Laptops Arena

International Data Group said that at Macworld 2010 they will come with the new Mobile Application Showcase, which represents an area of the show floor available for the innovations released on the market by iPhone and iPod touch developers.
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Being the opening piece at the 2010 event, the Mobile Application Showcase is meant to provide an effective way for the developers to increase their marketing attempts, to obtain maximum levels of exhibiting their innovations, thus enabling them to distinguish among the competitors at Macworld.

Paul Kent, Macworld general manager and vice president at International Data Group World Expo, affirmed that for 25 years now Macworld has served as a propulsion pad for new companies and a forum for the most brilliant developers to share their work with the users of Apple products. He added that nowadays with the explosion on the market of iPhone and iPod touch applications, IDG provide an efficient way for the developers to meet with the community that in the end is the one that might help them to be successful.

The new Mobile Application Showcase tends to be also an ideal solution for investors and business associates to get in touch with newcomers and for users to attempt new applications before they take any further steps in purchasing. The IDG World Expo vice president, Paul Kent, also emphasized the fact that there is an early interest in the new show floor addition and he is quite sure that this will provide the next generation of developers the platform they will need to launch their innovations.

The 2010 Macworld Expo takes place Feb. 9-13, 2010, at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, as IDG World Expo announced.

As each year goes by, notebooks and laptops become more popular and affordable. That`s why, in 2008 sales grew 65 percent and will continue growing for the next year, and that isn`t just me, it`s what people in the matter are talking about.
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Nevertheless the purchasing power is weaker, 2009 sales for notebook will keep on growing, but overall the desktop computer will drop sales, considering the fact that people are constantly on the move, and they don`t have to waste time and money on buying a desktop computer.

The prediction of specialists for 2009 sales for notebook is for approximately 1 million, having a total growth of 10 percent, meanwhile the computer desktop industry will suffer a decrease of about 20 percent. Why are numbers getting bigger day by day, month by month, year by year? Difficult question, but not such a difficult answer. Considering the fact that the industry is changing, and people ask for more products, better and smarter ones, easy to carry or cheaper, the notebook market will keep growing till will reach saturation, thus I don`t think that will ever happen, but who knows, at this rate of change what could ever happen.

Expect 2009 sales for notebook in the opinion of many, will be huge, If we compare with the other years behind, due to the purchasing growth and the market, that at this time is very hot. Why is this high percentage given for 2009 sales for notebook? I`ll tell you. The tiny notebook has been in the titles lately because of two important features. One is that is probably the cheaper PC on the market, about 250 dollars, or in an outlet or second hand at about 50 dollars, and the other aspect is that it`s a reliable, small, easy to carry, and fun product. If you take Apple as an example, they managed to exceed their sales of 70 percent due to Mac Book and Mac Pro Lines, and trust me when I say, they had never reached this high rated percentage.

All in all, expect 2009 sales for notebook are big, and when I say big, I mean bigger than all the years behind, but I give them all the credit, not for their products, but for their idea, cause most intelligent people don`t buy the brand, and I am not saying it isn`t an important feature, but the important thing is what this product can do, what is he made for, and at what point he can be helpful.

The brand new Palm Pre, which has its release date set on 6th June 2009 is already driving people crazy for having it. Driving them crazy for real, because a woman drover her car into a Calumet Park cell phone store, hurrying up to buy the new Palm Pre, without knowing that the release date was the next day.

This little new miracle can be found at Sprint stores, Best Buy, Radio Shack, select Walmart stores, and online at Sprint.com and you must "pre-pare" because everybody is hurrying to try Palm Pre for $199 with a 2-year contract. If you don’t want to buy the Palm Pre with a contract, it will cost you $549.99. There hasn't been announced yet a release date for Canada, but the company confirmed that it will be available in the second half of 2009.

Palm Pre has a nice design and it's less "boxy" than its competitors' smartphones, I-phone and G1.It fits good in the hand both closed and opened, and it is built with quality materials.

Its physical sliding mini-keyboard can be seen as an advantage, compared to virtual keyboards which tend to be slower and less prefferd by smartphone users.Palm Pre has a 3,1 inch touchscreen with a 320 x 480 pixels resolution.It has an accelerometer which changes the orientation of the display between portrait and landscape when the smartphone is rotated.

Palm Pre user interface is useful and multitasking is a fundamental attribute of smartphones, because you can receive a phonecall while you are writing an email or get notifications while doing anything without perturbing your activity.

Getting connected with friends,family and colleagues is an important facility offered by smartphones and Palm Pre has a very interesting application which compiles all the virtual communities and various profiles of the owner and communication with other people can be made in a single thread across many services.

The images on display are sharper than on Iphone's screen and the text is easier to read;also the speaker seems to be clearer than its competitor's.

All in all, the user interface is simple yet well organised, logic and useful.

Palm Pre "web OS" uses Javascript, HTML and CSS. It has the possibility to use Rss readers but Javascript is slow and it's hard to explore the hardware at 100% of its capacity and is visible weaker than Iphone's development platform.The Pre has 8.0 GB of internal flash storage and it doesnt support memory cards, but it has a 3Mb camera with a LED flash.

Pre responds in an intelligent manner to its surroundings due to the input sensors which have been implemented in this model of smartphone. It has an ambient light sensor which allows the smartphone to automatically adjust the brightness of the displayand the proximity sensor doesn't allow Pre to receive inputs when it is held close to the face during talking. Palm Pre is defined by attention paid to details, and the removable battery or the wireless recharger(one of the first smartphones which uses this feature) are to prove this. It also has the opportunity to be charged using a micro USB cable.It has a great user interface, a better camera than the Iphone and the physical keyboard is a real competitive advantage.

The Pre has received positive reviews from technology critics, has won CNET's Best in Show, Best in Category: Cell Phones & Smartphones, and People's Voice for 2009.

Good luck in finding a Palm Pre and don't forget the competition is tight in getting one og these little smart ones: a man got a palm pre tattoo and a guy has camped outside a Sprint store 3 days before the Palm Pre launch.

Each time I hear about burning PMP players or laptops on fire, I have to laugh. A lot. Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those idiots who laugh when others suffer, but I think that, as long as nobody's hurt, a literally smokin' laptop is a funny thing. The problem is that, leaving the funny part aside, such happenings can be really dangerous, as it was the case for Ken Brinkman...

... one of the unibody MacBook Pro users leaving the laptop connected to the electric network over night and, probably, downloading something or doing who-knows-what. Anyway, it doesn't really matter what was the laptop running at that time, the idea is that such things shouldn't happen, and if they do, they shouldn't happen with laptops coming from Apple.

Ken's story goes like this - "Tonight I went to bed around 12 as usual but I woke up around 1:30 smelling burning plastic. Turns out my MacBook Pro was on fire. Smoke was pouring out the seam between the unibody and bottom enclosure. I actually burned my hand pretty badly ripping the adapter out. Oh man. This is reallllly scary because what if I didn't wake up? It could of burned my house down."
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Damn, that's not funny at all. Ken, I really hope you'll get your hand back in shape as soon as possible. In the meantime, a good idea would be to talk to a lawyer. Maybe a lawsuit against Apple for your burnt hand and the risk of burning down the house ain't such a bad idea, after all, what do you think?

In the end, I am really curious about one thing - did you ever had to go through a similar situation? I almost fried my CPU almost a decade ago, but I didn't actually go so far to see smoke, but - fortunately - I never had to face my smokin' PMP or computer. If you had some burning laptop, please go ahead and drop your story below, all right? Thanks a lot!

Notebooks can be a real pain, believe me! Once, a friend of mine dropped by with a laptop, asking for help. Guess what? He got the damn thing with all drivers on a hidden partition, and then installed a license of Windows XP he had lying around. Fully partitioning the drive before and formatting it once again, just to be sure. No more Vista drivers on disk, no XP drivers online. Fortunately, I managed to recover the hidden partition, and put back Vista...

...and despite the fact I laugh at that friend of mine every time we meet, because he simply hates Windows Vista(most people I know do), but he has to live with it, seeing some drivers freely available on the Web makes me really happy! The drivers I am talking about are coming straight from NVIDIA, and they are targeting the latest mobile GeForce GPUs.

The GeForce 179 for notebooks driver "is a reference driver that can be installed on supported NVIDIA GeForce notebook GPUs." Unfortunately, you should "note that your notebook original equipment manufacturer (OEM) provides certified drivers for your specific notebook on their website. NVIDIA recommends that you check with your notebook OEM about recommended software updates for your notebook. OEMs may not provide technical support for issues that arise from the use of this driver."
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The release highlights include the following:

- Supports NVIDIA CUDA technology.
- Supports NVIDIA PhysX hardware acceleration on GeForce 8M and 9M GPUs with a minimum of 256MB dedicated graphics memory (this driver package installs NVIDIA PhysX System Software v9.09.0010).
- The GeForce Plus Pack, including a few free CUDA and PhysX demos.

The list of GPUs supported includes the older NVIDIA GeForce Go 7 Series, as well as the more recent NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 9100M, GeForce 7150M, GeForce 7000M, going as high as the latest GeForce GT 130M, GeForce G 110M, and GeForce G 105M GPUs.

At last, you should be aware that the new driver provides a fix for an issue related to the old and powerful single GPU GeForce 8800M GTX graphics solution, so if you have one of those monsters under the hood of your laptop... here's a reason to celebrate!