Intel's Sandy Bridge Laptops

Sandy Bridge technology is better than anything Intel has offered to date, and it's almost here. Intel is already shipping the processor to PC makers, which means when the chip technology is announced at the Consumer Electronics Show on January 5, systems will be in the pipeline.

As CNET has already reported, Sandy Bridge should offer better graphics and multimedia performance on the retail laptops that many consumers buy. In some cases, the performance improvement will be incremental--and even imperceptible--for everyday tasks, but there will be clear gains in gaming, trans coding (converting a movie from one format to another, for example), and Intel's Turbo Boost technology, which speeds up and slows down the processor to optimize performance and power, respectively.

Laptops, similar to the ultraslim 12.5-inch Lenovo IdeaPad U260,will come with Sandy Bridge processors and more intelligent cooling technology.

"They have to get smarter about how they improve performance. You have to shift where the focus on performance is. So things like Turbo Boost and integrating the graphics into the CPU (main processor) is how they do that," said Bob O'Donnell, an analyst at IDC. "Application authors can use graphics and expect that the better graphics will be there," he said.

And smarter also means intelligent designs, yielding laptops that, while running faster, run cooler.Some models now feature Intel cooling technology, which means they don't get as hot in the hot spots, typically on the bottom of system.

That also means more laptops should emerge that are slimmer and lighter, using processors like the rumors ultra-low-power LM and UM series of Sandy Bridge chips. Lenovo will undoubtedly tap Sandy Bridge for thin designs, while Sony and Toshiba should update their well regarded thin-and-light laptop lines. And large laptop stalwarts like Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and Apple should follow suit.

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Acer's Dual-Screen laptop

Can't choose between a laptop and a tablet? The Acer Iconia may be the product you've been waiting for.

At a Manhattan press event on Tuesday, Acer announced a dual-screen multitouch laptop that, while looking like a concept computer in the flesh, also looks like it's trying to get the best of two worlds at once. Iconia is a 14-inch laptop with an additional 14-inch screen where a keyboard would normally be, making the device in effect a large-scale version of a Toshiba Libretto we reviewed a few months ago.

The focus on the Iconia seems to be bridging the gap between "consuming" video/audio content and normal office productivity, and while the design is bold, its effectiveness remains in serious question. The twin Gorilla-glass-enforced multitouch displays seem to work like the iPad's panels, with support for 10-finger simultaneous touch.

Really, though, a touch device is useless without a good interface and software support. The Iconia does show some promise. Laying down all 10 fingers on the lower screen automatically launches a virtual keyboard, while one open-fingered hand launches Acer's proprietary wheel-like launcher for applications. It's futuristic, but perhaps an unnecessary visual gloss.

Iconia is, at its heart, a Core i5 laptop with familiar specs: up to 4GB of DDR3 RAM, integrated Intel graphics, a hard drive up to 750GB, and Windows 7 Home Premium. Ports are also typical for a high-end laptop: two USB 2.0, one USB 3.0, HDMI, and VGA.

Those twin 1,366x768 displays are the heart of the appeal here, and though Acer has shown off some methods of using those displays in innovative ways, we're just not sure that anyone will want to use a laptop like this instead of a more traditional keyboarded model, or a large-screen tablet like an iPad.

No specific availability or pricing has been announced either--Acer is calling Iconia a "concept device," which seems to place it firmly into the same experimental/expensive category that the Toshiba Libretto W105 fell into. Most importantly, we've yet to see a Windows 7 touch device that's really been easy or useful to operate. Will Iconia break the mold? We'll have to wait and see.

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Windows 8 in 2 years

Bangalore: A week ago Microsoft celebrated the first birthday Windows 7's release. And now Microsoft is working on the next version of Windows, the blog says in Dutch, but it will be about two years before Windows 8 is on the market. If you look at the journey so far - in early 2008, more than a year after Microsoft launched Windows Vista, Windows users had emphatically rejected that upgrade. Fewer than 10 percent of Windows users had switched, and nearly 5 percent of all Windows PCs in use were running Windows versions older than XP. The Windows 7 story is very different.

One year after the release of Windows 7, it has made a significant dent in the Windows user base, and those diehards holding on to pre-XP versions have mostly surrendered. XP's share of actual usage has declined more than 20 percent in two years, and that trend is accelerating.

Microsoft managed to sustain an overwhelming competitive advantage, even after a decade's worth of antitrust action and now the situation is different. The presence of Apple and Google as direct competitors suggests that maybe Microsoft is overdue to take a tumble. Is Apple really making a dent in Microsoft's long-standing Windows monopoly? A presentation leaked in June says that the next version of Windows will include, among other things, an app store similar to ones offered by Apple and other mobile device makers. Apple announced this week that it will bring an app store to the Mac within 90 days.

The presentation also said that Microsoft wanted to improve start-up times and the time it takes to resume from sleep, improve power efficiency, as well as work more closely with computer makers to better differentiate their respective computers. While these are all needed things, it's going to be a very long two years for Microsoft if it can't better addresses Apple's moves in the tablet and notebook models before Windows 8. In such a situation is it justified to wait for two years?

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