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Dell's Android-Powered Mini 3i Smartphone Details

Paul Lilly — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 07:30:50 -0600

Talk of Dell releasing a smartphone has been going on for some time now, and come next week, the OEM will finally release its first handset, albeit not in the U.S.

China Mobile was selected as the carrier of Dell's Mini 3i, which the two companies jointly announced will be available by the end of the month in choice of Red Passion or Oiled Bronze.

Coming as no surprise, the Mini 3i will sport Google's open-source Android platform, arguably the hottest OS out there right now, It will be compatible with quad-band GSM/EDGE networks and boast a 3.5-inch touchscreen with a 640x360 resolution, and measure 4.8 by 2.3 by 0.46 inches. By comparison, the iPhone 3GS also sports a 3.5-inch display, but with a 480x320 resolution, and measures 4.4 by 2.4 by 0.48 inches. And at 4.7 ounces, it weighs an ounce more than Dell's Mini 3i.

Other features include GPS navigation, Bluetooth, an a 3MP camera with zoom, auto-focus, flash, video capture, and photo-editing capabilities, eWeek.com reports.

"This signals an important milestone in the long term partnership between China Mobile and Dell," a China Mobile spokesperson said in a statement. "We are excited for Dell to be among the first manufacturers to introduce new technology based on the OPhone platform. We look forward to working the Dell as it brings innovative new products and services to add value to our customers' lives."

China Mobile currently has over 500 million subscribers.

Image Credit: Dell

Reminder: We're Giving Away a HP ENVY 13 Notebook!

The Maximum PC Staff — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:00:00 -0600

You read that right. HP has generously donated one of their slick new ENVY 13 notebooks for us to give away. Announced two months ago, the ENVY 13 is a powerful workhorse packed into a stunning chassis, with the specs to prove it. The model we're giving away is equipped with a 2.13 Core 2 Duo, 5GB of DDR3 SDRAM, a 250GB HD, and sports a beautiful 13.1" LED screen (1600x900 resolution). From our hands-on time with the notebook, we were definitely impressed by its radiant display, which put a comparably-sized Macbook Air to shame. And yes, it comes with Windows 7. ~~The contest starts today (Nov 10th) and runs for two weeks,~~ The contest ends tomorrow, you'll have to hit the jump to find out how to enter.

To get your name into the random drawing, you'll need to become a fan of our Facebook group and write a comment under the ENVY 13 Contest post about why you want to win this laptop. We'll pick a winner with a random drawing on November 24th! (Unfortunately, this contest is only available to US residents. HP's rules, not ours.)

The full system specs:

HP ENVY 13 – Value $2,424.99

Windows 7 Professional (64-bit)
Intel Core 2 Duo Processor SL9600 (2.13 GHz)
13.1" diagonal HD+ High Definition LED HP Radiance Infinity Widescreen Display (1600x900)
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330 Graphics
250GB (5400RPM)HDD
5GB DDR3 SDRAM
Intel WiFi Link 5100 Network & Bluetooth
External Slot Blu-Ray ROM with SuperMulti DVD+/-R/RW Double Layer
4 Cell Li-Ion Battery
Webcam
3.74 pounds

MAXIMUM PC HP ENVY 13 CONTEST
OFFICIAL RULES

NO PURCHASE OR PAYMENT OF ANY KIND IS NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. A PURCHASE WILL NOT IMPROVE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING.

1. SPONSOR: This promotion (the “Contest”) is sponsored by Maximum PC magazine and Future US, Inc. (“Sponsors”), subject to the following terms and conditions.

2. ELIGIBILITY: Contest open to legal residents of the United States (excluding residents of Rhode Island and Puerto Rico). Entrants must be at least 18 years of age. Employees of Sponsors, their respective parents, subsidiaries, affiliated companies, and agents, and foregoing employees’ household or immediate family members (defined as parent, spouse, child, sibling, or grandparent) are NOT eligible to enter Contest. By their submission of entry, participants warrant they are legally entitled and authorized to make such submission, either on their own behalf, or as to information submitted upon the express authorization of another on whose behalf the information is submitted.

3. TIMING: Contest begins at 12:01 a.m. PDT on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 and continues until 11:59 p.m. PDT on Tuesday, November 24th, 2009. Incomplete or late entries will not be accepted.

HOW TO ENTER: Email us at contests@maximumpc.com, putting “HP ENVY 13 Contest” in the subject line and including your complete name, address, daytime telephone number, city, state, and zip code in the body or join our Facebook page at http://facebook.com/maximumpc and submit a comment under the ENVY 13 Contest post. There is a limit of one entry per eligible participant. Entries become the property of the Sponsors and will not be acknowledged or returned.

5. PRIZES AND ODDS: One Grand Prize will be awarded. The Grand Prize will be a HP Envy 13 with Intel® Core 2 Duo 2.13GHz, 250GB HDD, 5GB SDRAM and a total retail value of $2,424.99.

Odds of winning shall be determined by the number of eligible entries received.
Prizes are nontransferable and must be accepted as awarded. Winner will be responsible for all taxes (federal, state, and local) and all expenses not listed herein related to acceptance and use of any prize. Prize will be awarded if properly claimed. Limit one prize per household.

6. DRAWING: Winners will be selected by random drawing from all valid eligible entries received. Drawing will be held on or about Tuesday, November 24th, 2009. Drawing will be conducted by Sponsors, whose decisions on all matters related to the Contest shall be final and binding and within their sole discretion. Canadian entrants selected in any drawing will be required to correctly answer, without assistance of any kind, whether mechanical or otherwise, a time-limited mathematical skill-testing question to be administered by mail or by telephone. Winning is contingent upon compliance with all terms and conditions set forth in these official rules; any entry drawn or any potential winner identified thereby found at any time to fail to comply with these official rules will be held invalid and ineligible for award.

NOTIFICATION: Winner will be notified by phone or email within one week following the random drawing. Winner so notified must within ten (10) days of notice of award, complete, execute and return the provided Affidavit, Waiver, Release and Indemnity Agreement including, where lawful, a Publicity Release (plus any additional documents required at the discretion of Sponsors). Failure to comply with the requirements of this paragraph (or the return of any prize or prize notification as non-deliverable) may result in disqualification and in the forfeiture of any right to a prize, in which case prize will be awarded to an alternate by random drawing. A list of winners will be available for six months after the award of prizes by sending a self addressed envelope with sufficient prepaid postage to:

MAXIMUM PC
HP ENVY 13 CONTEST
4000 Shoreline Court, Suite 400
South San Francisco, CA 94080

Residents of the state of Vermont may omit return postage.

8. PRIVACY POLICY: Submissions are subject to standard privacy policy, the terms of which can be found at http://www.futureus.com/privacy.php, which terms and conditions entrants accept and agree to by submission of entries pursuant to these official rules.

9. RELEASE: by participating in the Contest and/or accepting a prize, a participant/winner agrees to defend, release and hold harmless the Sponsors and their respective parents, subsidiaries, affiliates, divisions, advertising and promotion agencies, and the foregoing companies’ officers, directors, shareholders, employees, representatives and agents (collectively “Releasees”) from and against any actions, claims and/or liability for injury, loss or damage of any kind, (including the violation or infringement of any proprietary or personal right of any individual or entity) resulting in whole or in part, directly or indirectly, from participation in the Contest, and/or the use, acceptance, or possession of a Contest prize, and/or participation in a Contest prize-related activity, including any action, claim or liability arising from the unauthorized submission of any information.

By participating in the Contest and/or accepting a prize, a participant/winner consents to and gives the Sponsors the right to use, publish, and display a winner’s (and where applicable a participant’s) name, city and state, and prize awarded, for the purpose of advertising, trade, publicity and promotional purposes in any media now known or hereafter discovered, worldwide, and on the Web, without review, notification or approval, all without additional consideration, unless prohibited by law.

10. CONDITIONS: Participants agree that by participating they release the Releasees from any liability in connection with: a) Entries that are ineligible as a result of being lost, late, illegible, damaged, incomplete, stolen, postage due, or misdirected: b) Any typographical or other human or technical errors in the offer or administration of the Contest, including but not limited to errors in advertising, these official rules, the selection and announcement of a winner(s), or the distribution/awarding of a prize(s); c) Any omission, interruption, deletion, defect, delay, misdirection, damage, injury, technical malfunctions or traffic congestion on the Internet/telephone network, or at any website, or any combination thereof.

Sponsors reserve the right to modify these rules for clarification purposes without materially affecting the term and conditions of the Contest. In the event that the Contest is infected by a computer virus/worm, or is not capable of running or being executed as planned (as a result of but not limited to an error, omission, defect, delay, misdirection, tampering, unauthorized intervention, fraud, action of entrants, or technical failure) or any other cause which in the sole opinion of Sponsors corrupts or affects the administration, security, fairness, integrity, or proper conduct of the Contest, Sponsors reserve the right in their sole discretion to disqualify any suspect entry or entrant and to cancel, terminate, modify or suspend the Contest. In the event of such cancellation, termination, modification or suspension, notice thereof will be posted at the entry website(s) mentioned above, and winner(s) will be determined solely by Sponsors in a random drawing from among all eligible non-suspect and/or non-disqualified entries. In such event, Releasees shall have no liability to any participant who is disqualified due to such an action. Failure to enforce any term of these official rules shall not constitute a waiver of that provision.

11. LAW: This Contest is governed by the laws of the United States and is subject to all federal, state, and local laws and regulations. Void where prohibited or restricted. All issues and questions concerning the construction, validity, interpretation, and enforceability of these Official Rules, or the rights and obligations of entrants or Sponsor in connection with any drawing or award, shall be governed by, and construed in accordance with the laws of, the State of California, without regard to conflict of law principles. Any cause of action by you with respect to the offer (and/or any information, products or services related thereto) must be instituted within one (1) year after the cause of action arose or be forever waived and barred. All actions shall be subject to the limitations set forth in above. The language in these official rules shall be interpreted as in accordance with its fair meaning and not strictly for or against either party. All legal proceedings arising out of or in connection with the offer of these official rules shall be brought solely in San Mateo County, California. You expressly submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of said courts and consent to extraterritorial service of process.

Mozilla Admits that Firefox has CPU Usage Problems

Paul Lilly — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:30:52 -0600

Is your ultraportable overheating while surfing the web? As odd as it sounds, the culprit could be Firefox rather than a hardware issue. No, really, check out what one of Mozilla's support pages has to say on the matter.

"At times, Firefox may require significant CPU resources in order to download, process, and display web content," Mozilla states in a document titled "Firefox consumes a lot of CPU resources."

As CNet notes, this is a real problem that users are reporting, such as this Dell Mini9 owner. So what's the solution? Short of switching to a different browser, Mozilla recommends downloading and installing the latest version of the Flash plugin, which might help with Flash heavy sites like YouTube, and installing Flashblock, which allows end-users to selectively enable and disable Flash content.

Depending on when and where the high CPU usage kicks in, Mozilla also recommends updating the Adobe Reader plugin, configuring Firefox to open PDF documents outside of Firefox, and installing NoScript.

Have you noticed any unusual CPU activitiy or overheating woes while running Firefox? Tell us in the comments section below..

Image Credit: cypherhackz.net

Is T-Mobile Looking to Team Up With Another US Carrier?

Ryan Whitwam — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:36:43 -0600

In the wake of a major service outage a few weeks ago, fourth place US carrier T-Mobile may be shopping around for investment money from another US cell provider. Compared to the other US carriers, T-Mobile has a very small 3G footprint. Recognizing a need to expand, rumors indicate that parent company Deutsche Telekom is courting the likes of MetroPCS, Clearwire, and even AT&T.

Any of these investors would receive a small stake in T-Mobile in exchange for investment to expand their network. MetroPCS is of particular interest as the smaller carrier uses the same odd 1700Mhz 3G frequency that T-Mobile does. Collaboration with AT&T would be risky due to possible anti-trust allegations. AT&T is the only other GSM carrier in the US.

Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile UK was recently forced to merge with Orange UK. Could their US arm be headed in the same direction?

Finally, a Netbook with Brawn (and Dual-Core Processor)

Paul Lilly — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:41:01 -0600

Asus said it was switching to Nvidia's Ion platform for future netbooks, and making good on that promise, the Eee PC maker on Thursday announced the Eee PC 1201N Multimedia Netbook.

Up until now, a multimedia netbook could be considered an oxymoron, if not a cruel joke, but that certainly isn't the case here. Pushing the boundaries between a netbook and notebook, the 1201N sports a 12.1-inch LED display and comes built around Nvidia's pixel-pushing Ion platform. That's great for graphics, but it doesn't stop there. Instead of the ubiquitous Atom N270 processor found in most netbooks, Asus equipped the 1201N with Intel's Atom 330 dual-core processor.

On the storage front, the new netbook comes with a 250GB hard drive and 500GB of online Asus WebStorage. The online storage space is provided for free for the first year, and after that, you'll have to pony up for a subscription plan.

Other specs include 2GB of DDR2 memory, Wi-Fi, three USB2.0 ports, a 6-cell battery good for up to 5 hours of run time, and Windows 7.

No word yet on price or availability.

Image Credit: Asus

Netbooks Coming to the Enterprise, Get Ready IT Dept

Paul Lilly — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:06:21 -0600

Netbooks have been selling exceptionally well without much support in the enterprise sector, but they won't stay relegated to the consumer side forever, and that's something IT managers should be preparing for, some observers say.

Maulik Pandya, Dell's senior planning manager for commercial notebooks, says netbooks could conceivably ease into 5 percent of enterprise sales, but there's potential for much more. Rob Enderle, president and principal analyst for the Enderle Group, says that if end-users had any say in the matter, netbooks would blaze past the 5 percent mark.

"Small portable computers for less than $400 is where the market should be," Enderle said. "Portability and the price point really tear up the laptop. Many vendors don't wan to build a strong corporate netbook model because they don't want to pirate their laptop lines."

The obvious downside for enterprise applications is the lack of power inherent in most netbooks. However, this might not be as big an issue as some believe. According to Allen Gwinn, senior director and chief technologist for the Edwin L. Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, there are workarounds. He cites an example of one faculty member who works with demanding SAS models.

"We couldn't find a laptop powerful enough for him to do his work at home," said Gwinn. "So we gave him a netbook. He uses the remote desktop feature to connect to his desktop machine in the office."

Scenarios like this are what IT professionals would be wise to prepare for.

Image Credit: Flickr -eko-

GammaTech Durabook D14RM

Katherine Stevenson — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:30:00 -0600

Takes a lickin’...

GammaTech’s Durabook D14RM is the antidote for folks who are really rough on their hardware. The notebook’s gray and black magnesium-alloy case, complete with black rubberized corners, not only makes the rig look burly, but also serves to protect it from aggressive manhandling.

GammaTech says the notebook complies with MIL-STD-810F guidelines for ruggedness, so we put those claims to the test. We “accidentally” knocked the D14RM off a desk when the machine was open and running a program, dropped it from a standing position onto a concrete floor (a few times, because it gave us such a thrill), and spilled a full 16-ounce cup of liquid across its keyboard. The D14RM withstood all that abuse without any apparent damage to its structure or functionality. And mind you, the D14RM uses a mechanical hard drive. Yes, an SSD seems like a more obvious choice for a notebook that’s meant to be tossed about, but then it wouldn’t be nearly so affordable.

The D14RM is a business-class notebook, with components that are suitable to that role—a 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB of DDR2/800, a 320GB 5,400rpm hard drive, integrated graphics, and Windows Vista Business 64-bit (Windows 7 Home Premium, Pro, and Ultimate are also options). But in our initial benchmark runs, we were surprised to see scores that trailed our 2.53GHz zero-point machine by more than 30 percent in some cases. Further investigation revealed a serious power-management flaw. Even with the power plan set to High Performance, the D14RM’s two cores dropped to half-speed when the notebook was plugged into an outlet; when the notebook was unplugged and running on battery, the CPU performed at full speed. Weird, huh?

It seemed like a BIOS issue to us, and, indeed, GammaTech delivered us a BIOS fix within a few days of our discovery, which resolved the matter. But it does make us question how the company could miss a flaw this massive.

With the updated BIOS, the D14RM performed as expected. It bested our zero-point business notebook by very healthy margins in almost every benchmark. The only exception was in Photoshop, where our zero-point held a minor 2.3 percent lead, likely the result of that notebook’s SSD. We also compared the D14RM’s scores to the iBuypower M865TU that we reviewed in November, since both notebooks use the exact same 3.06GHz T9900 processor. Each notebook won two of our four content creation benchmarks, neither by more than seven percent, so we’ll call it a draw.

In terms of amenities, the D14RM offers a good selection of ports, including HDMI—all of which are protected with attached rubber caps to prevent dirt and dust from mucking with the works. But it’s strange that GammaTech makes these allowances for outdoor use yet outfits the D14RM with a glossy 1280x800 screen. Such a highly reflective surface is totally unsuitable for use in bright natural light. Back in the plus column, our model came equipped with the Bluetooth, built-in 3G GSM modem, and webcam options, to make the sturdy D14RM an accommodating overall package—and for about half the price of a comparably sized Panasonic Toughbook.

Number of Android Devices Has Devs Worried

Ryan Whitwam — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:02:31 -0600

It’s been just over a year since Android was released, and we’re finally seeing the floodgates open. There are currently no fewer than 12 Android phones available and still more coming soon. While this may make Android fans out there giddy with excitement, it’s not so thrilling for app developers.

There are 3 versions on Android in the wild: 2.0, 1.6, and 1.5. Developers increasingly find themselves devoting time to patching incompatibilities with new Android handsets. “Instead of working on updates to our apps, we find we are trying to make each app work for multiple versions of the OS and different hardware capabilities,” said Froogloid’s Chris Fagan.

The modifications some manufacturers are making to Android complicate things even further. The recent;y released HTC Hero, for example, was incompatible with Froogloid’s application ‘a2b’. When a2b attempted to enable GPS using standard commands, the Hero would instead respond by presenting the lock screen. The new Motorola Droid also had a few incompatibilities due to the high screen resolution and new Android 2.0 APIs.

Can Android overcome this fragmentation? The solution may be to keep phones more uniformly updated. But that requires better cooperation between hardware partners and Google. Only time will tell if Android’s ecosystem can continue to grow more robust despite these challenges.