Notebook based on AMD’s Second Generation Ultrathin Platform

It’s real easy to describe the 2nd generation ultrathin design: Take the 1st generation, give it a second CPU core and take nearly the performance of the first generation’s discrete card, shrink it and place it into the chipset decreasing energy consumption.  Oh yeah, and add sprinkles of VISION Technology.  Easy, right?  Don’t tell the engineers I said that.

Specs for MSI notebook based on AMD’s 2nd Generation Ultrathin Platform

• CPU: AMD Athlon Neo X2 Dual Core Processor L335 at 1.6 GHz.
• GPU: ATI Radeon HD 3200 Graphics
• Display: 12″ at 1366×768 resolution with HDMI for 1080P bliss and VGA port out

• RAM/HDD/Optical: 2GB (dual channel)/160GB/None
• Memory Slot: SD/SDHC/MMC
• Networking: Bluetooth, Gig-E, and BGN wireless
• 3 USB ports
• 1.3 MP Webcam

Size Matters

The best way to do a size comparison is to compare it to something someone may be familiar with.  Below are comparisons to a BlackBerry Bold and an MSI U100 Netbook.

MSI notebook based on AMD’s 2^nd Generation Ultrathin platform next to a BlackBerry Bold

MSI U100 Netbook next to MSI notebook based on AMD’s 2nd Generation Ultrathin platform

MSI U100 Netbook on top of an MSI notebook based on AMD’s 2nd Generation Ultrathin platform

HD Video Playback-Bring It On

The MSI ripped through HD video off of the web from YouTube HD as well as Hulu HD (to my surprise).  I also played HD files from my Sony Webbie (1080P/30FPS) and Kodak ZI6 (720P/60FPS) inexpensive HD palmcorders and it didn’t even break a sweat.  I plugged an external Blu-Ray drive and two movies with Cyberlink 8, “I Am Legend” and “Speed Racer”, and I never saw CPU utilization go above 25%.  Add this to the ability to project externally at 1080P video to my HDTV along with high-fidelity audio over the HDMI port and cable and I was real happy.

Games- Not Sweating the Small Stuff

Like the AMD 1st generation ultrathin platform, the 2nd generation ultrathin platform can (of course) play mainstream games well like the Sims and Spore, but even the more hard-core games (albeit at low settings) like Left 4 Dead. I must caveat by saying that if you consider yourself a gamer, go for a system that has a higher end GPU like the higher end ATI Radeon HD 3000 or HD 4000 series.  But if you play games but don’t consider yourself a gamer, no need to worry, you get a real ATI-branded graphics capability, not a generic brand in many systems.

Web Browsing- Flash Eater

I already described how this MSI notebook tore through YouTube HD and Hulu HD so why bring up anything else?  Well, it’s called Flash and it’s the basis for a ton of web sites and it chews up inordinate amounts of power.  Try this test- open up task manager to see how much CPU is being used then go to americanidol.com and then disney.com.  If you have one of those underpowered machines, you know what happens.  If you have a notebook based on the 2nd generation ultrathin platform, you get a good experience where the CPU isn’t pegging at 100%.

Conclusion

The 2nd generation ultrathin platform turned out exactly as I would have hoped: lighter, cooler, and more powerful to enable consumers to have an even better experience than they did with the first generation.  No-compromise computing in a thin package at a good value.  As “Active” and “Resting” battery life benchies go, the lab is working on those and I will update my blog when I get them.  Until then, let me know if you have any questions.

Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

Ultrathin laptops have been the talk of the press for about 6 months now, but the reality is that many laptops that will ship in 2009 will likely have 14″ or larger displays and not be ultrathin. Why? Many consumers prefer the full-featured nature of those notebooks with their larger displays, integrated optical drives, larger keyboards, expandability and for the most part, the ability to crank more quickly through software.  That’s where AMD’s newest full-featured platform comes in with all its entertainment goodies with VISION.  I got the chance to take a drive in a new MSI C-Series notebook based on the 2009 AMD Mainstream Notebook Platform (codename “Tigris”), and it had a few tricks in store I MUST share.

Tigris-based MSI Notebook Specs

• CPU: AMD Turion^TM II X2 Dual Core Mobile Processor M640 at 2.6 Ghz.
• GPU: ATI Radeon^TM HD 4200 Graphics
• Display: 16″ 16:9 at 1366×768 resolution
• Video out: HDMI and VGA port
• Keyboard: Full-size with full number pad
• RAM/HDD/Optical: 4GB/300GB/DVD-RW
• Memory Slot: SD/MMC/MS/MS Pro
• Networking: Bluetooth, Gig-E, and B/G/N wireless
• 1 E-SATA port/USB combo port
• 2 USB ports (3 if you count combo)
• ExpressCard 34 slot
• Webcam (1.3 MP) and microphone

Video Encoding- A Giant Leap

The most amazing and new feature of this Tigris-based notebook for me was the GPU-assisted video transcoding.  Quite simply, video transcoding is changing the format of a video to be played on another device.  One example is taking a family video on an HD camera and encoding it to play on an iPod or iPhone.

Of the 15 videos I tested, when I was using the GPU, I got nearly twice the performance or the time was nearly cut in HALF! Your mileage will vary with video type of course and I have seen published numbers of even higher scores converting to a PSP.  You can see a video of this in action here.

This is accomplished through the graphics card’s ATI Stream Technology and using the ATI Stream-enabled Cyberlink Espresso software application.

Video Playback- Reality is King

The “Tigris” platform has taken the video playback capabilities of its predecessor and placed it on steroids.  Not only do you get the HD video offload capabilities, which means lower CPU utilization and heat, but now the visual quality is greatly enhanced.  The features are described in super-geek terms like “dynamic contrast”, “flesh tone enhancement”, “HD color vibrance”, but it basically means that whites are brighter, blacks are richer, skin tones look more realistic, and the colors look better.  I noticed the differences when I connected the Tigris-based MSI notebook to my 1080P flat screen TV.

A couple of other cool video features that I thought were useful were video upscaling and Blu-ray PIP acceleration.  Video upscaling takes lower resolution videos like 400×240 and converts them to look better when shown on a larger screen (e.g.  1920×1080).  Here is a nice example here.  Blu-ray PIP acceleration allows you to watch a Blu-ray enabled movie (with PIP) with much lower CPU utilization, which results in less heat and noise.

AMD’s Ian McNaughton has done a fine job in his blog drilling down on key video features.

Games- Plow through Mainstream

Like video, the “Tigris” platform has taken the gaming capabilities of its predecessor to the next level.  While we would recommend to those who would consider themselves “gamers” a full discrete card, the ATI Radeon HD 4200 graphics didn’t disappoint.  In fact it impressed me more than I thought it would.

I started off with a simple 3DMark 06 test and was surprised at the 1,800 base score I achieved, particularly with last year’s 2008 AMD Mainstream Notebook Platform (codename “Puma”)  coming in at around 1,500.  Why?  The ATI Radeon HD 4200graphics are based on the RV620 core, a step ahead of the ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics based on the RV610 core.

Forget benchies a second, I wanted to try out a few games that a user would probably play on this system.  So I was forced to try some mainstream games: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, Sim City Societies, Ghostbusters, Sims 3, and X-Men Origins Wolverine.  I had a good experience on all of them with decent frame rates and resolutions.  For fun I loaded Left 4 Dead, Call of Duty World at War, and Tom Clancy’s Hawx.  Sure, take down the res and some of the eye candy; just the fact that they were playable on integrated graphics is a feat in itself.

One final feature I must point out is the “Tigris” platform’s support of Direct X 10.1 from Microsoft, currently the latest graphics technology available until DirectX 11 arrives sometime next month.  It allows either better looking games or better performance.  While I didn’t personally run these FPS scores the lab did, and on higher end games with some eye candy on the ATI Radeon HD 4200 drove HAWX at 1024×768 at 25FPS, Battleforge at 1280×1024 at 24FPS, and Stalker: Clear Sky at 30 FPS, while the competition either crashed or had worse than a third the performance and experience.

Why would any consumer buy a system with generic or dated graphics?  Beats me.

Thin Is In: Tigris-based MSI Notebook  next to the MSI notebook based on AMD’s Second Generation Ultrathin Platform

Conclusion

For that full-sized, full-featured mobile experience, I was impressed with the MSI system based on the “Tigris” platform.  Like I said above, the video encoding quantum leap was amazing and just shows how powerful the combination of the GPU and CPU working together can be.  Increasing the stakes on the video playback side was a treat and fun to try out and see all those features.  Finally, with support for Direct X 10.1 technology from Microsoft and the ability to play real games and of course mainstream games, the system should keep all the mainstreamers happy and surprise even some gamers.  Now that’s VISION.  Let me know if you have any questions or comments.

Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

Observations

• 23% increase over the prior two weeks in the number of SKUs advertised with battery life.  (34 to 42 SKUs) 23 SKUs I observed advertised battery life or inference to it during the week of 8/10/09, and 19 the week of 8/17/09.   (See raw data at very end of blog.)
• 2X increase in the number of ways battery life is being advertised.
  • Four different ways observed from weeks of 7/27 and 8/3:
    • “up to X hours, Y minutes”
    • “up to X hours” (no minutes)
    • “X+ hours” (no “up to”)
    • “X cell battery for longer performance” (adds concept of battery cell)
  • Five NEW ways battery life was described or inferred to the consumer weeks of 8/10 and 8/17 in addition to those listed above:
    • “up to X hours of battery life that will last in class all day” (adds idea of all day computing)
    • “X  cell battery” (no information on what this means)
    • “X cell battery will give you up to X hours of battery life”
    • “X cell Li-ion battery” (no battery life claim and introduces battery type)
    • Graphic with icons, small description, but no data.

    

• Still in these advertisements there is still only one battery life measurement being advertised.  This is like buying a car and only seeing the “up to 52 MPG,” even though you would never realize that gas mileage in city driving.  Also, it’s like advertising battery life for a mobile phone and only listing “up to 300 hours battery life”.  (See raw data at very end of blog.)
• Apple notebooks never list battery life, only Windows-based PCs.
• Two retailers provided disclaimers for the advertised battery life information.  (See raw data at very end of blog.)

Conclusion

Net-net, more notebooks are advertising battery life or inferring it, and the different ways of describing it to the consumer has more than doubled.  Some questions:

• Do nine different ways to describe battery life help set clear battery life expectations? I will let you be the judge.
• Do disclaimers or explanations behind the metric help increase awareness? Do they deserve broader application? I will let you be the judge.
• Does one single measurement of battery life help tell the whole story? I will let you be the judge.

If you would like to read more about the battery life discussion, please find the links below:

Nigel Dessau’s blogs on battery life

Pat Moorhead’s (me) blogs on battery life

FriendFeed page with select press articles

Improving Understanding of Notebook PC Battery Life Measurements

Let me know what you think!

NOTES:

Week of 8-10-09

Week of 8-17-09

Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

Week of 7-27-2009

Week of 8-3-2009

Observations

• 14 notebook SKUs I observed advertised battery life during the week of 7/27/09, and 20 SKUs I observed advertised battery life during the week of 8/3/09.

• In these advertisements there is still only one battery life measurement being advertised.  This is like buying a car and only seeing the “up to 52 MPG,” even though you would never realize that gas mileage in city driving.  Also, it’s like advertising battery life for a mobile phone and only listing “up to 300 hours battery life”.

• Battery life as I observed it is being advertised four different ways:
  • “up to X hours, Y minutes”
  • “up to X hours” (no minutes)
  • “X+ hours” (no “up to”)
  • “X cell battery life for longer performance”

• Only two retailers out of eight I observed provided disclaimers for the advertised battery life information.

During the holiday time frame, we hope and expect this situation to change. A few retailers have unofficially indicated that they are planning to adopt a “Min and Max” (aka guardrail approach) to notebook battery life communications.  Based on the lack of consistency I observed in the circulars, I expect this will be a very welcome change for consumers.

Above is a sample graphic that AMD has proposed for this guardrail approach.

If you would like to read more about the battery life discussion, please find the links below:

Nigel Dessau’s blogs on battery life

Pat Moorhead’s (me) blogs on battery life

FriendFeed page with select press articles

Improving Understanding of Notebook PC Battery Life Measurements

Let me know what you think!

Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

Main iPhone Information Page

When consumers navigate to the main iPhone page, about ¾ of the page down you see a link that says, “iPhone 3GS or Iphone 3G: Compare”.

Compare iPhones Page

Click this and you go to a comparison page of the iPhone 3G versus iPhone 3GS.  About ¾ down the page, you see a battery life comparison:

These seems like intuitive figures to provide a consumer, yet Apple is already operating in rarefied air in providing this much consumer information.  But wait, what about the details on what was tested, you ask?  Apple iPhone delivers, again.  When you click on the disclaimer (3) you are brought down to a line that says, “3) All battery claims depend on network configuration and many other factors; actual results will vary. For more details of iPhone performance tests for talk time, standby time, Internet use over 3G, Internet use over Wi-Fi, video playback, and audio playback, see www.apple.com/iphone/battery.html.”

Full Battery Life Performance Testing Disclosure Page

Click on the link in the disclaimer above and you are brought to a page that contains more battery life procedure testing than I have ever seen before. These 1,173 words of technical bliss scream detail.  Sure, someone could chose to pick at the way the testing was done, but you cannot complain about the detailed disclosure.  The page meticulously goes through the tests performed, the hardware used, and how it was done.

Who Cares?

We have made it very public and clear that AMD is striving to guide the PC industry to deliver better notebook PC battery life information for consumers.  Nigel and I have articulated the challenges and provided suggestions to this.  We expect some in the industry to adopt these, but some will sit on the sidelines.  To those who choose to sit I ask, how do you feel about better battery life information being disclosed on a $99 iPhone than a $799 notebook PC?  Industry, we can do better than the cell phone industry.

Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

As a reminder, MobileMark 2007 is now being advertised and merchandised in retail circulars across the US. This benchmark is developed by the Business Applications Performance Corporation (BAPCO).  (More background and our suggestions for more accurate battery life metrics can be found here, here, and here.)

Applications in MMO7 compared to consumer use

In my opinion, it is not credible to construct a consumer benchmark consisting primarily of applications that business people use. To demonstrate my point, take a look at the battery life benchmark applications now being used in consumer adverts.

These benchmarked applications inside MM07 include: Microsoft Project 2003 for project management, Microsoft Excel 2003 for calculation sheets, Microsoft Outlook 2003 for email, calendar and scheduling, Microsoft PowerPoint 2003 for presentations, Microsoft Word 2003 for word processing, WinZip Computing WinZip 10.0 for archive compression, Adobe Photoshop CS2 for manipulating and compressing images, Adobe Illustrator CS2 for manipulating images and Adobe Flash 8 for vector graphics and animation.

Do these look like your most commonly used consumer PC applications to you?  Here’s my personal list of most commonly used consumer applications as a starting point:

• Web browsers like Firefox, Safari, and Chrome or Internet Explorer. And with browsers come Google, Gmail, YouTube, Hulu, ESPN.com, Disney.com, etc.
• Music apps like iTunes or Windows Media player
• Video or movie playback for DVDs, Blu-ray or iTunes movies or TV shows
• Games like Spore, Sims, and Worlds of Warcraft

Like I said, you be the judge.

Application % weightings in MM07 compared to usage patterns

Even if we pretend for a moment that consumers don’t use web browsers, listen to music, watch videos or play games, and they primarily use the listed MM07 apps. Surely someone on the planet does that, right?

BAPCO has published MM07’s “distribution of measured application task times“, or in other words the apps the tested notebook was running 5-10% of the time when it wasn’t idling or resting 95-90% of the time.

Inside MM07, The “measured application task times” for Adobe Flash Creation is 33.6%, Adobe Photoshop CS2 is 21.8%, Adobe Illustrator CS2 is 16.7%, Microsoft Excel is 16.6%, WinZip 10.0 is 7.1%, Microsoft Word is 1.1%, Microsoft PowerPoint is 1.0%, Microsoft Project is 1.2% and Microsoft Outlook is 1.0%.

I ask, when you use your notebook, do you spend 72% of your time recoding Flash videos, manipulating and compressing pictures in Photoshop and Illustrator?   I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that that is not an accurate reflection of most of our usage profiles!

MM07 Applications compared to retail notebook software loads

One final aspect I would like to examine is the software preloaded on retail notebooks compared to the MM07 load. I also looked up the potential costs associated with a consumer adopting the MM07 software load if they bought it on their own.

I took what looked like popular notebooks and those which advertised battery life and compared their software load with MM07’s software load. I looked at five notebooks advertised in major Sunday circulars last weekend and here is what I found.

Granted this is a pretty limited sample, but as you can see above, there was 0% correlation between the MM07 software load and what is installed on these notebooks. Note: SKUs #1 and #2 did have a 60 day edition of MS Office Pro⁽¹⁾.  SKUs #3, 4, and 5 came with 60 day edition of MS Office Student Edition⁽²⁾.  Close but no cigar.

I then looked at what it would cost a consumer to buy the latest and greatest MM07 updated apps.  Here is what it could cost at retail:

As you can see above, it would cost the consumer approximately $2,701 at retail to load all of the updated MM07 applications.

Conclusion

My goal was to compare MobileMark 2007 (MM07) application selection and activity distribution and compare that to a consumer’s behavior. I showed the following:

1) MM07 Productivity is utilized in consumer facing advertisements to indicate comparative notebook battery life.
2) MM07 Productivity tested applications do not contain a single web browser, music app, video playback app, or game.
3) 72% of MM07’s application usage comes from Flash video encoding and photo manipulation and compression in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.
4) MM07 tested applications have a 0% correlation between what is pre-loaded on retail notebooks and are six years old on average. (Yes, I admit it was a small sample, but you get my point…)
5) If a user bought software representing the MM07 test suite, it could cost $2,701 at retail.

I ask you, do MM07 applications represent real world consumer usage behavior and purchase characteristics?  You be the judge.

Notes:

⁽¹⁾ loaded w/MS Works (word processor, spreadsheet, calendar) & 60-day trial of MS Office Pro2007 (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, Access, Publisher)

⁽²⁾ loaded w/MS Works (word processor, spreadsheet, calendar) & 60-day trial of MS Office 2007 Home & Student Edition (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, OneNote)

Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

The facts about MM07 and notebook display brightness

MM07 requires the following (1): “The display brightness should be measured for a white screen while on battery and be set at the lowest possible setting, no lower than 60 nits.” One needs a nit meter and yes, we have a few of those in our labs.  :-)

So what is a nit?  Wkipedia defines a nit as a “candela per square meter.” Yes, that really helped me too.  Think of a “nit” as a unit of measure of brightness.

How does 60 nits compare to brightness of other home electronics?

I pretend to be a technically-capable business, strategy and marketing guy, which according to the engineers, makes me REAL dangerous.  You see, 95% is good enough for my trade, but for theirs, its 99.999% and I respect that.

So I wanted to know what 60 nits really related to, as I didn’t know nits from nuts.  You should have seen the look on the engineer’s faces when I asked them to borrow their nit meter. Chad, his real name J, showed me how to use the nit meter and instructed me how to use the nit meter and to make sure to have a white background on all devices.

I literally went around my house testing many of my home electronics and tested them without changing any settings outside shutting off “auto adjustment” on the phones which I am told is best practice.  I suppose I can call this my family’s “comfort setting” based on the setting my family and I actually use the devices.  So there is variation in room setting, light, etc. that dictates this.

Here are the test results:

Net-net, the lowest nit measurement I observed with my “comfort setting” was still 2.58X brighter than the MM07 brightness level of 60 nits on which notebook battery life is measured.

I then wanted to see how nits related to notebook screen brightness.  So I tested a few notebooks I had in my office to see what the “max nits” were when the screen was set to the highest setting.

As you can see from the figures above, the MM07 requirement was between 20-30% of the samples notebooks’ max screen brightness.

What notebook display brightness setting do consumers use?

Now, I know that a sample set of one doesn’t represent anything, and I’m far from normal, as my friends frequently tell me, but the results of my home survey were interesting – interesting enough to make me  real curious about what others  are doing with their screen brightness settings.

So last week I started Tweeting and Facebooking questions to real users on what is the display brightness setting on which they place their notebooks. I received qualitative and quantitative responses.  Yes, I know, this isn’t a 17-country, global discrete choice, double blind methodology survey followed by focus groups, BUT there were telling, directional  indicators.

Quantitative: I wasn’t expecting anything like the response I got from Neowin respondents.  They actually placed a poll on their community website asking the question, “What brightness level do you run your notebook?“  Over 1,100 community members voted in a few days, and according to Shane Pitman, Editor-in-Chief, “Polls require a member account, and to be logged in to said account. Provides accountability, keeps people from voting multiple times.”

The results were overwhelming in that 75% of the Neowin community member respondents kept their notebook display brightness between 61% and 100%.  Somehow, I don’t think that fits into the 60 nit range.

Qualitative: These responses were as valuable as the quantitative as they gave insight into “why” they did this.  Some comments gave insight into the folks who use their notebooks at very low display settings.  I didn’t use their Twitter names to protect the innocent. :-)

Here was the response to my question, improper grammar and all, “Research question: what display brightness do you run your notebook at? (Please RT)”.  Here is just a sampling of public tweet responses.

• “On the machines I see, normally I prefer to have them fully backlit with the slider up to around 75% or so.”
• “I run my laptop at maximum brightness unless the battery is really low, or I have an external screen. “
• “Now running MBP 15.4″ 3.1 at 75% brightness with auto adjust turned ; but was at 100% without auto adjust til you asked! “
• “90 – 100% brightness, 90% of the time. “
• “depends entirely on my battery level and surroundings. “
• “Research question: what display brightness do you run your notebook at? (Please RT). I run full bright 95+% of the time. “
• “oh sorry , 100% unless I’m running low on battery, where I bring it down to a minimum, I’m guessing 50%, but thats rare”
• “usually around 60-70%”
• “i don’t use them much, mainly desktop, but i either have brightness at full or minimum: latter at night and if battery low”
• “When running laptop on battery, i set brightness to 25-40%, when plugged in -100%.”
• “100% brightness. Left default setting (and I appreciate it that way… old eyes). “
• “slammed up to full when possible, monitor screens vary though”
• “mine is usually as bright as I can make it. I hate dim screens. “
• “max brightness notwithstanding battery impact. “
• “I lower my screen brightness to the lowest, usable level that’s comfortable. It’s all about the battery life. “
• “Agreed…I think mine is usually around 30% or so. “
• “it varies by location due to lighting levels. Usually around 30% or 40%. Never > 50% when on battery. “
• “ME: 90 to 100% on AC, about 50 % on battery when I’m watching movies and about 20 to work. “

I also received some really interesting responses related to interpretation, explanations, tools and resources on brightness after asking about 60 nits. Got to love social media.

• “not all that hard. Need 800+ nits to read screens in direct sun, 30-150 for night highway signs: http://bit.ly/cjxJB“
• “60 nits = table in an office with 300 lux illumination: http://bit.ly/FvoKe BTW sRGB calibration target = 80 nits. “
• “oh and here’s a Kodak guide on how to use a digital camera and gray card as an ad-hoc nit estimator: http://bit.ly/1IMLK3“

You be the judge

I titled this blog, “MM07, 60 Nits, One Nit-picker and you” and now I ask you, am I just nitpicking? I ask you to make that decision for yourself.  I have described a few things:

• First, MM07 test requires a 60 nit or higher display brightness. To maximize battery life benchmarks, systems are set at the minimum allowable 60 nit level. This setting is thereby integrated into this battery life benchmark that is then used in consumer advertisings.
• Secondly, worst case, the display brightness of many electronics inside my home at my family’s “comfort setting” is 2.58X more than the MM07 nit setting requirement. Based on the small set of notebooks I tested, MM07’s 60 nits equated to around 20-30% of the max notebook brightness. Your mileage will vary, maybe.
• Third, my unscientific querying last week says many classes of users crank their screen beyond 61% and many at max brightness. Yes, I said max. Some self-selected a lower brightness setting to conserve battery life.

Nuff said, you be the judge.   Agree, disagree, I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

(1) MobileMark 2007 White Paper, March 2008, Revision 1.0. 4.2.1 “Display brightness”

Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

I kindly asked the PR team to provide me with some of the reviews and headlines, and it appears that many agree with our assessments.

Here are the highlights, and I recommend visiting the sites to get the full download.  I have separated the reviews into the following segments: Blu-ray experience, HD video capabilities, gaming experience, content creation capabilities, and AMD and HP’s new category creation:

Blu-ray Experience

ComputerShopper: HP Pavilion dv2-1030us, John Delaney

• “We were also impressed with the system’s video-handling prowess; the ATI graphics did a good job of delivering smooth playback of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest on Blu-ray.”

SlashGear: HP dv2 and Blu-ray preview, Steven Grady

• “The dv2 is running Vista Home Premium, and plays Blu-ray movies beautifully on the display. The dv2 has an HDMI port for making it easy to use the dv2 as your home Blu-ray player with your HDMI television…”

CrunchGear: HP’s new external Blu-ray driver is sleek as hell, Devin Coldeway

• “The Blu-ray drive that will be coming with the HP dv2 “ultra-slim” notebook is looking really nice. It’s shiny, gorgeous, and incredibly thin. I thought I better get some pictures of this sexy accessory up so you guys know how HP rolls with this new stylish line of not-netbooks-but-not-notebooks.”

HD Video Capabilities

Notebookreview.com: HP Pavilion dv2 Review, Jerry Jackson

• “If you want to connect your laptop to your HDTV and watch 1080p video, the dv2 can handle it.”

JKOntherun.com: HP dv2 on a Road Trip: First Impressions, Kevin Tofel

• “I mentioned HD video playback before. I decided to download and view some 720p content before closing out this post. Hitting up the Microsoft WMV HD Content Showcase, I downloaded the “Super Speedway” video; something I wouldn’t even bother doing with a netbook. I expected playback to be superb and the dv2 didn’t disappoint. It was a joy to watch: I couldn’t detect any stutter or dropped frames.”

JKOntherun.com: HPdv2 Battery Tests Illustrate Compromise of Power vs. Performance, Kevin Tofel

• “Of course, the intent and design of this device is to do just that: you can’t effectively enjoy high quality video on a netbook. And while you can watch high-def media on other notebooks at this price, they’ll generally weigh more and/or have a bigger footprint.”

Gaming Experience

TGDaily: The netbook-killing HP dv2, Rob Enderle

• “The product feels high quality and the graphics performance exceeds anything else short of a gaming box that I’ve had in this year.”

Notebooks.com: HP Pavilion dv2 Unboxed, First Impressions, Xavier Lanier

• “the Pavilion dv2 is the first notebook that’s based on AMD’s Yukon platform, which combines an Athlon Neo processor with ATI Mobility Radeon HD3410 graphics. The result is a computer that can be used to watch high-definition video and handle some 3D games.”

SlashGear: HP dv2 and Blu-ray preview, Steven Grady

• “it has been promised to me that the dv2 will game with the best of them, thanks to the ATI graphics card. Fear 2, Call of Duty: World at War and others are said to run amazingly well on this tiny device, showing the capability of a good GPU paired with a less power-intensive processor.”

Notebooks.com: HP Pavilion dv2 Game Demo: Call of Duty World at War, Xavier Lanier

• “The HP Pavilion dv2 is an ultraportable notebook that’s affordable, but has enough graphics muscle that users can enjoy video games….”

Content Creation Capabilities

PC Magazine: HP Pavilion dv2 (1030us), Cisco Cheng

• “So how did the Neo processor fare against the Atom in actual testing? The dv2, with its Neo processor, showed its muscle in video encoding tests, outperforming the Atom-powered Asus 1000HE by 20 seconds and the Mini 12 by 1 minute, 18 seconds. It was the only one that completed Photoshop CS4 tests, finishing in 1 minute 49 seconds (the Dell 12 did not complete the test and the 1000HE’s resolution was too low to even run the test.”
• “In terms of raw horsepower, the Neo clearly has an advantage over Atom.”

Notebookreview.com: HP Pavilion dv2 Review, Jerry Jackson

• “If you want to edit high-resolution images in Photoshop while you’re on vacation, the dv2 can handle it.”

ComputerShopper: HP Pavilion dv2-1030us, John Delaney

• “Compared with other netbooks, the dv2 performed brilliantly, scoring a class-leading 1,261 on our Cinebench 10 benchmark, while the Atom-based Dell Inspiron Mini 12 and Asus N10Jc came in at 718 and 774, respectively.”

Creating the New Affordable Ultrathin Category

PC World: Netbook or Ultraportable: Which is Best for the Job?, James Martin

• “DV2 blurs the lines between netbook and ultraportable more than most portable computers. That’s just $120 more than a high-end HP Mini 2140 netbook, which can’t compare to the dv2’s more robust specs.”

TechNewsWorld: The Death and Rebirth of Silicon Valley, Rob Enderle

• “By creating a hybrid between a netbook and a notebook, the DV2 falls into an interesting product gap. It isn’t as small as a netbook, it is vastly less expensive than a small notebook, it has more performance than many notebooks have (let alone netbooks) and it still costs under US$750.”

JKOntherun.com: HP dv2 Runs the CrystalMark Benchmark Gauntlet, Kevin Tofel

• “The AMD Neo platform is squarely targeted between the netbook market and traditional notebooks. You can get traditional notebook performance in a near-netbook sized package: call it a more portable package than a standard notebook, but not as anemic as a netbook.”

ZDNet: HP Pavilion dv2: Netbook or Notebook?, Jennifer Bergen

• “If Goldilocks was in the market for a laptop, she might pick the new HP Pavilion dv2. It’s not too big, and not too small. It sits between the large and expensive notebooks, and the small-screened netbooks – it’s just right.”

TGDaily: The netbook-killing HP dv2, Rob Enderle

• “As it was designed to be, this is a product that falls within the price range of netbooks and provides capabilities that exceed many $2000 products.”

Notebookreview.com: HP Pavilion dv2 Review, Jerry Jackson

• “The HP Pavilion dv2 satisfies an important need that low-cost netbooks never could.”

Tom’s Hardware: HP Launches Pavilion dv2 Notebook for $749, Jane McEntergart

• “At $749 it’s more expensive than a netbook and more in the range of an ultra portable; a great option for those who’ve realized that a netbook won’t cut it when it comes to anything more than classes, business trips, Facebook or browsing.”

The feedback wasn’t perfect, and that’s expected, as some raised points of question about the dv2’s battery life and fan.

So, all in all, a very good showing for the HP dv2 in regards to the Blu-ray experience, HD video capability, gaming experience, and content creation capabilities; all in a new category created by AMD and HP. The affordable ultrathin. And it’s nice to know that we weren’t the only ones extolling the virtues of the dv2.  The best part about it is that AMD’s ultrathin platform roadmap only begins here, and it even gets better, in the form of the “Congo” platform planned for release in 2H09.  I will see you then!

Note: Blu-ray is optional

Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

Let me tell you about that.

I met up with AMD during my tenure at Compaq Computer Corp. starting in 1995. Back then, lots of PCs sold for as much as $2,000 and the idea of notebooks for consumers instead of just business people was new. AMD helped change the entire landscape on both those fronts and the market has never been the same.

I also fondly recall loving the ATI Rage^TM Pro graphics card. In fact it was at that time that Compaq actually soldered the ATI Rage Pro engine onto the motherboard [it was in fact the first motherboard-resident AGP graphics chip]. Soldering anything on a mobo back in the day was a huge commitment and vote of confidence.

In late 2000, I joined AMD and have called it home ever since.

I admire AMD for a lot of things, but three things come top of mind:

1. Integrity, the highest levels.

2. Putting customers first, sometimes seemingly at its own peril.

3. Defying the pundits and “just doing it”

#1 and #2 are reasonably self-explanatory so I will drill down into #3.  I will provide the “dialogue” as people may have heard it play-out many times before:

• 1990 Pundit: “You have the 386 mask set, but not the microcode. No way can you make a 386.”

But AMD did it.

• 1992 Pundit: “You don’t have the 486 mask set or the microcode. No way can you make a 486.”

But AMD did it.

• 1997 Pundit: “You have relied on Intel’s infrastructure this whole time so no way you can make a 7^th generation CPU with an AMD-based motherboard infrastructure. You are dead.”

But AMD did it.

• 1999 Pundit: “New and proprietary instruction sets from massive companies are the way to go. You are nuts if you think you can drive a 64-bit instruction set by yourselves. You will be dead.”

But AMD did it.

• 2003 Pundit: “No way you can get into the datacenter. You are just a consumer desktop CPU company. Get back in your box.”

But AMD did it.

• 2007 Pundit: “You’ve lost graphics technology leadership and you won’t ever get it back. The competition is too tough.”

But AMD did it.

So I hope I refreshed your memory banks on what pundits may have said, how AMD said “we can” and how AMD “just did it”.  I want to highlight that we didn’t do anything on our own without the support of our customers, their customers, and technology and infrastructure partners.

I am excited about AMD, our employees, and our future.  I am excited about what we plan to bring to our customers on cloud server computing and media-rich consumer usage models. Pundits will take shots and that’s okay, as it tends to motivate us and enhance the sweetness of our successes in the end.

Pundits laughed when Kennedy set his challenge to send a man to the moon and return him safely by the end of the 1960s. We like our moon-shots at AMD, too, and surprising the pundits again and again.

AMD, happy 40^th and I promise I will keep promoting the “we can” attitude and we’ll just do it.

Note: Nigel Dessau, CMO and SVP at AMD is also providing his unique blog perspective on the 40th anniversary here.

Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

Can an ultrathin notebook be sophisticated, simple, and not cost an arm and a leg?  After using the new HP Pavilion dv2 for a few months, I would say, “yes”.  Since I did my first blog on it back in January I even found some new tricks with the HP dv2.  I was also amazed at how many ways the dv2 exceeded some of the specifications outlined in my “My Perfect Mini-Notebook”.  Finally, I was surprised how much more I could do with the dv2 when compared to some of the pricey $2,000 ultraportables.

HP dv2 (.9" thin) next to BlackBerry Bold

For The Record

I have a mixed family of systems from many manufacturers.  I use these to help with my day job. (No, I don’t blog or tweet for a living. J ) I also want to say that I have been immensely impressed with many of those $2,000 ultraportables on certain usage models like basic couch web surfing, writing emails, and social media sites.  Finally, I am not a mainstream user; I am a media geek and a mid-range gamer.  I do many things most non-geeks won’t do.

HD Video

• Blu-ray: My dv2 came with the optional Blu-ray drive.  It’s simple; plug the drive into one of the 3 USB ports, pop in a movie, the HP player pops up, and watch it. Some of the pricey ultraportables don’t even support Blu-ray or come at an immense price adder.

Blu-ray drive next to a Blu-ray case

• HD video off hard drive: I wrote earlier on the fun and implications of the new breed of inexpensive HD palmcorders.  Whether it’s the Kodak Zi6 or the Flip Mino HD, which capture video at 720P, or the Sony Webbie, which captures video at 1080, I can play these files back flawlessly on my dv2.*  I use Cyberlink 8 playback these files and my CPU utilization is around 35%.  In my personal experience at home with one of my ultraportables, CPU utilization sometimes ran as high as 75%.

Inexpensive HD Palmcorders at 720P or 1080P under $200

TV Connection

• Single HDMI cable: I connected my dv2 to my TV and got digital video and digital audio.  Why?  My family and I like to watch Blu-ray movies and Hulu together on a 60″ display, not 12″.  Many advanced users are doing this today and our research says more and more people are doing this.  Why?  It’s one cable and they can get content on their PC they can’t get on their TV.  Many of the current HDTV models even feature an HDMI port on the side panel to facilitate this usage model.

HP dv2's HDMI port for one cable digital video and audio

To accomplish this on some of the pricey ultraportables, a user could be required to buy additional cables and adapters, increasing cost and difficulty to setup.  Would your wife prefer one cable or five cables in the living room? 

Real Games

• ATI Radeon ^TM HD 3410 graphics: It’s generally understood that typical netbooks cannot play “real” J games well, and some say they aren’t intended to.  The dv2 can because it has discrete graphics that you might expect to find in a larger, more expensive notebook.  Not only could I play mainstream games well like WOW and Spore, but I could also play first-person-shooter PC games like Left 4 Dead and Call of Duty 4, albeit at lower settings than I could on an ATI Radeon^TM HD 4000 Series card.  The fact that I can even play these games is impressive.  Some of the pricey ultraportables have Intel integrated graphics that may struggle to effectively play real games at a level I prefer to play.   Ian McNaughton will be covering gaming and the dv2 in depth in a later blog.

3G Connectivity

• Integrated 3G: My HP dv2 came with 3G support capabilities, built-in!  All I needed to do was remove the battery, plug in my AT&T SIM card, run HP connection manager to authorize my card (one click) with AT&T, and I was surfing in my car (while my wife was driving, of course). Alternatively, with some of these pricey ultraportables, I needed to plug in a relatively large external dongle into the side USB port.

HP dv2's Built-in 3G

The alternative 3 G dongle, NOT Built-In

Memory Card Connectivity

• SD card: The dv2 has a built-in memory card slot for devices like digital cameras and video cameras.  It supports SD, MMC, MS/Pro, and xD.  I take my pictures and videos, pull out the SD card from my digital still camera or video camera, and transfer it to the dv2.  With some of the pricey ultraportables, you might need to buy an external SD card reader. By providing a built-in card reader at no extra cost, the dv2 may be able to save you time and money.

HP dv2's built-in memory reader

I like my expensive ultraportable for basic couch web surfing, writing emails, and social media sites.  For more sophisticated tasks, I prefer my HP dv2 ultrathin notebook over my expensive ultraportable.   It’s sophisticated in that it I can play HD videos and Blu-ray movies, play “real” games, and connect with 3G, yet it is simple enough to quickly connect what I want, when I want it, helping me save me time, hassle and even money.  Oh yeah, and did I mention that you may even be able to buy two HP dv2’s and some Blu-ray movies for the price of one of those expensive ultraportables?

* Standard HP dv2 screen resolution is 1280 x 800; 1080p playback is possible when connected to an external 1080p display.

I can assure you that no devious plot exists to mislead you. It really comes down to three simple factors.

#1: Measurements are best case: Like a car’s “highway miles per gallon” which gauges the best case (cruising at a sustained speed for an extended period without stop-and-go driving), notebook battery life is typically based on MobileMark® 2007. This benchmark primarily measures battery life while the notebook is doing nothing – not even wirelessly connecting to the Internet. A “city-driving” equivalent of notebook battery life doesn’t exist…yet.

#2: Different strokes for different folks: Notebook users are different; we all use notebooks differently, and therefore will see different battery durations.  Some watch HD web videos on YouTube, some may just do email, and some play more games than others. ALL which will mean varying battery life.  You can see this data from AMD here that shows the phenomenon.  This even shows that battery life under system use can even vary by component manufacturer.

#3: Battery life varies over time: The longer you own your notebook, use it, charge, and recharge, over and over again, the more the battery loses its effectiveness.  So theoretically, your longest battery life will be on the first day you crack open the packaging.  See all the people selling new batteries for old notebooks?  Some even say, battery life is variable with heat.

So what should a consumer like you do?

• Grade battery life on a “curve”, let’s say 60%. If the label says 10 hours, my guess is it’s probably only about 6 hours in real use.  (UPDATE: this isn’t always linear, so be very careful with this.)
• Ask your retailer and systems providers to provide the “city miles per gallon” or using the tried and tested cellphone analogy, “talk-time”. They all have web sites and when all else fails, you can ask them over Twitter.

I may have not added back 40% of your battery life, but hopefully you know why you only get 60% of it!

(This blog was originally published at the Technologizer web site. Updated with full blog June 8, 2009.)

It has been nearly two weeks since AMD engaged the community to ask for their feedback on how the industry should evolve notebook battery life metrics. I have received many questions on where folks can send their feedback and follow the discussion.

Below I have listed some key destinations for discussion.

AMD Blogs

• Nigel Dessau’s high-level notebook battery life blog : Objects in the Toolbar May Be Further Away Than They Seem
• Hal Speed’s detailed notebook battery life blog: There has to be a Better Way

Press and Community Discussions (sampling)

• Slashdot: AMD: ‘we’re not entirely honest’ about batteries
• Engadget: AMD proposes new laptop battery life metrics, Intel is like “whatevs”
• TweakTown: AMD wants to talk battery life with Intel
• The Inquirer: Intel: consumers not bright enough for discussion
• Chris Brogan: An Important Conversation About Conversations
• Icrontic: A Look at AMD’s daring Social media Strategy
• Hot Hardware: Why Are Notebook Batteries So Misleading?
• Wall Street Journal: AMD: Why No One Believes Estimates for Laptop Battery Life
• Tom’s Hardware: AMD: Let’s Revamp Laptop Battery Metrics
• PC Pro: AMD admits industry “not entirely honest” about battery life
• GadgetSteria: “We Lie so you’ll buy our products”
• Notebooks.com: Time for More Battery Life Metrics
• PC Authority: AMD: ‘we are not being entirely honest’ about battery life
• InformationWeek: AMD Proposes Better Battery Life Tests
• Technology Blog: AMD Wants to Revise Laptop Battery Metrics
• TechSpot: AMD calls for new battery measurement standard
• IT Pro: AMD executive admits the industry is “not entirely honest” on the subject of battery life
• Fudzilla: AMD tries to spark a “false battery-life” discussion. Intel doesn’t.
• Thinkpads: AMD Calls for new battery life standards
• The Independent: Why don’t batteries last as long as they’re supposed to?
• Uber.la: Battery Life: Does Anybody Really Care What Time It Is? – Until Their Laptop Goes Black?

Or, of course, you can use Twitter, but be sure to use the #batterylife hashtag so people can easily follow.  You can also follow the “notebook or laptop battery life” discussion on Twitter here.

In the next few weeks we will be organizing all of the inputs and will share these with you in an organized fashion. We will also be soliciting feedback from our customers. Until then, keep the conversation going! Unlike other major technology companies, we believe that blogs are good forums to have these conversations, and gauging from your responses, I think a great many of you agree.

Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

I do a lot of hands-on research on smartphones. I do this for two reasons. First, I believe they are fast becoming one of the prevalent cloud clients, and second, they are fast becoming a popular device to consume video. AMD obviously is involved in building the cloud with the AMD Opteron^TM Processors but also conversion to make a video smartphone-friendly can take a tremendous amount of compute power, and ATI Radeon ^TM HD 4800 series graphics and AMD Phenom ^TM II X4 processors do those conversions quite well.

One smartphone element that needs some more discussion is the value of battery life figures that one finds at the point of purchase or research. Whether it’s the iPhone, Blackberry Bold, Blackberry Storm, or Nokia N96, there initially appears to be variability between claims, tests, and personal usage. Let’s take a look at each phone and see if that’s the case.

iPhone

Apple’s web site lists the following for the 3G iPhone:

• Talk time: up to 5 hours on 3G, 10 hours on 2G
• Standby time: up to 300 hours
• Internet use: up to 5 hours on 3G, 6 hours on WiFi
• Video playback: Up to 7 hours
• Audio playback: Up to 24 hours

The birdseed print states that the testing was done with pre-production handsets back in June, 2008. I also found the methodology interesting in that different features were sometimes toggled on/off during the tests: WiFi association, WiFi “ask to join networks”, call forwarding, and auto-brightness.

Anandtech did their own testing and reported the following battery life for the 3G iPhone:

• Talk time: 4 hours 44 mins (284 mins) on 3G; 6 hours 4 mins (364 mins) on EDGE
• Web browsing: 3 hours 17 mins (197 minutes) on 3G; 6 hours, 40 mins (400 minutes) on WiFi; 4 hours and 3 mins (243 minutes) on EDGE

Anandtech’s number confirmed and disputed some of the numbers listed by Apple, but then again they may not have tested exactly the same way. I am impressed by Apple’s depth and transparency of information as you will soon see why…

Blackberry Bold

RIM’s web site lists the following for the Bold:

• Talk time: 4 hours, 30 mins
• Standby time: 324 hours (13.5 days)

I found it interesting that there were no disclaimers evident anywhere on the web site and there were no battery life scores for internet, video or audio.

I looked long and hard and found some testing reviews by Boy Genius and Asian One that listed what I would describe as good “compilation battery remarks”, but couldn’t find as detailed a review as Anandtech had for the iPhone.

BoyGenius commented that their testing had included:

• 300-500 emails a day,
• one hour of web surfing over 3G,
• Wi-Fi usually turned on, Bluetooth turned off,
• JiveTalk connected, and around one hour of phone calling (although they admitted that they didn’t normally use the BlackBerry as a phone), and that their test phone’s battery lasted from 9AM until 4:30AM (or 7 ½ hours).

The talk time figure is around what I get, but I would like to see more granularity by usage model with more details around specific usages around internet use and video playback.

Blackberry Storm

RIM’s web site lists the following for the Storm:

• Talk time: 6 hours
• Standby time: 356 hours (15 days)

As with the Bold, I also found it interesting on the Storm that there were no disclaimers evident anywhere and again there were no battery life scores for internet, video or audio.

CNet reported the following test results for the Storm:

• Talk time: 7 hours
• Music: 14 hours, 45 mins

As with the Bold, the Storm’s talk time figure is around what I get, but I would like to see more granularity by usage model with more details around specific usages around internet use and video playback.

Nokia N96

Nokia’s web site lists the following for the Nokia N96:

• Talk time: up to 150 / 220 minutes (WCDMA / GSM)
• Stand-by time: up to 8 / 9 days (WCDMA / GSM)
• Video playback: up to 5 hours (offline mode)
• Music playback: up to 14 hours (offline mode)

There is an asterisk that disclaims that “Operation times may vary depending on radio access technology, used operator network configuration and usage.”

All About Symbian reported the following activities they could complete in 16.5 hours on the N96 on one charge:

• YouTube Videos: approx 1 Hour playing using the S60 browser through 3.5G
• General Web Surfing: approx 1 Hour using both WiFi and 3.5G
• Mucking about with settings and navigating menus, etc.: approx 1 hour
• Setup Profimail and synced my IMAP account, 3,200 Emails, approx 400MB using WiFi, 3.5G and GPRS
• Downloaded the AAS Podcast, approx 20MB directly on the N96, and played the file using a stereo Bluetooth headset

End users may even find this test methodology the most valuable in that it shows a “day in a life” given a particular charge. This data is impossible to compare against Nokia’s corporate website, but it was nice that Nokia would, like Apple, provide video and music playback numbers. I would like to see Nokia commit to an internet battery life figure.

Conclusions

So what can we take away from this mash-up of smartphone battery life figures? First, there are some significant variances from vendor to vendor in the terminology and the information depth and transparency provided. Secondly, when a third-party review was conducted, it could sometimes be compared to the manufacturer’s specs, sometimes not. In some cases, the third-party review supported the claim, sometimes not. But that could be attributed to a difference in methodology. Net-net, not a whole lot of consistency exists with audio, video and internet battery life scoring.

My single biggest positive takeaway was the consistency with almost everyone on the usage and application of “talk time” and “standby time.” While not as cool as “internet battery” life, if you believe that talking is the primary use for your smartphone, this is good for the consumer.

What do you think about smartphone battery life marks? How is their accuracy and value?

Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

Technorati Profile.

(As seen at Notebooks.com and Dell’s Digital Nomads)

Cloud computing is rising in interest even during these uncertain world economic times and AMD is taking an important leadership role in the creation of the cloud. And in opinion, smartphones are increasingly becoming one of the most important cloud clients. What makes smartphones cloud-unique is their portability and versatility. One minute a phone, the next a web browser, the next a video broadcast client. After blogging on the Android G1 and the BlackBerry Storm, and as co-owner of an iPhone (wife’s), people asked me why I didn’t blog on my personal workhorse, the BlackBerry Bold. Well, I aim to please and here it is.

(L to R: iPod touch, BlackBerry Storm, BlackBerry Bold, Android G1)

Net-net, the Blackberry Bold is my preferred device for work and also serves many good consumer functions as well. At work, I live off of email messaging, then the web, then phone functionality, and the Bold hits high marks on all fronts.

What I Like

• Email Messaging: If you have Blackberry Enterprise Server, the Bold becomes the Godzilla of messaging. Many times I will get email on my Blackberry before it even hits my desktop. Spooky. You can also easily configure accounts from Yahoo Mail, GMail and Outlook. Fast and reliable, for work.

• Upgradeable storage and replaceable battery: Android G1, Storm, and Bold all have upgradable memory and replaceable battery. It’s kind of a pet peeve I have with the iPhone. Call me conservative, but I don’t like the thought of being on a long business trip and not have a spare battery. I carry a 16GB microSD in an externally accessible memory slot. No need to remove batteries, just a side door. It fits my documents, videos, and music quite well and theoretically limitless with every added card.

MicroSD door closed

MicroSD door open

• MS Office File Support: Built-in and free, you can download, save, view, and even edit the latest PowerPoint, Word, and Excel files. Excel wasn’t that useful given column width issues, but Word and especially PowerPoint was impressive. For an added fee, you can even create these documents.

• Rock solid: The Storm was solid physically, but the Bold is rock-solid. I have dropped it on every axis, 25x with no issues. Whenever I dropped my Pearl, I would get a SIM card error or the battery would pop out. Drop the Bold… pick it up where you left off. I suspect my Bold could easily survive a 5′ drop onto its screen. Would you say that for your iPhone?

From an application stability standpoint, I only get lockups or issues on some of the more sophisticated video streaming apps like Qik, but for the other 99.9% of the time, rock solid.

• Multitasking & Copy Paste: Unlike some phones, the Bold can multitask. If you are anything like me, you are bouncing between the phone, Google maps, the browser, email, address book, and want to go back at the stage where you left off, not start the app over again.

I can copy and paste literally between EVERY application on the Bold and its add-on apps. Very impressive and a huge time-saver.

• Screen: This display is 480×320 pixels and strikingly crisp. It’s only about half the size of an iPhone, but then again it’s 100% screen, and doesn’t share it with a keyboard. The only situation I want more screen is for videos, some web sites, and maybe some PowerPoint.

On web surfing, Bold makes up for the screen size with a very ingenious toggle. If you are on a web page that is wider than the page or the text too small, just press the “z” key and the browser reorients into column mode and you can see the web site much, much better. Press “z” again and it pops into page view mode. The trackball also lets you navigate web pages in 360 degree movement and magnify the area by clicking on it.

• Standard mini-USB port: Bold uses a standard mini-USB port and cable to charge and transfer data. I have a lot of gadgets and don’t have time for proprietary USB implementations. I can handle USB, mini-USB, and micro-USB, but have no time for Palm Centro’s or iPhone proprietary connectors.

• Digital camera: The Bold takes decent pictures at 2MP with 1600×1200 max resolution. The built-in flash is very bright, and I always get comments from envious iPhone owners wishing they had a flash. The Bold supports geo-tagging which uses the GPS capability to log the long/lat data to use with supported photo packages.

• Music player: Same as the Storm. I easily synched my iTunes playlists and all my non-DRM’d songs played. The album art also transferred which was a nice “extra” I didn’t expect. The speaker volume was unexpectedly loud, but not louder than the Storm.

• Video player and recorder: I am very impressed with the breadth of video formats supported; unlike other popular phones…. uh iPhone. The Bold supports DivX 4, DivX 5/6 is partially supported, XviD is partially supported, H.263, H.264, and WMV3 are supported. For me, it did play non-DRM’d video from my iPod and Nano with no alterations, very convenient. You can reconvert loads of video which can take advantage of four processor cores. I used an AMD Phenom TM X4 9950 quad core processor overclocked to 3.2Ghz (using AMD Fusion for Gaming utility) and was appreciating all four of those wonderful cores.¹

The video recorder function is awesome, but only in medium or high lighting. It records in .3gp format in low density quality, fine for streaming real-time to the internet or even emailing. I use Qik to real-time stream video to the internet.

Improvements I would like to See

• Faster web Java-script: Like the Storm, web surfing was fast on most sites until I hit java-script-laden sites, then the browser appeared to slow down. The default browser setting is “off” and if a site really needs Java-script to accomplish a major task, it asks you. My point of reference here is the iPhone and the Touch which has fast browsing with or without Java-script turned on.

• Improved popular applications: I can live without iPhone “Fart” or G1’s “Level” app, but not without a better functioning FaceBook and Twitter application. What a faux pas when compared to the iPhone. It has been months and would expect more from RIM. If iPhone ever got a physical keyboard and multitasking, I could be swayed. With that said, BlackBerry has some very good and differentiated applications like Qik for real-time video streaming, Flickr for photo uploads, SlingPlayer TV, YouVersion Bible and E*Trade Mobile Pro.

Summary

Today I prefer the Bold as my cloud workhorse to the alternatives (iPhone, Storm, Android G1) and has enough good consumer features to keep me happy and interested for the time being. RIM will need to improve web Java-script execution time and up the ante on the popular applications if they want folks to continue to cheer them on. With talk of iPhone’s improved multitasking, copy-paste, and video recorder functionality, I hope this will provide impetus for some improvements. If not, maybe the Palm Pre’.

I would love to hear from your experiences with the BlackBerry Bold.

¹ AMD’s PRODUCT WARRANTY DOES NOT COVER DAMAGES CAUSED BY OVERCLOCKING, EVEN WHEN OVERCLOCKING IS ENABLED VUA AMD SOFTWARE. THE AMD FUSION FOR GAMING UTILITY MAY DISABLE SECURITY / ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE, OR ADVERSELY AFFECT YOUR SYSTEM. REVIEW ACCOMPANYING DOCUMENTATION CAREFULLY BEFORE INSTALLING.

Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

]]> http://blogs.amd.com/patmoorhead/2009/02/17/blackberry-bold-my-mobile-cloud-workhorse/feed/ 1 http://blogs.amd.com/patmoorhead/2009/01/23/why-spore-may-look-so-poor-on-your-new-notebook/ http://blogs.amd.com/patmoorhead/2009/01/23/why-spore-may-look-so-poor-on-your-new-notebook/#comments Fri, 23 Jan 2009 08:26:00 +0000 Patrick Moorhead /patmoorhead/archive/2009/01/23/spore-game-quality-settings-notebook-netbook.aspx (Originally published at Notebooks.com)

Spore, the popular “casual” game from EA, has received as much sales and fanfare as it has controversy from its DRM policies. Spore sold 1M copies and 25M creations were created in its first 2 weeks so no one questions its popularity. But, does anyone question the quality of the visual experience between different notebook technologies? They should, as there are big differences that could really impact their enjoyment. One would expect that today on modern notebooks these differences wouldn’t exist but they definitely do.

Brian Henry, a software engineer in our Performance and Experience Lab, provided me with some data that I thought was interesting. He showed me a visual comparative analysis of Spore on two HP Pavilion dv5 notebooks, both with integrated graphics. One system was an AMD-based (“Puma”) and the other an Intel-based (Montevina). Interestingly, the Intel-based system demonstrated significant difference in Spore quality.

Here are the comparative screen-shots on “high” settings. You don’t need to have 20/20 vision to see there is a huge disparity.

Here is the Intel Centrino 2 (Montevina) system with Core 2 Duo CPU and GMA 4500MHD graphics (1):

Here is the AMD (“Puma”) system with a Turion™ X2 Ultra CPU and ATI Radeon™ 3200 graphics (2) :

Compare the water quality, shadows off the creatures, the grassy field dimensionality and the background fog elements (or lack thereof) between the two images.

The Intel game graphics performance and visual experience shown here on Spore is very consistent with what AMD, Nvidia and others in the tech press have been confirming for a years. And, just to list a few:

• Business Week: “Is Your PC a Graphics Wimp?”
• InformationWeek: “Intel Cites Graphics Problems In Centrino 2 Delay”
• Notebooks.com: “AMD vs. Intel Integrated Graphics Video”
• The Inquirer: “Intel’s G965 embedded graphics stink – official”
• NVIDIA video: “GeForce 7 series Motherboard GPU”
• AMD video: “AMD Phenom X3 + AMD 780 Gaming Demo”

Ironically, this is a phenomenon that has everything to do with the balance of the total platform (CPU-GPU-Chipset) versus the performance of one specific component. Let me explain in a little more detail. The Puma platform combined the new code-name “Griffin” CPU with the new integrated AMD M780G chipset that included the integrated ATI Radeon 3200 graphics. The M780G chipset’s graphics is a 55nm shrink of a full desktop Radeon 2000 Series graphics, which to me explains the awesome performance and quality. It also provides DX10, native DVI, HDMI and HDCP. The chipset and CPU and graphics are married together and provide sophisticated power management capabilities with ATI PowerPlay, ^TM, AMD Cool ‘n ‘ Quiet ^TM Technology, and Display Cache. In my opinion, the combined performance, quality, display, and power management capabilities are a requirement for a good mobile casual gaming experience.

Net-net, even when it comes to casual games like Spore, The Sims, or even Sim City, buyer beware: there can be major differences in the experience with these games on a notebook–differences not changed by a cutesy TV jingle. The industry (of which I am a part) has thus far failed to develop, deliver, and educate end-users on these differences. To me, playing Spore at high-quality would be the low bar game experience for a notebook you just plowed $699 to $1,599 into.

If you play casual games on notebooks, I recommend looking for notebooks with ATI Radeon ^TM branded graphics numbered 3200 and above and with AMD Turion ™ processors.

If you “beg to differ” or have your own casual game nightmare I would like to hear from you.

Note: This blog was originally published on notebooks.com here.

1) AMD notebook specs: HP Pavilion dv5z, BIOS F.05 – 6/18/2008, AMD Turion Ultra ZM-82, DDR2-800 2GB (2 X 1GB) RAM, ATI Radeon HD 3200 Graphics , 7.1.1.747 VBIOS, Seagate ST9100824AS hard drive, high Spore settings.

2) Intel notebook spec: HP Pavilion dv5z (CORR:dv5t), BIOS F.05 – 6/8/2008, Intel Core 2 Duo CPU P8400, DDR2-800 2GB (2 X 1GB) RAM, Mobile Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD, 7.15.10.1502 VBIOS, Seagate- ST9100824AS hard drive, high Spore settings..

Note: No sponsorship with EA is implied in this blog.

Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

Low-priced, 720P HD pocket camcorders (palmcorders) are gaining market momentum and I believe consumers are drawn to the value proposition of low cost, high quality, portable, and convenient video capture and playback. As these devices proliferate, it leaves me contemplating how consumers will respond when they discover just how many of these notebooks or netbooks can’t effectively play back that content. Whether or not low end notebooks or netbooks were designed to do this isn’t relevant, as a recent NPD blog posting (citing new research) may suggest.

The Cameras

Let’s start with the cameras. I evaluated three different models, Flip MinoHD ($179), Kodak Zi6 ($148), and the Aiptek 1080 ($159). These cameras capture HD video at 720P resolution and 30-60 fps at around 10-12Mbps, which I consider mid-level HD video. Compare this to your typical Blu-ray movie peaking between 20 to 40 Mbps.

Compared to higher end HD camcorders priced into the $1,000s, many features have been removed like branded lenses, large magnification, optical image stabilization, night vision and auto-focus, just to name a few.  In comparing between HD pocket camcorders, the differences are found in battery life, image capture quality, external display size, memory upgradability, and physical size.

Pervasiveness

To quickly gauge pervasiveness in the U.S., I sometimes use Best Buy shelving as a proxy indicator. In my last trip to my local Best Buy, these new class of cameras had 7 slots of shelf space, which is significant. Some models that use the lowest-cost clamshell packaging are even sold at Wal-Mart and Target next to $20 JPEG picture key chains and USB flash drives. In addition, many influential bloggers are picking up on these new HD cameras, which is sometimes a good indicator of future popularity. Amazon.com is an “OK” indicator and these new HD palmcorders are relatively high in sales rank.

The Problem

As I see it, the problem is simple…. videos from these new cheap cameras won’t play well on many of the new inexpensive net/notebooks. If new research from the NPD blog is a future indicator, most consumers won’t know the capability tradeoffs between netbooks, low end notebooks and full capability (HD capable) notebooks. This could spell some real disappointment for users who may expect decent playback. In my testing on a typical netbook or real low end notebook, I get around 7 fps – close to a slide show. Think of it this way – the HD palmcorder is smaller and cheaper than any netbook. Is it logical to assume the consumer will know that the video from the palmcorder can’t play on the bigger, more expensive netbook?

Different Solution Approaches

I suggest there are a few different ways that OEMs can solve these problems. They can:

1)    Provide greater CPU power to decode the 720P HD video.  This may also increase the heat, the fan noise and lower the battery life as well. (High end dual core CPU)

2)    Provide an effective graphics solution that efficiently decodes, filters, and color corrects the image. (i.e: AMD 780G, ATI Mobility Radeon™3000, and competing solutions)

3)    Provide a special decode chip that’s expensive and bounded to specific software. (i.e: discrete accelerator)

AMD’s Approach

Our approach is simple: apply the most efficient silicon to the challenge.  In this usage scenario, the most efficient way is to decode the HD video with the GPU. Inside the GPU are special silicon blocks and special quality filters that are optimized for this function. We call this our UVD or Unified Video Decoder. It accelerates decoding of VC-1, H.264, and MPEG2 video and offloads the CPU for other tasks. UVD also applies quality filters against the video to make it look better, when using a supported player like Cyberlink 8. The result is amazing.  Very low CPU utilization, keeping the system cool and very high quality image thanks to the filters provided by ATI Avivo™ technology.

Implications

If you accept that users will increase their consumption of HD video on their notebooks, disappointment for many will follow with low, ~7 fps HD experience or apply an appropriate GPU to execute the task. Another alternative is to invest resources educating consumers on the difference in capabilities between netbooks, low end notebooks, and fully capable notebooks. With the economy and budgets the way they are, I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

Real-World Efficiency in Action

I want to highlight my favorite example. The new HP dv2 notebook (based on AMD’s “Yukon” platform technology for ultrathin notebooks) uses a superscalar AMD Athlon Neo ™ processor paired with ATI Radeon™ X1250 integrated graphics and optional ATI Radeon ™ HD 3410 discrete graphics to deliver not only full frame-rate HD video from these new HD palmcorders, but also higher end Blu-ray movies.

Conclusion

AMD has already anticipated the importance of HD video in multiple forms: low cost HD pocket camcorders discussed above, Blu-ray movie capabilities, and of course, some downloaded content.  And we have responded with technologies that are in-market today.  Big question remains: where does that leave netbook owners who expected their netbook to work with their even-smaller and less expensive HD palmcorder, even if that was “never the design intent”? It leaves them stranded on a non-HD island. Hopefully they have a second HD-capable PC at home, but if the NPD data is an indicator, they may not….

Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

]]> http://blogs.amd.com/patmoorhead/2009/01/22/the-significance-of-hd-palmcorders-to-netbook-and-notebook-design/feed/ 4 http://blogs.amd.com/patmoorhead/2009/01/06/the-magical-amd-yukon-based-hp-pavilion-dv2-ultrathin-notebook/ http://blogs.amd.com/patmoorhead/2009/01/06/the-magical-amd-yukon-based-hp-pavilion-dv2-ultrathin-notebook/#comments Tue, 06 Jan 2009 08:49:00 +0000 Patrick Moorhead /patmoorhead/archive/2009/01/06/amd-yukon-hp-pavilion-dv2-ultrathin-notebook-netbook-neo.aspx There has been a considerable amount of interest and debate surrounding mini-notebooks (aka “netbooks”), ultraportable notebooks and standard, full-size notebooks. Netbooks sure have come a long way since I first blogged on my experiences back in May. My first configuration had a 7” display at 840×480, 8GB storage, a tiny keyboard, Linux and was priced at $499. Netbooks have changed considerably since then and I think it is safe to say that “more” is what consumers demanded. It is commonplace now to find 10” display at 1024×600, 160GB storage, larger keyboard, Windows XP and priced from $389 to a whopping $789. I have tested now 9 netbooks and clearly see their plusses and minuses, and yes there are plusses. :>

In the background of all the netbook debate, AMD quietly announced the “Yukon” platform for ultrathin notebooks. We wanted to provide something different, something more. We wanted to provide a rich entertainment experience at an affordable price.

So when I got the chance to play with a real, live Yukon-based, HP Pavilion dv2 Entertainment ultrathin notebook, of course I jumped on it, and wanted to share those experiences with you. Because the unit is a prototype sample and isn’t expected to be released until March, I won’t be able to share everything with you, but I will share as much as I can.

The Basic Specs

• AMD Athlon ^TM Neo processor
• ATI Mobility Radeon ^TM HD 3410 discrete graphics with 1080P HD video capability and HDMI-out
• 12.1” LED BrightView display
• Optional external Blu-ray drive
• Integrated webcam
• Nearly full-size keyboard

UPDATE 3/26:

• 0 .93in thin and 3.8lb, varies by confuguration
• Hard drives up to 500GB

Beauty Shots

The HP dv2 looks great and feels like a real notebook. The attention to detail was obvious, in opposition to me who couldn’t get his head out of the way of the picture above.

Front

Back

Left





Right

I cannot share the exact size or weight specifications at this time, but I can show you proportionally how it compares size-wise to objects I am sure you are familiar with.

HP dv2 and U.S. dime

HP dv2 and a BlackBerry Bold

HP dv2 and 10" Notebook

HP dv2 and Mac Air

I had a very enjoyable web experience with the HP dv2 due to many reasons, but three really stand out: the 12.1 display at a nice resolution, a large trackpad with large buttons, and the large keyboard.

On displays, the higher the resolution, the more information you can fit on a screen. The larger the screen, the better you can actually see it. The dv2 combines a large 12.1 screen with 1280×800 resolution. When compared to netbooks, the viewable image area is 45% larger (versus 10”) or 80% larger (versus 8.9”).¹ Not only is the viewable image area larger, you can pack 67% more information on the screen.² That’s a big difference. The best way to describe it is to show the difference. I did a Google search on “AMD Turion”, went into “Shopping” and then into “Show grid view”.

12.1" HP dv2

10" Netbook

8.9" Netbook ; 10" Netbook ; 12.1" HB dv2

HD Movies and Video

High definition video is where the HP dv2 absolutely shines, as I not only did I play 1080P Blu-Ray movies with ease and quality, but also played HD video files from the new generation of pocket HD camcorders.

You can get an external Blu-ray drive as an option that’s about the same size as a Blu-ray case. I really liked the drive as it was very compact, matched the design and size of the notebook, and was powered by only one USB connector, unlike many others you can get in the after-market.

I also successfully played HD video files at full speed from three of the latest pocket HD camcorders. You can buy these cameras from multiple sources for as little as $119 and I see them slowly taking shelf space at retail. This usually is a proxy for real sales and popularity. I tested video files from the Kodak Zi6 (720/60), the Aiptek HD (1080/30), and the Flip MinoHD (720/30) using Cyberlink PowerDVD 8. The dv2 played 720 and 1080 video without a hitch, AND with low CPU utilization. As a comparison, the netbooks played the Zi6 720 HD video at approximately 7 frames per second, according to QuickTime’s Movie Inspector.

The final video clincher for me is the external HDMI port. Forget about 12.1”……. try 52” or 120”, just connect on HDMI cable and you have HD video and audio pumping into your compatible TV or receiver.

Gaming Experience

You would expect the dv2 with the ATI Radeon Mobility 3410 discrete graphics to chew through all the “casual” games like Sims 2, Lego Indiana Jones, and Spore at high settings…. and it did. Also, I tested higher end games like Fallout 3 and even Left 4 Dead. While I would recommend to a hard core gamer an ATI Radeon™ 4000 Series graphics and even multiple ATI Radeon graphics cards using ATI CrossFireX^TM technology for these intense games, I could play them relatively well at 1200×800 resolution at lower quality settings. I was really surprised how playable Left 4 Dead’s first scene was.³ Oh and watch out for the exploding bile man, he is a killer.

Summary

I cannot wait for the HP dv2 to be available in March of this year. It adds most of my personal must-have features in my “ideal ultrathin entertainment notebook”. Features like the 12.1” display, HD video playback, ability to play real games, HDMI out, and a larger keyboard. This supports all my ultrathin notebook needs for casual games, Blu-ray movies, HD video and of course, the web. Is this what you want to see in a Yukon-based ultrathin notebook? I would like to know.

Notes:

1) Resolution: 1280×800 pixels= 1,024,000 pixels; 1024×600 pixels= 614,400

2) Viewable image area: 16:9 (1.78:1) native mode. 12.1”= 61.95 sq in; 10”= 42.63 sq in.; 8.9”= 34.32 sq in.

3) Left 4 Dead at “low” settings.

Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

You would think that with the volume of controversy on the web last week that there was some juicy new development with Britney Spears instead of not-so-innocent little netbooks (aka mini-notebooks). But netbooks were indeed the controversy of the week following comments reportedly made by Intel executive Stu Pann (with whom I worked in the mid-90s) at the Raymond James IT Supply Chain Conference.

Like reports of Spears latest performance, the net burst open with opinion, conjecture, and even a bit of paranoia. Folks took sides and even attacked each other over these devices that are not a smartphone, not yet a notebook.

According to Brooke Crothers at CNET.com, who broke the story on Nov. 28, Stu reportedly said,

• “We originally thought Netbooks would be for emerging markets and younger kids, and there is some of that. It turns out the bulk of the Netbooks sold today are Western Europe, North America, and for people who just want to grab and go with a notebook.”
• “We view the Netbook as mostly incremental to our total available market.”
• “If you’ve ever used a Netbook and used a 10-inch screen size–it’s fine for an hour. It’s not something you’re going to use day in and day out.”

What ensued was a web melee as charged as a Chris Rocker YouTube video. Is it time to “Leave Netbooks Alone!”? Here’s a sample:

“Three Reasons Why Netbooks Just Aren’t Good Enough”

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/29/three-reasons-why-netbooks-just-arent-good-enough/all-comments

“Ten Reasons to Hate Netbooks”

http://www.t3.com/news/ten-reasons-to-hate-netbooks?=37421

“Why Netbooks Aren’t There Yet”

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/mowi/article.php/3787471/Why+Netbooks+Arent+There+Yet.htm

“Are Netbooks Headed the Way of the Dodo Bird?”

http://www.inquisitr.com/10131/are-netbooks-headed-the-way-of-the-dodo-bird/

“Sony claims Growing Netbook Market is ʽConfusingʼ ”

http://www.pcretailmag.com/news/30831/Sony-claims-growing-netbook-market-is-confusing

“Can Apple Save the Netbook?”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/28/AR2008112802449.html

“The Time is Ripe for a Rip by Netbook PC“

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/28/BU3E14BCHU.DTL

“Intel: netbooks are OK for an hour or so, that’s all”

http://www.jkontherun.com/2008/11/intel-netbooks.html

The interesting thing about the headlines is that when you actually read the full spectrum of articles, there were some very positive stories on netbooks that sat along with the negative ones. I have been on the receiving end of “less than accurate” headlines, so I can empathize.

The comments are as entertaining as the articles. A poster actually insinuates that one tech blogger has business ties to a competitive platform. Posters go back and forth describing why they love or hate netbooks. Others draw the iPhone/Touch into the debate saying netbooks AND notebooks stink and that Apple has the only true solution that meets everyone’s needs.

Whatever happens with Britney this week, I’m sure we’ll read of it ad nauseam in the entertainment pages. In the high-tech arena, netbooks are supplying all the drama. Does anyone outside the tech bubble really care? I don’t know, but would love to hear your comments on this “unfolding drama.”

Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

One great thing about blogs is that it is anyone and everyone’s chance to express their opinions, and I definitely have opinions. :> However, attacking one’s personal experiences is a bit like questioning free speech or democracy, but that’s exactly what makes Web 2.0 so exciting, everyone does it. So even when I get misquoted (never called it “useless”) in news stories based on what I said in a video concerning netbooks (should be hard to get wrong, I know), it generates discussion on the pros, cons, and on-the-road experiences of various netbook and mini-notebook designs. And after talking with various sources, it has already impacted future thinking, which is ultimately good for consumers, channels, OEMs, and ODM’s.

After testing seven netbooks (1) over the last five months, I now know what I want to see in future designs. This may not be the same for all 6,699,999,999 people on earth, but perhaps for a handful or two of likeminded people.

One caveat: I don’t expect a single mini-notebook design to be able to meet both my usage models:

• One inside the home focused on entertainment
• One outside the home focused on portability

My ideal at-home mini-notebook

I would like to carry my mini-notebook from room-to-room, plugging it in via HDMI to the next best available flat panel TV in the home. It would also be great to wirelessly stream 1080i video content off the web or my home server, which would benefit from HD graphics decode capability, wireless-N, and the capability to externally project at 1920×1080i resolutions. A simple, Gyration-style wireless remote should come standard to easily navigate content from 10’.

For web surfing, I would like the peace of mind that my system could support the next-generation of Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight technology, so it doesn’t become a paperweight in 6 months. This means the processor and native panel screen size must be up to par. Kids’ sites like Webkinz, the “World of Warcraft for kids,” today requires at least 1024×768 (tomorrow, maybe 1280×1024) internal panel sizes, and I need at least enough CPU performance to prevent pauses in the action. Try running Hulu HD, an Apple HD trailer, or iTunes HD TV shows on a netbook and you will know what I am talking about. A 13” panel would really optimize the viewing experience when not connected to an external display.

Battery life isn’t that important at home, but a couple hours would be reasonable, along with a retractable power cord. Weight isn’t as important unless you have difficulty carrying a few pounds room to room. If that’s the case, I would recommend a lifetime membership to Gold’s Gym. Hard drive size isn’t as important because I can leverage the hard drive space on my home server, but I still want at least 160GB for applications or DRM-based content loads in case I need to take it on a family trip.

On games, While I don’t expect to play Crysis on highest quality settings, I would expect to be able to play a game like Spore and the Sims 2 at 30 fps (frames per second) and decent quality settings.

My ideal away-from-home mini-notebook

Outside the home is all about portability features and much less about entertainment. Battery life, size and weight become absolutely paramount in defining an “acceptable” bar level of performance.

Like the “at home” netbook, I still want my version to be able to effectively run today’s and at least one future generation of web applications at resolutions no less than 1024×768. I don’t think that is asking too much, is it? Also, I could live with less than a 10” display.

Eight to nine hours battery life (which we know really means five to six browsing hours) would be optimal, as I probably wouldn’t even need to bring a power cord for the day. If I don’t need to bring my power cord with me every time I go outside the house, then having a larger, possibly less expensive and faster charging power brick would be OK. This only makes sense if it saves money on the BOM cost because those tiny power adapters are cool.

As I said, if I’m going to need to lug this everywhere, weight is a huge factor and at 1.5 to 2 lbs, this seems plenty light enough. Also, the closed height cannot exceed ¾”, which would make it thicker than a Mac Air, but thinner than the Asus Eee PC Surf 4G, allowing for easy storage in a glove box or even in my bedroom drawer.

On the WAN communications side, I want to insert my SIM chip into my mini-notebook from my BlackBerry and get the same speedy, instant-on communications features I have had for years. Sure, I could tether, but if you are redesigning something, why settle for “good enough?” I don’t want to wait for 4G to do something useful or fun and could live with 3G or even, gasp, EDGE. Why should I have to pay for service twice? I know Pat, grow up, this is business… :>

Hard drive storage is a bit more important with this design because I wouldn’t have speedy access to large amounts of quick storage on my home server. Sure, I could use one of those “in-the-cloud” services, but until someone invents a more reliable synchronization tool, I will keep my documents and iTunes and Movielink content on my system, snugly fit on a 320GB hard drive. I have been keeping my “life” on MyYahoo for years, including my contacts, notes, calendar, and email, but documents and content are different.

As I would want to use this in my car, GPS and high bandwidth Bluetooth must be standard. The GPS is obvious, as I could use it as a mapping tool. I would like to use the higher bandwidth Bluetooth to gain access to my car speaker system and also pump audible navigational signals as well. Of course, if this thing serves as the nerve center for my car, I need some type of standard docking mechanism that delivers power with ease of attachment so I can take it in the house when I am home from work. I know, I am asking a lot.

So that is what I want in my mini-notebook. A bit different I know, but did you expect anything less? And if you are wondering why I didn’t call it a “netbook”, well I want to more than just the “net.”

With that, I would like to hear your thoughts on what your dream mini-notebook would look like.

1) Asus Eee PC 4G, Asus Eee PC 900, MSI U100, Dell Inspiron 910, HP 2133, Geode reference design, Asus Eee PC 1000H.

Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

]]> http://blogs.amd.com/patmoorhead/2008/11/03/my-perfect-mini-notebook/feed/ 6 http://blogs.amd.com/patmoorhead/2008/10/31/guest-blogging-on-notebookscom/ http://blogs.amd.com/patmoorhead/2008/10/31/guest-blogging-on-notebookscom/#comments Fri, 31 Oct 2008 08:59:00 +0000 Patrick Moorhead /patmoorhead/archive/2008/10/31/guest-blog-on-notebooks-mini-notebook-netbook.aspx

For my next blog post we are going to branch out into guest blogging, which I think is a good idea and worth a try. Not as aggressive as our Computex 2008 experiment, but hey, everything doesn’t need to a level 10 risk to be valuable! :>

We received an invitation from Xavier Lanier who runs a website called www.notebooks.com. I think Notebooks.com serves as a solid resource for prospective buyers of notebook PCs. If you are ready to buy your next notebook PC, I recommend you check it out first for insight and perspective on the options, features and overall value in terms of price/performance of the wide variety of choices consumers have in the mobile computing market. I do want to emphasize that the guest blog opportunity is nothing more than an invitation to share an opinion and doesn’t represent or reflect a sponsorship or formal business relationship between AMD and www.notebooks.com.

“Mini-notebooks” and “netbooks” remain a very trendy topic in the space, one I’ve blogged about previously. Certainly worth a closer look. Here’s a short excerpt of my next blog you can find in its entirety here.

My Perfect Mini-Notebook

After testing seven netbooks (Asus  Eee PC 4G, Asus Eee PC 900, MSI U100, Dell Inspiron 910, HP 2133, Geode reference design, Asus Eee PC 1000H), over the last five months, I now know what I want to see in future designs.  This may not be the same for all 6,699,999,999 people on earth, but perhaps for a handful or two of like-minded people.

One caveat: I don’t expect a single mini-notebook design to be able to meet both my usage models:

* One inside the home focused on entertainment
* One outside the home focused on portability…….

Find the entire blog here.

Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

In my last blog, I covered my first experiences with T-Mobile’s G1 Android-based phone. I liked it, but could learn to love it if the promise of open-source software comes true. One of the drawbacks I saw on Day 1 was the lack of a video player to playback videos on the phone, and I would like to provide an update to that. I will provide the good news, the bad news, and then provide some suggestions on how to improve the situation.

The Good News

The good news is that on Day 2, one day after launch, a video player became available on Android Market, right off the phone. Android Market says “Video Player 1.0” comes from a chap named “Jeff Hamilton”, and states that, the “File should be MPEG4 or 3GPP with H.264 or H.263 video and MP3, AAC, or AMR audio. Videos need to be 480×352 or smaller to play back properly.” This is a good start, but not the whole equation.

The Bad News

The bad news is that if anyone has played around moving video onto mobile devices, there are a lot more variables you need to know to make the video play well. For example, video bit rate, profiles (ie baseline, simple), and frames per second are important. For the audio inside the video file, sample frequency, bit rate, and channels are key.

The Apple iPhone provides all this data. As an example, data from the iPhone’s technical specifications page clearly states:

“Video formats supported: H.264 video, up to 1.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Low-Complexity version of the H.264 Baseline Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; H.264 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Baseline Profile up to Level 3.0 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats .”

While to many, this sounds like gibberish, whoever wants to put their own content (not purchased from iTunes, like family videos) it gives you enough to work from.

The Android G1 didn’t have any of these detailed support statements, which provided a medium-sized challenge. :>

Some Suggestions

After some hunting on the internet and about 12 hours of my own testing this weekend, I found some interim solutions that I hope can help.

The first thing you need is a program out there that can convert video from one specification to another specification. For example, you want to take video from your digital camcorder and put it on your Android G1, you must change the format of the file and key specifications (listed above) inside the file. Software packages come in a wide range from consumer, to prosumer, and to professional versions, priced from free to $600, and everything in-between. I use Movavi Video Converter, Nero 8 Recoder/Vision, Pinnacle Studio, and sometimes Sony Vegas for tasks like this, but it’s your choice.

So below, please find what worked for me:

· Apple nano-optimized setting: If you have any videos already in iPod nano-optimized format, most of mine worked OK, but the quality wasn’t as good because the nano has a smaller 320×240 screen.

· IPod generic video down-scaled settings: Take that profile and reduce some of the quality settings: 426×240 pixels, progressive, MPEG4 L1, 350-600 Kbps, 30fps, AAC audio, 48 KHz.

· IPod Generation 5 video down-scaled settings: 426×240 pixels, progressive, MPEG4 L1, 300-900 kbps, 30fps, AAC audio 48 kHz.

· MPEG 4 home-made brew: .mp4 format, 480×320 pixels, MPEG 4 Simple profile, 384 kbps, 25 fps, AAC audio, 22050 sample frequency, 64 kbps bit rate.

· H.264 home-made brew: .mp4 format, 480×320 pixels, H.264 Baseline, 384 kbps, 25 fps, AAC audio, 22050 sample frequency, 64 kbps bit rate.

So there we have it, video on your Android G1. One thing I failed to mention here is that most of this video recoding requires a heavy-duty processor. Of all the packages I tried, all but one heavily taxed all four cores of my AMD Phenom ™ X4 9950 processor, some up to 100%. So don’t skimp on CPU performance, it matters on video encoding. Having moved from a dual core to quad core CPU configuration was one of the best upgrades I made at home.

I hope this is helpful and I would love to hear about your suggestions.

Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

It was Day 1 yesterday for the T-Mobile G1 Android phone and I wanted to share my early impressions of the device. 24 hours is NOT enough time to complete a full evaluation, as mobile devices like this are very personal and take months to fully explore and judge. But I think within 24 hours it is safe to say that you can do about 75% of an evaluation on its capabilities on that single day. My basis for comparison is the two phones I have used the most: the iPhone and the BlackBerry Pearl. While these phones aren’t exactly positioned the same, it is what I have used and you may have also.

G1 Android Plusses

• Size: I carry a BlackBerry Pearl for business and while the Android G1 larger; it is still in that size range to be carried comfortably in a pocket or even a front shirt pocket. (From R to L, BlackBerry Pearl, Android G1, iPod touch)

• Trackball: This rocks…completely. With one thumb, I could basically control every application. Using the trackball with Google StreetView was absolutely amazing.

• Back button: To the right of the trackball, it enhances one thumb control. Other popular phones require two hands to do most anything.
• QWERTY keyboard: Just slide the display out and you get a complete QWERTY keyboard, just like your computer except you use your two thumbs to type. I have above-average sized fingers and it worked well. I would have preferred higher-rise keys, but they work OK.

• High-quality, touch-screen: If this is what you get into, you have it. It lacks auto-orientation like the iPhone/Touch, but pull out the keyboard and the orientation chances.

• Vision of an open software ecosystem: While not very many apps existed on Day 1 in the Android Market, I think there will be based on the Android Open Source Project , and they will be very cool and useful. I was very impressed that I could directly download and install an application (Twitroid, Twitter for Android), something I cannot do on my iPhone/Touch.
• 3MP camera: The photos I took looked good and comparable to many digital cameras I have owned in the past. More mega-pixels, better headroom if you need to crop, cut or blow up.
• GPS with Street View and Compass View: Unbelievable. Physically walk around and the G1 will show you what you will be seeing, in panoramic view. You turn around and its view turns around.
• Replaceable battery: I get a little grumpy stuck at the Moscow airport at 2AM with no juice. ‘Nuff said.

G1 Android Minuses

• No video player: Many $49 phones (with plan like my daughter’s) offer MP4 or AVI video. I don’t get it with a device priced from $179-$399. The manual talks about storing “video clips” on the microSD memory card, so I am expecting this in the future.
• T-Mobile Austin 3G network: Seemed spotty, even near downtown. Could barely get EDGE in my house located in a highly populated neighborhood.
• Wi-Fi range and speed: Compared to the iPhone/Touch, it seemed much, much slower and with lower range, but I didn’t do any scientific tests.
• 8GB memory limitation: Will be hard to keep multitudes of applications, pictures, music, and (hopefully) video on 8GB. Subsets of subsets of your media collection are a bummer.
• 14-day evaluation period: iPhone offers 30 days through AT&T. A new phone, particularly a new concept phone, should have at least as many days as the de-facto “cool” phone.

Too Early to Determine

• Battery life: Much shorter than my BlackBerry Pearl, but then again it does a lot more.
• Open software implications: A few of the applications I downloaded gave me some errors, but I expected it because I experienced the same with the first iPhone and also because the platform is more “open” than the alternatives.
• Exchange Support: iPhone didn’t have it at launch and neither does Android G1. Can’t imagine that staying the same if Android G1 wants to ever get into medium and large businesses.

I like the Android G1 after 24 hours but as I said, the true test comes after weeks of real use. The exciting part is that I think like a fine wine, it will get better with time as the reported hoard of open source software shows up and the basics like Wi-Fi are improved, just as they were with the iPhone. Then I could love it. If you have tried out one of the Android G1s, I would love to hear from you and your experiences.

Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

Over the last 6 months, I have heard a lot of industry insiders vehemently defending the cheap mini notebook (aka netbook) as a great device to travel with given its cost, size weight and applicability to task. I don’t have anything against these new cheap mini notebooks, but I think it is VERY important that consumers are educated to their weaknesses as well as their strengths, and all I see talked about are the strengths, a disservice to consumers in my opinion. I have used five of the cheap mini-notebooks over the last 6 months and yes, there are strengths and more weaknesses compared to an inexpensive full-sized notebook at the same price. I had written a lot in previous blogs on my personal interaction with these inside the home, so I decided to put it to the test outside the home, a contrast to what I had done and written about in a previous blog.

I needed to travel to Florida last week to look for a new show horse for my wife. She is a “hunter/jumper” and competes at the local, state, and national level along with my two young girls. Buying a horse is a very personal activity, and you have very little time to ride and test many horses. It is important to videotape, take still images and be able to share the videos and pictures with the other horse professionals back home in Texas over on-line services like YouTube and Flickr.

I technologically armed myself with the following:

• Aiptek HD video camera ($179) for capturing 720P and 1080P high definition video to view high quality off-line videos
• FlipVideo camera ($159) for capturing lower-resolution, easy to upload to YouTube and will also convert to the new “watch in high quality mode”
• Kodak V1253 ($175) digital camera to capture high quality 12MP 16:9 stills
• MSI Wind U100 ($579) mini-notebook with no mods
• AT&T 3G USBConnect 881 ($149) modem to connect to the internet remotely

The daily regimen consisted of driving a half hour to the horse barn and trying out a bunch of horses by riding them, videotaping and photographing them while taking notes on the pros and cons. At about mid-day, we would load all the content onto the MSI Wind to view and/or upload the content while still at the horse barn. We would do this in the car and on the way home. That’s when some of the challenges started hitting.

1) Extremely Short Battery Life
I only would get 1.5 hours battery life per charge so I was either not able to load the content in the car, view the content I had loaded in the car or had to wait until I reached the hotel to load, view and upload. I suppose I could have bought another $25-50 car adapter, but hey, these are supposed to be cheap mini notebooks, not the expensive, full featured ones, right? Additionally, because I preferred not to upload 15 separate files and preferred one, I used Windows Movie Maker to stitch together all the SD (standard-def) Flip videos, which of course wouldn’t last an entire charge and could only be done back at the hotel. Even basic usages like surfing the web at the pool was useless given the low battery life. By the time you would get to the pool, you might get an hour to read the news, get caught up on current events, etc. After that hour, its right back up to the hotel room to plug the unit back in. Forget it, easier to use the BlackBerry.

2) Choppy, Unplayable 720P Video Playback
I like slide shows, but not when myself, our trainer, and I are trying to evaluate a horses timing, skill, personality and potential problems with health and price. I estimate that the 720p video playback on the Wind was operating at 15 frames per second, a slide show. This was MOV files read from VLC player and of course QuickTime. Completely useless 720P video playback with the cheap mini-notebook. I didn’t even kid myself into thinking it was a good idea to stitch the HD files together. Encode would have been painful.

3) Choppy NBCOlympics.com Internet Video and Compromised UI
During the downtime, we wanted to watch some of the events on NBCOlympics.com, you know, with the Microsoft SilverLight experience… I then discovered a new challenge with the netbook’s 1024×600 screen resolution and maybe even with the Silverlight performance on these new notebooks. This may seem like a nit, but a couple big issues surfaced. When I clicked on the left icon “Olympic Sports” many sports icons were cut off at the top. Not real useful or intuitive and not a big deal to everyone, but new netbook and new website, it should work.

On the “Most Watched” icon on the left rail, once clicked, you cannot read the white text at the top of the screen. Annoying.

The worst part was the “As Seen on TV”, where if clicked, you get a bunch of cool videos selected by day. The big problem was that the days were covered by the browsers at the top. See that yellow half moon at the top right? That’s supposed to be a day. You can theoretically pick previous days if you could actually see them……… but you can’t.

I can’t blame the browser, I need to blame the display and controller for not being able to display those vital 168 (768-600) missing pixels. When I could actually get the videos to play, they were hit and miss, most being choppy and pixilated, some very good. The CPU varied between 75-100% depending on the content.

Hopefully others can learn from my latest science experiment….. when in doubt in my opinion, if you want to do ANYTHING other than surfing basic, light websites AT HOME without the bells and whistles, go for the full-size notebook, not one of these cheap mini-notebooks. With any form of decent video playback or any video recoding, even with Microsoft , I wouldn’t, couldn’t recommend these cheap mini-notebooks in their current state and configuration.

I would love to hear your feedback on this or of your experiences have been any different.

Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD.His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.