October 25, 2006, 3:05 PM PDT
Windows Vista Upgrade coupons are here, but what's with the "nominal fee"?
Posted by: Rich Brown

Update: Velocity Micro informs us that it will actually be charging for the upgrade to Windows Vista Basic from Windows XP Home, via a coupon that lets you make the switch for $60. (11/10/06)

The news circulated earlier today that Microsoft has finally unveiled the specifics behind its Windows Vista Upgrade coupons. As of October 26, the company is going to allow vendors to offer an upgrade for all new Windows XP-based desktops and laptops. The upgrade path matches certain versions of Windows XP to their Vista equivalents. XP Home will earn you Vista Basic, XP Media Center 2005 gets bumped to Vista Home Premium, and XP Pro lines up with Windows Vista Business. You get the upgrade DVD by sending in the coupon or filling out a Web form.

We like this plan, but one thing bothered us. The details on Microsoft's official Vista blog weren't specific as to what the upgrades would cost. It pointed to a "nominal fee" for each, and said that it was up to the PC manufacturers and retailers to decide the specifics of upgrade and shipping-and-handling fees. So who's going to charge, you ask? So did we. Here's what we found out from the major PC vendors, except Sony who never called us back (where were you guys?).

Alienware: Won't offer the upgrade to XP Home, but will have no charge for the other versions. It will charge for shipping.

Dell: Will charge $45 to go from XP Home to Vista Basic; all other versions will be free; shipping costs apply.

HP: All versions will be free. It will also ship a DVD of Vista driver updates with the upgrade disc (nice touch). Might charge for shipping, depending on your location.

Gateway: For online customers, all versions will be free, with no shipping-and-handling fee. A few retail customers might get hit with S/H charges. Details for professional-channel customers have yet to be worked out.

Lenovo: Going from XP Home to Vista Basic will cost an amount that has yet to be determined--on top of the shipping and handling fee. XP Pro to Vista Business will have a fee for shipping and handling only.

Sony: TBD

Velocity Micro: No charge for any of the upgrades. Shipping-and-handling charges will apply via Microsoft. Made the point that all out-of-channel vendors (read: the smaller guys) will need to point customers to Microsoft directly, hence the shipping charge. The larger vendors have the option to absorb the fee.

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October 24, 2006, 7:16 AM PDT
DIY FragBox
Posted by: Rich Brown

If you jump on over to NewEgg.com this morning, you'll find a new desktop PC chassis for sale. The Falcon Northwest FragBox case runs nearly $300 ($289.99, to be exact), but for that price, you get a small form-factor case with the spec standards of premiere, high-end PCs. Falcon has sold its Northwest FragBox directly from its Web site. According to the press release issued this morning, however, the act of unleashing the item on NewEgg was less at-odds with Falcon's own custom-PC business.

The case doesn't come with a power supply, and you have to bring your own motherboard, too. We've seen the FragBox running with a pair of 3D cards in it, however, making it quite friendly to PC builders wanting to make a small-but-deadly semiportable gaming system.

It has room for four expansion cards, so it is a little bigger than a typical, small form-factor PC, but we have a feeling most gamers won't mind the added capacity.

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October 18, 2006, 11:29 AM PDT
More motivation to let a robot vacuum
Posted by: Elsa Wenzel

To go on a proper energy diet, first you'd have to measure the power consumed around the house, outlet by outlet. Just like counting calories, that would take all the fun out of gobbling up electricity. But if you're really geeked about saving money and greening your home, then you might follow the lead of one Silicon Valley engineer who crusaded around his apartment with the Kill-a-Watt energy meter, measuring the appetite of nearly every appliance.

Eric Boyd calculated that over a year, his refrigerator, desktop PC, and iMac used the most electricity. He estimated that his stove, oven, and air conditioner demanded a bit less energy than the computers. (Government figures, on the other hand, list heating and cooling as the biggest energy gobbler.) The toaster, microwave, washer, and dryer were hungrier for watts than anything else in Boyd's home, but their infrequent use led to low operating costs overall. Lighting didn't cost much because he already used compact fluorescent bulbs instead of ravenous incandescents. And in case you needed more motivation not to clean the floor yourself, his Roomba ate up a piddling 43 cents of his annual electrical bill.

Unfortunately, Boyd concluded that he'd barely notice a dent in his utilities bills if he conscientiously unplugged every gadget from the wall when not in use. But various studies show that standby power drained by those dormant appliances might quietly eat up as much as one-tenth of your energy expenses.

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October 17, 2006, 11:03 AM PDT
Averatec's $849 dual-core ultraportable
Posted by: Michelle Thatcher

No, that's not a typo. In a world where ultraportables regularly hit the $2,000 mark, Averatec has created a niche with its small, inexpensive systems that are loaded with some pretty compelling components for the price. Thus it is with the just-announced Averatec 2300, a 4-pound system with a 1.6GHz AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-50 processor, a 12.1-inch WXGA display, a 100GB hard drive, and a built-in double-layer DVD burner, all for the low, low starting price of $849.

We're eager to see whether the new laptop improves upon its predecessor, the Averatec 2260, which suffered in our battery-drain tests. Stay tuned for results from CNET Labs.

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October 17, 2006, 10:16 AM PDT
Lenovo wants to keep your data safe
Posted by: Michelle Thatcher

You've read the reports: Someone steals a laptop loaded with personal data. Maybe you've even received a letter explaining that your records were on a stolen piece of computer equipment. Attribute it to media hype if you want, but protecting data on ever-more-mobile hardware has to be a concern to businesses and their clients.

And this is why Lenovo announced plans to load select ThinkPads with software that works in conjunction with the laptop's fingerprint reader to encrypt the data on the hard drive. According to the company, the software meets encryption standards for U.S. government systems. (Take note, ING, Deloitte, EDS, Aetna, HP, Fidelity, the State of Florida, and others whose data has been exposed because of hardware theft.)

Meanwhile, Lenovo has also announced plans to update all ThinkPad lines with the option of Intel Core 2 Duo processors; at this point the manufacturer's Web site is showing the new processors only on T-series and R-series models. We're expecting review units in CNET Labs soon and will let you know how they run--if we can get past the security measures.

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October 17, 2006, 7:53 AM PDT
ATI cleans up CrossFire
Posted by: Rich Brown

Nvidia's SLI dual 3D card technology has become more or less the de facto winner in high-end gaming rigs, not necessarily because its cards are faster (Quad SLI notwithstanding), but because it was out first, and it's had a much cleaner design than ATI's competing CrossFire mode. ATI still has to challenge the perception that SLI is a more robust, stable solution than CrossFire, but at least its technology has finally caught up, by way of the Radeon X1950 Pro, announced today. Now you don't need a special, more expensive CrossFire Edition of a particular 3D card to run two side by side. ATI has also improved the aesthetics by moving the connector between the two cards to the inside. Good-bye, stupid dongle!

ATI pitched this card to us with an MSRP of $199, to compete against Nvidia's new GeForce 7900 GS card. Confoundingly, Froogle turned up prices more along the lines of $299. ATI assured us that it was just speculative preorder pricing and that NewEgg will have the card at or close to the MSRP when it updates its listings. If it comes in at the lower price, early returns on performance are that the 256MB Radeon X1950 Pro is an impressive midrange deal. If it's more like $300, we suggest that you wait to see what Nvidia has up its sleeve with its next-gen cards, due to be announced within the next few months. Our review is almost ready to go, so stay tuned for full performance results and hopefully the final word on pricing.

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October 12, 2006, 4:00 PM PDT
SimpleCenter: iTunes for the rest of us?
Posted by: John P. Falcone

If you have a hard drive full of digital media--photos, videos, and music--and you have the need to sync to a portable device, Universal Electronics' updated SimpleCenter may be right up your alley. The software, which has just been updated to version 4.1, boasts a variety of new and updated features that digital media mavens will appreciate.

SimpleCenter is a Windows software package that works with a variety of devices, including the Sony PSP, the Nokia N80 and N93 smart phones, and most USB mass storage and Plays For Sure devices. In addition to being able to sync your media to those devices, SimpleCenter can also transcode files to compatible formats (particularly useful for getting video files onto the PSP and the iPod, for instance). The software can also act as a UPnP server and stream media to other devices on your home network (it's compliant with version 1.5 of the working draft DLNA standard). There's an option to access and share your photos and movies online via the Web.

For those keeping score, quite a few of those features are not available on iTunes and Windows Media Player. There's a catch, of course: most of the good stuff is available only if you pay $30 to upgrade to SimpleCenter Premium. But Universal Electronics offers the Premium version as a free 30-day trial, and the basic media management and playback functions remain enabled even if you choose not to upgrade. In other words, if any of those features pique your interest, you should download SimpleCenter and kick in the tires to see if it's the right media manager for you.

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October 12, 2006, 10:28 AM PDT
Digital Life 2006: Dell's overclockable gaming laptop
Posted by: Dan Ackerman

Digital Life, conveniently scheduled right before the big holiday shopping season, is a hotbed of new product announcements. Dell is hoping to get on some wish lists with its latest gaming laptop, which keeps the same model number as its predecessor but adds enough new bells and whistles to warrant a second look.

The new XPS M1710 offers high-end parts such as Intel's overclocker-friendly Core 2 Duo T7600G and the new Nvidia GeForce Go 7950 GTX GPU. Dell won't overclock the processor for you in the factory, but just the fact that the company is encouraging it is a bold step (although not as bold as its overclocked XPS 700 desktop).

There are strobe lights built into the wrist rests that, according to Dell literature, "strobe, pulse, or fade the system's 16-color lights to the beat of a song or whenever a game character fires a weapon, moves, or gets fragged." It works with mainstream music apps, such as Windows Media Player and iTunes, but the compatible game list is still up in the air. The flashing lights are either massively cool or entirely lame, depending on your personal aesthetic sense. We'll leave it up to you to judge for yourself.

The revised XPS M1710 is available now. The tricked-out version with the components referenced above will set you back $3,498.

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October 04, 2006, 11:11 AM PDT
Blu-ray and flash-based hard drives on display at CEATEC
Posted by: Matthew Elliott

The Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies, or CEATEC, got underway yesterday in Japan. While I can't claim to be on the show floor or, truth be told, anywhere near the land of the rising sun, Akihabara News has correspondents onsite. Blu-ray announcements are dominating the coverage, with solid-state storage garnering headlines, as well.

In next-gen optical storage news, Blu-ray looks to be outpacing rival HD-DVD at the show. Hitachi is showing off a number of camcorders, including a model that uses mini Blu-ray discs. Sony announced its VAIO L series all-in-one PC, which will feature a Blu-ray burner, while NEC showed off a sub-$1,000 ValueStar PC with a Blu-ray drive (BD-ROM means reading but, sadly, no writing). Sony also had a pair of stand-alone Blu-ray recorders on display, as did Pioneer, while Toshiba countered with a prototype of an external (USB 2.0) HD-DVD player.

Tired of hard drives that have the gall to spin in order to find your data? Then take a peek at the flash-based drives that TDK and Taiwanese company iNNODISK have on hand. It'll be interesting to see what new laptop designs these small, fast, and durable drives will afford. Perhaps such mobile devices will dominate next year's show.

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October 04, 2006, 8:39 AM PDT
Interview: Falcon Northwest CEO Kelt Reeves on the HP-Voodoo PC deal
Posted by: Rich Brown

First Dell bought Alienware, then HP scooped up Voodoo PC. If those deals are bad news for Falcon Northwest, it's not because CEO Kelt Reeves isn't dedicated. Dude just answered our questions from his Hawaiian vacation. Maybe it's all that sun, but he doesn't sound too worried.

Were you surprised by HP's acquisition of Voodoo?

I don't know anyone who wasn't surprised. That said, with the Dell/Alienware deal as precedent, it was a logical fit from a business perspective. What was so surprising about it is that [Voodoo President and CTO] Rahul [Sood] has made a name for himself as a blogger by predicting other deals, such as the ATI/AMD buyout and Dell's aquisition of Alienware. The one he could've predicted with perfect accuracy was the one he was very good at keeping secret.

What do you think it means for the future of Falcon Northwest and the boutique PC market in general?

That's probably a more loaded question than either of us can imagine right now. This is definitely an "inflection point" for the entire PC market. It depends on how the two companies fit together. We found that as Alienware grew, they strayed further from the enthusiast/custom/boutique market. The Dell deal seems to have clinched that. It works out well for us because essentially we're serving two different markets. Alienware may be sleeping on a big bed of money these days, but it hasn't seemed to come at our expense...the net effect on us is neither Dell nor Alienware seems to be on our turf anymore, and strangely, their combined impact on us is less than it used to be with Alienware alone.

HP's aquisition of Voodoo PC seems to be structured much more effectively, and if it works, it could keep the rest of the boutique market on its toes. It appears HP understands that a boutique's real value isn't from volume, but as a proving ground for showing off new technologies and getting real-time enthusiast feedback. And most importantly, filtering enthusiast PC ideas to mainstream products quickly. Another Web site likened it to HP buying a Formula 1 team. In that sense, they could be very valuable to all of us enthusiasts by bringing enthusiast PC thinking to more mainstream customers.

Do you plan to capitalize on your new status as the best-known indie PC vendor?

I've received a lot of "what's it like to be the last one?" e-mails this week. While not technically true, I can see how a lot of people are viewing us that way. The enthusiast market perceives going mass market as "selling out." The very day Alienware went into Best Buy years ago we heard nothing from our clientele except "they sold out." A bit unfair on day one, but I guess it's just the price you pay for making ties with any big company. Falcon's not going to go taking out advertisements saying "Hey we're the last of the 'big 3' independents, so you should buy from us and stick it to The Man!" We're going to do what we've always done: provide hardware and services that are an alternative to the big PC makers.

Alienware has Michael Dell's checkbook; Voodoo has the keys to the HP R&D kingdom. How does Falcon plan to compete?

In theory they do, but I doubt it's that simple. Alienware has a sliver of Michael Dell's checkbook, and Michael Dell is using many more slivers to make his own gaming-focused XPS line. It must be maddening for Alienware's management, but they wouldn't be allowed to say so if it is. Voodoo may find HP already has a long list of its own projects, and Voodoo may not be as important to HP's $80 billion worldwide sales as it is to Canada's enthusiast community.

These trade-offs could be tough on a small company that's used to moving fast and not having to ask for budget approval on projects. But it would be foolish to suggest that having big company funding was on balance a disadvantage. I'm sure the funding will give them a competitive advantage. But Falcon has always fought the big guys; I've never seen being small as a disadvantage. On the contrary, being small means I make our decisions quickly, without politics, and with our clients a bigger priority than stockholders.

One speculation is that Gateway or another large vendor might come knocking on your door. Thoughts?

Obviously, the fit between a boutique and a volume player makes sense to a lot of people, including me. That said, it would be very hard for any bigger fish to swallow Falcon without destroying what it is that makes it special. We've passed up many opportunities to "go big" over the years. These opportunities may have made a lot of business sense, but I'd rather protect what Falcon Northwest is and who it serves.

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