utilise ION to extend their current range and upcoming devices.

With the new operating systems from Apple and Microsoft due out this year, there will be many more increased features and functionality for ION to benefit from.

Tags: Hardware Nvidia Quick Guide Intel Graphics cards Netbooks Nettops

A quick guide to Nvidia ION originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:52:11 +0100

What is it?
It is the long awaited major Apple software update to the iPhone and iPod touch that brings a host of new features and abilities that either haven't been seen, or weren’t available before to the Apple device users.

What are the variations of the technology?
There are really just two variations to the Apple update, a free update to the iPhone and a chargeable version for the iPod touch.

There may also be some slight variations to the handset version, depending on what the actual mobile phone network may support. Not all carriers around the world will be capable of handling some of the more advanced features of this update.

Also some of the more phone-centric functions will not work on the iPod touch, seeing as that device is missing those key hardware components.

Why should I care?
Version 3.0 of the operating system is said to have resolved many of the issues and features that the handset has lacked since its arrival on the scene back in 2007. Some of these abilities are standard in all mobile phone operating systems and have been for many years, they just weren't present on the iPhone.

One of the new features that is included in this latest update is the ability to cut and paste text and images from place to place. This apparently was a much requested item from users and has been missing since the first iteration of the iPhone. Now users can, for example, select text from a web page on the iPhone's browser and copy and paste it straight into an email. This is an ability other mobiles have had and for a number of years, it is perhaps why this feature may have drawn a lot of criticism for not being present beforehand. Apple has mentioned there were security risks in the past, as to why this has taken so long to be included, but haven’t really offered any more of an explanation than that.

Another inclusion is the ability to send multimedia messages or MMS for the very first time. In essence this basically means an iPhone user can send a text message with rich multimedia content, such as images, pictures or even audio, once again being a standard feature on many other phones.

Many users have found the way of entering text on an iPhone cumbersome to say the least, especially when they’ve experienced other full touch widescreen displays that can be turned sideways to produce a much larger onscreen keyboard. This landscape way of typing is now an option to users on version 3.0, which should be popular as it also was one of the most requested features of the virtual keyboard for the OS.

Bluetooth has been a part of the iPhone, only never really used to its fullest potential in the past. On the newest update, stereo Bluetooth has been enabled for listening to wireless audio from the handset. This now opens up a much wider use for the mobile, not to mention the possibilities of accessories and ways of enjoying music and films without being tethered to the handset by a wire.

Operating systems such as Windows Mobile have been able to support mobile phones being used as USB dongles for a while. Effectively this turns a handset into a mobile broadband modem for a laptop or netbook, allowing internet access. The ability, under the name 3G tethering, has now become a part of the recent update by Apple. This just further extends the usefulness of the iPhone to portable computer users away from the likes of Wi-Fi, or an Ethernet socket. Although it’s become apparent not every network around the world that carries the handset will support this addition, the majority of them will do so.

There are other notable additions to the new software, such as a new search function, other notifications - not just from the arrival of mail, to the possibilities of voice memo recording and peer to peer gaming.

What's a good example in practice?
The update can be seen on the iPhone or the iPod touch, or even the upcoming iPhone 3G S which will already have version 3.0 installed by default. This enables the handset to access all of these new features from the start, with the likes of video recording now being possible.

Is there a competing technology that I should be aware of?
Other phones have had many of these features and for many years, the next versions possibly being ahead of Apple’s abilities, seeing as they‘re late in joining them on an even keel.

Not so much competing, but the iPod touch has also received a chargeable update with many of the same features that the iPhone has seen, as it runs more or less the same operating system. The iPod touch update will miss out on the phone-centric items, which would be redundant on that platform anyway.

This software revamp allows for the buying and downloading of TV shows, movies and audio-books straight on to the device over Wi-Fi. This ability is also seen in the iPhone update too, which means both devices have direct access to the iTunes repository but only from Wi-Fi and not over a mobile phone network.

Much like iPod shuffles and other devices from known manufacturers, the ability to shake the iPod touch to change the music or items is now present in this update. This utilises for the first time the accelerometer of the device, which the touch also uses to detect when the handset is turned on its side for displaying images.

What is in store for the future?
The update from the previous version of 2.2.1 to 3.0 is a very significant one, what’s next could be to bring in new aspects that aren’t already seen on other mobile phones, whilst improving the qualities that are already there.

Tags: Phones Mobile phones Apple Operating Systems iPhone iPod Audio Software updates Quick Guide

A quick guide to iPhone OS 3.0 originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Thu, 18 Jun 2009 16:35:07 +0100

What is it?
It is the next possible stage in the evolution of email from Google, which has also been said to be the next biggest thing in an communication and collaboration tool for today and it runs from inside a web browser much like Gmail.

Wave was first publicly aired in an early beta version at Google's recent symposium and is set to be launched later on this year. It is an open source product and platform that is already two years in the making from Google's Australian offices and will soon be opened up to developers to aid in its development process, all to fulfill its full potential.

It's already been said that Google Wave has been purposely built to rethink the way we all communicate with each other online and will reinvent email for tomorrow's world.

What are the variations of the technology?
So far, all that's been seen is an early preview for developers to use and help develop. It's unsure whether Google will have several versions of Wave, or just the one for all to use. All that's really known at this point is that it will run from inside a web browser possibly from Google's own servers, much like Gmail is today.

Why should I care?
Email has been around for 40 years, way before the internet was even thought about. The people at Google have set about answering the question – "What would email look like today, if it was invented now?" This takes into account the variety of different methods of communicating that's around today which wasn't around at the time of email's invention, from the likes of SMS, IM, social networking and all the other types of communication that's in practice.

Google Wave is their attempt at answering that very question.

Email today really hasn't changed over all those years, it still just mimics the same way a letter is laid out and sent. Google's Wave is said to change all that, as a message is handled much the same way a conversation is had with a group of people, with the free flow of ideas and messages rather than just the linear format of a letter.

This new way of electronically communicating comes across similar to a forum thread. Where the messages are open, free flowing and linked together in a much more friendly and easy to read way rather than scrolling down through long continuous lines of text in an email, all to find out what various people have typed as a reply to the original message.

With Wave you can simply add a reply to any part of the conversation or text in a very easy, clear and distinct graphical way which then shows the reply is from a separate person and is then included in the original message all very clearly.

This is an alternative to isolating which part of the email is needed to have a reply, then manually editing the email, adding the reply to that part of the text and then making sure the person the email is being sent to knows full well who the reply is from.

Wave is all geared up to easily keep tabs on the structure of an email. Everyone's seen or had an email in the past with more than 10 people contributing to it over a number of days or weeks, where the original point or subject has been lost in the myriad of confusing replies from various people.

One of the key aspects of making this possible is that it's a hosted open source application, where multiple email systems are all mostly incompatible with each other and costly to implement.

As a reply is added to a message, or one of these Waves, the text even appears in real time inside the original message by instantly manifesting on all the recipients computer screens if the message is open - much the same way as MSN messenger works, only from inside an email.

This combines the functionality of instant messaging from the likes of Microsoft's Messenger, with email. Only this shows that Google's Wave has many tools inside of its software, which in turn keeps track of all and any conversations or messages exchanged. It also saves searching in many different places, just to keep track of what was said when, to whom and what was actually typed.

There are even some aspects to Wave that extends beyond the features that are normally seen inside IM software and email. One of the more useful aspects of the instant messaging functions inside of the Wave conversations is when each character is typed, it appears immediately inside of the message rather than waiting for the return key to be pressed at the end of each sentence.

Another useful aspect is when someone else is added to the email conversation late, all in order to receive all messages they usually have to scroll down to the very start of the message and read backwards over all the interactions. Inside of Wave, they have a playback function where a new recipient can just press a play button, this replays the goings on of all the email interactions as if it was recorded by a video camera.

There are many more aspects of Google's Wave that builds upon how email is evolving, from the usefulness of collaborating on messages, to the embedding of Google's Wave on to websites and blogs with all of the aspects to the Wave acting the exact same way, to attachments also instantly appearing to all the recipients in emails and there's mobile phone clients too.

What's a good example in practice?
As this is still very early in its development cycle not a great deal has been seen by the general public, or has really been shown off to everyone. Developers though have been given accounts to Google Wave, just to try out its features and help in aiding in its success and development.

Although some images, screen shots and demos can be seen for time being over at http://wave.google.com.

Is there a competing technology that I should be aware of?
There is of course other email software around and instant messaging software too, none of which has the interoperability of both aspects within one suite.

Some of the larger software companies such as Microsoft and IBM do have suites for the collaboration of documents, work loads and their ilk. These are costly to purchase and license, even more so to run and implement - where as Google Wave is open source.

What is in store for the future?
Next on the agenda is the further development of Google's Wave, by themselves and the Google community of developers to create more feature sets and aspects to the software all from being inspired with what's already been worked upon.

There's also opening up the platform to more and more users, much like the same way Google did with Gmail. It's hoped that this will be within the year, with a view to see more and more features from what's already been seen and aired at Google's recent symposium for developers.

Google has developed many extensions for the Wave platform, much like extensions inside Firefox. All of them work like widgets or the small applications that run inside Windows sidebar. They're working on more each and every day, as are outside developers too and all to increase the potential of the platform itself.

This could very well replace the corporate communication system, if not for the larger ones then definitely for smaller companies or just aspects or departments of a company.

It could very well be useful for collaborative work or just replacing the standard email systems, or even their own Gmail as a way for conversing as they're hoping it be could the one communication tool to suit all needs.

Tags: Software Google Gmail Email Quick Guide Google Wave

A quick guide to Google Wave originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Tue, 09 Jun 2009 16:40:40 +0100

What is it?
Ovi Store is the recently launched online application store from Nokia, containing content for use with their Symbian operating system based handsets.

This is the very latest in a line of online application repositories for a particular mobile phone range and its own OS. Google has a similar venture for their Android mobile OS, as does Apple for the iPhone. All of which has proven to be very successful, on both driving sales of the content and the phones themselves.

What are the variations of the technology?
There is just the one Ovi Store, so there really aren’t any variations, although there is the main site and a small downloadable application, both of which can be used to access the stores items. How the Ovi Store varies over other mobile phone app stores is, however, interesting, as from its launch there is the greatest number of devices supported and the greatest number of individual handsets.

It’s been said that over 50 million mobile phones will be able to access the store, with over 50 different models of Nokia handsets all being able to use it as well. There’s also no cost to access the app store, or even develop applications, unlike Apple’s store.

Why should I care?
The Ovi Store is the equivalent of Apple’s popular app store for the iPhone and iPod touch, only it’s for Nokia’s own handsets and mobile phone operating system.

Content on the store has been written specifically for the Nokia OS Symbian, where the site can be accessed from the handsets browser at store.ovi.com. As with other app stores, there are both free and paid-for items catering for all, only Nokia has the highest available quantity of them at launch.

It’s been said there were over 20,000 items, which is the highest amount for any app store at the get go, compared to other offerings by other handset manufactures. These items range from the likes of games, videos and podcasts, with applications for all types of users and there is even location based content. Nokia has the largest amount of Flash supported devices around to date, meaning the possible items could be rather rich in terms of their multimedia experience.

They are all easy to download and use, with their sheer number being very high indeed. In the past the content offered for Nokia handsets was not as numerous, often being troublesome to install.

There is also content from launch to localised individual countries, with a variety of different language versions of the store all available too.

Items on offer for the user can also be suggested at the Ovi Store based on past selections, social connections and even the location of where the user is located. This differs greatly from other app stores around, as they do not currently provide such a mix of diversity.

It’s also been said that paid-for items could even be billed straight to the network or operator, besides from a credit card account. It’s unsure which operators and in what countries will support the first method, but the latter will be available to all.

Versions of the Symbian operating system, such as the Series 40 and Series 60 will all have access to the store by going to the browser or by installing the stores application. The upcoming N97 will have this software already built in at the time of arrival, making the ease of use even greater than other Nokia handsets.

What's a good example in practice?
A good example is seen by visiting the store online itself, where there’s content available to suit all tastes with a wide diversity of items on offer. There is a small application to be installed upon the handset for easy access, or just visiting the website will suffice.

Presumably all networks will provide access to the app store, if not right away then in time, with only a few already making public statements over this.

Is there a competing technology that I should be aware of?
The application store has been a great success, with most handset manufactures having their own bespoke store for their own individual phones and OS’s.

Apple has had an application store, full of software and other items, with well over 35,000 in total and all for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Google has more recently opened up the Android Market place, which offers up similar content, its limited phones running the mobile operating platform. Research In Motion now has an app store, becoming more popular with each passing day with the BlackBerry phones.

This now means that nearly all of the largest phone vendors have a store of similar ilk, accessible through a browser from their phone or by other means.

What is in store for the future?
What’s next for the Ovi Store is more content and more upcoming handsets all having the application on board, plus ease of access and availability to the store and greater support for older handsets.

Nokia is aiming to reach 300 million handsets by 2012, which is their target figure of existing and upcoming handset launches by the time that year comes around.

They are also making available services for the publishing of users' own content through the Nokia Ovi Store. This feature will offer and open up its abilities for all developers to create, market and monetise their own content in a way that’s already been seen on other stores.

Potentially, this has the reach to allow software writers to deliver content to hundreds of millions of people and with well over 4 million registered developers it’s set to be successful.

Tags: Phones Mobile phones Mobile phone apps Quick Guide

A quick guide to Nokia Ovi Store originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Mon, 01 Jun 2009 15:46:35 +0100

What is it?
Windows 7 RC1 is the free for use latest release candidate or beta version of the upcoming Microsoft desktop operating system, due for release later on this year.

This new software has been improved since the first beta edition came out in January, initially shown at Las Vegas' CES show.

Its final release date was first thought to have been January 2010, making its arrival exactly 3 years after Vista began shipping. At a press conference for the company Acer the actual shipping date was accidentally leaked, which is now around 23 October this year.

What are the variations of the technology?
The release candidate itself only comes along in the form of Ultimate Edition, this is the fully blown suite with everything on board and is perfectly suited for cutting edge machines.

Windows 7 however, when it finally ships will arrive in a number of different versions. There will be six in total, with really only two of them available to purchase that are aimed at the consumer - these listed as the Home Premium and Professional packages. The others are either aimed at the business world or system builders, where it will arrive already installed on a new computer.

Also on offer for the first time is an almost lite version of the OS for netbooks, entitled Windows 7 Starter. This version has been specifically tuned for the lower powered CPU based computers, with the ability to run only three applications at once making it ideal for those types of machines that currently can only run Windows XP.

Why should I care?
The public release candidate of Windows 7 has been significantly improved since its first outing, to a much more robust and stable operating system which will be indicative of the final version.

Since the January beta Microsoft has reportedly made 30 changes to Windows 7. Many of these aren't all that apparent to the layman, as they are reworkings to the basic code that runs inside of Windows 7.

Some of the more evident additions are the remote streaming, where media on a Windows 7 based computer can be streamed anywhere in the world over an internet connection.

Another addition, or more appropriately reduction in RC1, is the AutoPlay option when new media is detected and automatically run. This feature has now solely been consigned to optical discs, rather than any other media such as flash drives. This apparently came out of the recent Conflicker virus attack, which spread in a very similar way from flash drives themselves.

A rather controversial addition to this version is the Windows XP mode, in order to run older software. In RC1 and most likely the final version, the only way to run older software is from downloading a virtual operating system piece of software and run that application from inside of it.

This is because Windows 7 cannot natively support older software; this has caused much controversy - especially in the business world that heavily rely on older software to run aspects of the company.

Microsoft clearly has a lot of faith in this release given that they have an expiry for RC1 of June, next year. As they are confident this version will be seen as a reliable, stable platform and with economic times being what they are, Microsoft recognises not everyone will be able to upgrade on day one.

What's a good example in practice?
The good example is the OS itself, which has been available to download free of charge and to run from Microsoft's website since early May.

Subscribers to the likes of Microsoft's professional IT qualified technicians’ service and website namely TechNet, were able to download RC1 sometime before hand in, the response so far being positive.

Is there a competing technology that I should be aware of?
There is of course the early beta from January, which is now vastly out of date in terms of how it performs as compared to RC1.

During the process of working on this latest edition of Windows 7, Microsoft received well over 500,000 reports, all from users and just within the first 6 weeks. These were all to do with errors and issues needing to be fixed, along with ideas on features. All of which were farmed out to the developers, where some have found their way into RC1.

What is in store for the future?
Next is the various IT vendors and system builders such as HP and Dell to qualify their own hardware, all in order for Windows 7 to work perfectly on their systems. This is the stage that's possibly next and is currently being worked upon right now, as all the various bespoke drivers need to be written in order to move forward for the final version.

In previous versions of Microsoft's operating systems there has been another release candidate, before the final version was released. It's unsure if this will be the case this time around, primarily because of the June 2010 announcement for the platform to be still running and the readiness of the OS currently.

There are already software companies working on applications to use Windows 7's features. The graphics company Corel has made public news of their upcoming software having full multi-touch screen abilities before the OS even ships, where this is one of the core feature sets of Windows 7 and sets itself apart from Windows Vista.

Related links:

• News - Acer confirms Windows 7 available 23 October

Tags: Software Windows 7 Operating Systems Microsoft Quick Guide

A quick guide to Windows 7 RC1 originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Mon, 18 May 2009 14:49:41 +0100

What is it?
It’s the second version of the Google developed open source operating system for mobile phones. This new version was first seen in the second Android handset from HTC called the Magic, on the Vodafone network in the UK and Verizon in the USA. Soon after that, it was provided as an update to the very first mobile running the platform from T-Mobile, the G1.

There have been many overall improvements in the latest version, from its performance, down to a better overall user interface and a host of new features, all of which were included in this release

What are the variations of the technology?
As this is the second version of the operating system to be made public, there are now just two versions and therefore the only variations now in existence of the mobile platform. These are really the only options around today, but the features may differ from handset to handset.

It’s down to the individual operator and phone manufacture as to which abilities of the OS are enabled, disabled, further worked on, improved or customised for their particular handset and network – this is where an additional variation may come in to play.

Why should I care?
Google had already produced a good operating system for a mobile phone and in their very first attempt, version 1.5 just adds to the overall usefulness.

On the whole they’ve improved on the user interface, which isn’t all that noticeable at first glance, but they have refined the OS if you’ve experienced or used the T-Mobile G1. Everything from basic web browsing, to copy and paste and the built in Google services such as Gmail, Calendar and SMS options are all better integrated along with being improved.

Noticeable, is that the accelerometer has now been worked into more applications on the phone, from the likes of the onscreen virtual keyboard now present, which is also automatically displayed in landscape mode as result. On that note, it’s the first time there’s been an onscreen virtual keyboard, as it was missing from the first version presumably due to a physical keyboard being present in the original hardware.

There’s an overall performance step up, clearly seen if compared side by side, all of which is very evident after some time in use. Some of the noted aspects that plagued the first version of Android have been worked on once again, from the accessing of satellites used in their Google maps, down to the camera’s speed in operation.

Other aspects of the reworked user interface relate to widgets, the use of video recording being possible with instant posting to sites, whilst Bluetooth stereo audio is now present along with a new Linux Kernel.

What's a good example in practice?
The latest handset by HTC, who was also the manufacture of the very first Android mobile, now has the new OS deployed on both of its phones. The HTC Magic on the Vodafone network shipped with version 1.5, where the T-Mobile G1 handset was offered an update later.

Although the T-Mobile G1 doesn’t bear the name HTC, it was still very much at the heart of the design process with T-Mobile also having a hand to play. As it’s been confirmed HTC really wanted a T-Mobile sidekick looking handset, running on the Google platform.

More Android powered handsets are due out this year, from the likes of Samsung, Motorola and Sony Ericsson – which will all presumably be running version 1.5 at the time of arrival.

Is there a competing technology that I should be aware of?
There are a few other well known platforms for mobile phones, with the key ones being Windows Mobile from Microsoft and Symbian from Nokia. The latter, in more recent times, has made a big move towards an open source model since being acquired by Nokia and it’s here that it could be a competitor to Google’s Android.

What is in store for the future?
There is set to be a number of phones due out this year all running on Android, which will undoubtedly be based on the new version of the Google platform. We’ve already mentioned some key companies, with more minor ones set to be showing a keen interest in handsets of this ilk.

The likes of Acer and Lenovo are said to be releasing handsets later this year, based on the open source OS, although not all will be available in the UK or everywhere in the world. It’s been reported that Lenovo, who are a much larger company, with a distinct presence in Japan than elsewhere in the world, will have a mobile for that very country alone.

It’s also been said that other companies are even finding uses for Android outside of just a mobile operating system platform. Archos, a company well known for their versatile portable media players and the multiple generations of them, are producing a multimedia tablet device running from the Google OS. This could open up new avenues and angles for the development of Android, further beyond the handset limitations.

Tags: Phones Mobile phones Software Google Quick Guide Android

A quick guide to Google’s 1.5 Cupcake update originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Thu, 14 May 2009 14:27:44 +0100

What is it?
It’s the recent release of the new version of the short range wireless technology Bluetooth, which is said to be on the cards to replace the current standard of the popular and widely used protocol for sending data.

The new iteration of the specification has been laid out to incorporate the Wi-Fi standard seen and used by wireless routers at home and in the office, normally to deliver the Internet. As this has been bolted onto Bluetooth, it could now mean the reach will be much greater along with the speed in which the data can be sent.

What are the variations of the technology?
At the time of releasing the specifications of the new standard of Bluetooth, which will be now known as Bluetooth 3.0 + HS, no variations have been mentioned. This may not be the case however as we move closer to seeing actual products, or expect the new version to be included in consumer devices.

Materials do change, along with their abilities and functions from first putting pen to paper to releasing the specifications and standards to various companies and the general public. It’s been known from experience that the initial draft or first run of an outlaid design won't always end up being the final version, or that the governing body won't end up bowing to the pressure of companies developing products.

Why should I care?
There will be a distinct speed increase, along with the assumed increased distance Bluetooth can operate over – all of which makes this a far better technology than what’s been around for well over a decade.

Currently the possible speeds obtained from Bluetooth 2.1 is around 2.1 Mbps, where thanks to the new addition of the 802.11 protocol from Wi-Fi the new possible speeds will be around the 24 Mbps mark. This is obviously a distinct boost to the version currently seen, with its subsequent uses being very vast indeed.

If incorporated within products this could very well be useful in transferring large amounts of data, which at present is in the domain of the likes of FireWire and USB technology and cables. Due to the speeds possible of Bluetooth 3.0 and the wide accessibility of the current standard, the likelihood of the new standard being used in this way is very high indeed.

It’s even been mentioned that printers could benefit from Bluetooth 3.0, with large data transfers from computers to the printer. With the amount of megapixels ever on the increase in cameras, along with the quality of home printers ever on the rise, this could very well be a bonus in terms of fast printing.

What's a good example in practice?
As this technology has only been recently aired in terms of the possible final specifications, it’s still sometime away to being seen within new products and devices.

Saying that, the most likely uses will be similar to ones around today where Bluetooth is currently seen and used, from the likes of mobile phones, laptops, to PDAs and the other usual suspects. As it has the Wi-Fi specification onboard – which will be powered down until the need for data transfer arises – there will be the added functionality of transferring large amounts of data in a very short time with low power consumption.

This technology could very well be useful for digital cameras, digital camcorders and similar products. This could even expand into the field of mp3 players, personal media devices and really any electronic product that often needs data transferred to and from.

Is there a competing technology that I should be aware of?
Bluetooth 3.0 strengths will be seen in the fast transfer speeds, which is really why it’s being released and is the natural evolution of this technology. Currently competing here are the likes of FireWire and USB 2.0, which is primarily used for fast data transfers.

These will always be popular, as the standards have been built into computers for some years and many devices and products around today all use the technology. The drawback is they’re fixed to a location, where as the wireless standards are most definitely not and are far more flexible as a result.

Coming up the ranks to compete in the Bluetooth 3.0 market space is Wireless USB, which is capable of 480Mbps. This has yet to be seen in a great deal of products, but it is a promising technology and could very well be a contender if widely adopted.

The other technology that could give Bluetooth 3.0 a run for its money is Ultra Wideband, this is also an emerging short range wireless standard, which is capable of delivering data at 10 Mbps and over a good distance. It was first thought that Bluetooth 3.0 would be running from or over UWB, as both standards could have complemented each other in design. It turns out this wasn’t the case and there were complications, although it is hoped this might change with time.

What is in store for the future?
As with all new and emerging technology, it’s the uptake and incorporation into devices which will drive the new standard’s adoption further. We’re likely to start seeing Bluetooth 3.0 in products around January of 2010, with more coming out soon after that.

Companies that already make Bluetooth chips for devices, with names such as Atheros and Broadcom have already made public their intentions to make Bluetooth 3.0 chips. They have also mentioned, when the specifications were recently unveiled, that they are 9-12 months away from delivering these chips for products.

It’s been said that certain Bluetooth 2.1 devices could be upgradeable to Bluetooth 3.0, with a firmware flash update and with all the features of 2.1. As we get closer and closer to the time of arrival for the new technology, this could be more of a realistic proposal and we’ll see more of these details being made public around then.

Tags: Software Hardware Phones Audio Bluetooth Quick Guide

A quick guide to Bluetooth 3.0 originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Wed, 06 May 2009 14:07:58 +0100

What is it?
Standing for Ultra Wideband, it is a wireless technology used for the transfer of data over short distances in a similar way to Bluetooth. Unlike Bluetooth, the speeds in which the data is transferred can be far superior, with up to 100 times that of current Bluetooth devices.

What are the variations of the technology?
The variations of the technology would only be down to exactly how this technology is implemented and for what purpose it is used for. The speeds obtained can also be a key difference, as it could vary somewhat over great distances.

Why should I care?
The possible maximum throughput of Ultra Wideband as a technology is much greater than existing technology seen around today.

With enough interest from large companies already in the wireless data comms sector, it is hoped it could very well be the next wireless standard to be used. This is instead of the likes of Bluetooth - which even includes the latest version unveiled last week.

Already stated is the very fast speeds, but also the radio licenses for operating at the frequencies necessary are already in place and have been for some time. Meaning there is no heavy trial, testing and qualifying period needed.

What's a good example in practice?
One of the latest Ultra Wideband devices to be seen is the personal storage device Leyio, launched in the UK last week. This portable device can transfer data over UWB to another Leyio device up to 10 MBps with a reach of 10 metres.

The transfer speeds of a Leyio is 100 times faster than Bluetooth and 4 times that of Wi-Fi (802.11g), which in itself is a good solid speed for any type of data sending. Leyio also has a 16GB capacity, two USB ports and an in-built removable 2GB USB flash memory card for sharing data not over UWB.

Ultra Wideband has even been used in applications involving radar, where the signal sent is penetrated by objects close by and reflected by objects further away – this has been used to detect objects behind walls.

Is there a competing technology that I should be aware of?
Last week the Bluetooth Significant Interest Group, made public the specifications of the upcoming Bluetooth 3.0 standard. This could be a serious competitor, just as the upcoming Wireless USB standard and products could be too which uses UWB as a basis.

The new Bluetooth is said to be using a near Wi-Fi variation, creating a much wider range than the 10 or so metres of UWB, with an expected throughput of 24Mbps. Although UWB is capable of 80Mbps, as an established and proven technology Bluetooth could very will lead and win the battle when it finally comes down to it.

Ultra Wideband is effectively used for just short distances of the 10-metre variety, whereas the likes of Wi-Fi has a much larger reach, whilst it’s not competing with UWB it’s often measured up against it in speed.

What is in store for the future?
Just as with any emerging technology it’s the uptake by various companies, along with the way it's implement that will drive the standard and its further adoption.

It was hoped that the new standard of Bluetooth version 3.0 would either run from UWB or use it in some way – enabling a better usage of Ultra Wideband and further endorsing the technology. Unfortunately UWB wasn’t included in the specifications made available, possibly leaving a drastic dent in what could have been a useful addition in the Ultra Wideband arsenal of abilities.

It's hoping companies such as the INS group with Leyio, could start the ball rolling with UWB in a new direction, with other companies taking heed at its overall usefulness and possibly thinking of including it as a wireless standard.

As a technology, the short reach and the vast possible throughput of UWB could mean it could be of great use in transmitting larger volumes of data at close range. Sending the likes of HD video from camera to PC and streaming high quality sound to speakers are all possible ways of implementing the standard.

Tags: Software Hardware Quick Guide Wireless Networking

A quick guide to UWB originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Tue, 28 Apr 2009 15:53:23 +0100

What is it?
Standing for Organic Light Emitting Diode, it's the basis of the next generation of display technology. It's soon to be seen in standard computer screens and domestic TVs and is already here in the likes of mobile phones, digital cameras and PDAs.

What are the variations of the technology?
There are two types of OLED displays commonly seen around today, AMOLED and PMOLED based technology. Although Passive-Matrix OLED screens can be seen in smaller displays as the design is more or less geared for that market, Active-Matrix OLED screens can now be seen within mobile phones.

PMOLED is more or less made for the smaller device, as it does have a high power draw over the latter by its nature alone if compared size against size. AMOLED is geared for the much larger screen, making it an ideal product for normal sized computer displays and even the bigger HDTV screens.

PMOLED is operating by switching columns and row, where as AMOLED technology is controlled by manipulating each and every pixel for a much better image production.

Why should I care?
OLED screens do have many benefits over traditional LCD-based displays. They produce a much sharper image, along with being brighter than the normal displays used today and is a different design on the whole. They also draw much less power than those other screens, as they do not require a backlight to illuminate them due to their brightness. This in turn offers a much greener alternative to the displays seen around today.

Just as LCDs once offered over Cathode ray tubes as a new, thinner form factor, OLED technology is also thinner due to its overall design and manufacturing. This could very well once again revolutionise the screen industry, when adopted on mass.

It's been touted that larger screens for the home can be around a quarter of an inch in depth with this new technology. Proven prototypes of displays with these very claims backed up have already been seen at various trade shows, from CES in Las Vegas to CeBIT in Hamburg.

As a result of being much thinner than the LCDs, they also are much lighter and more flexible too. This in turn means they're much more resilient to bumps and drops than standard displays making them ideal for the likes of mobile phones and PDAs.

What's a good example in practice?
There are already a lot of the OLED products seen around today, with many more devices on the cards promised later this year and the following. The type of screens that can be seen are in digital cameras, mobile phones and PDAs all featuring OLED's clarity and brightness.

Much larger displays are to be seen next, with their ultra thin designs because of the very nature of the OLED technology and the way it's embedded in a screen housings.

Sony recently launched the XEL-1, boasting the title of the Europe's first OLED screen and the world's thinnest display. This primarily is aimed as a replacement for a small portable television, with a width just 3mm in depth and 11-inches in diameter – with a price tag of nearly £3,500.

Kodak is producing AMOLED digital picture frames, LG is working on OLED TVs, Samsung has shown off a foldable OLED mobile phone based screen and even Nokia ships its N85 with an OLED display.

Is there a competing technology that I should be aware of?
At present, it's early days still for OLED on larger screens above those sizes seen in mobiles and on digital cameras. The competing technology in the market space OLED displays are heading for is the LCD TFT standard on screens today. This technology is still very popular and will be for sometime, until the demand for OLED screens becomes more widespread as both a requirement and need.

One of the initial downsides to OLED screens is the cost, at present. Companies such as LG have said their OLED televisions sets could cost over twice as much, compared to normal LCD TVs. This is due to the new type of manufacturing currently involved, all of which will undoubtedly come down in cost over time.

It's been also said that water can easily damage some OLED displays, as the glass screen used for LCD TFT screens aren't always present or necessary which would normally add an extra layer of protection.

What is in store for the future?
As with most new and emerging technology it's the mass adoption that's the future, along with the refining of the manufacturing techniques used in order to make them more affordable whilst being a realistic viable alternative to LCDs.

OLEDs seem to be easier to produce, making them the ideal replacement for the future of flat screen displays. They're also much more versatile within viewing angles than these LCD TFT screens, as they can be viewed from a much more rounded area. Other displays in use today can lose their sharpness from certain angles, as compared to these OLED screens.

The screens themselves are said to be able to refresh at 1000 times faster than LCD displays, where gaming platforms would easily be an ideal target for the OLED market next. This is in addition to larger public displays, along with billboards clearly benefiting from this type of technology as it can be bent to fit almost any surrounding and environment whilst being made at a larger scale too.

Tags: Home Cinema OLED Phones OLED televisions Quick Guide

A quick guide to OLED originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Wed, 22 Apr 2009 10:18:11 +0100

What is it?
eBook reader, stands for electronic book reader. These are electronic devices with fairly simple screens for reading eBooks which are effectively just documents in known file formats for the eBook reader, such as pdf, text or other propriety bespoke formats.

These devices are lightweight handhelds that can support multiple books, whilst having an extremely long battery life. A variety of manufacturers already have a decent range of these products, from the likes of Sony and Amazon.

What are the variations of the technology?
The only real variations around today are within the screen sizes, what the device supports in terms of file formats and what books are actually accompanied on the product when they ship.

The screen sizes can vary to almost an A4 form factor, down to just an A5 looking display. The choice of device is all really dependent on what the user is comfortable reading for a length of time.

Getting eBooks on to these readers can be done via the ports they have built in, most of them come with a USB socket as standard. Also commonly seen are memory card slots, for housing additional eBooks, their numbers being well into the hundreds or thousands. These in turn usually support multiple flash card formats, although SD cards are usually favoured.

Most of the current ranges of eBook readers have screens that are only monochrome, primarily due to the reason that colour is unnecessary within these devices.

Why should I care?
For one, many books can be housed within these units using the standard memory onboard – up to 1000s in some cases.

Other benefits of eBook readers are that text or specific words can be searched within seconds, as compared to thumbing through a book for hours for a certain passage or text.

There’s also the advantage that the text size can be increased, catering for all reading abilities like larger print for the poorly eye sighted.

A lot of eBook readers have backlights or feature settings for reading at night, ideal for the electricity-conscious late night reader who doesn't want to use additional lighting.

Book marking passages of text can also be added to an eBook or the reader can even recall the last page read, allowing users to open the eBook next time automatically at where the reader left off.

eBooks can be obtained online from various trusted places, from the likes of Amazon and Waterstones to even purpose-built websites such as Project Gutenberg with many free books on offer.

There’s also the added advantage of using some of these devices as a tablet computer, as it’s also possible to write on some of these screens with their character recognition features to turn entries straight into editable text.

What's a good example in practice?
There are numerous eBook readers on the market today, all from well known established companies most of which have devices that run Linux for its versatility and low cost as a platform.

Sony has a range of devices, with clear and distinct viewable text from their paper like E-Ink technology. It’s capable of holding in its memory by default, over 160 eBooks with a long battery life of 7500 page turns without needing to recharge. The current PRS-505S ships with 100 free books, along with the ability to play music at the same time.

Another known company in the field of eBook readers is iRex Technologies. This company has a number of eBook readers, with the most recent versions going under the moniker of the "Digital Reader" and has Wi-Fi onboard. Besides being able to hold over 1000 eBooks, its 10.2-inch screen can be used to write upon as it has an integrated Wacom tablet.

One of the more popular eBook readers is Amazon’s Kindle, which has now of late reached its second generation. It’s currently predominantly available in the USA, although the demand seems to be high worldwide.

Is there a competing technology that I should be aware of?
Of course, there are the physical books themselves which will always be popular. There is also the software equivalent of eBook readers, with quite a few versions seen around catering for all tastes and devices.

Mobipocket is a popular software eBook reader, with support for many mobile phone operating systems. Most phones can be used to read eBooks, whilst the software also allows webpages and many documents to be turned into an eBook with its publisher add-on.

What is in store for the future?
Several new aspects are hoping to be seen more often in upcoming versions of the eBook readers, from the likes of tie-in publication houses, support for more file formats down to Wi-Fi and better connection options.

There already are devices around with Wi-Fi from companies such as iRex, which offer the likes of browsing online albeit in a monochrome format. Recently we saw one of their devices on an Orange trail with access to their 3G dongles, all ready for mobile viewing of news websites whilst away from a fixed location which could be another path for eBook readers to go down.

Of course there’s the hope that Amazon’s own eBook reader will become available elsewhere in the world.

Tags: Gadgets ebooks Quick Guide

A quick guide to ebook readers originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:14:23 +0100

What is it?
Nettop, stands for the word mishmash of interNET and deskTOP. These can be seen as the lite computer base station equivalent to the desktop computer, just as the netbook is the lite laptop or notebook.

They are traditionally low in power consumption, low in cost, low in noise, low in their overall size along with being low in processing power as compared to the desktop computer counterparts.

Just as with netbooks they have a small storage capacity, ideal for running just the main operating system and a few key applications whilst relying heavily on an internet connection for everything else.

What are the variations of the technology?
The majority of nettops, are from the usual suspects of ASUS and MSI and are all of the same ilk. These are powered by low voltage processor powered CPU’s by Intel, they all have an average size RAM offering, and low graphical abilities with storage ranging from small SSDs to hard drives in the 80GB size and beyond.

The operating systems are really the only variation from nettop to nettop, with the likes of Linux, Windows XP and even Vista basic being currently supplied as options. Although ASUS offer their Splashtop/Express Gate as an option in booting up, making the load time to a fully working OS only seconds .

Recently there have been some updates to the basic base station models, which include a faster processor and better graphics and a subsequent HDMI port with further models in the series that we’ll come to later.

Why should I care?
This range of computers have benefits in many areas, making them ideally placed as a second computer in the home, a main office computer for those who don’t really need high processing power or even in the education sector because of their overall usefulness.

For one, they pull much less power than a standard computer – up to 90% less in some cases, making them a greener alternative to the desktop computer. Their size can be just a little larger than an average paperback which can be 16 times smaller than a normal computer, making them ideally suited for even the most space stringent environments. The noise produced due to the design is barely audible, down to that of just 26 decibels with one manufacture quoting it’s quieter than a library.

What's a good example in practice?
ASUS produce in their Eee PC family range the Eee Box, which was the very first nettop around. MSI have their Wind Box, which closely followed on behind the ASUS product and is more or less of the same ilk in its setup and features.

Other companies such as Shuttle, HP and also Acer have started to announce and produce their own versions of nettop systems.

Is there a competing technology that I should be aware of?
The alternative is a much more powerful desktop computer that really won’t be used to its full extent by most, or the netbook which is becoming more and more common place today.

The average user will never push a standard computer to the maximum of its abilities, or even reach anywhere near the full use of its processing potential. It’s more likely web surfing, downloading files, listening to music and chatting over instant messaging that will be the common tasks of a PC suggesting the average computer is an excess and not needed.

Nettop systems seem an ideal solution for today’s common usage of a computer, with their low cost, low power CPU’s and low footprint meaning they're a greener alternative to powerful computers.

What is in store for the future?
Starting to appear are variations to the nettops, expanding on what is already here and building on the basic system itself. Some of the variations seen could quite easily be described as the next generation of these devices, just by what they offer on top of the original builds.

System builders ASUS and MSI now have nettops systems built into flat LCD displays which are also touch screen enabled, these more or less have the same feature sets of the nettops.

MSI have gone the route of branding these AIO or All In One PC’s, in which by the wording alone highlights what these are. ASUS have bundled theirs into the Eee PC family of computers, where the netbooks and nettops currently exist.

These ranges could be more suitable for the home, rather than the educational market or office where to all accounts there appears to be a well established market already for the basic nettop platforms.

As with netbooks, whenever there’s a new series of processors or greater improvements within low powered CPUs the range of nettops are refreshed. The earlier models aren’t really geared up for a heavy multimedia usage, whereas the next processors will address this factor even more.

Windows 7 Starter edition will perhaps drive the sales of netbooks much further when it arrives. It could very well do the same with the nettops for the same reasons – it will be cheap, more versatile than Windows XP and have been deliberately tuned for these types of computers.

Tags: Hardware Quick Guide Desktop PCs Nettops

A quick guide to nettops originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Wed, 08 Apr 2009 13:49:20 +0100

What is it?
Wireless USB is the next generation of wireless technology for connecting various devices to a computer wirelessly, which could very well be a challenger to Bluetooth in its usefulness and abilities.

Often referred to as WUSB, it’s a technology very similar on the outside to the way Bluetooth can be used today, only it has the possibilities of 480Mbps throughput as compared to 1-2Mbps on Bluetooth.

Its underlying technology is known as Ultra-WideBand or UWB, which in itself has picked up a lot of headlines of late as this alone is driving the possibilities of wireless HDMI, plus Dolby 5.1 audio possibilities over the airwaves.

What are the variations of the technology?
Since its creation over 3 years ago, there really hasn't been any variations in the technology. The connector for the external adaptors today is a USB port, which has the possibilities of connecting to 127 other Wireless USB devices.

There are two different terms used in Wireless USB, Device Wire Adapter (DWA) and Host Wire Adapter (HWA). The first is known as the device where multiple USB devices can physically connect to a product that looks and acts much like a hub, where the other term is used for the adaptor on a computer to connect to such a hub wirelessly.

Why should I care?
One of the reasons why you should care is that besides being the next generation of wireless technology and far better than Bluetooth, it can offer a neatness as compared to many stray USB leads hanging off a computer.

Wireless USB offers the facility for a hub to be placed, somewhere near or above the workstation area, where all the USB devices can then be attached and accessed in a far cleaner way without the many wires trailing to the computer.

There are fixed USB hubs for such a purpose, although these are still held back by wires leading to the computer and have limits in their very design – whereas Wireless USB is free from such drawbacks.

What's a good example in practice?
Despite the uptake of Wireless USB being rather slow at present, there are products around today and a distinct expectation for more very soon.

Peripheral manufactures from the likes of Belkin and IOGEAR already have Wireless USB products, proving the technology is viable, useful and ready for the market today.

Belkin retails their own Wireless USB hub, which is accompanied by a wireless adaptor for connecting up a computer to the hub over the airwaves. The hub can be placed anywhere in a 10 metre radius although it’s more affective within a 3 metre distance. Four USB devices can be connected up, which has a bandwidth throughput of 480Mbps at close range and up to 110Mbps at the greater limit.

IOGEAR has a wider range of products working on the Wireless USB specifications, besides just a hub similar to Belkin’s. Their series of devices are tailored to deliver video from a computer to a screen and up to the resolution of 720p, along with audio too over a similar distance. They also retail their Wireless USB adaptors separately, in order to extend the overall usefulness of other equipment for other computers.

Is there a competing technology that I should be aware of?
The current leader for wireless data transfer is of course Bluetooth and that’s the competing technology, simply by the fact it is used so widely. Its adoption is quite rife, from laptops to mobile phones and even some personal media players have Bluetooth onboard.

That wireless technology is very limited in its transfer speed and subsequently the amount of data that can be transferred across. This is one of the reasons why it really hasn’t been used for vast amounts of data transfer.

The alternative that’s more widely used is just a USB cable, these are ever present and nearly always at hand, ready and easy to use.

What is in store for the future?
What’s next on the roadmap of Wireless USB is the greater adoption of the technology, with more devices having it inherent within and computers supporting the standard.

Motherboard manufacturers and computer companies will need to start including Wireless USB as an optional technology or by default in their systems. It’s a tricky scenario between peripheral companies and system manufactures, as one or the other needs to highlight and lead by example of how useful and ready the technology is.

There are also the benefits and use in the field of Wireless HDMI, which is something that’s been written and spoken about by vendors but is still at an early stage of development. This is where a signal could be delivered from a computer or a laptop, to an HDMI socket on a supporting screen with a similar adaptor attached at a higher standard that’s already on offer.

Of late, news has come from Samsung that its Wireless USB chips are almost ready for market, around Q2 of this year. These chipsets can be made available to the likes of digital cameras, speakers and similar devices.

With Wireless USB there could be a day when an entire desktop computer setup could very well be connected wirelessly, as mice can be wireless, just as keyboards can be, speakers and now monitors too.

Tags: Hardware USB gadgets Wireless Wireless USB Gadgets Quick Guide

A quick guide to Wireless USB originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:48:41 +0100

What is it?
SATA 6Gbps is the next generation of the Serial ATA connectors and its technology, used for connecting up the majority of the computer’s hard disk drives, optical drives and similar devices seen around today.

The new standard was first announced by SATA’s governing body, the Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO) mid last year and first demonstrated at the Intel developer’s conference late in August.

More recently, Seagate and AMD jointly demonstrated the world’s first SATA 6Gbps hard drive and chipset at Everything Channel Xchange Conference in New Orleans in early March, showing the technology is much more ready than first thought and that we could be seeing products much sooner.

Just as with USB 3.0 from last week, its key feature is the increased speed over the current technology, SATA 3Gbps also known as SATA-II. Also the ports and technology will be backwards compatible, so migration from one to the other will be simple in the long run just as it was from the first SATA devices to the SATA 3Gbps.

What are the variations of the technology?
There really aren’t any variations that have been made public on the next version of SATA nor do we expect any to be. It will be as standard as the common place connecting ports of USB and SATA, seen today.

The new standard builds upon what’s already in SATA 3Gbps and improves on the way data is handled by the computer. There are also subtle changes in the way the likes of video is handled within streaming, plus the larger amounts of data being manipulated and all possibly from a slightly higher power consumption level.

Existing cables today will still be able to be used in the future with SATA 6Gbps, with no additions needed as it’s running from the exact same connectors. This removes the headache and additional learning curve, which often puts some people off with new technology.

Why should I care?
Currently SATA 3Gbps is capable of delivering transfer speeds of around 300 megabytes per second, whereas this new technology SATA 6Gbps as the name suggests will double that at 600. Putting that into perspective, the bus connector is measured in bits per second and hard drives are in megabytes or terabytes all of which is very important to differentiate between.

At the moment there really is no hard drive around that has maxed out the existing technology in its throughput, but the likes of SSDs are at the very brink of it.

There’s even talk that many hard drives or similar peripherals could share the same cable within the implementation of the SATA 6Gbps new standard, much like the old ATA or PATA cabling scenarios of yesteryear. This saves the need for one cable being used for just one device in the current option, this will allow much more storage expansion inside a single system.

What's a good example in practice?
The technology seems to be here now and the standards close to finalisation, although no products are around as yet we're hoping the adoption for this will be sooner than in the past. We expect to start seeing systems including SATA 6Gbps, as we do storage products and their ilk later on this year, or early next.

Due to the large possible throughputs, hard drives are the obvious choice for the SATA 6Gbps adoption. More appropriately, the larger hard drives with lots of data going back and forth would benefit first.

After that, the second most obvious choice if not the first would clearly be Solid State Drives (SSD) in benefiting from the new standard, as we’ve already stated the bottleneck is being reached.

The likes of high definition movies, either the playback of media or even burning media to writeable Blu-ray discs could show some worth in SATA 6Gbps. If not now, then in the future, as the current fastest burning speeds are 6x Blu-ray writeable discs with 216 Mbps in possible data transfer rates. This doesn’t even top out SATA 3Gbps. But who knows what the future may hold there.

Coupling hard drives together for fault tolerance in simple RAID setups would also be a useful way of capitalising on the speeds of SATA 6Gbps, especially within the maximum speed throughputs possible.

Is there a competing technology that I should be aware of?
The closest technology around today which matches SATA 6Gbps is SAS 6Gbps, which has been shipping now for some time. This is the serial attached SCSI that’s the upgrade of the old style enterprise hard drive standard, which closely matches the evolutionary path of ATA to SATA as they both came out of the same developmental roadmap.

There are also similarities shared between the two, with the likes of the physical layer and other aspects taken from the development path of the enterprise SAS technology seen around today.

What is in store for the future?
It’s been said the final specifications are very close to being fully ratified, with the next stage of the adoption being companies implementing the new standard within their new systems, hopefully later on this year or early next year.

As with USB 3.0 from last week, the first incorporators will most likely be the motherboard manufacturers such as ASUS and MSI, who are usually the first adopters and often the leaders.

Moving on from there, or even at the same time are the peripheral manufacturers who will be the next ones to utilise SATA 6Gbps by manufacturing drives with those connectors.

This year AMD has already successfully aired a prototype of a PC running the SATA 6Gbps chipset, with a prototype Seagate Barracuda 6Gbps hard drive. With those two already being first to partner and to show off what is capable, we’re expecting both of them to be the first, with new SATA standards being actually implemented within the year.

Most of the hard drive companies are members of the SATA-IO organisation and are ready to deliver SATA 6Gbps products, if and when they find the customer needs them.

Seagate has already announced it is working on a SSD SATA 6Gbps based drive that will match that drive's performance to the infrastructure itself.

Tags: Hardware Quick Guide

A quick guide to SATA 6Gbps originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:56:31 +0000

What is it?
USB 3.0 is the next generation of the Universal Serial Bus technology. It was first demonstrated at an Intel developers conference way back in September 2007, where its fast transfer speeds where first shown off to the public. News of this technology has recently been picking up more and more headlines of late, as it’s been said the first test specification is finally close to completion and manufactures are starting to talk about its arrival and benefits.

The key feature of USB 3.0 is that it’s been touted as being ten times faster in transferring data, as compared to the current USB 2.0 standard. That along with the connectors being backwards compatible, so there will be no need to throw away, replace or learn about something new in a hurry.

What are the variations of the technology?
There really aren’t any variations that have been made public to date on the next version of USB and we don’t expect there will be either. It will be as standard as the common place single connecting port of a USB 2.0.

On the inside however, it’s all changed. There’s a new bus or circuitry for handling the increased data speeds, that’s known as SuperSpeed. The cables are said to have changed on the inside too, with four additional wires being included making the cables themselves a tad thicker. As far as the preliminary images of the connectors go, they look no different to the normal USB ports seen around today – the connector design will support existing technology and current cabling too.

Why should I care?
USB 3.0 is said to be capable of delivering transfer speeds of 5 Gigabits per second, whereas USB 2.0 is only capable of 480 megabits per second. That’s more than ten times the speed of existing USB 2.0 which is a tad old in itself, as it’s now been with us for over 8 years replacing the older standard of USB 1.1.

5 Gbps is the theoretical maximum speed of USB 3.0 which translates to 0.625 Gigabytes per second, in rough calculations. Transferring a full 25GB Blu-ray movie across this next generation setup should take just 70 seconds – clearly highlighting exactly how fast this will be in its data throughput and its overall uses all around.

What's a good example in practice?
The technology is still in the early stages of being finalised, despite already being around for 2 years. In June this year manufactures will be officially testing out the specification, with a view to hopefully including this technology in their systems later on this year or early next.

We‘re expecting the initial uses of USB 3.0 to be largely in the field of heavy data transfers, due to its throughput capabilities. External hard drives or very large high Terabyte sizes will undoubtedly capitalise on the standard’s fast speeds of delivery, and rightly so too.

Solid State Drives (SSD) could also benefit under the new standard, as the bottleneck (where it’s being held back from completing its true possible speeds) could go some way to being eliminated here. SATA - II drives and their native 3Gbps speeds could also benefit, as could the soon-to-be upcoming SATA 6 Gbps – SATA’s own next generation.

The current standards of digital media in recording devices are moving towards the high definition end of the spectrum, where USB 3.0 will surely be of use. The default standard around today is the measly 2.0 speed for transferring data, or the FireWire options both of which really do not measure up to USB 3.0. The vast amounts of media needed to be transferred for editing purposes, could take just moments on this new technology as compared to others around.

Is there a competing technology that I should be aware of?
As it stands today, there really isn’t a competing data transfer speed that will be up to matching USB 3.0 for the consumer in terms of speed or the possible amounts of data throughput.

The closest around is FireWire and its few standards, along with eSata. FireWire’s standards are noted as being 400 and 800 in their variations, with those speeds being around 400Mbps and 800Mbps respectively. On the horizon is said to be the FireWire S800T, S1600 and S3200, it’s been mentioned these are capable of 800 Mbps, 1.6 Gbps and 3.2 Gbps although there’s no news as to when they’ll be available.

What is in store for the future?
The draft ratification is said to be near completion and very close to being signed off. After this point is reached, we’ll start to see announcements from companies that are ready to start including the new standard within their systems, hopefully later on this year or early next year.

The first incorporators of this technology will most likely be the motherboard manufacturers such as ASUS and MSI, who are usually the first adopters of new standards and often lead the way for others. These systems will be off the back of the chipset companies such as Intel who will probably already be prepared to go to the presses around this time too, with their USB 3.0 technologies.

Following on from that stage are the peripheral manufacturers, these will be the next ones to utilise this new standard to the fullest by capitalising on the speed USB 3.0 will operate.

It’s been reported that Apple will be testing the specification during this summer, with rumours that Microsoft Windows 7 will also be addressing 3.0 straight from the box.

Seagate aired a prototype, at Las Vegas' Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in January, from the series of their best selling external hard disc drives, known as FreeAgent. This was running from USB 3.0, with the company Symwave’s SuperSpeed USB prototype controller. Alone this offered an example of exactly where the new technology will be placed and how it could be first implemented, whilst at the very same time highlighting who could be first to market with their drives.

Tags: Hardware Gadgets USB 3 Home Cinema Quick Guide

A quick guide to USB 3.0 originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Wed, 18 Mar 2009 15:23:30 +0000

What is it?
Standing for, Voice Over IP or Voice Over Internet Protocol – to be more specific. Essentially it’s a way of transmitting voice over the Internet to a similar, or an identical item on the receiving end.

This could be software or hardware capable of picking up such a signal from and over the Internet, that’s been especially designed to cater for such a task.

The software can be based on a PC, mobile phone or even embedded in a piece of equipment specifically made for this type of function and this task alone.

It’s likely most computer users have already experimented with such an application, or they’ve used a piece of software day in day out which already has this functionality but haven’t actually got around to using it, or can’t in the office environment. The likes of MSN Messenger, more commonly known today as Windows Live Messenger has this built in as does Google’s Gmail.

What are the variations of the technology?
There are not many variations of VoIP that are relevant for this guide or are easily explained away. The variations really only come along in the forms it’s used, in the applications it’s seen in and the hardware that uses it.

There are also the extra services companies can attach to the basic operations of the VoIP software, with the benefits they hold being very clear, more of which we’ll go into later.

Why should I care?
In its truest form VoIP is a cheaper alternative to using a telephone to communicate, or even a mobile phone. Calls can be made, for example, from computer to computer free of charge over existing infrastructure such as broadband or a mobile phone’s data connection.

On top of that, there are the bundled in call packages with companies such as Skype, for calling landlines or mobiles, which come out on average much cheaper than a normal telephone operator.

Within the business world, VoIP phones for the desk usually run off the power delivered from a standard Ethernet cable. This is from a system known as PoE or Power over Ethernet, which pulls much less electricity than a normal phone that plugs into the wall. Overall this makes it a rather attractive green alternative to the normal telephone systems seen in offices.

What's a good example in practise?
VoIP can be seen and used in both software form and in hardware based products, all of which are becoming more and more commonplace today.

Already very popular and widely used is the software Skype, which is one of the more versatile applications out there today. This is due to the extra facilities the software provides and its company provides, from video calling to instant messaging to phone calling packages, along with it being embedded in hardware too.

The likes of Netgear and Philips now have embedded Skype into some of their handsets. These are both in standalone hardware versions, which operate in dual modes as both a normal phone handset and as a VoIP handset using Wi-Fi.

Netgear also offers up a handset that just has Skype onboard that once again uses the home Wi-Fi wireless router, and not the phone line to place calls.

Asus has recently produced, in conjunction with Skype, a standalone video phone, using the VoIP software and its video functions. This can work with other Skype options, such as their phone calling packages besides just the videophone-to-videophone and videophone-to-PC.

On top of that, Skype also has software or clients for nearly all the mobile phone operating systems around today. This is ideal for use over the phones data connection, or even Wi-Fi to place calls.

Another popular VoIP application for mobile phones is Truphone, this is a favourite with iPhone users and increasingly so on other mobile phone platforms.

Is there a competing technology that I should be aware of?
The alternative to using VoIP is just not using it at all, just staying with the mobile for normal calling or the standard phone.

The benefits to using VoIP as an optional way to communicate with people have been clearly laid out already; the downside is that more often than not it relies on another piece of equipment to function.

This could be additional software that’s not already installed on a PC or mobile phone, or even the additional purchase of a standalone device.

There are technically different alternatives to VoIP that are quite complex. These can be found in use in enterprise and are aimed at business users. These do not have the widely adopted foundation that VoIP has or the subsequent support.

What is in store for the future?
The future for VoIP comes down to more devices and applications supporting the standard, along with existing software gaining VoIP functionality.

For the consumer, the low call cost and freely available applications will go on to challenge the network operators and their high prices – which in turn will help to drive down the cost of calling, whether this be mobiles or landlines.

For the business user, the green aspects of low power usage on VoIP systems will just lead to greater benefits all around, due to the cost of ownership and ease of manageability of VoIP phones and their systems.

Tags: Software VoIP Phones Skype Truphone Quick Guide

A quick guide to VoIP originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:23:56 +0000

What is it?
A netbook is a very portable, very lightweight, low cost, low powered and green alternative to a large laptop. The screen size is usually much smaller than its laptop counterpart, the onboard storage is also much smaller and the battery life is usually far superior as well.

Due to its low storage capacity, it’s often seen as a laptop the runs its applications from the Internet rather than its hard drive. The hard drive, or more commonly seen SSD – which we covered last week – is large enough to house a good operating system, plus a few choice applications but no more than that.

Web browsing and very lite office applications seem to be the primary usage for netbooks, but it’s becoming ever more increasingly versatile as a replacement to the laptop. This is all down to its affordability, good battery life and usefulness around the home, out of the home or office.

What are the variations of the technology?
Netbooks come along in a few different variations. These can really be pigeon-holed into just three categories; screen sizes, storage space and operating systems.

The first option can range from the likes of a 7-inch screen, up to and even beyond a 10-inch display.

Storage space on a netbook comes along either as an SSD format, or an actual physical hard drive. These in turn can also vary in size considerably; commonly seen is a smaller 4GB SSD up to a much larger version from a 20GB hard drive, upwards.

Batteries for netbooks are usually only seen in just two different offerings, a 3-cell and a 6-cell version. If you imagine there are several D-size batteries powering the unit, with 3 or 6 of them stacked end to end, then you’ll get some idea of the size. There are two rows of the 3-cell batteries used in making up the larger option, which is often seen in the hard drive models only due to the power consumption needed as compared to an SSD.

The other variant commonly seen is the operating system. The two platforms here are Linux and Windows XP, with the life of XP being clearly extended due to the popularity of netbooks today. Both are primarily used for their low install and the smallness of their code whilst running, all of which doesn’t tax the system whereas Vista would very much do so.

What’s also seen within some manufactures SKU’s are these options working together for a more balanced choice of product. One of the iterations usually offered is the bundling of Linux, a larger hard drive with a bigger battery, with the other being Windows XP Home on a smaller capacity SSD with a smaller battery. These two versions equal themselves out in cost, whilst at the same time being fairly equally matched in terms of their battery life.

What’s constant in all models is the low powered, but still fast CPU which is ideal for this type of computing. These processors are often refreshed, if and when a new range of CPUs are released by the likes of, the leading manufacture in this field, Intel.

Their Atom processors are a very popular choice with nearly all the netbook makers, for their versatility and other points that we will go in to later.

Wi-Fi is a standard feature onboard all of the netbooks around today. Some might even say these computers are designed solely for use on the Internet, whilst relying heavily on on-line features rather than software installed on the system.

Many manufactures today offer other aspects to their netbook designs, with options such as mobile broadband embedded on the platform.

Why should I care?
There are several key benefits to netbooks, ranging from portability, a long battery life and affordability. Although the latter could also be seen in the budget models of laptops, when the other benefits are not present.

These devices are truly portable, weighing in at around the 1.2kg mark on average with a size very comparable to a paperback book – making them very accessible to all. This includes a battery that in most cases will last a normal working day, if used wisely.

The processing power of most is good enough to browse the Internet, use word processing and listen to music all at the same time, without putting a strain on the system in any way. This just adds to the overall usability and attractiveness, as an alternative to the bulkier laptop.

What's a good example in practice?
The first to produce and really coin the phrase netbook, in terms of defining it for today’s market, was Asus back in mid 2007. They’ve produced a good array of netbooks since then, just as MSI have, who came along next in producing their offerings.

Some of the mobile telephone networks around today, such as Orange, even offer up netbooks for free bundled in with a contract for mobile broadband, at a reasonable cost per month.

Prices for netbooks range from around the £150 mark, to the £500 price point. This all depends with what’s onboard, from larger storage, bigger screen sizes and larger batteries.

Also names of the larger manufactures could add to the cost, with the likes of Samsung, HP, Sony, Lenovo and DELL also offering up netbooks of late.

Is there a competing technology that I should be aware of?
The alternatives to netbooks are of course, laptops. These, by default, have faster processing powers, larger screens and greater access to larger hard drive storage sizes. This is besides an optical drive, which is normally missing from netbooks today.

These computers are normally twice, if not three times the size of a netbook with a cost attached that matches and a battery life that cannot always be matched either.

What is in store for the future?
As expected with all next generation computers, the aim is to better the ones they’re now superseding and replacing. Netbooks are no different in this formula either, with the development driving forward possibly more so at the moment than laptops. What’s due in the next generation are the likes of faster processors, better memory, increased storage – all with the promise of a longer battery life too.

Asus are due to be bringing out, within the next month, their latest S121 netbook. This boasts the world’s largest SSD of 512GB, with a 12-inch screen.

There’s a common misnomer that anything above a 10-inch screen is considered to be falling into the category of laptops, this just simply isn’t true. At the time of the first incarnation of netbooks, the screen was only around the 7-inch mark which clearly separated itself from the display sizes of laptops solely by its dimensions. This added to this misconception and possibly added more fuel to the speculation at the time, it’s also where this idea could have come from.

When technology advances, so does the specifications of every netbook, everyone would expect this to happen with screen sizes, as with everything else.

The S121 was announced at CES in Las Vegas back in January, along with their T91 which is also due for launch in the next month or so. This is a netbook with a difference, as the screen can be swivelled around to cover the entire keyboard, which turns the device into a tablet based computer. It’s both a normal netbook, along with being the world’s very first tablet-netbook hybrid computer.

Another popular manufacture of netbooks is MSI, who also unveiled another new format at CES. They’ve gone a different route though, in order to stand out against their competition. MSI announced and showed off their X320 netbook, a very very slim device. This almost has the feel of that extremely thin Apple notebook, the Air, as this new netbook from MSI is only 1.98cm thick.

There have been rumours of late of Nokia being said to be producing a netbook, presumably running their Symbian OS. With the other popular platform rumour being that of Google, said to be porting its mobile phone OS, Android, to a netbook as well.

There’s a distinct possibility that one day the lines between the netbook and laptops will be blurred, within their capabilities, their possibilities and even price.

Tags: Hardware Netbooks Quick Guide

A quick guide to netbooks originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Tue, 03 Mar 2009 15:05:53 +0000

What is it?
Standing for solid state drive it's an alternative to the hard disk drives used for storage and is a favourite in the low cost netbooks that are seen around today from the likes of Asus.

SSDs traditionally have the type of onboard technology used by your computer's RAM or USB Flash drives rather than storing data on hard disk drive (HDD) platters.

This makes them faster in both writing and reading data, as compared to the HDD. There are also many other factors involved relating to additional benefits they have over a normal hard disk drive, more of which we’ll go into later.

It's common to see SSDs in notebooks and more increasingly so in laptops too. These often fall under the normal drive size capacities of the 2.5-inch and 1.8-inch form factors, which are associated with standard HDD sizes for storage within these types of computers.

Although it appears SSDs are a recent addition to the IT world, they have been around for some time in some form or another. They even date as far back to the early home computing days of the Amigas and Ataris in the 1980s, where hard drives were expensive and these were then commonly referred to as RAM drives. There is a history of them dating back even further than that, with the likes of mission critical applications used by the military – in which they are still very popular today.

What are the variations of the technology?
There are a few ways to deliver SSDs. These range from being embedded in the device down to the type of interface used from the likes of PATA (parallel ATA or PSSD) to SATA-II, all which go on to mimic to a degree a hard disk drive in their operation.

Inside the SSD itself there are a couple of variants surrounding the memory used making up its storage abilities. These fall into two categories, known as SLC and MLC – standing for single level cell and multi level cell.

The first allows for faster transfer of the data onboard, where it's a tad more expensive than the other type of memory.

The second version, being that of MLC offers much higher levels of storage as compared to the other, but is slower in terms of transferring the data from the chips to the computer.

It's becoming more and more common these days to see both of these types of memory used in an SSD, as both have their strengths and together they can capitalise on their distinct technologies.

SSDs are already fast in transferring data by default, no matter what type of memory is used in their manufacturing it's just that SLCs are that little bit faster over MLC chips.

Why should I care?
There are several key benefits SSDs have over HDDs, most of which relate to the difference in architecture they have over platter-based storage as compared to NAND-based storage.

These can be mostly attributed to a number of reasons ranging from performance, low power consummation and durability.

SSDs have no moving parts, unlike a hard disk drive. This means there's really no wear and tear as associated with its alternative, creating on the whole a longer life for the drive.

There are some stats worked out by Samsung, where the average MTBF – mean time between failures (the expected running time before the drive could possibly develop a fault) – of a 2.5-inch HDD is less than 700,000 hours.

The same standard for an SLC and an MLC based SSDs are more than 2 million, and 1 million hours respectively. This clearly highlights their benefits being much greater than a normal hard drive, in terms of just how long it's expected to be up and running problem free.

As there are no spinning disks or heads needed to search for the data, the performance is greatly increased with a boot time that's been said to be 40% faster than an HDD. On top of that, there's the increased data transfer in read and write times to the SSD.

Just to put this in context, a 2.5-inch hard disk drive can have a 59MB/s read time where an SLC can have a 100MB/s read time. Once again, this just further highlights the benefits very clearly from one to the other.

Netbooks, which are a popular choice in mobile computing today can benefit from SSDs for extended battery life. It's been noted by Samsung that their SSDs pull just 0.4W whilst at their most active period, with a 2.5-inch HDD pulling in 2.1W – over five times that of the other.

What's a good example in practice?
There are various types of capacities around today, most still relate to the lower end of the spectrum rather than the mighty sizes seen in the larger terabyte drives.

SSDs can be seen in netbooks ranging in capacity from 8GB upwards. SanDisk do have ranges reaching as high as 240GB, seen in their latest G3 family of products which also include 60 and 120GB variants.

Other well known companies such as OCZ Technology have produced 250GB SSDs, whilst Samsung has also been said to be turning out a 256GB model.

The lower capacity drives can be seen in many netbooks around today, with more planned on the horizon. These are all present and are included for the benefits we mentioned in the last section.

Manufactures such as Buffalo are also offering SSDs in the form of larger portable external storage, and are also looking towards NAS (Network Attached Storage) for trouble and risk free backups.

Is there a competing technology that I should be aware of?
The alternative is of course, the hard disk drive. On the whole the HDD is a lot cheaper per megabyte than the SSD, by some considerable factor too.

Some netbook manufacturers have in the past balanced out the SSD Vs HDD price point by offering various SKUs whilst each have their own merits over one another. These fall under the categories of larger hard drives with Linux installed and a larger battery to accommodate the power drain, to SSDs with Windows XP and a smaller battery onboard.

What is in store for the future?
On the not too distant horizon is increased storage, faster access to data and cheaper ways of both making and offering SSDs to the users or companies.

There have been announcements of late by Toshiba and also SanDisk, who are two of the key players in this field offering up news of breakthroughs inside this arena.

The first made public details of a prototype of FeRAM based chips, which could very well drive the next generation of SSDs. These types of chips can offer read and writing speeds of 1.6GB per second, whilst delivering the capacity of 128MB per chip.

This trumps their own current ceiling 200 megabit data transfer speeds, with 32 megabytes of possible storage. With this new technology being almost eight times that of what's around today.

SanDisk at CES unveiled their next generation of SSDs, which operate at the equivalent of a 40,000 RPM hard disk drive, based on the MLC type of chips – where the common HDD runs in at around 7200 RPM.

Asus has a new notebook that was also launched at CES this year known as the S121, this is said to have a 512GB SSD onboard when it arrives. Meaning it will have the largest solid state disk possible at the time of being on sale, later on this year.

Tags: Hardware Storage Quick Guide

A quick guide to SSDs originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Mon, 23 Feb 2009 17:43:00 +0000

What is it?
Standing for Global Positioning System, it is a radio based technology that measures the distance from a device with access to GPS onboard such as satellite navigation products (sat nav), then calculates that distance to the satellites in orbit sending out these radio signals.

From this, a GPS device can provide details of exactly where it’s located nearly anywhere on Earth.

This technology is free to use, apart from the additional cost of the device itself, using it, and general upkeep. Think of these devices as being a map, a compass and the world’s best navigator all rolled up into one.

GPS has been in the development process over the past 50 years, and is used by many all over the world for various reasons and purposes.

It was developed by the United States Department of Defence, with its general upkeep now being maintained by the United States Airforce. This network of satellites amounts to a figure in between 24 and 32 in total, in what’s known as a medium earth orbit and higher orbits within the skies. Its official name is NAVSTAR GPS, although it’s more commonly known as just GPS today.

What are the variations of the technology?
There really aren’t any variations of the technology, other than alternatives and future expansion of GPS – both of which we’ll go into later.

The only real variant is how GPS is actually used and interpreted by the device that’s utilising it, these range from sat nav products to mobile phones.

Why should I care?
As an alternative to using a plain old Ordinance Survey Map for navigating GPS technology is much more reliable, the devices can be frequently updated where maps cannot and it goes without saying the location can be provided, even when the location is unknown.

The service is free to use, it’s only the device that costs and the software it accommodates. There isn’t any likely hood of the GPS service not being able to be used anymore, which creates a good solid platform for future expansion on the system.

What's a good example in practice?
There are a wide range of sat nav devices in use today, all using GPS. The company’s are known to most, with products from established names such as TomTom and Garmin.

How they differ from each other is not related in any way to the GPS service obtained, but how the device operates.

This can be balanced out and brought down to the price of the unit, as they all vary as much in cost as they do in feature sets from device to device with the GPS being a standard offering to all.

These feature sets can relate to the physical aspects of the sat nav products, down to what’s actually onboard in terms of accessing and utilising the GPS data. Starting from the highest downwards, there are widescreen abilities on offer and maps that list many countries which are all features seen in a more costly device. With the lower costing units having just a single country map and an older looking screen, similar to the 4:3 shaped televisions that came before widescreen.

Companies such as TomTom, can also provide their mapping software for mobile phones that have GPS access from their built in chipsets. These also use and utilise the same level of service as an actual stand alone sat nav product, in relation to how they use GPS to provide navigational abilities.

Just proving how useful and versatile GPS can be is the technology geotagging, on mobile phones. This is where the image taken with an onboard camera also has the data provided of where it was exactly taken from GPS, for use in conjunction with the likes of Google maps. This offers up another added dimension to the resourcefulness of GPS and its usage today.

Is there a competing technology that I should be aware of?
Apart from future expansion of the GPS system which we’ll cover next, there really is only one other service that could be seen or interpreted as a competing technology. This is known as A-GPS, or assisted GPS.

This is more commonly known and seen in mobile phones, and is becoming more and more of a regular feature inside a great deal of handsets coming out in the market place today.

Instead of using the satellites orbiting the Earth to obtain the location, this uses cellular network towers, the same ones used by a mobile phone to gain a signal for communication purposes. From there, the location can be roughly worked out by triangulating the location from a series of towers and finding out where the phone is in relation to all of those cellular towers.

It’s a good alternative to GPS, with a number of benefits. Instead of using an expensive chipset for the phone with actual GPS capabilities onboard, it’s a low cost effective way of deploying this type of technology on handsets. Whilst at the same time it doesn’t use the same amount of CPU processing power as GPS, this in turn can extend the battery life of the mobile.

There is also another key benefit, which comes from the GPS signal obtained in built up areas. It’s common to find with densely populated areas surrounded with large tall buildings that normal GPS signals can be hard to obtain, or next to impossible.

A-GPS as an alternative can offer nearly the same level of service as GPS, as for one it doesn’t need to access those satellites, just as long as the phone can obtain a signal it’s okay to use.

There are even mobile phones around which use both GPS and A-GPS, in order to gather a much more accurate and precise signal for location finding and navigation. As both can complement each other and work from their own strengths to bring a better level of service to a device.

What is in store for the future?
Besides the usage of RDS to deliver up to date traffic information, by means of FM radio which provides digital information to a sat nav device – there is another set to take its place. With RDS the data is taken on board and used to update, if and when necessary, the car’s journey when there are traffic issues on the planned route ahead. There are flaws in this service, as the frequency of the data is polled and delay in providing can be as long as 20 minutes.

TomTom has developed a system they’re calling HD Traffic which is the next evolution of this service, adding to the usefulness of GPS by providing better on ground services.

They partner with the leading mobile network provider in that country, where they in turn provide anonymous data from the likes of discovering denser population of their mobile phones on the roads in relation to the car. This in turn shows when and where the traffic hot spots are and offers a much better service that RDS could ever provide. HD Traffic is then delivered every 3 minutes straight to the device, which contains a SIM card itself effectively turning it into a mobile phone for all intents and purposes.

Also in the future more satellites will be launched, to improve the quality and sensitivity of the devices.

There has even been ground made on a European civilian satellite network named Galileo. When this launches in 2010 it will provide a network of 30 satellites and is set to give the Europeans greater independence and lessen the need to rely on the USA, whilst at the same time providing a much more accurate service than is already in place.

Tags: Car And GPS GPS Mapping Software Galileo Quick Guide

A quick guide to GPS originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Tue, 17 Feb 2009 13:41:55 +0000

What is it?
HomePlug or PowerLine, depending on which vendor you speak to, is a technology and series of products that turns your home electrical circuit into a local area network or LAN.

These devices plug into a normal power socket on the wall, whilst an Ethernet cable runs from the product to a computer, gaming console or similar device.

When connected to the likes of an ADSL or DSL router, this in turn delivers internet access to one of the devices listed above.

It's an alternative to wireless technologies, bettering them in most cases by providing a solid, constant, reliable signal and at speeds that can almost be four times that of normal wireless products.

What are the variations of the technology?
There are really only three variations to HomePlug or PowerLine technologies; these mainly boil down to the speeds delivered to the device.

The first is known as HomePlug 1.0, this was the very first incarnation of the technology and is still around today in the more budget orientated models. This version only reaches around 14Mbps maximum throughput. The speed obtained here is just below a third of the common standard of wireless technologies today in 802.11g or 54Mbps, which is seen inside most ADSL routers.

Next up is the HomePlug 1.0 Turbo, which reaches 85Mbps and surpasses most wireless networks around today. It also provides, just as before, a good solid, reliable constant signal over any distance.

At the top of the range is HomePlug AV, which offers close to 200Mbps almost four times that of what common place wireless routers can provide. This is ideal for some tasks that rely on large amounts of data getting to devices, from the Internet or just inside the home. In this version security and encryption is also featured as a standard, ensuring high levels of privacy not always seen in others.

There are also various models and ways these are presented in products, we'll go into these in more detail later. All of them come along in the various standards listed above, with a cost to suit all pockets and from nearly all the known manufactures of wireless routers which complement their existing range.

Why should I care?
As an alternative to wireless technology, HomePlug or PowerLine can deliver a good solid signal over some distance as it operates over a fixed power circuit of a home and not over the airwaves.

This can be beneficial for the likes of data intensive operations such as video streaming. Where if the laptop, PC or gaming console is some distance from the wireless base station the signal can be very intermittent.

With the likes of high definition video streaming, the need for a solid, stable signal to one of those devices is very important. As the amount of information and data being streamed over the Internet is quite vast, where wireless technology is not always up to that type of challenge.

Not only that, but the further you are away from the base station a lesser signal will always be obtained. If you're paying for the likes of a 22Mbps connection or Virgin's latest 50Mbps shouldn't you be able to receive it everywhere in your home and at that very speed?

One of the negative aspects is that you need to be near a power socket for this to all operate. Seeing as the technology is based around just that, the device being used is nearly always tied to that central location.

What's a good example in practice?
A lot of known companies around today have invested in producing HomePlug or PowerLine devices, most are in a variety of different models to suit all tastes. These are from established companies such as Netgear, Linksys, Belkin and Zyxel amongst others.

The majority of devices arrive in several formats, these fall into a few camps of network speeds, the amount of connections on offer and physical formats.

More commonly seen today are products that look much like a power extension block that plugs into the mains socket, offering up power to multiple appliances. Although they look almost identical, these only provide HomePlug abilities by offering up an Ethernet connection for your PC, games consoles or other such devices.

These can be seen providing up those speeds mentioned of 14Mbps, 85Mbps and 200Mbps. With two really needed to see the benefits, most starter kits are sold in pairs, one being used for the device that needs the data and another that's plugged into the device that offers up the data.

Normally these provide access to just one Ethernet port, but there are products around with multiple ports which can also operate as a switch. This is where each and every port is given the same priority and bandwidth. It's as if there are four of these single devices, all plugged into the wall at once only in one unit.

The other physical format that's seen around looks much like a standalone networking hub, which has the appearance of either a single Ethernet port or a collection of them often seen at the back of a wireless ADSL router.

In this format, the data is taken and transmitted up the power cable to a normal looking plug. Which has benefits all in itself, as this form could be used and expanded upon for other products in the future with the likes of wireless routers with this technology built in.

Other more uncommon, but equally useful HomePlug or PowerLine products are known as wireless extenders. These are sold in a pair too, both looking like a normal device with one of them having an Ethernet port and the other one not. The "dumb" version takes a signal from a wireless router and then transmits it over power circuits of the home, to increase the wireless reach beyond normal range.

There are also products starting to emerge with HomePlug or PowerLine technologies built inside. Logitech has a range of surveillance video equipment which operates over the power line, providing access to these cameras anywhere in the world.

Is there a competing technology that I should be aware of?
An alternative for fast connectivity around the home is always wireless access, of any sorts, where this is lacking is in its current speeds.

A lot of shipping HomePlug or PowerLine products around today run at 200Mbps, where as the most commonly seen wireless standards used is as we've mentioned 802.11g at 54Mbps. The next emerging standard of the 802.11 wireless standards is the incarnation "n", which could reach 300Mbps.

802.11n is around today, but has yet to be fully adopted by customers and vendors as the standard as it's yet to be fully signed off on. Although in its current format, it's almost ready to go as a proven technology.

The signal strength from wireless technologies fluctuates and varies, from moment to moment and is disrupted by walls and ceilings. Where the signal obtained by the HomePlug devices is said to be steady and non-intermittent. It’s setup as if the device is plugged straight into the other one it's getting or transmitting data to, much like a traditional LAN or local area network seen in most offices today.

On top of the varying signal strength letting down wireless connections, there is also the range. In comparison, HomePlug technologies in theory should be limitless around the home, as it operates over the power circuit.

What is in store for the future?
The next products we’ll be seeing on the HomePlug front are devices with the technology being built into them, as standard.

It's been rumoured for sometime that the likes of Linksys are soon to be including HomePlug in their range of products. These are likely to be in their ADSL and DSL routers, wireless or otherwise. This is where the power plug for the device already has HomePlug capabilities onboard.

This negates the need for having a separate device near the xDSL router, by offering up HomePlug around the home by default. This could also go some way to increase the range of the router beyond the reach of a wireless router, if one was used.

Other devices that could benefit from HomePlug abilities are games consoles that do not currently ship with internet connectivity, but have an Ethernet port at the rear. A device like this could benefit from having a combined HomePlug/dual Ethernet cable offering, straight from the box.

The Home Plug Alliance, which is the governing body of these standards is close to ratifying HomePlug AV2. This is set to be capable of 600Mbps and is aiming for being able to deliver HDMI content, over the home power circuit.

Tags: Software Broadband Hardware Networking HomePlug Wi-Fi Wireless Quick Guide

A quick guide to HomePlug originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Mon, 09 Feb 2009 13:26:58 +0000

What is it?
Android isn't an acronym of any sorts, it's the name for an open source operating system for mobile phones that is set to be the next big step in the evolution of the mobile phone platform. It was initially taken on board by Google and developed to the first launch, seen running on T-Mobile's G1 handset. It will be forever synonymous with Google, for just that alone, as they were chiefly responsible for its existence in the mainstream today.

The OS is built on Linux and the kernel version 2.6, with the majority of applications being developed based on the Java programming language with Google's own freely available software libraries for the phone, which are well known for their versatility and ease of use.

As it hails from Google, all of the services they have are built into Android creating a solid, reliable and durable mobile experience that offers up the best of the Internet whilst harnessing the underlying hardware at the very same time.

Android is known to be a very lightweight operating system, meaning its install code is very small creating a much more robust platform that can be installed and run very well on even budget entry level phones.

Everything that can be used and seen in various other phones, from Wi-Fi, GPS and the accelerometer can be harnessed and used by the Google OS to create a well-rounded handset. Nothing is left out - if anything it's much easier for third-party developers to use these features for writing applications.

One of the less written about features of Android, that excites and drives developers, is how their software is run on the OS. Due to the nature and design of the platform, third-party software is executed and run with the same priority as even the core operating system. This prevents any lags in performance or bad user experience for almost any applications written and creates a fair, unbiased platform for mobile phones. Other operating systems for handsets do not function in the same way.

What are the variations of the technology?
There really is just one, Android. It's said to be so versatile, it can be used on a wide array of mobile phones from clamshell to candybar, smartphones, low cost, high cost and anything else in between.

Why should I care?
Android is an open source platform where others are closed. It's free from being tied to any deployment costs, with a whole host of companies investing in its further development rather than just the one. There's no cost attached in the licensing of the OS for a phone, meaning production costs can be kept low which in turn means a lower cost handset. There's also the benefit of a much richer hardware feature set that could be included in the phone, where in the past and with other operating systems sacrifices might have to be made to keep the costs low.

The applications pre-installed are also very rich in nature, with the likes of the reliable Google search being interwoven into the OS. Other Google services such as their Gmail, Calendar, Google talk and their Mapping software are all built in by default, with the latter offering satellite, traffic and soon to be seen location based services.

There's also the support of multiple applications and widgets, from third-party developers on the Android Market. This is rather akin to the Apple iTunes store and is set to replicate its great success, once the wide adoption of the platform has become greater with handset manufacturers.

The software development kit for application writers is freely available, where everything needed to start writing from day one is free. This will undoubtedly fuel the uptake of the OS, as compared to software writing on other platforms around for mobiles.

What's a good example in practice?
There really is only one handset on the market today running Android and that is T-Mobile's G1 that launched late October 2008.

The phone was made exclusively for that network by HTC, which was the very first Android phone for them too. This now establishes a precedent for the company for the future, where they could very well be the first handset manufacture to have a phone under their own name for other networks, such as Orange or Vodafone, to adopt.

T-Mobile's G1 comes under the heading of a smartphone, as it has the characteristics of a handset of that nature with the likes of a full slide out QWERTY keyboard. With all of Google's features tied so closely to the operating system, it also picked up the mantel of being called the first true internet mobile phone.

As for web surfing the G1 uses its default WebKit based browser, with similar code to the ones used by Apple's Safari and Google's own Chrome.

In December last year, Google announced the Android "Dev Phone 1", a SIM-free version of the G1 that wasn't locked to T-Mobile, with a view for developers to be able to use this device to create their own applications for the OS, based around this phone as a template and free from the restrictions that a network might apply.

Is there a competing technology that I should be aware of?
There are a few other operating systems for mobile phones. One of the more well known ones is Windows Mobile, which has been around for nearly 9 years and in over seven editions over that time frame. It's been noted there is a $14 license cost attached for handset manufactures to use Windows Mobile, where Android doesn't have one at all as it falls under the Open Source category of operating systems much like Linux.

One of the other alternatives is Symbian, a favourite of Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Nokia and more recently purchased on whole by the last company. This mobile platform can have its linage traced as far back as the early 90s, from the Psion mobile computing products. More recently, Symbian has started to make progress to being Open Source with a cost also noted as having a zero price tag attached to it.

There are some handset or chipset specific mobile operating systems, from the likes of Qualcomm with their Brew OS, Research In Motion's BlackBerry and Palm's devices. The latter of which has just developed a new version to be first seen on an upcoming handset called the Pre.

Qualcomm's Brew can be seen on a number of handsets, as many phones have the chipset by Qualcomm and the OS works seamlessly together with them hand in hand. One of the more recent mobiles seen supporting this platform is the INQ1 handset, by the network's "3" parent company.

What is in store for the future?
As we're writing this guide one of the largest events on the mobile phone calendar is just a matter of weeks away. Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, which every February shapes the handset launches for the rest of the year, as the majority of the upcoming handsets are announced there.

An organisation known as the Open Handset Alliance was formed sometime back, to create the base for further development of Android. Ensuring it's not only with one single company, but with a number of companies which will guarantee its success by offering a solid foundation for the future.

14 of the largest operators in the field of mobile phones are now a part of this organisation, just stamping their mark and progressiveness towards its future of this industry, whilst at the very same time showing their hand in a way, as they too will be working on Android based mobiles.

Some of these companies that will be instantly recognisable are; HTC, LG, Motorola, Samsung Electronics, ASUSTek, Sony Ericsson and Toshiba.

We're expecting in a few weeks time announcements by several of those key companies unveiling Android-based mobile phones, or at the very least showing prototypes with the OS running on them.

It goes without saying that more and more companies developing mobile phones with the Google OS platform will drive its adoption. In turn, more and more software developers seeing more and more Android phones will in turn write more and more applications for those handsets. This goes to create more handsets, and so on and so on.

Tags: Phones Mobile phone industry Google Android T-Mobile HTC Software Quick Guide

A quick guide to Android originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Thu, 05 Feb 2009 17:43:16 +0000

What is it?
Still standing for, COder / DECoder with the same functionality that we brought to you in last week's "A quick guide to audio codecs". Once again, it's the second part of the word that most people will be more familiar with, as that part is handled by the device the video is being played back on. Those include and range from a computer, to a web browser and portable media players such as the iPod or even a mobile phone.

More often than not you're unaware of the COder part of the process, that's when the video has been transformed from the initial larger source into its compressed version for the convenience of playback. By the time you normally see video, this has already taken place.

A lot of devices such as portable media players, camcorders and mobile phones are accompanied by software for the single purpose of converting other video formats to ones it can handle. There are even DVDs shipping today with versions already on the retail disc tailored for products such as the PSP, where this conversion process has already been taken care of.

Just as in last week's piece, it's still best to think of the various codec types for video as file types, such as the .doc file or the .pdf. Although unlike before, some may be transparent as the extension – the words that come after the "." of the file name – defining the codec that's used, isn't always disclosed on websites or by the operating system. Key examples of that would be the likes of QuickTime movie trailers or videos on YouTube, these both fall into this category.

What are the variations of the technology?
Unlike the simple MP3 audio file, which can almost certainly be played back on many devices natively – video is nearly always dependent on another piece of software or a codec file suite to be installed. There are a number of reasons behind this ranging from licenses used by the software to encode the video, down to the media not being native to the device.

More than likely you've come across a video on a computer that's been downloaded and cannot be played, where the above is the sole reason for that. On portable media players that are solely designed for this purpose or a similar one, this has normally been taken care of already and is built in.

As mentioned last week in the difference between lossy and lossless, with the first process used to bring files down to smaller version aspects can be lost along the way. Nearly all video encoding is performed in this fashion, with very few exceptions. The way most videos are encoded is by concentration where the action or fast motion is on the screen, and to a lesser extent on the other areas that do not change as much. There is a lot more to it than just that, but this gives you a basic idea of how the compression is achieved.

With all the above in mind, there are several formats of video around, far more than with audio, that are in common usage today. How familiar you are with these formats all depends on what and how you use video. As these all vary from downloading video, to watching embedded materials on websites to capturing video yourself.

MPEG-2 is one of the formats that's been around for the longest, and one of the most frequently used. You might have come across this as a file with a .MPG extension, or failing that it's at the very heart of DVDs, or .VOB files.

One of the other common formats is the .AVI file. These could be under the guise of a few different codecs, more often than not you'll find them under just one or two flavours these days. With nearly all the AVI video content around for downloading today, the usual way of encoding these files is in a format or codecs known as DivX, and its open source equivalent Xvid.

These were born from the technology behind MPEG-2 and could be seen as the advancement of that, as they fall into the category of MPEG-4. Without going into too much detail, more can be fitted into these files and in an overall smaller file size than MPEG-2. DivX was the standard for some time and was from a company of that very name, whereas the Xvid is under GNU General Public License. It's freely available to be used on many systems from computers, to portable media players and is even seen on games consoles now.

You will have undoubtedly watched a video on that codec format, as the sheer plethora of content around today for downloading is just vast. There's even talk of UK broadcasting companies adopting this format for transmitting channels into your home, where even HD broadcasts are already using this in the USA right now.

It'll probably be remiss of us not to mention Windows Media Video or the .WMV file format. This proprietary standard by Microsoft is widely used, although not as popular as the ones above it is gaining more momentum. Beforehand DVDs could be brought down to Xvid files by encoding them, with the quality still being sustained during the process. Taking down a high definition video via one of these codecs doesn't deliver the best results, which is why more and more HD content is now around in the latest incarnation of the WMV file format – Windows Media Video 9.

Why should I care?
Just as last week, size once again does matter, just as quality does too. If you saw the inconceivable size of video footage, before a codec is applied you'd be running for the hills to obtain many, many terabytes of storage. Yes, it's that vast.

These file types were introduced for many reasons, ranging from the best possible way to deliver video conveniently to streaming over the Internet – all of which relate to size, with the best quality taken into consideration.

Bitrates are also to be factored in, just as they are with audio files. The higher the rate, the better the quality of the video and the larger the file size.

When it comes down to producing video and encoding, that's a whole different topic and a much more complex one at that. Although there are simple solutions around - like YouTube - for getting personal video content out there; with the greatest ease of use being key.

What's a good example in practice?
The last paragraph really says it all, in terms of the everyday use of video producing – the flip side of video playback.

As with playback the best practice of this medium is all down to the device you use or the very place you watch video. Flash content is used by most people, a step up from that is the likes of iPlayer and moving on further is downloadable video.

It's more common to see Xvid material around in the latter, with more and more devices and computers with the codec files installed being able access these videos.

Is there a competing technology that I should be aware of?
There isn't another technology competing in the same realm as such, other than the more advanced video codec formats we'll mention later.

In the audio codec guide from last week, we touched on the files being static, as in they're stored and played from a device – with the alternative way of using audio possibly being "streaming" over the Internet. This might very well apply here too, with video content being much more widely available online. Some might even argue more so than audio, depending on who uses it and for what purpose.

What is in store for the future?
The next step on the evolutionary ladder is HD codecs and video content. Most of the formats around in common usage aren't really geared up to deliver the type of video quality, or compression levels needed. The next rung, which we briefly touched upon with WMV9, as with others they all surround x264 or H.264 format which is set up for capture and displaying of 720 and 1080 materials.

H.264 is the industry standard used for high definition content, it's at the heart of Blu-ray media and also the dying out HD DVD format. It's also in the same category of MPEG-4, so it's a well tried and tested medium already.

Those Xvid formats we mentioned earlier can be used to encode a DVD, which could initially contain a film of 8.5GB in size down to around the 700MB mark. Where if you think of the capacity of Blu-ray discs, which could possibly contain films of over 50GB in stature the codec needed to compress such a beast has to be cutting edge.

This is where the new breed comes in to play, with the likes of WMV9 and similar formats with file extensions such as .MKV or .264. These are geared up to deliver 16:9 1080p content, in a much smaller file container around the region of 11GB on average.

Related links:

• Feature - A quick guide to audio codecs

Tags: Home Cinema Software Audio Cameras DivX Quick Guide

A quick guide to video codecs originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Tue, 27 Jan 2009 17:24:43 +0000

What is it?
Standing for, COder / DECoder, although it's the second part of the word that most people are more familiar with, it's the part an MP3 player, iPod, mobile phone or computer handles whilst playing file-based music.

Without going really technical and just giving the basics, the COder part of codec is used to initially transform the large audio files from a normal music CD into much smaller files by compressing it. Whereas the DECoder part of codec, uncompresses the compressed file for playback and to be heard.

There's a lot more involved within this of course, but for the purposes of this piece we won't go into too much scary detail with the heavy maths and science behind it. However, we will be addressing the different codecs used, which are all best to think of as file types, like a .doc file or a .pdf file. As the most frequent ones used are just that, a file type, with the likes of MP3, as an example, one of the most popular ones used today.

What are the variations of the technology?
There are two main camps the file formats fall under, lossy and lossless. Both are chiefly used to compress these rather big audio files making up a CD, into ones that fit nicely on to portable media players.

Lossless is a tad more advanced and not really in common place usage as yet, but lossy is around everywhere and more likely than not you've used it in the past. Lossy, as the word hints uses a compression method where some of the quality can be lost in the process. This is the trade off which comes from reducing in size the initial large audio track. Within these means of encoding there are also a few levels or bitrates used to improve the quality and marginally increase the size along the way.

Lossy is probably misleading as a term, as it indicates a lot of information has been lost. This isn't so you'd notice, as the hardware or the software used for playback of the audio compensates in certain ways. To the normal ear, the difference isn't noticeable from playing a CD on a Hi-Fi, to the same codec based file version on a portable device.

iTunes uses a Lossy format, seen in their.AAC files or its more formal title, Advanced Audio Coding. The MP3 file format uses the same compression methodology. Depending on the way you obtain music, you'll have possibly come across one or the other by now.

There are other file formats around that you may have heard of. The likes of a WAVE file or .WAV format is also a well known one. This is more or less an uncompressed file taking up vast amounts of space. In fact, it's the closest size to the actual one taken up by a single track on the CD. It's not really used or preferred anymore, so we'll talk about the more common placed ones you'll easily recognise.

Recently in the news there has been the subject of Apples iTunes store going DRM-free, where some have wrongly associated DRM as an actual codec or file format. Instead, DRM or Digital Rights Management is a way of licensing the music solely for certain computers and devices. This locks down the music and prevents any illicit sharing of those files to others, without any additional payment being received. With the iTunes dropping DRM as a way of regulating their music distribution it allows many computers to use those files, with various different devices taken into consideration.

Why should I care?
Size does matter, it boils down to just that. We can tell you this, most of those codecs used bring down the initial size of those massive CD tracks by up to 58% and there's a reason for that.

If you've ever bought or used a blank CD to burn data, you'll realise it can hold up to 700MB of data. This doesn't bode well for portable MP3 players or even iPods and their storage space.

With the average flash-based portable music player being around the 2GB mark, you really aren't getting a great choice of music with not even three albums being able to fully fit on a device. Hence the reason codecs exist and are used for reducing in size the audio from those CDs, down to a marginal amount for the likes of an iPod.

700MB CDs are the worst case scenarios and are normally used for those compilation albums with lots of tracks, with the average size of the other version being at the 650MB capacity mark. Even then, not all the space is used on a CD, just for your information.

What's a good example in practice?
It's best to highlight the popular usage behind codecs by an example, with the most obvious one being that of reducing the audio files from a CD into MP3 files.

A music CD that comes out as 454MB in size, with a running time of 45 minutes can be brought down to just 41MB in total size. This is with a level of audio quality that's almost the same as CD, with a 128Kbps bitrate count.

This goes some way to showing the true benefits of the MP3 codec and the reason for its wide usage today. With a standard 2GB flash MP3 player being able to hold 48 albums, it's a far cry from just 3, you'll undoubtedly agree.

Is there a competing technology that I should be aware of?
There isn't another technology competing in the same realm as such, other than the more advanced codec formats we'll mention later.

Although you could consider the "streaming audio" codecs and their formats as an alternative, whereas the ones we've spoken about here are primarily used as static sources for music. That's a subject for another time, but it's worth taking note it could be seen as an alternative.

What is in store for the future?
Lossless is the next step up from the lossy codecs, as these do not lose any of the quality whilst encoding. The file size here is much higher, with an average 2:1 ratio being used, where the average lossy is a reduction by a 10th.

These could be considered to be for the real music connoisseurs at this stage, in saying that the quality can be heard over lossy formats. It's almost the step up from FM to digital radio in the way it comes across, on good playback equipment.

There are several reasons for the technology being held back, the main one being the adoption of these codecs with names like FLAC and APE, by device manufactures. There are more and more companies addressing and including these formats, but hardly enough.

Also, as compared to MP3 files the size is quite vast and therefore the amount stored will be less on portable music players. With the size of storage ever increasing on these devices, the link with that and the adoption of this codec could be heavily tied in together.

Tags: Audio Music downloads CDs MP3 players DRM-free Quick Guide

A quick guide to audio codecs originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:27:03 +0000

What is it?
Standing for, well, nothing really. In the past, people have wrongly associated Wi-Fi with Wireless Fidelity. When in actual fact it's just a trade mark associated with its governing body over standards. The Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance (WECA) more commonly known as the Wi-Fi alliance provides certification of those standards and equipment being used.

It's probably best to think of Wi-Fi as Wireless LAN or WLAN instead. As that is more of an accurate definition of the technology. This really should have been the more popular phrase everyone uses, instead of Wi-Fi as it's less confusing and spot on.

Wireless LANs are a way for computers or similar devices to access data over the airwaves. It's as simple as that.

What are the variations of the technology?
Wi-Fi can also be thought of by the various standards and variants that use the airwaves for data access. These are listed in what's known as the IEEE 802.11x protocol, with x being a, b, g or what's becoming more common place today, n.

All these, in their purest essence, just boil down to how strong the signal is and how far it can reach. The most commonplace of these used and seen around today are: 802.11b and 802.11g, with 802.11n being only recently more widely adopted, with the latter replacing the 802.11g standard, just as it did before with the "b".

All of these are backward compatible with each other, meaning there's no need to throw the baby out with bath water – so to speak.

802.11n works off the 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz frequency, with a possible maximum indoor range of 70 metres taking into account walls and floors. It's also possible to reach 600Mbit/s, meaning it's capable of receiving 75 Megabytes a second.

802.11g runs from the 2.4Ghz spectrum and has been around for over 5 years. It's more common to see this technology than not these days. Its maximum rate is around 54Mbps with an indoor range of around 38 metres. Some providers of this technology equipment cheat, by bundling multiple "g" channels together on one device. This in turn increases the possible data travelling across them, also boosting the range in some cases.

802.11b also works from the 2.4Ghz range and has been around for nearly a decade, with only an 11Mbit/s rate and a 38 metre range. This isn't really seen around anymore, only in legacy or older equipment.

Why should I care?
More and more devices seen around these days have a Wi-Fi/WLAN technology built in; to be honest it's unusual not to see it featured. Laptops to computers, mobile phones and even with some extra additions, gaming consoles too. The first grumble anyone has when a new mobile phone comes out is if it lacks Wi-Fi, an indication of how we're so used to seeing it around.

What's a good example in practice?
A great deal of ADSL and cable internet access providers offer a gratis Wi-Fi router, where multiple computers can all access the Internet at once. This is the alternative to having a computer based right next to where the phone line or cable box comes in, where there's no room for portability or convenient internet access around the home.

What's needed to be taken into consideration is the connection speed offered by the ISP. It's not worth having a 802.11b wireless router if you have a 22 Mbps internet connection, as there will be a bottle neck and you wouldn't benefit from the download speeds.

With the latest and greatest from Virgin Media, even the 802.11g would creak under the 50Mbps possible speed. This is why they'll be bundling in the latest and greatest 802.11n wireless routers around.

Is there a competing technology that I should be aware of?
There really is only one alternative to Wi-Fi around the home, that's from technology known as HomePlug. This essentially is a way of getting data to a computer, over the mains power circuit in a house or home.

These range in their possible speeds of transmitting and receiving data from 14Mbps, to 85Mbps up to 200Mbps currently. This is all from equipment that looks rather like an extension plug for the mains socket, where a normal Ethernet cable runs from a HomePlug product into an ADSL router, with another one to be plugged into the wall near a computer with an Ethernet cable running to the PC, enabling internet access over the mains power.

In some instances, these could actually benefit Wi-Fi as there are products that fall under the HomePlug category of devices that plug into the mains, take the main signal from the Wi-Fi router and then extends its range. It more or less acts like another wireless router around the home, all without the configuration needing to happen or connection to a phone line.

What is in store for the future?
802.11n isn't actually fully ready yet, although devices have been around for some years. In saying that, the current range of either wireless routers or Wi-Fi products will be fine for the when the final standard becomes released. With just a minor software update of sorts needed to make the current technology fully ratified.

Just as 802.11g got around increasing its data limitation by "bonding" multiple "g" channels together, we suspect "n" could possibly go down this route too.

Tags: Software Wi-Fi Networking Quick Guide

A quick guide to Wi-Fi originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:29:50 +0000

What is it?
Mobile broadband is a generic term used to describe fast internet access for devices such as a laptop, whilst on the move or just away from a fixed location. All the major networks: Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile, 3 and O2 offer this as a service and various contracts to suit all tastes, whilst also providing their own equipment at the same time.

The equipment is commonly described as a mobile broadband "dongle", which looks more or less like a USB flash drive to the untrained eye. These are for all intents and purposes a portable modem that works much the same way a mobile phone does in providing internet access. Only it's tailored to provide just data access, rather than voice services on a mobile device.

The speeds and familiar terms are the same as associated with a mobile for internet access, with the likes of GPRS, EDGE, 3G, HSDPA and HSUPA all used. You won't achieve download speeds along the lines of ADSL access at home, so it could be a bit misleading to call it "broadband" but it's the best there is around. The ceiling of which is more likely to be 3.6Mbps, coming up from the lowest on 32kbps on the very basic GSM.

What are the variations of the technology?
What network the dongle is on and what coverage the area has, all depends on what signal your device obtains. Think of a line drawn from the very basic GSM, to the highest of the high at HSDPA. All depending on your signal strength and closeness to those cell towers geared towards that better faster service, all depends on your download speeds.

On networks with today's coverage, GPRS, EDGE and 3G are all available to most in more places than not. These are fast enough for email sending/receiving and surfing the web but anything else such as downloading large files could take some time.

Not really falling under the "variations of technology" category, but are two other areas to be covered – contracts and also embedded mobile broadband functionality. Both of which are unrelated, but are worth noting.

Contracts vary from operator to operator, and all of them revolve around the amount of data being used over a month. This means the megabytes of data pulled down over the connection, over that very period of time. These can range from 500MB upwards to 10GB per month as an allowance, with Pay As You Go contracts also available.

The other is "embedded functionality", this is where laptops or similar devices already have mobile broadband built in and just require a SIM card and contract. The likes of Orange are giving away a free netbook with this technology onboard, as long as you sign up to a contract.

Why should I care?
Internet access for a mobile phone is limited to just that, a mobile phone. Having net access on the move, for your netbook, laptop or other portable devices just opens up the usability and usage of that product.

From business to just personal needs, having access to everything you can whilst at home or in the office is just as essential to most people these days as knowing the time of day.

The speeds that can be obtained won't be as good as Wi-Fi, but whilst out and about with a portable device without mobile broadband, you're confined to shared Wi-Fi where the laptop has to be physically located near a place serving Wi-Fi, or what's commonly known as a hotspot.

With a hotspot, you're never guaranteed a good connection or fast speeds, whereas both of these are near enough guaranteed with mobile broadband.

What's a good example in practice?
As an example of the practicality and speeds you can obtain whilst using mobile broadband, it's best to think of what the service will be used for.

Over 3G, viewing a web page or a plain text email would take less than 2 seconds. On HSDPA, it's around 1 second as a comparison.

Downloading a 4MB music file for an example would take around 1 and a half minutes on 3G. Whilst taking just under 9 seconds on HSPDA.

Stepping this up to a higher file size, a 700MB BBC iPlayer TV episode would take 26minutes on HSDPA or over 4 hours on 3G.

With these examples you can see it's not really home broadband like speeds, but you understand the limits of the service now and can see how useful it is outside of the home and office.

Is there a competing technology that I should be aware of?
The only competition to mobile broadband is Wi-Fi access from hotspots. Already outlaid is the downside to this, with the upsides only being possible faster speeds.

As an example, that same music file could take around 4 seconds to download and that iPlayer episode just 13 minutes.

This all depends though on how fast the Wi-Fi speed offered up is and how close you are to the wireless router, along with how many people are sharing the service.

It's perhaps unfair to really call this a competing technology, as the costs are different in terms of what you can download in most cases, and it's a different service altogether.

What is in store for the future?
On the horizon are one or two avenues of interest for the mobile broadband. The first being faster downloading speeds to match those of the home or office. The other being more devices, with laptops, netbooks or such like with mobile broadband embedded.

3 is on schedule with T-mobile to produce a faster HSDPA variant, seen in 14Mbps. They're hoping to jointly cover a fairly large area of the UK with possible connectivity by 2010.

Also being developed is 4G technology, with WiMAX being the next evolution of mobile broadband. No need to worry about this yet, as it's sometime away from being seen in common use.

This could offer speeds of 10Mbps to 70, depending how far you are away from the cell towers and signal strength. It's a step in the right direction and is much closer to home broadband speeds, and will eventually be the successor to what's around today.

Tags: Phones Mobile broadband USB modems Quick Guide

A quick guide to mobile broadband originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Mon, 05 Jan 2009 10:00:00 +0000

What is it?
Standing for "high definition" in this scenario, it means a better picture quality in either viewing or having images being digitally transmitted to a compatible screen. Most people associate HD with flat screen TVs, either LCD or plasmas, where there are several varieties and variations of standards and qualities.

The underlying benefit of which is just how good the image on the screen looks. From here there's a range of sources to deliver the best picture.

This comes along in one of two common ways, from a multiple-channel system or high definition media playback. The first is either Sky, Virgin Media or Freesat boxes with high definition capabilities, or Blu-ray and HD DVD discs and their associated players.

What are the variations of the technology?
The standard way of viewing pictures on a cathode ray tube of yesteryear was only based on 625 lines of information on the screen. The basic high definition screen format is more or less double that with 1280 x 720 pixels, often referred to a 720. This is a dramatic leap from the old TVs and shouldn't be seen as only "double the quality" in anyway shape or form - it's way beyond that.

A step up from that is known as 1080, either seen as 1080i or 1080p. This is based on 1920 x 1080 pixels and is therefore a much higher viewable standard, with an image that benefits from a larger screen.

Within the 1080 standard, there's a p and an i variation. This means Progressive and Interlace and basically comes down to how the image on the screen is refreshed. The p option offers the best with the image being frequently fully refreshed whereas the other option, every other line is refreshed instead. This still looks good, but on pictures such as fast sports action or high-octane car chases in Bond films, Progressive looks far, far better.

Why should I care?
The better the image quality, the better your enjoyment – it can be boiled down to just that. With the likes of the Playstation 3 having Blu-ray built-in and the Xbox 360 now sporting an HD connection, the picture benefits can already be seen without forking out for Sky or Virgin boxes.

Some that have been around long enough have summed up the experience of seeing an HD movie for the first time as similar to seeing a colour TV going from black and white.

Once you've seen a high definition movie on a decent HD screen you will not want to go back to anything else. It's as simple as that.

What's a good example in practice?
Both Sky and Virgin now offer up boxes showing a high definition picture, as does the newly emerged Freesat – which is more or less Freeview from a satellite dish, with some HD channels. Most known makers of TVs offer up LCD high definition screens, with the plasma option costing more in most cases.

We've already mentioned the Playstation 3 with Blu-ray and the Xbox 360, which needs an extra drive to play HD movies and is currently only for HD DVD movies - the now-defunct rival to Blu-ray. There are also stand-alone Blu-ray disc players, much like normal DVD players, but geared for playback of its own media type.

There's also a more advanced option of upscaling DVD players or similar devices. This is where the signal is boosted electronically to obtain a near HD quality. It just extends the life of your existing DVD collection, before you fully make the switch over to Blu-ray discs.

Is there a competing technology that I should be aware of?
There really isn't another technology around to compete with HD screens or its quality. The only thing to mention here is that not all channels on both Sky or Virgin Media are in an HD format. In saying that, it's still better to see any images on an HD screen than not at all.

There will be more channels within time. When the UK catches up with the USA where nearly all their basic channels are in high definition and the programs are made in this way too – that will be a good day.

In pre-empting this move, it's always wise to hedge your bets and go down the HD route. The only deciding factor is to either go for a likely cheaper 720 screen or a 1080 screen at this time.

What is in store for the future?
The future holds more and more channels being transmitted digitally, and more and more in HD too. With the analogue to digital switch over being just around the corner, the clock is ticking away fast.

At the end of the day, an HD TV is only as good as the content delivered to it. You'll be disappointed by watching videos from the late 80s on a vast 50-inch screen, although you'll be astounded and blown away by watching "Quantum of Solace" on that very same TV.

The high-def capable consoles have games written solely for high definition screens and has online content aimed for HD users too. Whether you like it or not, high definition is here to stay for the foreseeable future.

The future is bright and it's all in HD.

Tags: Home Cinema HDTV Sky PS3 Xbox 360 Freesat Virgin Media Blu-ray Quick Guide

A quick guide to HD originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Mon, 22 Dec 2008 15:48:31 +0000