April 14, 2006
Reg Hardware breaks news of a T-Mobile Sidekick-inspired high-resolution, low-cost, fully loaded UMPC that Averatec plas to offer in the fall. Well, it won't be all those things at the same time, but that's ok. A $600 price point would go a long way toward helping consumers overlook the lack of a killer application for this platform.
The concept drawings Averatec's offering has a dedicated keyboard, which is generally good. However, I don't think the typing while standing usage scenario will prove very popular. Flat surfaces are plentiful, and having to type more than a sentence of two on a device as heavy as the UMPC s just palnful. I learned that a while back.
In other news, the Samsung Q1 bundle that will go for about $1,400 in Korea — with its wrap case that includes a detached keyboard — brings back memories of a Newton 2000/2100 package that appeared near the end of the line for Apple's uber-PDA.
March 31, 2006
If Cablevision's DVR in the cloud can withstand legal scrutiny and be at least as reliable as current video-on-demand services, it would not only mean increased pressure for TiVo and the other retail DVR also-rans, but a threat to Media Center, which has much of its value riding on digital video recording. Neither platform has introduced anything more compelling than its DVR capabilities and there are plenty of other solutions for getting media from Computer A to Television B.
By delivering video directly from its servers, Cablevision and its fellow oligopolists could cheaply provide the equivalent of that holy grail of multi-room DVR without having to deal with the thorny technology and expense of high-speed home networking. Most DVR users with flat screens would probably give their fast-forward buttons to lose the bulky boxes in their living rooms, although removing the hard drive would make it more difficult to enable portable device sideloading like DirecTV2Go.
