News for Tuesday, 30 December 2008

Following criticisms on Intel's original comments concerning the NVidia GeForce 9400M-based solution for Intel ATOM CPU, Santa-Clara giant seems to have revised its positions.
One of Intel's public relations executives announced that Intel did not plan to prevent NVidia to offer such hardware solution to third parties, and the ATOM should be available as a standalone CPU, and not necessarily bundled with its chipset 945.
Behind this announcement, one will have to follow and evaluate how fast Intel will indeed release the ATOM as a retail product as the company is well-known to be playing some monopoly games when it can, a simple look at all the anti-trust legal actions in progress against Intel would demonstrate that the founder has often not been fair-play in the past.

In Japan, one can find references of new Seagate 3.5" HD based on 500 GB plates and spinning at 7200 rpm. If the use of a single plate might help Seagate to reduce production cost, it could also allow the manufacturer to offer in a near future a 3.5" HD featuring 4 of those plates, and opening the door to the first HD with 2 TB of storage space.
This might be the best way to fight against SSD for desktop computer, by offering 3.5" HD with large storage space, and as a consequence an ever cheaper GB.

A report from Laurent, one of our readers from Canada:

I ordered a unibody MBP 15" clocked at 2.8 GHz two days after its announcement, coupled with a DVI Dual Link adaptor. I am very pleased with the notebook, while I am still waiting for my adaptor. While the expected shipment was postponed till December 22nd, I still did not receive any adaptor yet...
This morning I received a letter from Apple indicating that my account was credited of 123.03 CAD. I checked it out, and indeed it was...
So, two hypothesis, either Apple offers DVI Dual Link adaptor as a compensation for this ridiculously long delay, or Apple pay it back as it does not plan to manufacture it and be able to ship it in a reasonable time frame?

It is difficult to conclude, offering such adaptor might cost a lot to Apple, and paying it back might be the best way to avoid any legal actions. According to our sources, the bug with this adaptor might be linked to drivers, as it does work perfectly with Mac OS 10.5.5 and with Windows, so for Mac OS X 10.5.6 and beyond, one will have to wait...

Following the lost of its exclusive partnership for the iPhone in France, Orange adapts its subscription plans to better face the competition. The two other carriers, Bouygues and SFR have already announced iPhone-dedicated plans to be unveiled and offered to new customers in January. New iPhone Orange plans are described below:

The entry-level will be based on a 1 hour + 1 hour plan including unlimited SMS, 20 hours connection to Orange hotspot networks as well as unlimited data for 38 €. All those new plan are entitled Origami Star Limited Edition for iPhone, probably because Orange expect to win its appeal...

While waiting for the Nehalem, Intel has announced new processors for the current portable architecture.
- Core 2 Duo P8700: 2,53 GHz, FSB 1066 MHz, 6 MB of cache and a TDP of 25W
- Core 2 Duo P9600: 2,66 GHz, FSB 1066 MHz, 6 MB of cache and a TDP of 25W
- Core 2 Duo T9550: 2,66 GHz, FSB 1066 MHz, 6 MB of cache and a TDP of 35W
- Core 2 Duo T9800: 2,93 GHz, FSB 1066 MHz, 6 MB of cache and a TDP of 35W
This last will certainly equip the next update of the MacBook Pro, and at least bring back to the catalogue (certainly overdue) of its 17" model.
Intel also announces first Core 2 Quad finally with a TDP acceptable for Apple:
- Core 2 Duo Q9000: 2 GHz, FSB 1066 MHz, 6 MB of cache and a TDP of 45W
Alas, its frequency is low and this would be certainly be a commercial handicap very difficult to surmount.