Pat Moorhead » Social media

Does only AMD love the HP Pavilion dv2?

Patrick Moorhead — Mon, 04 May 2009 13:43:02 +0000

AMD is excited about the HP Pavilion dv2 powered by AMD “Yukon” platform, as evidenced by many of our communications. Obviously HP is excited, as it’s their baby. On the blog front, Nigel, Casey, and I have written accounts of our personal HP dv2 experiences. But, is this just an AMD love affair with its own stuff, or do others share the enthusiasm?

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.

Where Can You Go To Engage In The Notebook Battery Life Discussion?

Patrick Moorhead — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 16:35:41 +0000

So how can you provide your input into the controversial “battery life metric” discussion?

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.

I’m No Social Media Expert, but Dig Our New Blog Platform

Patrick Moorhead — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 16:33:45 +0000

So if I am not the in-house “social media expert”, web guy, or IT guy, why do I care about our new blog platform the team is rolling out next week? Well, I am a strategy guy and social media has been invaluable to have real-time conversations with some real smart folks in the community. I have also used social media to create new relationships and make existing ones stronger. Plus it’s real time and productive, I love the efficiency of 140-character ideation.

So I am excited about some new features in our blogs we are rolling out for readers like you and authors like me. Here is a run-down of the feature highlights you should see next week.

For readers (You):

Post rating - Ability to rate each post. You can tell me if you like the post or if you think it stinks.

Polls – Tell us quickly what you think. Participating in polls helps us out, too.

ShareThis – allows you to send a post to the social network of your choice.

Look & feel – New look and feel that’s easier to read and navigate

Video content inside posts – No we didn’t have that before… shame. (head shaking). Look Mom, a real video:

Threaded comments - Comments are still easy to submit and with threading, you can now see where the conversation is going more easily. There’s a “reply-to” option that notifies you if you want to hear about all replies to a post.

Easy comment authentication – If you are already signed up on OpenID and Gravatar, login and you are commenting. Asking people to exclusively sign up for your site is “so 2008”.

Improved smartphone view – View the blog better from mobile devices like the iPhone and iPod Touch. OK, I wanted it optimized for Bold, Storm, and G1 Android too, but maybe later.

For Authors (You and I):

Posting flexibility- I want to blog the moment I get that “big idea”- no matter where I am. I get increased flexibility of where I can post, doing it through ping.fm, iPhone, etc. without a SecureID dongle which I needed on our old system. This means I can more quickly start conversations and blog more often and spend less time doing it. I used to go from a)Word to b)LiveWriter to c)LiveWriter and fix broken content to d) old platform tool to e) fix broken content in old platform tool to f) publish. This removes most of those steps.

Improved rich media tools- I won’t even bore you with how many steps I would need to go through to post media. Don’t get me started. I can do it now and do it fast. You want videos and audio, we got it.

Comment SPAM filtering- I used to get 50 per day. That’s real productive. I’d hate to look at my inbox in the morning. For the last time, no, I don’t want Cialis or oil paintings.

Robust tracking & measurement- Let me know what interests you and what doesn’t. Simple. You don’t care, I don’t write.

So we hope YOU like the new blogs and features. Please tell us what you think; we’ve made it much easier to do so.

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.

AMD@CES 2009

Patrick Moorhead — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 13:51:00 +0000

I don’t need to tell you that the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is the biggest tradeshow event of the year in North America for the IT and CE industry. It’s always an exciting event for technology gearheads like me (and you!) I wouldn’t miss it and I plan to spend as much time as I can roaming the show floor and going blog-wild with daily posts and some video posts from Las Vegas.

There are two easy ways to stay tuned to AMD@CES2009: www.amd.com/ces (link live Monday) & www.friendfeed.com/amdunprocessed.

With that said, I’d like to highlight the activities we’ll be involved with this year. If you’re going to CES, I hope to see you at least at one of these events. If not, we’ll try to bring you the highlights via the web.

Dirk Meyer, President and CEO of AMD, Industry Insider’s Keynote

11:00 a.m., Thursday, January 8, 2009 – Las Vegas Hilton Theater

Make sure you attend Dirk’s Industry Insider Session at CES. It promises to be a “can’t miss” event. Dirk will be joined on-stage by several of our key partners who will be showcasing innovations available in the market today plus our joint visions for technologies like Cinema 2.0 that hint to what technology capabilities will be like in the near future with solutions that fuse the combined power of both CPUs, GPUs, and software. Overall, expect high visual impact. We plan to re-broadcast the entire event afterwards at www.mogulus.com/amdunprocessed.

AMD at CntrStg (CenterStage) — www.cntrstg.com

5:00 – 6:00 p.m., Thursday, January 8, 2009 – The Wynn

This event evolves the highly successful “blogger lounge” concept, aimed at social media types. AMD has an exclusive time slot to meet and interact with bloggers, demo new technology and more importantly, listening to what today’s key influencers have to say. I hope to meet as many new bloggers as I can and also shake hands with those I only have a digital relationship with.

“It Won’t Stay in Vegas” Blogger Party — http://itwontstayinvegas.com/

5:00 – 8:00 p.m. Friday, January 9, Atomic Testing Museum, Las Vegas

This event will be hosted by blogger icon Robert Scoble. This will be my first time to this event which I understand combines heavy-duty tech conversation with a cocktail lounge. AMD will be hosting the AMD Hospitality shuttles that will pick-up folks at the Wynn and at the Convention Center. Check the website for registration and more info on the bus.

12^th Annual Tiger Direct “Build A PC for Charity Race” — http://www.charitypcrace.com/

5:30 – 8:00 p.m. Thursday, January 8, 2009 — The Wynn

AMD has been a sponsor of this worthwhile event for years. Top industry journalists compete to assemble a system in the fastest time. Proceeds go to charity.

ShowStoppers – http://www.showstoppers.com/events2/about_ces.html

6:00 – 10:00 p.m., Thursday, January 8, 2009 – The Wynn

ShowStoppers takes place at The Wynn adjacent to the TigerDirect event. AMD representatives will be with our partners from HP demonstrating new AMD-based HP technology.

CES Unveiled — http://www.cesweb.org/press/events/default.asp

4:00 – 7:00 p.m., Tuesday, January 6, 2009 – The Sands/Venetian, The Venetian Ballroom

This event offers a sneak-peek at new CES technology, a few days ahead of the opening of the exhibit. We will have new technology to show.

With that, I look forward to seeing many of you and blogging with and for many of you in a few weeks. If there is something that you would like to see, please comment below and I will do what I can to accommodate!

The Netbook Web Spectacle

Patrick Moorhead — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 08:01:00 +0000

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.”

Guest Blogging on Notebooks.com

Patrick Moorhead — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 08:59:00 +0000

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.

Live From The Post-Computex Social Media Decompression Chamber

Patrick Moorhead — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 09:19:00 +0000

Back safely from Computex. Even though this was my tenth trip, this one will stand out for a long time for the high spirit of adventure it produced as a result of implementing many social media tools at once.

We picked a place thirteen time zones away to dive into the deep end of the social media pool. Metaphorically speaking, it felt like being in a tin can going to the moon. We were implementing lots of new capabilities at the same time that ultimately required lots of troubleshooting on the fly. It produced some early headaches and challenges but it turned out to be memorable, spirited, and a lot of fun.

Here’s the rundown on the experience, or should I say experiment, of all these activities.

First, the Nokia N95 phone, in my opinion, was a bust using it the way we wanted to use it. We wanted to be able to automatically capture, upload, and broadcast video with minimal delay. Amazing functionality, for sure, and I’m sure we’ll continue to use it in North America, but couldn’t get it to behave with the 3G networks in Taiwan. This made us dependent on unreliable Wi-Fi signals from the show floor and even back at our hotels. We resorted to using my Flip video camera, uploading that content into our YouTube account vis-à-vis the old reliable PC and using the help of the Flixwagon folks to back load the new content into our Flixwagon account. Two of our videos are still stuck in Flixwagon and won’t load into YouTube! (Check out “Pat Chats with Theo” & “Gigabyte’s Spider”).

We had to implement the same kind of workarounds with the Flickr account using the Nokia N95 phone as well. Frankly, the early troubles with the video impacted the attention we gave to Flickr, which deserved more. But we Flickred, it works, and we’ll do it better next time.

The live Mogulus broadcast of our press event also had mixed results. We implemented an up-rezzing transcoding engine on the live feed from a company called Kulabyte – a very promising technology. Feedback from the audience was mixed – I am told many were amazed by the high quality video streaming through their computers from half a world away. Some experienced a jittery picture. Clearly looks dependent on the capabilities of the end user PC, their network, their WAN, and we will continue to work with these companies to provide a reliable solution for our audience. You can check it out for yourself as the recording on-demand feature is available now. It looks great.

Twitter is still kind of an enigma to me, but it I think it has its place, and I am intrigued. It was kind of a like cross-breed between a mass phone text, a mass IM, and the Truman Show. Like many first-time cross-breedings, it was ugly at times. The Twitter network was down a lot, users were habitually complaining, and there is even a Twitter blog on the issues and reasons for the outages. Even with all the issues, we are starting to build a following. Translating that capability into an on-going business practice will take time and more experimentation.

Next, I didn’t need to spend much time following our Facebook page because it already integrates content from YouTube, FlickR, and Twitter. It is growing by itself and we’re hearing from many long time AMD fans from around the world expressing their feelings about why they like us…..and what they think we need to fix.

Finally, none of this “rise of the machines” stuff above worked without awesome “humans” ;> . I particularly want to thank Scott Carroll, our social media manager and Matt Davis, our PR manager for making everything work when the tech didn’t.

Here are quick & easy summary links to much of this content:

Community-inspired innovation is awesome. I’m looking forward to continuing the use and implementation of these tools but doing so while playing for the home team in the states for a while… at least a few weeks

This is AMD@Computex 2008, signing off!

Day 3 @Computex: The Innovation Cycle Continues

Patrick Moorhead — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 14:45:00 +0000

Day three at Computex comprised of more 1:1 regional press interviews and spending more time, maybe too much time, on the show floor given security booted us out of the facility.

Although I had spent a good part of time interviewing some of our technology partners, it was now our turn to give interviews. The first one was with Bloomberg, and while they would have liked to dig deep into AMD’s financial matters, we confined our discussion to AMD’s products and competitiveness. We also talked with IDG on a variety of corporate areas. I have been meeting with Sumner for years and it’s so nice to catch up with familiar faces.

We also hosted a Japanese press contingent that freelanced for publications including PC Watch and MYCOM Journal The discussion focused on our “Puma” platform, the rationalization behind our AMD GAME!™ and AMD LIVE! ™ programs, and the benefits we believe they provide to different sets of customers. I personally like to think of AMD LIVE! and AMD GAME! as guiding posts to deliver a superior technology platform for mainstream gamers and media mavens. Some may disagree and call it just a sticker program or marketing ploy, but if it can help simplify a confusing buying decision, it’s easy to see the benefit. Again, we in the PC industry tend to lose perspective on the ocean that separates enthusiasts and mainstream customers in how each of them approach a solid buying decision. AMD LIVE! and GAME! fill a void in information availability and help save time and effort for the consumer looking for a great all-around digital media and gaming PC.

The final interview was with Hardware Zone out of Singapore. We chatted a lot about the future, or in my opinion, the questionable future for UMPCs and a lot about the mini-notebook spin and hype at this year’s show. As you know, I spent 30 days at home with a lot of different mini-notebooks, comparing full sized notebooks at the same price point, and blogged about my results here. I just hope that consumers get full disclosure when deciding between a mini-notebook and full-sized notebook at the same price point.

After our 1:1 interviews we met up with GearLive for a chat. These guys are awesome in that they sift right through the spin (B.S.) to get to the heart of the technology and the benefit it provides the end user. I absolutely LOVE that approach and wish more folks would adopt this. You can check out our interview with GearLive here:

…as we discuss the next generation notebook platform.

Jake Ludington from GearLive has great insights on the entire Computex show and he shares these insights on his blog here.

Finally, we met up with AMD’s Jacky Wong to talk about ATI XGP™ technology. This is AMD’s new external PCI Express® (PCIe) 2.0 graphics platform, designed to deliver enthusiast-class desktop graphic performance and true multimedia upgradeability to notebooks. The concept is real simple: If you have a notebook with an ATI XGP Technology external PCIe connector and you want some real incredible gaming performance, plug your notebook into an independently powered and cooled graphics “booster unit”, and you are on your way to gaming heaven. Jacky talks more about it here:

…and shows us a notebook connected to three additional monitors playing some cool games.

As we were giving our final GearLive interview of the show, the lights turned down and security entered our realm, a pretty good sign that it was time to leave. Matt Davis, my AMD compadre of the show, just flipped on the camera and we just started walking and talking, trying to summarize what we saw during the show. You can catch that conversation here.

What a Computex 2008 show…… Puma has been let off the leash and the industry’s cycle of innovation rules over anything else. It rules over spin and the giant blue hype machine… the truth always comes out in the end, or that’s what my grandfather the milkman and Christmas tree farmer told me when I was a mere four foot tall…….

Day 2 @Computex: Innovation Book-ends

Patrick Moorhead — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 09:27:00 +0000

Today was a huge day for AMD which was capped off with the launch of our next generation mobile platform, formerly code-named “Puma”. For me, it was really a tale of book-ends ranging from checking out some of the coolest technology on the show floor to sharing AMD’s innovation vision with Taiwan’s top 100 tech companies.

With so much technology on the floor, I thought the best way to bring you some of the coolest AMD stuff was to shoot it on video and pics so you can see for yourself. There were a ton of our next generation notebook platforms on the show floor with varying configurations. Check out these videos of new notebooks from HP and Acer and MSI. I especially appreciate MSI’s HDMI port so a user can connect their new AMD-based laptop with a single cable to their TV and get great video and audio. On the desktop front, I thought Gigabyte had a very cool Spider platform that you can see here. Not only was it cool, it was water-cooled with an AMD Phenom™ X4 processor and dual ATI Radeon™ 3870 graphics cards in ATI CrossFireX™ mode.

There were also some unique desktop form-factors as well. Acer had a very cool Aspire L5100 SFF desktop, and at less than 1 liter, it was only slightly taller than my business card. I like SFF but I really love big cases, and Thermaltake had some wicked AMD LIVE!™ and AMD GAME!™ chassis on display. You can see all these below.

The highlight of the day was the launch event of our next generation mobile platform. We had over 400 in attendance and from the feedback I received, we hit the mark with our customers, partners, press and analysts. I caught up with In-Stat’s Jim McGregor and asked him his thoughts about the mobile market and AMD’s platform which you can find here:

Finally, if you missed the event live, you can view it on-demand at Mogulus.

My final event of the day was providing the keynote speech to Business Next’s 2008 Taiwan Info Tech100 Award Ceremony and Forum. The forum included high level executives from Taiwan’s top 100 industries and government officials from what was described to me as “The Executive Yuan”. The theme of the entire forum was “exploring the power of innovation “ and covered a variety of topics from strategy to research and development, operating and executive management……the main point being that innovation has been the key point of technology competition with distinguished companies. One of the biggest treats was the greeting from Taiwan’s Vice President, R.O.C., Mr. Vincent Siew. This certainly isn’t something that I experience every day. It was also an honor to speak alongside Mr. Johnny Shih, Chairman of AsusTek, Adam Judd, senior vice president of Asia Pacific at Juniper, and Mr. Charlie Lee, Tainan factory director of Corning. They really know how to do big events well in Taiwan and this was no exception. Here are some pics below…..

So there we have it, Computex day two, a day of mobile innovation, and certainly a day of innovation book-ends.

(1) From left to right speakers are Mr. Adam Judd, senior vice president of Asia Pacific at Juniper; Mr. Patrick Moorhead, vice president of Advanced marketing at AMD; Mr. Johnny Shih, Chairman of AsusTek; Mr. Charlie Lee, Tainan factory director of Corning.

Day 1 @Computex: In The Beginning….

Patrick Moorhead — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 19:17:00 +0000

As I said in my previous blog, we are planning to bring you some of the insights from Computex 2008. We wanted to bring it to you in a more multimedia fashion, and it’s just beginning now.

Day 1 was uneventful, with the exception that I somehow managed to lock myself into my bathroom. Some people may have said, “Someone doesn’t want me going to Computex” and stopped while they were ahead, but I am a man on a mission and cannot be deterred. I am no longer in the bathroom, in case you wondered. Thank goodness for bathroom phones. :>

The Computex show floor didn’t open until 9:30 am and Day 1 for me was mostly about show planning and press interviews. I met with Bloomberg, CNET Asia, Hong Kong Economic Journal, Ming Pao Daily News, and the Hong Kong Economic Times for about an hour each. We talked about a variety of items, but one item that we continually discussed was the present and future of mobility. There was a lot of interest in the AMD platform codename “Puma”, but since it isn’t scheduled to launch until June 4^th, I couldn’t divulge too much so we could save something for the grand announcement.

We talked about the concept of these expensive mini-notebooks a lot. It’s so interesting how, in my opinion, every trade show needs to have the “shiny new red wagon”. The irony is that many never gain market traction and either die or are reformed as something else. I was around for the first tablets released on Windows in the early 90’s and someone reminded me about diskless and wireless web tablets (Miro). For this show I am witnessing the feeding frenzy around inexpensive, low performing (versus full size) mini-notebooks. See my comments on those here. Last year at Computex, the big new thing was UMPCs…… and it was very hard for me to find many of them on the show floor this year.

So I did get the chance to walk the show floor for a few hours and it was interesting. It’s like system builder heaven…… chassis, motherboards, cooling solutions, memory, new storage…….. running out of breath just thinking about it.

At this year’s show, among many things, we are bringing out our new AMD LIVE!™ Home Cinema, which in simple words, is a cool reference design for a living room home theater PC. The specific configuration we’re demonstrating at Computex has a couple of cool features, specifically a digital audio amplifier from D2Audio (which hits what some would call audiophile specs) and a new liquid cooling solution we worked on with NoiseLimit Inc. We’re showing how the digital amp and a quad core AMD Phenom™ processor can all live like a happy family together in a VCR-sized chassis. Check out the interview here on the overall specs and benefits. We also were pleased to have NoiseLimit swing by the booth to tell us how they have innovated for the AMD LIVE! Home Cinema program. You can check that out here.

Finally, I took a look around another booth. I will leave it to your imagination as to who’s booth it was. What I saw there was a demo of Second Life and HD running on their new integrated chipset which was too jittery for me to enjoy. I was yearning for an AMD 780G chipset system with a quad or triple core AMD Phenom™ processor around that time. At my house at least I can run full Blu-ray movies with no hiccups at 1080P splendor and play some really good games like HL2 at decent frame rates.

Doing all this on a mobile platform could be even better…..and that’s what tomorrow is about…. i.e.: our next generation “Puma” platform. I will keep you posted…..and as I requested last time and you came through, let me know what you would like to see and I will try to get it on film.

AMD@Computex 2008 with 130,000 of My Closest Friends

Patrick Moorhead — Tue, 27 May 2008 12:12:00 +0000

It’s Computex time again in Taipei, Taiwan, and we are gearing up for an exciting show. It’s my tenth show personally, which by no means makes me a Computex veteran, given that the show has been going on since 1981. Click here if you want a little bit of background on the show.

I have always enjoyed Computex as it has been the best place to view the latest and greatest in “components” like the latest motherboards, add-in cards, new chassis system and peripheral designs, and thermal solutions. Every year, though, it gets even more sophisticated in that the level of technology increases and the amount of “metal bending” decreases. Any of you who have been in the industry a while know what I mean.

AMD@Computex 2008 this year, we’re stepping up our social media activities, including many things we’ve never tried before.

First, we’re broadcasting our June 4 press conference live over the Internet using a cool web application called Mogulus. We used Mogulus to broadcast our press conference at CeBIT in March and were impressed by the A/V quality and ease of use. You can chat live with other viewers as well as embed the live feed in your own url. The potential of the embed feature is enormous but hasn’t really caught on yet.

Our press event In Taipei starts at 12:30 a.m. ET. If you’re outside the region, we will record the broadcast which you can access available on-demand afterwards, another cool Mogulus feature.

Secondly, we’ve teed up an AMD Facebook Group that will act as the social media hub of our Computex activities. If people like it, we will likely keep it active for future AMD news and conversations. Feel free to check it out.

I’m most excited about my plans to roam the Computex show floor with the Nokia N95 smart phone on the lookout for cool new products and the subject matter experts behind them. The Nokia N95, if you’re not familiar, is a handheld device for the price of a laptop ($750). Among its many capabilities, it can stream live video over the Internet. I’ll be looking to provide brief clips on new technologies and products, not just from AMD but from our many partners as well. I’ll also be experimenting with my first video blogs, providing daily updates on Computex, what’s generating buzz and catching the eye. For kicks, I might shoot some video of the many unique sights and sounds of Taipei.

We’re using the Nokia N95 with another cool new web app we’re trying called Flixwagon. It will host all the short videos we create and will auto-upload all our new videos to our YouTube account which is embedded in our Facebook page. Currently, you can’t stream live video to YouTube and you can’t embed Flixwagon into Facebook, but you can get your videos onto Facebook automatically by going this route. You can also subscribe to our Flixwagon page and get automatic updates when we’ve posted new videos. We’ll also post photos on our FlickR account which will also be accessible on Facebook.

Some are calling Twitter the “killer app” of social media. I’m about to take my first dive into the deep end of the Twitter pool at Computex, but frankly, from the outside looking in, it looks more like the overkill app to me. Nonetheless, we’re going in, so if you’re on Twitter, you can follow us. I expect to be wowed by the viral effect and power of Twitter to some degree and I’ll share my thoughts on it later.

If there is any particular item from Computex you’d like to see covered, leave me a comment or a tweet and I’ll do my best to track it down and shoot you a video or take a picture.

See you at Computex!