If you are interested in upgrading to Windows Vista when it comes out (eventually, someday), you’ll probably have to upgrade your computer. According to
Microsoft, the minimum requirements for a Vista “Capable” PC are
- A modern processor (at least 800MHz).
- 512 MB of system memory.
- A graphics processor that is DirectX 9 capable.
Yeah, right. A bit more realistically, a Vista “Premium” PC should have at least the following:
- 1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor.
- 1 GB of system memory.
- A graphics processor that runs Windows Aero.
- 128 MB of graphics memory.
- 40 GB of hard drive capacity with 15 GB free space.
- DVD-ROM Drive.
- Audio output capability.
- Internet access capability.
A bit better, but thats not really reasonable either. Assume you’ll need a PC at least 50% better just to get some menial level of productivity.
Or you can just wait to get your 350 GHz system. No, not 3 GHz. Three hundred fifty gigahertz.
Georgia Tech and IBM have created a processor that runs that fast at room temperature and 500 GHz if its supercooled. According to the
press release, researchers think they can achieve terahertz performance with some tweaks.
The purpose of the research was to figure out the upper limits of processor speeds with the current technology and see what kind of speed improvements would manifest with cooling processors to absolute zero.
The bloggers at zdnet think there is going to be a Google Music service. Hopefully it doesn’t use the music interface in Google Desktop, which sucks pretty bad. More rumors from SearchEngineWatch as well. If this and notebook have some decent interfaces, they are going to kick Yahoo! and MS in the pants.
So I just got done posting about how the porn industry is allowing full movie downloads before Hollywood, and then notice a BusinessWeek article on diggdot on how downloading HDTV is going to choke the Internet. If the average tv actually downloads all 8 hours of tv that they watch everday, the Internet is gonna choke. No kidding Sherlock.
But whats the possibility of that happening? Who needs to watch all their tv in high-def? Do I really need to watch The Sopranos in HDTV? Hell, cable companies can just charge more for those downloads. So how much will it cost to transmit all that data?
But if the customer starts watching Internet TV like the average household watches regular TV, 8 hours a day, BellSouth’s cost would go up to $112 a month, according to Kafka.
Yeah, sure…but this is unlikely to happen:
In fact, he said, Internet traffic has increased much more slowly than the prices of Internet-carrying equipment like switches and routers have fallen, and that trend is likely to continue.
The ISPs just need to get a machine with some gigantic hard drives that cache the tv shows. Hollywood uploads the movies to the ISPs a couple days before they are supposed to be shown…the ISPs propagate the files to file servers close to metro areas and let users download the files as needed.
I guess the ISPs would rather bitch and moan…like me 
Technorati Tags : hdtv, television
Yahoo! has an article about how the adult industry is getting ready to support downloads of DVDs while Hollywood still hasn’t gotten their act together. Article does point out something interesting though: it might not be completely Hollywood’s fault. Hollywood has had to depend on theaters and stores for revenue for a long time and they are all intertwined. If Hollywood wants to change how it does business by directly selling to the consumer, all the theaters and big chains like Wal-Mart are going to get PO’ed.
Seriously, some of studios should sell some of their good older movies online. Seriously doubt Wal-Mart would care if Hollywood sold old Spencer Tracy or Katherine Hepburn movies directly to the consumer. Get mainstream used to the idea and the Wal-Marts of the world will come up with their business model to support downloading.
Technorati Tags : hollywood
Honestly, it doesn’t sound like much of stretch. The iPods already support video and can run Linux. Turning iPod into a UMPC seems like the next logical step. Rick Segal (who has a great VC blog), has some interesting news: Apple dropping their current chip supplier for Samsung could be showing us their roadmap. The current chip is good for media related apps, but the Samsung chip could be used for a full-blown UMPC.
Affordable UMPCs could change everything. Palm devices are nice organizers, but their media capabilities are weak. The Archos and Cowon devices are awesome multimedia devices, but have no business apps. Even with their monsterous hard drives, they probably don’t have the hardware for productivity tools or a browser. The top of the line device from Archos, AV700, costs $600, while the latest UMPC supporting Microsoft XP from Samsung (nice to see Samsung covering both sides) costs $1099 from Best Buy. Can Archos or Cowon add the right tools for non-multimedia apps? Maybe, Apple might be better suited to take on Microsoft UMPC platform.
With the 60GB video iPod costing $399 from Apple and Apple already making an OS, they should be able to make a competitive UMPC for less than $1000.
Apple and Microsoft going head to head again? What were the chances?
Technorati Tags : apple, ipod, umpc, microsoft
I have to admit, I’ve always been a big fan of Google. I love the search engine, google mail, and yes, even their newsreader. The interface is pretty slick, even if it isn’t the most responsive UI ever. Bloglines was my old favorite, but it got old scrolling through long pages if I hadn’t looked at a site in a while.
Being a nut for keeping track of sites and random crud around the internet, del.ico.us and Furl are a god-send. Del.icio.us has the easy UI for posting and tagging sites, but its gotten to be annoying slow nowadays. Think they need to spend some money on infrastructure. Of course, there is the question of how del.icio.us is making any money at all. Furl (and similarly spurl) lets you actually store copies of websites, so when the NY Times decides to move their articles and charge for them, I can just pull up my copy in Furl.
Thats why I’m looking forward to Google’s notebook service thats supposed to come out next week. TechCrunch has some nice screenshots they got from Erica Joy who works at Google. The notebook is supposed to be able to store linkes, images, and text, so it might be a good replacement for del.icio.us and Furl.
Update: Looks like folks have found the URL for notebook.
Technorati Tags : google, googlenotebook
