Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

"An Intel roadmap that surfaced at the Intel Developers Forum 2008 shows that Intel plans to bring the next generation Atom processor to market in Q3 2009 -- roughly a year from now. PCWatch reports that the new Atom will carry the codename Pineview and will be offered in both dual-core and single-core versions."

Dual-core was pretty much expected at this point, but what I found interesting was the plan to build the GPU core directly into the chip. We should be seeing the dual-core Atoms soon, but technically we should only be seeing them in non-XP based netbooks unless Microsoft relents on their requirement that XP only continue to be used on single core machines.

This is an unboxing and first impressions video of the MSI Wind, a small 2.3 pound netbook with a 10" screen at 1024 x 600 resolution. It features an Intel Atom 1.6 Ghz CPU, 1 GB of RAM (upgradeable to 2 GB), 802.11 b/g, three USB ports, VGA out, and an 80 GB hard drive. I paid $554 CAD + tax for it.

The version I ordered was supposed to be a black MSI Wind with a 6-cell battery, but instead it's a white MSI Wind with a 3-cell battery. Join me for the fun of an unboxing of the wrong product! I ended up returning this to the computer store I bought it from because it was the wrong version, but I plan on re-ordering an MSI Wind when they release the version with the 6-cell battery. I was extremely impressed with the build quality, the screen quality, and the performance. At 50% brightness the screen was as bright as many laptops in a normally lit room, and the performance of the Intel Atom chip shocked me - I wasn't expecting to be able to play 720p WMV files without a hitch (it choked on 720p h.264 files though).

[click through to YouTube to see it in higher quality]

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The Inspiron Mini 9 wasn't the only new product that Dell announced today: they've released a new monitor called the S2409W. It's a 24" panel, at a 16:9 aspect ratio, running at 1920 x 1200 1080 resolution. It has an 85% colour gamut, 5 ms Gray-to-Gray response time, and connects via VGA, DVI, or HDMI with HDCP. No memory card reader, USB ports, component, or DisplayPort connections. I guess the $349 USD price point makes this a budget monitor of sorts. They also have 20" ($299) and 17" ($189) versions, although they don't seem to be 16:9. The 20" monitor has a 2.0 megapixel camera though.

So, am I missing something with this move to 16:9 aspect ratio? What's the benefit on the desktop? You get the same resolution, so you're not really missing anything, but you get a monitor that's a bit wider but shorter (vertically). Is that a good thing? I don't know, having never used a 16:9 monitor (my TV doesn't really count). What's your take on 16:9 monitors?

Dell.com has finally launched their Inspiron Mini page, and you can check out the details for all three models there now. Strangely, the $349 USD version with Ubuntu is only available for pre-order, leaving only the Windows XP-based versions for sale. Equally strange is that the $399 version, equipped with Windows XP, only comes with 512 MB of RAM. Windows XP really needs 1 GB of RAM to breathe properly, so this is a poor choice - especially since many, if not all other netbooks at $399 come with 1 GB of RAM. The good news though is that for $51 more you get bumped to 1 GB of RAM and the 16 GB SSD hard drive. The bad news is that even at $449, you don't get Bluetooth or the 1.3 MP Web cam - Dell wants $20 and $10 respectively for each of those.

If it seems I'm being a bit hard on the Dell Inspiron Mini 9, it's because I had really high hopes that Dell would bring something exciting to the table - either in the form of reduced pricing, great custom configuration options, different colour options, etc. If you don't like black, you can pay $25 for the privilege of owning an "Alpine White" version. Supposedly other colours are coming later, but Dell was so late to the game, why not launch with all guns blazing? Dell is a huge company, and instead of broadening the netbook market and giving the other players something to compete against, they seem to have released an also-ran product. Maybe once I get my hands on one I'll feel differently - perhaps the build quality is excellent, or the battery life is better than Dell says. We'll see...

Want to learn more about the Inspiron Mini 9? Brian Pitstick, part of the Dell team that brought this product to market, gives us a 10 minute overview of this new Dell product. There's not a lot of new information, but it's nice to see how the product looks/feels in the hand.

[Side note: why doesn't Dell upload higher quality videos? There's no "High Quality" option for Dell's video on YouTube. Weak!]

"Dell doesn't take its site down when it introduces product unlike some laptop peddlers. The result, however, is shots like this of early pre-release gear like the Inspiron Mini 9 netbook as Dell spins the product up for retail. $449 fully spec'd just like we heard with 8GB SSD, 1GB memory, Bluetooth 2.1, Windows XP, and a 1.3 megapixel webcam. We still expect to see a lesser spec'd $349 model running Ubuntu. Shipping on the 16th of September in your choice of white or black though white will cost you a $25 premium. Dell hasn't officially announced the product yet but we're sure they'll get that sorted out in a few hours. For now, happy URL hacking as we dig for more details."

Dell sure knows how to limply launch a product launch that could have been really exciting! Instead of having a simultaneous, multi-site launch, the launch of the Inspiron first had a leaked flyer, then the product went live in the UK and Germany (but only certain configurations), and then Gizmodo broke press release embargo and published the press release. Meanwhile, all my emails to Dell over the past four months about this product have been ignored. Sometimes I find dealing with Dell so incredibly frustrating.

At any rate, here's the breakdown, and if you were hoping for something new and exciting in the netbook space with a giant like Dell entering it, you're in for a disappointment. The $449 version will come with an Intel Atom N270 CPU, an 8 GB solid-state drive for storge, 1 GB of RAM, Bluetooth 2.1, 802.11g WiFi, a 1.3 MP Web cam, and Windows XP SP3. 8 GB of storage and Windows XP? That seems highly dubious to me - how much storage space is going to be left for applications and user data? There's going to be a 16 GB SSD option, but no word on pricing. Looking at the spec sheet, there are really only two things that stand out to me as being interesting: first, that Dell managed to fit a 4-cell battery in there, but apparently still only manage three hours of battery life, even with an SSD. The MSI Wind, and other netbooks, can get three hours of battery life with a 3-cell battery - and the MSI Wind has both a ten inch screen and an 80 GB hard drive. That makes me wonder why the Dell is so power-hungry.

Keep an eye on your local Dell Web site for the official launch - I'll very likely be ordering one, if only to check it out for a couple of weeks. Pictures, and the full press release, are after the break. Read more...

Normally I use Firefox, except for the few sites that require it, like Netflix for "Watch It Now". Although I'm always a little irked to be forced to use IE, usually the sites are pretty straightforward about the requirement. However, recently, I've come across what appears to be a little more subversive behavior on the part of Microsoft. The Women's group that is part of my neighborhood association set up a website a few months back on Windows Live Spaces. I've been regularly checking it for news about the neighborhood. A few weeks ago, instead of the normal page, I started getting a log in screen. At first I thought they had messed something up when doing an update to the site, but after asking them about it, we figured out that the log in screen only appeared in Firefox and that the site worked just fine in IE.

Screen captures after the break. Read more...

"While some of the new things in 2.0 are tweaks that you'd expect in a second-revision product, Lightroom also supports some significant additions that aim to raise the feature bar for RAW image processing. The much-touted localized adjustments feature, which attempts to bring some Photoshop-level control to RAW image processing, is headlining this release's feature set. Lossless RAW image editing is a bit of a holy grail for digital image processing, so the more granular control we're given over RAW images, the closer we'll be to that digital imaging grail. But Lightroom 2.0 isn't just about localized edits-there are a lot of other additions that warrant a closer look."

Ars Technica wasted no time in getting their review of Lightroom 2 out the door - I'm waiting for my copy to arrive from Adobe, then I'll be taking it for a spin. If there are three words to describe the changes in 2.0, it seems "more like Photoshop" would be a good fit. They've adding masking tools to allow you to make selections, then alter those selections. So if you're processing a RAW file and you want to boost the exposure only in the sky, you can do that. That has some powerful possibilities, so I'm looking forward to seeing what I can do with the new version of Lightroom. I'm also looking forward to (hopefully) the bug fixes they put into 2.0. Version 1.4.1 still has bugs around something as simple as deleting an image. Let's hope 2.0 can do what 1.x hasn't managed to do: not frustrate me every five minutes. Call me an optimist, but I have high hopes!

"You knew it was coming, but Microsoft has made it official: the Xbox 360 is officially going to drop to as low as $199 starting Friday, September 5 in the U.S. The three currently offered SKUs will get a price drop in North America, following multiple retail leaks and a similar pricing adjustment for the Japanese market. The new MSRP for the current line up is as follows. Xbox 360 Arcade - $199 Xbox 360 - $299 Xbox 360 Elite - $399"

While not a surprise, I think this a pretty good move by Microsoft going into the end of the year. The $199 price point is psycologically important in that it is cheaper than the Wii, which STILL might be in short supply this holiday season.

"A little over two years ago, we launched Picasa Web Albums to make publishing photos online easy. Now Picasa Web Albums hosts billions of online photos from around the globe, with users adding millions of new snapshots every day. Each of these photos records a different moment, or a different perspective, but one thing they all have in common is that in each case, the person behind the camera wanted to share their experience with a friend, their extended family, or maybe the world. Today, we're rolling out major technology upgrades to both Picasa and Picasa Web Albums. As you might have guessed, these are largely focused on how we share and enjoy our photos with others."

I honestly thought that Picasa was an abandoned product - Google hadn't released a significant update in so long I was sure it was a dead product walking. I'm so glad I was wrong! Picasa 3.0 is currently in beta and available for download. Although I haven't had a chance to try it out yet, the features in it look really exciting: the text tool (pictured above), the collage tool, the heal tool, and the movie making tool all look like great additions. After the break, there are two walk-through videos that highlight some of these new features. Read more...