What’s Green, Wireless and Fully Recyclable?

March 11, 2008 | Bob Snyder | PCs - PC ComponentsPDFPrintE-mail

Eee PCThe Lenovo Idea Pad, Apple AirBook, Asus eeePc…like Alice in Wonderland, notebooks are shrinking, shrinking…

Call them Ultra Mobile Devices. But supposing someone tied this UMD excitement to the urgency of Green IT?

Meet the UNI-V100, a new fully recyclable notebook for under 199 Euro MSRP and shown for the first time ever at CeBIT.

A Linux based subnotebook with Strong ARM processor that comes with a suite of office tools, theUni-V100 comes from China. It’s wireless-enabled and has 2GB of flash memory, 256MB RAM. Built-in stereo and two USB interfaces.

Etienne Finet with V100Features aside, the Uni-V100’s biggest selling point is that is has been designed with Beginning of Life and End of Life in mind. More than just RoHS and WEEE complaint, this is one pc that won’t end up in a landfill. Easy to dissemble, fewer parts and only one plastic material that, the maker says, is non-toxic even if it’s set on fire.

With a price point below 200 euros, it’s more likely that sales will catch on fire.

Go Green & Totally Recyclable

Altec Lansing Shows iPhone Dock

March 11, 2008 | Bob Snyder | Mobile (Phones)PDFPrintE-mail

Many industry observers were surprised when Gartner reported worldwide mobile phone sales reached 1.15 billion units in 2007 and three new companies made the Top 10. Apple, outsider to the telecom industry, made the list. 

German distributor MacLand, specialist in third party solutions for Apple, held its annual MacLand@CeBIT day in the Convention Center. 

There Altec Lansing’s Dirk Gerber showed the T612 sound dock, one of the first iPhone docks. Altec’s range of iPod decks is well-established but the iPHONE dock joins a new wave of iPhone accessories and peripherals that will spur retail and etail sales.

Go Altec iPhone dock T612

Mobile Broadband Up 157% in USA

March 11, 2008 | Bob Snyder | Laptops & TabletsPDFPrintE-mail
Research says the devices accessing internet via U.S. cellular broadband networks more than doubled in 2007. The majority of those machines were corporate-issued machines.                             According comScore, 2,168,000 devices used broadband cellular connections to access the web in Q4 in USA.  And 59% are corporate users. Another study by In-Stat says smartphones worldwide will increase by an average of 33% each year through 2012 (and mobile broadband growth automatically will follow that number.) Go Mobile Broadband 

IBM Meets Demand for 'Microsoft-free' PCs

March 11, 2008 | Bob Snyder | PCs - PC ComponentsPDFPrintE-mail

IBM will work with Vienna-based VDEL and Poland’s LX Polska to sell "Open Referent" systems (based on Red Hat Linux and open standards-based productivity software).

Open Referent taps into a growing demand for low-cost desktop systems that by definition have to lose the cost of Microsoft. IBM says it is responding to demand from large businesses and government agencies in Eastern Europe and Russia (including  Aeroflot, the Russian Ministry of Defence and the RusHotel hotel chain). Open Referent could cut their costs in half.

The press is beating this to death as a “Is IBM Getting Back into PC Business?” issue but really…think about it? Who would want to get back into PCs?

IBM just wants to wrap their arms fuller around their customers, those big organizations that can buy SOLUTIONS instead of boxes.

Go Open Referent

IT Jobs Can Be Sexy, Suggests EC Commissioner

March 11, 2008 | Bob Snyder | PCs - PC ComponentsPDFPrintE-mail

"We have to convince young women that ICT isn't just for geeks. IT jobs can be very sexy indeed," Reding told journalists in a briefing.

Reding believes getting women recruits is the best way to make up the shortfall of 300,000 skilled ICT personnel in Europe. Women accounted for 58% of all graduates in the EU at last count, but female computer science graduates fell by 4% during the same period.

Go Woman in IT

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