What Intel's Extreme Quad Core means for ThinkPad W700

Intel talked up its supercharged processor at the Montevina unveiling last month, but now the first notebooks with it are making their way to the public.

Some people have wondered if four processing cores inside a laptop is overkill, but Lenovo clearly doesn't think so.

Lenovo's ThinkPad W700 is the first to market with the Core 2 Extreme Quad Core processor. As you might imagine, this isn't one of those thin-and-light notebooks the industry is so high on. Nope, the W700 is a mobile workstation, but "mobile" isn't really the emphasis here.

"This isn't meant to be a mobile workstation--it's mean to be a workstation," said Wes Williams, Lenovo's chief ThinkPad marketing manager. "When you do need to be on-the-go, it means you can take it with you-- don't need two systems anymore."

Besides being a 17-inch notebook, it comes with the option of dual hard drives with RAID configurations, and an optional Blu-ray burner/player. Not only does that mean this beast is on the heavier side, you probably don't want all those cores churning away on your lap either.

The W700 is aimed at creative professionals and content producers, and has a built-in digitizer and a color calibrator to go along with its 17-inch screen. It comes with Nvidia's Quadro FX mobile graphics processor, which has 1GB of dedicated video memory.

Falcon Northwest has been using mobile quad-core processors before this, but Lenovo is first with Intel's offering. Keep an eye out for other vendors sure to follow soon.

Via CNET Crave

Atom-based LifeBook U series hits the streets

How do you make the world's smallest convertible tablet better? First, you drop the price from a heart-stopping S$1,988 (US$1,412.33) to a painful but manageable S$1,688 (US$1,199.20). Then, while keeping the same 5.6-inch display size, up the resolution 1,024 x 768 pixels to a sharper 1,280 x 800 resolution.

After that, add in new multimedia features such as the Microsoft Origami Experience 2 application (a downloadable application for any touchscreen-enabled UMPC) and an FM transmitter. The latter allows you to stream music to any FM receiver so you don't have to transfer or burn a CD to play on your car or home stereo. And if that is still not enough, bump up the battery life from a puny 2 hours on the four-cell battery to a whopping 8 hours of uptime. Top it all off with a choice of five colors and what do you get? The latest Fujitsu LifeBook U2010, descendent of the LifeBook U1010.

Though it's missing 3G/HSDPA connectivity (future editions may be equipped with it), the U series remains as one of the smallest convertible tablet PCs in the market. Thanks to its Atom processor, we can expect much better performance from Windows Vista Home Premium than in the previous iterations. A pity that the anemic keyboard is still one of the hardest to use, but stick to content consumption and you should be fine. If you are in the market for a machine like that, the unit is already available in Asia for S$1,688 (US$1,199.20).

Intel's Nehalem chips to get "Core" branding

Intel's next-generation desktop processors will be branded "Intel Core" with an "i7" identifier for the first wave of products.

The i7 identifier will apply to the first crop of high-end desktop processors, according to George Alfs, an Intel spokesperson. Other identifiers will come later that will "complement" the i7, said Alfs.

There will be a separate black logo for the highest-end offering called the Extreme Edition. Model numbers will differentiate each chip.

"The Core name is and will be our flagship PC processor brand going forward," Sean Maloney, Intel executive vice president and general manager, said in a statement.

Intel is trying to simplify branding. In the past, "it's been Core Duo, Core Solo... Basically, we're going to simplify Nehalem down to just Core", Alfs said.

Currently known by the codename Nehalem, the desktop Core i7 processors are slated to ship in the fourth quarter and will be based on a new microarchitecture that will have faster chip-to-chip communication and be better at doing multiple tasks simultaneously--what Intel calls hyper-threading, among other improvements.
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The Olympics on the Web: Squashed by tradition

The 2008 Summer Olympics is the most online ever, which is no surprise. More of the world has broadband access than four years ago. But in the US, at least, the old advertising-supported television model for distributing sports coverage is hanging on tight.

That isn't to say the Web is losing. On NBCOlympics.com, you can quickly jump to delayed coverage of the major events, as well as live coverage of less popular sports or qualifying rounds. What you cannot do is duplicate the live-television experience online for major events like swimming.
This is because NBC affiliate stations make advertising revenues when people tune in to those events on TV. NBC cannot just run all its Olympics video online in real time and compete with its own affiliates. We may not like it, but from a business perspective, this appears to make sense.

Or does it? Could NBC offer a Web experience that's competitive with the television offering and end up still ahead of the game? I believe that it could.
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Why the Internet continues to be NBC's Olympic headache

Sometimes things don't work out as planned but still it's all to the good. That's the case with the early data for NBC's telecasts of the Beijing Olympics.

Heading into the games, a big question on the minds of NBC execs was whether Internet video and piracy would erode TV viewership.

If the first couple of days offered a harbinger, it was all much ado about nothing. As the world settles in to watch the first truly broadband Olympics, too many big media creators still judge the Web to be more of a foe than a friend. But the masses are voting with their eyeballs. Turns out these Summer Games are the most watched in the last decade--coinciding with similar record viewership over the Internet.

This comes as a counter-intuitive--albeit pleasant--surprise to the likes of General Electric and Disney and all the other content creating factories. Anxious to mollify the concerns of its affiliates, NBC, which owns exclusive broadcast rights to the games, decided to offer only 75 percent of its live coverage of the Olympics via its Web site.
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