News for Monday, 25 October 2004

AMD shall announce on Thursday a new type of PC that is to be sold in emergent countries such as Asia or Latin America countries. This PC will cost $249 only, as it aims to provide an Internet access to families of those countries middle class.
The machine will embark a 399MHz Geode GX500 processor, 128MB Ram, a CRT 15" display, a 10Go HD, 4 USB ports and an [ahem] "extended" Windows CE (email managing, web navigator, PowerPoint management, ...).
AMD might perhaps sell this machine in Europe or Northern America, which could lead to opening the Net to a larger population [provided their governments will let them free of doing so...], but could also result, in our countries, to a new kind of computing business based no more on the "best" product, but the "sufficient"!
[NB : there has been an industry of cheap PCs in India for some time now, perhaps AMD is growing wary of that as well as MS was scared by their softwares piracy in those parts of the world]

Jean-Pierre just had his G5 delivered. He had a surprise looking for the references of its Superdrive:

abricant: PIONEER
Modèle: PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-117D
Révision: B705
Type de disque: CD-RW/DVD-RW
Gravure du disque: Géré/Livré par Apple
Support amovible: Oui
Disque amovible: Non
Protocole: ATAPI
Numéro de l’unité: 0
Type de socket: Interne

Quite surprisingly, this product is not to be found anywhere by Pioneer. It will thus be difficult to get a zone free firmware, unless it is only a 107 in disguise.
Anyway, it will grow harder for Apple to deliver 107, as Pioneer switched to produce 108 only.

HP sell their iPod under Apple licence. They necessarily want that this product be bought by them.
This little commercial war might be initiated by stars, as our friend error404 noticed.

Hi, I just watched one of Snoop dog latest clips tonight on MTV and what did I see ???
Snoop listening to an iPod during the whole clip ;-) An iPod that you'll get to see pretty well at one time: tis an iPod HP…

A picture is available here:
http://www.engadget.com
Of course the HP logon is purposedly so well shown.

The ever increasing oil prices finally get a growing impact on plastic reliant industries. One of the biggest blank CDs companies, Prodisc, will soon increase their prices by 10%, an important rise that other brands shall soon follow.
Every common products, for computing especially, might be concerned eventually:
- it takes much energy to produce them
- they include much plastic matters
- they're often shipped using planees
For once we shall rejoice of Apple's policy who never modify their products prices save for line renewal.

Today, with their double layer format, the alliance that supports DVD "+" formats is way ahead the DVD Forum featuring the "-" format. As the specifications and the first models themselves of DVD-R9 burners are still being expected, the DVD+R9 shall soon support a 8x speed for burning and 16x should come by the end of 2005.
Tis a shame, as whatever Philips can say, the "-" format is far better supported by standalone readers.

Following AMD, Microsoft lets us know that security on Internet is a question of what machine you use.

For those whod' deny this is a Mac, here's the original pic, found by Benoît on Getty Images (a site where there is an enormous quantity of PC images too...):

Apple don't even have to communicate about the non existence of viruses and trojans on the Macintosh, tis better left to competitors ;)

There are countless such examples of this, yet some still deserve notice. Here's another ad featuring a Mac, a PowerBook here, used to communicate about a PC. This time, it's Rémi who saw it in the latest "Science et Vie" magazine.
AMD found out the solution to deal with Internet security issues: using a Mac... It is important that such a huge name in personal computing reminds us of that!

Sébastien was also victim of a disaster. This time, however, not only did the package suffer, but the content of it too.

The pack was not a pretty sight, but after opening it... oh my !!!
The chassis of the G5 is totally deformed.
The front and back grills are litteraly smashed.
One of the handles is completely de-soldered and torn.
The guts of the G5 are a scrambled mess, the hard drive was just hanging in the machine.
We couldn't resist, so we tried to turn the machine on... well, no big surprise there, nothing happened.
All in all, a job "well done". In my opinion, the box fell from a dock or even worse, from the cargo bay of a plane (aground, of course ;): it must have been a heck of a fall to go through the carton AND the PVC, AND finally the machine itself.
Sébastien
Toulouse

For those interested, here are some pics. not for the faint hearted:


Here's the hard drive (or what's left of it):