Home & Small Office Computer Guide

If you haven’t noticed let me tell you that laptops are getting bigger. They’re a bit like cars, a manufacturer introduces a small car and over the years the small car gradually gets bigger and bigger until suddenly the manufacturer finds that there’s room in their line-up for another small car.

That seems to be what some laptop manufacturers have just discovered and now we’re seeing the introduction of a genuinely small laptop. There are several manufacturers who are in the market but Asus seems to be the leader at the moment with their Eee range.

In case you’re wondering about where they got that unusual name then you’ll find tghe answer on Asus Eee home page.

This laptop is a genuine notebook sized computer. It’s just 7 inches or 17cm on it’s longest side and it weighs just 0.92kg.

There are several models in the Eee range but they all come with WiFi connectivity and a solid-state hard drive. Asus suggests that their Eee laptops are so user-friendly you don’t even need a technical manual.

Have you ever dreamed of owning a laptop with a battery that lasted longer than just a couple of hours?

How would you like a laptop battery that lasted for 40 hours?

A discovery by researchers at Stanford University could be the start of turning those dreams into reality. You can read more about it here.

It seems that a growing shortage of major laptop components could impact on some laptop manufacturers over the coming months. Everything from screens to hard drives have been in short supply for some time.

You can read the full story here

… it all depends

When Windows Vista appeareed one of it’s selling points - aimed at those who use laptops - was that it would extend battery life. To some extent that has been the case and if you run Vista in it’s very basic form you can get better battery life than if you were running Windows XP.

However, if you have the hardware in your laptop to run Vista’s Aero Glass interface - you know, the one the brochures all show you and that looks so wonderful - then expect to drain your laptop’s battery rather quickly. The problem is so bad that several laptop producers have come up with their own power management settings rather than relying on those built into Vista.

You can find more about the story here.

How many times have you wanted one quick bit of information that’s only on your laptop? 

NVIDIA Corporation has announced that LG Electronics (LG), a global leader and technology innovator in consumer electronics, introduced a new series of notebook computers that take full advantage of the Windows Vista operating system, which fully utilizes the new NVIDIA Preface(TM) Personal Media Display (PMD) platform.

By using Preface to enable Windows SideShow, consumers will have “always-on” access to multimedia content and software gadgets via a secondary display embedded in the notebook lid.

Windows SideShow is a new technology that allows the Windows Vista operating system to drive auxiliary displays providing consumers with faster and easier to use bite-size bits of information. NVIDIA Preface allows consumers to link to the programs and data stored on the main system, even when the notebook is in hibernation mode or turned off.

Some of the many gadgets that can be used on the go without draining battery life include music playback, photo slideshows, e-mail, calendars, world clocks, stock quotes, RSS feeds, and more.

“In the consumer electronics market, the line between work and entertainment devices has become increasingly blurred,” said John Milner, general manager of personal media processors at NVIDIA Corporation.

“The LG Z1 with NVIDIA Preface technology allows consumers to get more from the notebook experience — they can be more productive throughout their workday and enjoy personal media along the way.”

“NVIDIA Preface technology and Windows SideShow allow us to offer our customers a new way to take advantage of the wealth of personal information in their notebook and on the Web,” said Mr. JJ Lee, general manager for the PC division of LG. “For those looking to enjoy a complete Windows Vista experience, this notebook is a must-have.”

Some components get older faster

The laptop I use when I need to escape from the office and work outdoors or in another part of the house is almost three years old and yesterday, without any warning at all, the hard drive died. It blue-screened on shut down and when I tried restarting it failed.

So off it went to the computer shop where our partner diagnosed a some corrupt sectors in a critical part of the hard drive. Fortunately I store almost no data on the hard drive of the laptop so nothing was lost except some time. 

It seems that laptop hard drives have a tendency to fail around the three year mark so be warned, if you keep important data on your laptop’s hard drive make sure you back it up regularly and if you can avoid storing data on an older laptop’s hard drive then do so because it can all be lost in the blink of an eye.

Meet Sony’s ultra portable micro PC. It comes with a 4.5″ widescreen SVGA display and is powered by an Intel Core Solo Ultra Low Voltage processor.

The Sony UX180P also comes equipped with Microsoft XP Professional.

Just in case the image gives you the impression that the Sony UX180P is the size of your average laptop let me tell you that it basically fits in the palm of your hand.

The Sony UX180P may not be for everyone - I’m not sure my big fingers would be able to cope with that keyboard - the price is definitely not going to suit the size of my wallet

You can read more about the Sony UX180P here.

Like many people, when we’re on the road we travel with our laptops. Those laptops keep us connected to our business and our clients but the also make us vulnerable to taking a serious hit from thieves.

It’s not the loss of a laptop if it gets stolen than is the problem, it’s the data we could be carrying on that laptop that could be the major loss.

To minimise the potential loss we never carry vital data on our laptops (in fact our laptops carry the bare minimum in software as well). Instead we either carry it in removable data storage devices such as thumb drives that stay in our pockets or we keep it online and only access it when we need it.

Of course, not everyone can do that and for some preventing their laptops from being stolen will also prevent their data from disappearing too. You can find some good suggestions on that topic here

MALIBAL(TM) Introduces World’s First 19″ Laptop with Dual NVIDIA(R) GPUs

New Veda Series(TM) Laptops Elevate Mobile Computing with NVIDIA(R) SLI(TM) Technology

MALIBAL, LLC, a Las Vegas based company and a world leader in innovative laptop design and development, today unveiled its long awaited Veda Series™. Available immediately, the Veda Series features the world’s first 19″ laptop display with NVIDIA® SLI™ technology.

NVIDIA® SLI™ technology is a revolutionary platform innovation that allows the end-user to intelligently scale graphics performance by combining multiple NVIDIA graphics solutions in a single system with an NVIDIA nForce® SLI media and communications processor (MCP)

The Veda Series™ comes equipped with a pair of NVIDIA® GeForce® Go 7800 GTX GPUs, which can produce up to twice the rendering capability of a standard Go 7800 GTX notebook, while generating flawless picture clarity and video playback.

The NVIDIA® GeForce® Go 7800 GTX is the flagship of NVIDIA’s mobile GPU product line for notebooks, delivering the cutting-edge technology needed to render the most intense visual effects for today’s games and 3D applications.

The dual GPUs are coupled with an NVIDIA nForce®4 SLI media and communications processor (MCP) to offer a superb visual experience, that will appeal to gamers as well as: animators, artists and business professionals who are looking for the pinnacle of high performance on the go.

With immersive, ultra-realistic lighting effects at extreme resolutions, these three NVIDIA® chips will enable end-users the ability to experience the ultimate in high-definition graphics & gaming–anytime, anywhere.

“Delivering top performance, diverse functionality and convenient compatibility, the Veda Series reaffirms our impassioned commitment to producing laptops that continually push the limits of mobile technology,” said Matthew Plott, founder, MALIBAL.

To visit the Malibal website follow this link

The latest trend in computer hardware is a serious move towards replacing desktops with laptops. There is such a strong move in that direction that there have been some months where the sale of laptops have exceeded the sale of desktops.

It’s a move that has rather puzzled and alarmed me. As a trained typist the keyboard on any laptop drives me nuts because there is no way that I can get it to slope in the way a keyboard should and that means that I have to hold my hands in a different position that becomes very tiring very quickly. That means that my productivity decreases the longer I have to use my laptop.

On top of that most modern laptops put out way too much heat and it’s quite possible to have them overheat on a desk and on my lap.

That doesn’t mean that laptops don’t have their advantages. It’s just great to be able to grab the laptop and go out onto the patio and work there when the four walls of the office begin to close in. And it’s good to be able to take our laptops with us when we go away but I’ve never accepted that a laptop could be a serious replacement for a desktop.

However that attitude has left me feeling like a voice crying in the wilderness as more and more people trumpet the supposed advantages of a laptop over a desktop. But now others are joining me in suggesting that laptops may not really be such an ideal replacement for a desktop after all.

Here you can read the story of a laptop that became very unstable after just 32 hours of continuous use. The desktops in our office run 24/7 for weeks at a time without rebooting.