Monday May 19, 2008

- TV Plasma: This Is the End? - Lionel - 13:57:57

For many customers, having a plasma TV has been an inaccessible wish at the beginning of the century, who did not dream of having a flat panel TV in his living-room in 2000? If today, prices have been nearly divided by 10, this is not only due to reduced production cost linked to the mass market, but rather to the competition driven by the LCD-based TV. Within the last 2 years, innovations allow LCD TV to offer an image quality nearly identical to the TV plasma, while consuming less energy, so days for plasma panel might be counted as one can not justify a premium price when there is no more
In recent months, several announcements have already indicated that the future was getting darker for plasma TV: Pioneer stopping production of plasma panel, EU willing to apply eco-tax on such high-power consuming penal, and today Digitimes reports that Philips could also quit plasma TV market in 2009. The reason might be driven by the annual growth demand, 13 millions units for plasma TV vs. 100 million units for LCD TV...

While large OLED-based panel will finally hit the shelves, the LCD TV will soon be the only alternative for flat panel TV, let's simply hope that the lack of competition will not stop technology innovation which could offer even better experience to customers, such as the development of variable lighting for diodes to creating even deeper contrast on LCD panel.

[translation by Linathael]

- MagSafe Is Great, but Patented - Lionel - 11:16:14

The MagSafe adaptor is a really interesting innovation, and of course Apple patented it. If this is obvious and normal, Apple might not be willing to see other PC manufacturer's to copy it, it also prevents companies that develop peripherals to offer any power related products for the Mac.

The first companies to have faced the problem were Batterygeek and more recently Quickertek. They offer batteries, but without adaptor, which should be bought independently, or built as a DIY product, this is quite expensive as one has to destroy a MagSafe in order to recover the adaptor.

FastMac just released an interesting alternative, and offer an universal charger, working with all Apple MacBook, but one should say all MacBook's batteries. Indeed, instead of getting connected to the computer, they offer a connection to be plugged to the battery itself.


Of course this a way to overcome the MagSafe patent while offering a product for it, but it also makes their product incompatible with the MacBook air. With such trick, FastMac can offer a product at 70 USD without having to pay royalties to Apple.

On the long term, peripherals really taking advantages of the MagSafe might be a problem to develop if Apple does not accept licensing for its technology.

[translation by Linathael]

- Apple Store UK Does not Collect 'Processing Fee' Anymore - Lionel - 11:08:26

Source : http://www.computeractive.co.uk

Following "Fair & Square campaign" campaign leaded by Computeractive, and in order to align its online Tems and conditions with the UK Law, Apple UK decided to no longer charge customers who wish to return unwanted goods.

Following this information, we have been looking at the corresponding terms in Apple France, as French distance selling regulations are known for protecting primarily the customer. This was also mostly transposed into the EU customer protection regulations. Apple France seems to offer even more than what is required by the law: customer can return a good within 14 days following his purchasing, while the law requires only 7. But surprisingly, there is a section missing while being quoted in the text: Section D in paragraph 7.2. This is supposed to be the one where terms for processing fee are being described, a point also covered by the French law. It seems that Apple quickly removed it, and it might well be due to the precedent with the Apple UK. The French law is quite precise about such lacking information: when information are missing, the conditions must be the most favorable to the customers, in other words here Apple should not apply processing fee.

Warning, such regulations apply for hardware and other products, but not for unpacked software and personalized-engraved iPods.

[translation by Linathael]

- WiMax in our portables? - Lionel - 08:28:26

Source : http://blogs.computerworld.com/

WiMax is certainly the most promising wireless technology since the advent of Wi-Fi there now nearly 10 years ago.
On paper, it should make it possible to connect at high bandwidth to base stations several tens of kilometres distance and to thus ensure a constant connection at a cost much lower than those offered by the mobile telephone operators, that make their data services cost equivalent to the price of gold.
One has spoken about WiMax for a few years now, however actual users are still very rare, and often often in the state of experimentation. Things should change soon, thanks to Intel, which decided to promote this technology as its next portable platform that will arrive in a few months.
WiMax will then be proposed at accessible tariffs from such machines. The FFC revealed a document showing a compact PCI Express format card that Intel wants to get approved. This card supports both Wi-Fi and WiMax, and, the good news, will have the same format as those which we have already in our portables " Mac Intel".
The day when Apple offers this product, it will be thus possible to instal this card in older machines, just like replacing the traditional Airport cards by others bringing compatibility with the 802.11n.
Of course, it will not be enough to put a card of this type to have this WiMax service. It will also be necessary that the operators to have a licence (Free in France) so that they can deploy their infrastructure and propose specific subscriptions. However it will be certainly the case soon that there will be a stock of machines compatible with this commercially interesting option.

[translation by crispin]

- NAS - Part II: Four NAS Put to the Test - Eric - 06:50:25

Here's the second part of our series of articles dedicated to NAS (part one).
The new generation of NAS devices has arrived, bringing some real performance gains, while keeping the user-friendly setup and usage interface. We have expanded our selection with two manufacturers, Synology and LaCie, thus offering more competition to the QNAP products. Once again, we're limited to initial installation, setup, and performance of the devices, and we've discovered some surprises. The new article is not available in EnglishFor more information, here.

In the next episode, we will describe how these NAS devices perform as a webserver (HTML/PHP), and FTP-fileserver.