Specifications

NOVEMBER 6, 2007 PC MAGAZINE 59
Another Bad Idea Bites the Dust Dept.: Palm wised up and
killed that Foleo micro laptop project. No one wants this form
factor. It began with the Gateway Handbook, deteriorated
into the Toshiba Libretto, then mutated into the OQO after
a few other
exercises in futility. The Palm decision suppos-
edly happened because
Apple’s iPhone has challenged the
smartphone category, and Palm now wants to concentrate
on smartphones. Everyone wants to, despite the rather small
market.
Microsoft even says it would seriously consider devel-
oping a
Zune phone. I hope Microsoft calls it the PhoZune.
Get the URL now!
Numerous
Zune fanboy sites (yes, they exist) have been
trying to guess at the name. Some ideas: the Z-phone, the Pune,
the Zell Phone, Telezune, MicroPhone (get
it?), Zobile, Zone, etc. Another guess from
me—and a likely candidate considering the
way things are going for Microsoft—
the
Microsoft Zune Mobile Phone. The company
must be
galled by the attention being paid
to Apple, considering that Microsoft has
been in the business for some time.
In the meantime, I got one of the
rare (in
the U.S.) Neonode N2 smartphones from
Sweden. It plays movies, shows photos,
takes pictures, uses a
touch screen, and does
much of what the iPhone does, in a package
the size of a pager. It hooks to a computer
and becomes a thumb drive so you can eas-
ily download WAV and MP3 files to use as ringtones. Why
can’t you do that with the iPhone? I’ll eventually post an elabo-
rate review on www.dvorak.org/blog
.
Never-Ending Stats Dept.: A site called W3Counter (www
.w3counter.com) tallied
33 million visits at over 5,000 Web sites
to develop some interesting stats people should know. The
most interesting by far is that very few people have jumped
on the Windows Vista bandwagon. (Duh!) The market share
for operating systems is still led by
Windows XP, at 83.5 per-
cent, followed by Windows 2000, with 3.9 percent. The Mac
OS comes in third, with 3.7 percent, followed by Vista, with
3.5 percent. Linux as a desktop OS is still moribund, at 1.3 per-
cent, the same as the
laggards such as Windows 98.
This does
not bode well for Linux on the desktop. There
needs to be a rigid Linux
standard or reference platform. Too
many people have too much gear that simply doesn’t work
with Linux; either no drivers exist or the gear is just incompat-
ible. People do not want to put together an elaborate system
only to fi nd that their printer doesn’t work or that their system
doesn’t recognize the hard drive. Some sort of
seal of approval
list that covers the top 10 Linux distros and what works with
them should reside in one place. Right now this information is
scattered. It needs to be
sensibly consolidated in one site with
someone handing out “Approved” stickers.
Of course, the likelihood of this happening is zilch, since
there are
too many anarchists in the Linux community. Not
that that’s a bad thing.
Two other things in the survey worth noting: First, IE 6/7
has 66.2 percent of the market. Remarkable when you consider
that, at one time, Microsoft had nearly 100 percent. And Opera
is very low at 0.6 percent. This doesn’t sound right, and it tells
me that many of the smarter users take advantage of the
Opera
option of pretending to be IE. This is so downloads and other
functions go smoothly at sites that
refuse to accommodate
non-Microsoft browsers. Opera should have 2 to 5 percent mar-
ket share, if not more. All those estimates would further reduce
the IE numbers. Most of the rest goes to Mozilla/Firefox.
In addition to browsers, the survey cov-
ered screen size. 1,024-by-768 is the winner,
at 49.5 percent. But only 8.3 percent of the
users run a smaller (800-by-600) size. All
the rest—over 42 percent—are bigger! So
people should
get off the old 640-by-480
bandwagon for Web sites.
Digital Cameras Are Clicking Dept.: Many
interesting machinations are taking place in
the digital-camera arena, with
pocket cam-
eras moving to 12 megapixels. Kodak has two
models selling for less than $249. All sorts
of cool, subtle feature improvements are
showing up on the new offerings, at a great
low price. I am impressed with what Kodak
is doing. This new 12MP CCD (charge-coupled device) sensor
is the hot ticket. But Kodak and a few other companies are mak-
ing noise about fi nally
moving over to CMOS (complementary
metal-oxide semiconductor). Nikon just showed its new D3
full-frame 35mm D-SLR, and just like the Kodak, it uses a big
CMOS sensor. Its little brother, the D300, is also CMOS. So the
change
fi rst promised around 1997 is fi nally beginning. Ha!
Will the E-Book Rise Again? Dept: The e-book and e-book
reader have been nibbling at the collective unconscious for
years. But the promise has not been fulfi lled, as users have not
warmed up to
electronic reading devices. The Apple iPhone
may change that, with its sharp image and page-flipping
touch screen that adds needed tactility. Instead of iPhone-
compatible e-books, though, expect more proprietary readers
and new incompatible formats.
That said, what happens if
Apple decides to do an e-book
reader? It will take off and leave everyone in disbelief. Is it a
coincidence Apple took the
iBook off the market but still has
the name in waiting? After all, the company needs more con-
tent to sell online, doesn’t it? It’s just
too logical to ignore.
WANT MORE DVORAK? John writes a weekly column for our
Web site, too. Log on to go.pcmag.com/dvorak. Or you can e-mail
him at [e-mail].
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