Cheer up all – Two Days Off

Good afternoon all, hopefully this week hasn’t been too crushing for the rest of you, as it’s been quite nice to us. It’s been a long week, and indeed, a long January, but that seems to be the way with Winter months. Hopefully February will move along a little more quickly.

Anyway, as with every other Friday, we just wanted to do up a quick post with some of the various bits and pieces we’ve found across the web that have gotten at least a smile and often a bit of a giggle from us. This simple Korean comic is among the best things to have hit my inbox this week, and I thought that it might be something you’d all enjoy.

Smart Networking – IP Over Power

When it comes to home networking, it seems that most people are served very well indeed by a relatively straightforward wireless router. There’s no real mystery to it, a router just has enough coverage to envelop most houses. Still, there are some who, for one reason or another, just can’t use a router. In those cases, IP over power can be a refreshing change.

Check out our page for the Belkin IP over power arrangement

People can have any number of reasons for moving away from wireless: for some it’s just that their house is too big (or of too-dense construction) to allow solid wireless access, for others its that their desktop is their gaming machine, and on the wrong end of the house to their router. These things happen. Indeed, our Country Manager recently found himself in such a bind…

Microsoft Finds iPad “Humorous”

It seems that the folks at Microsoft aren’t at all worried about Apple’s upcoming tablet, the recently officially announced iPad, with the company’s official line on the device being that they find it to be “humorous.”

The recent tablet announcement from apple puts in a curious situation, when you take it all into account. Microsoft tried desperately around 2000-2002 to launch the tablet, notebook PC as a real option for the average user, though in those days tablets were clunkier things with stylus’ and usually full keyboards. Skip forward almost ten years, and Apple is launching its own tablet, while Microsoft shows some renewed interest in the area that it seemed to have long since given up as a niche with the new line of “slate” styled PCs.

Motorola to Build Google’s Nexus Two?

Word is creeping out that Motorola could well be building the next phone to be sold directly through Google, without any intervention from network carriers.

HTC's effort looks well, we'll be interested to see Motorola's offering.

If the word from TechRadar is right, then signs are pointing towards Motorola as the second company to have build a smartphone for sale directly through Google. Just what we can expect from this device has yet to be seen or even really hinted at, though it would make a lot of sense for it to be running Google’s mobile operating system, Android.

Michael Dell Shows off Tablet

It seems that Apple isn’t the only company detailing the release of its upcoming tablet this week, with Dell’s CEO giving a little more detail on the PC giant’s upcoming Mini 5.

We assume it'll also be available in not-pink

The folks over at TechCrunch had the chance to talk to the man himself while he was in Switzerland for the World Economic Forum, where he seemed relatively happy to talk about the upcoming tablet device, including the fact that he expects it to see a launch in the US in the coming months, the first indication of its launch yet given. Sadly, so far there’s no word on Europe, though hopefully that’ll change soon enough.

AMD and Intel Six-Core Processors Coming Soon

DigiTimes is reporting that the long-running rumours of AMD’s plans to launch three six-core desktop processors (codenamed Thuban) under its new Phenom II X6 1000T series will finally come to pass in May of this year, while Intel’s heavily mooted plans to launch its six-core desktop processors (codenamed Gulftown) are set to kick into gear at the end of March.

It’s war!

Citing “sources from motherboard makers”, the article claims that the three processors from AMD – the Phenom II X6 1075T, 1055T and 1035T – will each adopt a 45nm process. AMD will also launch the quad-core Phenom II X4 960T alongside the six-core models, the sources noted.

Amazon Profits Skyrocket

It seems that Amazon has been living it up, thanks in no small part to massive sales of its Kindle ebook reader over the Christmas block.

Amazon seems to have KINDLED a virtual book market... please, shoot me.

According to Cnet, Amazon has had a very fine year indeed, with revenue up to $9.52 billion, a fairly staggering increase on last year, to the tune of 42%. Indeed, reports also indicate that Amazon has seen profits rise by around the 70% mark, which is nothing to be sneezed at. Apparently, the fourth quarter of last year (which happily enough includes both Christmas and the US’s Black Friday sales) was the most profitable quarter the company has ever seen.

Samsung Predicts Big Year in 3DTV

Samsung isn’t holding back this year, with the company announcing to investors this morning that 3DTV sales are going to ‘explode’ in 2010. Some may be skeptical that we’ll all be sitting in our living rooms wearing those Blues Brothers-esque glasses in the near future but Sueohk Shim, vice president of Samsung’s visual display business is pretty sure she knows what he’s talking about.

3DTV may have its doubters but Samsung seem confident there’s a market there already.

“We expect demand for 3D TVs to grow explosively,” she said, adding that Samsung expects to sell two million 3D TVs this year.

Windows 7 Causes Battery Issues

It seems as though the upgrade to Windows 7 has been wreaking havoc on some users’ notebook batteries, dropping the running time by as much as 70%.

Word comes via TheRegister of the reasonably widespread complaints, with many users holding the upgrade to Windows 7 responsible for their sudden and noticeable drop in overall battery life. Moreover, the piece points to the forums over at Microsoft’s own TechNet that sees hordes of users with roughly the same complaint – that their battery life has been greatly diminished since the upgrade to Windows 7. Indeed, there’s been so widespread an outcry that Microsoft has responded directly to address the issue.

Ireland – The Slow Internet Kings

In news that will surprise around about no one, be they from Cow’s Lane or Cavan, Ranelagh or Roosky, our dear nation has the unfortunate honour of having the highest percentage of slow internet connections in Europe at 3.4pc. We’re still good at something eh. Coupled with this figure came the news – via a study by web traffic management company Akami – that we have the fourth lowest percentage of fast connections over 5mbits in Europe at 9.4%

All he wanted was to download a few podcasts… not in this here country.

In like a shot, broadband lobby group IrelandOffline said the results were “utterly unsurprising” given the “sheer number of dial-up and midband 3G mobile connections” in Ireland. The group’s chairman, Eamonn Wallace, “The leading countries in this survey all have wide scale fibre deployed to the home, today. Irish people are more likely to be looking for that mystical blue light on their 3G dongles while up in the attic getting that urgent email out before they go to bed.