Amid the rush to the ultra-low end bargain PC market, its amazing how cheap a fuller functional Vista machine is

Many people are eying the ultra-portable bargain notebook market thanks to up-and-comers like Lenovo's IdeaPad S10 and the MSI Wind.  Chipmakers like Intel and VIA are struggling to keep up with demand for the bargain machines.  However, lost amid the ruckus is an equally significant trend in slightly higher-end model pricing.

Going to Best Buy, Circuit City, or even Target; a plethora of machines from manufacturers like Dell and HP assault the eyes.  Many of these Vista machines have impressive muscle for modest prices.  Take HP -- the average sale price (ASP) of a notebook with 14.1-inch display, 2GHz processor, 4GB of RAM and a 320GB hard drive is $699.   That kind of machine can not only replace a desktop, but also meet most users

Matrox Graphics announces new triple widescreen modes for the TripleHead2Go Digital Edition: 3x1680x1050 and 3x1440x900. The new modes allow gaming enthusiasts and professionals to benefit from the advantages of widescreen technology across an astonishing desktop set-up.

"With TripleHead2Go, users can now drive three widescreen monitors from a single system," says Caroline Injoyan, Business Development Manager, Matrox Graphics. "The ultra-wide desktop gives gamers a maximum field-of-view for an unrivaled gaming experience and professionals a vast desktop for managing multiple applications."

The expanded playing area provides gaming enthusiasts with extra pixel space to view wider interactive scenes for a competitive advantage during game play. What's more, the additional onscreen information in a widescreen Surround Gaming(tm) set-up creates a heightened level of immersion for a more enjoyable gaming environment.

"TripleHead2Go offers us an amazing panoramic setup on any system in the blink of an eye," remarks Marek Spanel, CEO, Bohemia Interactive. "Seeing brand new game worlds spread out to the far corners of your view is quite simply, stunning."

Professional workstation users can also benefit from a triple-widescreen desktop-less scrolling, toggling, and re-sizing of windows significantly enhances efficiency and increases overall productivity by ensuring all the information they need is conveniently at their fingertips.

The new TripleHead2Go widescreen modes-enabled by connecting the TripleHead2Go to the system's dual-link DVI connector-are available with select NVIDIA

A new generation of low-power radio technologies is creeping into our homes, in the form of wireless light switches and remote-controlled plug sockets. But the next generation of home-automation kit is all going to communicate every which way, assuming a common language can be agreed upon.

Zigbee, Z-Wave, and Bluetooth Low Energy would all like to play in this space, and Intel is even trying to squeeze Wi-Fi into the role. The industry believes the time is right for watches, key fobs and door locks to be wirelessly enabled, and that it's finally time to replace the aging infrared remote controls that have been controlling our TVs for the last few decades.

Not that the IDrA (Infrared Data Association) is taking this lying down. The group is quick to point out that the most expensive part of building IR into a device is the plastic window covering the transmitter, and has demonstrated a 1Gb/sec version of the standard. But line of sight is always going to be a problem for IR, so for most applications radio works better.

Still seeing infrared?

Several radio standards are competing for the title, all offering limited bandwidth and very low power consumption, but differing both in the details of their protocols and in how they expect the architecture of our (home) wireless networks to evolve.

Groups such as the Bluetooth SIG and Ozmo Devices (who have been demonstrating Intel's Cliffside low-power Wi-Fi) see the future filled with client devices connected to more powerful servers. In the case of Ozmo the "server" could be a games console or home computer, while the Bluetooth SIG still reckons the mobile phone will be the most popular server for their "Bluetooth Low Energy" standard. This divergence is based on the technologies onto which the two approaches piggy-back: Wi-Fi and Bluetooth respectively.

The standard formally known as Wibree, now christened "Bluetooth Low Energy Technology", is designed to make use of much of the Bluetooth silicon - not just the antenna as Nokia's original Wibree proposed. The SIG reckons that should make the cost of bundling Low Energy an insignificant increment on that of putting Bluetooth into a device. Phones supporting Bluetooth should, from the end of 2009, automatically support the Low Energy technology, though it remains to be seen if there will be any Low Energy devices for them to talk to by then. The idea is that watches, light switches etc. will only have the Low Energy components, though the cost of those is still unknown.

Cliffside is a technology from Intel that does much the same thing with Wi-Fi circuits. The argument is that as every device is going to have Wi-Fi anyway you might as well make use of that circuit for your low-power connections too. Cliffside allows a device to connect to a traditional Wi-Fi network while simultaneously talking to low-power-Wi-Fi devices, such as those recently demonstrated by Ozmo Devices.

All this traffic at 2.4GHz might see the channel getting a bit crowded, if it wasn't already. But Ozmo reckons their technology will scale well to 5.8GHz - another chunk of unlicensed space to which Wi-Fi connections are increasingly shifting.

So the question becomes whether Bluetooth or Wi-Fi is going to be the wireless technology embedded in everything by default - on which technology the low-power variation can most usefully piggy-back.

Ozmo reckons its devices can out-perform Bluetooth, offering 9Mb/sec bandwidth and with 2.5 times the battery life of a Bluetooth device. But Bluetooth Low Energy should have 10 times the battery life of a normal Bluetooth device, even if it won't be able to offer the same bandwidth.

Point to the window, point to the door

A 10x improvement in battery life is all very well, but to reach a life measured in years rather than days you need to move away from existing technologies and adopt something a little more radical.

Zigbee is a low-power protocol that can also fit into 2.4GHz, and operating at such low bandwidth it can squeeze in around other applications - one of the 16 bands used by Zigbee at 2.4GHz is actually a Wi-Fi guard band, so will never be filled by networking kit. Zigbee can also hang around at 433Mhz, but that's a very chaotic band for interference, or 868Mhz, though there's not much room to breathe there.

Zigbee was designed from the ground up to be a very low-power networking technology, and one that allows nodes to act as relays, creating an auto-forming mesh network to extend coverage. Zigbee and its competitor Z-Wave both offer a battery life measured in years, and the first consumer products using the technologies are now on the shelves.

AlertMe.Com is typical. It uses Zigbee-equipped sensors operating at 2.4GHz and with a battery life of several years to monitor doors and windows, as well as temperatures and user interaction, with mesh-enabled nodes operating as status lights while routing connections around the network. The mesh that AlertMe.Com creates only connects to a single hub, but there's no reason for a Zigbee deployment to be limited in that way.

AlertMe.Com is working on more devices, including a remotely-controlled plug socket, which should provide a standard platform for home automation. This first deployment will be controlled by AlertMe.Com as all traffic must be routed through their servers, but it won't be long before we see more open Zigbee hardware on the shelves.

So if you believe the future will be devices connecting to peripherals then it's most likely going to be Bluetooth Low Energy or low-powered Wi-Fi, depending on which is the dominant embedded technology. But if you see a future in networks of nodes around the home then Z-Wave or Zigbee is the technology of choice.

If, on the other hand, you want to see high-definition video or uncompressed audio flying around the house then you'll need something else entirely, and we'll be looking at some of the options there soon.

The Judge who presided over the first successful prosecution of an American P2P file sharer has hinted that he has changed his mind - and may nullify the trial.

Jammie Thomas sold her knickers online (see pic) after being convicted of copyright infringement last year. A jury of her peers in Duluth, Minnesota wasn't impressed by what they regarded as a time-wasting trial, when she should have copped to a small fine:

"Her defense sucked... I don't know what the censored (oops - hehe) she was thinking, to tell you the truth," said jury member Michael Hegg at the time.

 

But now Judge Davis thinks that the basis of the record companies' pursuit of file-sharers sucks, too. It hinges on the prosecution's use of the "making available" argument. Last October, the prosecution successfully argued that leaving songs in a shared folder on a network means making them available, leaving the sharer liable for infringement damages. That's what Judge Davis told the Duluth jury, too. The problem is, the Copyright Act doesn't use the words "making available".

What the Act does do, however, is define five exclusive rights in the copyright 'bundle': Reproduction, adaptation, publication, performance and display. And for sound recordings, it defines "publication" as "offering to distribute copies or phonorecords to a group of persons for purposes of further distribution, public performance, or public display".

Which seems clear enough.

But the courts have expressed differing views on the matter. Within the space of a fortnight earlier this year, we saw two courts accept the argument that shared folders aren't publication while another rejected it.

You may not yet know it, but gamers will soon be quitting their living rooms and heading outdoors.

Handheld consoles and laptops made gaming portable, while the Nintendo Wii made gaming active. Now active, portable gaming is possible thanks to GPS and improved graphics becoming standard in cellphones.

By 2013, the world's largest handset manufacturer, Nokia, expects half of its phones to be GPS capable, giving them the ability to fix their locations on the planet to within a few metres.

Apple's iPhone, seen as a benchmark for other manufacturers, also has GPS and many handsets have motion-sensing accelerometers, just like a Wii controller. Games studios are racing to exploit a new world of what is called "pervasive gaming", where everyone carries a powerful gaming machine in their pocket.

Hotter, colder

The first wave of games are largely based on treasure hunts, with a phone guiding users through a set of waypoints to a particular goal.

UK firm LocoMatrix does it using photos of a neighbourhood. An onscreen thermometer lets a player know if they are "getting warmer" as they close in on the next waypoint, and users can create and share their own treasure hunts.

Richard Vahrman of LocoMatrix was inspired while using handheld GPS for walking routes, and says location-aware gaming could have health benefits. "If we could make a compelling game on a mobile, then youngsters might get out more," he says.

Other treasure hunt games include GPS Mission, from Orbster in Karlsruhe, Germany. But games that blend real and virtual worlds can offer a richer gaming experience.

Real-world fun

European academics exploring pervasive gaming have created a detective game called Crash.

Another example, Stamp the Mole, starts with users defining an arena using GPS, before chasing moles visible only on their mobile screens inside it.

The Shroud, from Florida firm Your World Games mixes the real world around a player into the world of an adventure game. Travelling to real-world locations can unlock or solve quests in the virtual world.

While some location-aware games can be played anywhere, others may be strongly connected to a particular area, says Constance Fleuriot of the Pervasive Media Studio in Bristol, UK, those strongly connected to a particular area, say, Manhattan, and those that can be played anywhere.

"The former could be linked to the history of an area and give you a different viewpoint of a place," says Fleuriot. "The latter are portable."

Socially mobile

Phones with GPS also allow players to discover each other's locations and meet physically as well as virtually. That kind of camaraderie will appeal to many, says Mark Eyles, principal lecturer in the Advanced Games Research Group at the University of Portsmouth, UK.

"If they are designed correctly, they will attract people who currently aren't gamers simply because they are social and fun," says Eyles.

Just as the sometimes madcap physicality of Wii gaming has loosened inhibitions, Fleuriot says social location-based gaming can do the same.

"We had a group of adults who played an activity game of Stamp the Mole outdoors and they said: 'We look like prats, but at least we're all prats together,'" says Fleuriot.

Jon Dovey, a new media expert at Bristol University, says GPS gaming is likely to be the first application to introduce the masses to being connected digitally to their surroundings, something he calls "ambient connectivity".

The 14-to-19 age group will lead the way, Dovey says, because their social lives depend heavily on cellphones.

"As soon as you get the link between texting, social networking and GPS-enabled devices, you are going to get something that takes off like wildfire among young people because their culture is already primed for it,

Game over

But being able to discover the physical location of other people has downsides. Researchers at Portsmouth University have had to abandon GPS games projects because they cannot get approval from the ethics committee.

"Already there are social networking applications for the GPS iPhone which let you see where other iPhone users are," says Andy Bain, lecturer at Portsmouth University's School of Creative Technologies. "If I were a thief I'd abuse that knowledge right away to get myself more iPhones."

Commercial games developers are not subject to the same ethical scrutiny as academics, he adds. It could be left to their customers to work out how to avoid anti-social gamers.

In fact, truly mobile gamers must learn to weigh up a range of new hazards. Bain worries that gamers may focus so hard on their mobile phone's small screen that they lose awareness of real-life hazards, such as traffic on a busy road.

The developers of The Shroud have clearly thought of this already; its terms and conditions state baldly that "You will be responsible if you or anyone else is injured or killed while you are playing". Game over.