ComputerWorld is running a story about the future of laptops. Apparently, both Apple and LG are planning to release laptops using flash memory devices instead of hard drives.

Flash memory is already in heavy usage in a lot of consumer electronics devices, like digital cameras, MP3 players, mobile phones and similar devices but until relatively recently they have had much smaller capacity than hard drives and so haven’t been used for computers.

Dropping prices and increasing capacity are changing the game, however, and while we haven’t seen many high-profile companies releasing flash-based and hybrid flash and hard drive portable computers.

Call me sceptical, but I don’t think this is quite ready to happen yet, and I see one major issue here.

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As we’ve covered extensively, Steve Jobs’ MacWorld keynote was quite an exciting time today.

Huw and I got together for a short podcast that gives our thoughts on today’s two major announcements: the iPhone and the Apple TV.

The podcast runs 23 minutes and 34 seconds, and is a 16.2mb download.

• Download the podcast
• Subscribe via a feed reader
• Subscribe via iTunes

CES is upon us, and Microsoft have apparently been busy and Bill Gates himself demonstrated a new product - Windows Home Server.

The idea behind Home Server is to provide a central location to allow sharing between all the Windows machines in a household and also to provide bridging functionality to other Microsoft products (like the Xbox 360 and the Zune), so that all of your Microsoft-equipped devices in the house can talk to each other.

It also has additional features such as backup capabilities and there is likely to be room for Microsoft to add new features to tightly integrate with Windows Vista (which, in case you’ve forgotten has a public launch on the 30th of January).

But Microsoft won’t be selling the Windows Home Server software - they’re going about it slightly differently. Hardware vendors are invited to build machines based on Microsoft’s reference design for Home Server, and then they can resell Home Server as OEM with their machines. It’s unlikely that the Home Server OS, a cut-down version of Windows Server 2003, will be sold separately - at least not for a while.

The Home Server can be administered via a web-based interface and a ‘Windows Home Server Console’ client application for Windows.

Leaving aside my personal opinions on Microsoft pushing towards domination in yet more spaces, this is an innovative idea and will provide features that maybe even non-geeky households might consider. I think now it’s up to Microsoft to ensure the success of this product by getting third-party software and hardware vendors warmed up to the idea, so they can make their products interoperate and share seamlessly with the presence of a Home Server. If you could bring home any new gadget and instantly connect to it by Wifi from all the computers in your house, then Home Server will become a very attractive package for anyone with a home network and sufficient machines to warrant one.

Smarthouse is reporting that allegedly, Apple are working on a tablet-based Mac which will serve as a platform for applications specifically designed to exploit the tablet format (like home automation software that controls lighting etc). The article also mentions that it’s rumoured that it would also function as a fully-fledged computer, but that’s not so clear. Especially with Apple looking more towards embedded devices (think iTV), it’s not clear whether this would be a functioning ‘computer’ or not (if it ever does come to fruition).

Apple’s normal strategy is not to try and face the dominant product head on, but to take a slightly different angle at the target market (in their recent ads, aiming consumer Macs squarely at the home market, for example, citing they’re better for “life stuff”). If the buzz about this integrating with other Apple devices, like the iTV perhaps, is true then this would seem fairly credible.

In fact, this trend of Apple going for embedded devices and consumer electronics (the iPhone, the iTV) seems to be an attempt by Apple to move from being an obscure computer company in the eyes of the public to a household name in electronics (but no so much mainstream computing). The iPod drove that movement and Apple are apparently now capitalising further on the consumer electronics market.

If I were sceptical, I would say that Apple have realised they may well have lost the battle for personal computers and are aiming in other directions.

[via OSNews]

The Apple rumour mill has been grinding for some time again about this announcement, with UK online retailer Play.com leaking the possibility of new Core 2 MacBooks earlier this week, but now it has officially been confirmed.

Apple’s consumer notebook, the MacBook, has been upgraded with, among other things, an Intel Core 2 Duo processor. The upgrades also include a RAM boost to 1 GB on the higher end models and a slightly bumped up (but still quite mediocre considering the price) hard drive for the higher end models.

Redmond-based Microsoft and Utah’s Novell are entering a new partnership based around Novell’s SuSE Linux.

As part of the deal, all future litigation against Novell will be halted, including patent infringement disputes. Microsoft will begin offering sales support and technical support for Novell SuSE Linux, an open source operating system available in several versions, including OpenSuSE (community developed) and SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (Novell developed, includes proprietary applications).

The deal is not final, and may be changed at any time. This appears, however, to dent the plans that business software giant Oracle has had to begin support for Novell competitor Red Hat. Both Oracle and Red Hat stock was down at the time of this writing.

A press conference is slated for 5:00pm EST (now) and more details may be announced. As always, GizBuzz will keep you updated.

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The press conference has begun. Updates follow:

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Apple and AMD - a marriage made in heaven?

Reg Hardware is speculating that Apple may be interested in utilising AMD chips in new Macs that are coming in the future. I better reiterate that this is purely speculation, but apparently AMD CEO Hector Ruiz was quoted as saying:

“Why would they [Apple] want to be held hostage [to Intel] like everyone else has been?”

Certainly a move to use AMD processors in their computers would be credible if it happened. One of the features Apple is showcasing about their next operating system release Mac OS X Leopard, is full 64-bit support (at the application level, not just the system level).

While some of the more top-end PowerPC-based Macs had 64-bit chips, only the new Mac Pro has an Intel Xeon 64-bit chip which would be able to fully take advantage of this feature.

But if Apple were to go to AMD, they would have access to the Athlon 64 range, which are considerably cheaper than the Xeon (which has traditionally been used for servers). Apple could choose processors from the Athlon 64 X2 dual core range for the iMac consumer desktop machine and get the 64-bit capabilities in their consumer products, not just their pro products.

On the other hand, Apple may well choose just to stick with the one new processor brand, partly to try and reinforce the difference between a ‘Mac’ and a ‘PC’. Also, they have marketed all the new Macs as Intel-based Macs, which is fair enough, because they are. If they used AMD chips as well, they would end up with PowerPC-based machines and Intel-based and AMD-based machines. This could potentially cause confusion to the vital Windows switcher market, which would not be good news for Apple.

So in my eyes it’s pretty 50/50 here, with both upsides and downsides for both ways to go. With AMD officials talking about it, however, inevitably the Apple rumour mill will start up again following their event a couple of weeks ago.

Intel seem to be pushing out new processors and new architectures all the time nowadays. Only a short while after the release of their Core Duo (and Core Solo) range, they recently released the Core 2 Duo processors aimed at desktops.

Now Engadget seem to think that we will see a Core 2 ‘Quadro’ chip featuring quad cores on one processor chip for even more performance.

Admittedly, this would be cool, but there may well be issues with marketing this chip if it does materialise.

First of all, as Engadget point out, the name ‘Quadro’ is already in use by Nvidia for their high-end professional graphics cards. However, that’s not really a major problem because a simple name change could avoid that issue.

What’s a more important issue here is the fact that, as far as I know, Windows (XP and others) put restrictions on the number of processors they can be run on. Now whether ‘processors’ is equivalent to ‘processor cores’ is unclear, but there are definitely issues here. If the ‘Quadro’ goes to market, some computer users may find that they are breaking the licence agreement (it’s not clear whether Windows fails to work if you do use too many processors).

From the XP Home EULA:

1.1 Installation and use. You may install, use, access, display and run one copy of the SOFTWARE on the COMPUTER. The SOFTWARE may not be used by more than two (2) processors at any one time on the COMPUTER, unless a higher number is indicated on the COA.

So does this/will this affect quad core processors? I guess only Microsoft (or an experienced lawyer) will be able to tell us.

Apparently, following Dell’s recent recall of many of its laptop batteries, our friend Apple has recalled 1 million iBook and PowerBook batteries, due to a fire hazard issue.

We haven’t seen the exploding iBooks yet (along the lines of exploding Dell machines), but the potential is there, apparently, such that Apple are recalling the offending batteries.

Are Apple and Dell using rubbish batteries or something? That’s two of the biggest laptop retailers issuing battery recalls in a very short period of time. Same supplier, do you reckon?

More from BBC News - breaking news, apparently.

This is a fairly big story for the open source world - Intel have released driver source code for their Intel 965 Express range of graphics cards. Most of these cards are used for ‘integrated graphics’ - that is, they are built straight into the motherboard and aren’t designed for gaming/heavy 3D work. Intel actually are leaders in the graphics chip market, but that’s generally for these integrated graphics solutions where 3D processing horsepower isn’t required.

Nevertheless, Intel have released and open sourced both 2D and 3D drivers for these cards and Linux users with these cards should be able to set up 3D accelaration support very easily - due to the fact that Linux distributors are free to include the drivers in the distribution.

To get 3D accelaration support for other cards in Linux is not very easy at all at the moment. Both ATi and Nvidia offer 3D drivers for Linux, but they are not open source. This means the main distributions generally aren’t free to include the drivers on the disc, so the user has to download and manually install the drivers (which in most cases involves using the command line for a short while). Also, 3D drivers for Linux aren’t as fully tested and sometimes cause problems which aren’t easy for community members to help with.

Needless to say, this is a big and very brave move by Intel which will hopefully be mirrored by the other big graphics players.

However, I’m sceptical that Nvidia and ATi will follow suit. Driver software, by its nature, reveals a lot of information about how hardware works, so ATi and Nvidia won’t want to share potentially secret hardware specifications with each other. With Intel not having quite as much of a stake in the high-end graphics market, they apparently don’t see the big players as such a big threat.

You can download the driver source code from the site here (but if you want to use the driver it’s probably easier to wait for your distribution to package it for you).