Microsoft's iPod rival, due for US customers this Christmas, has had a scathing reception from one industry wonk. American Technology Research analyst Shaw Wu calls Zune 'underwhelming' and 'essentially a repackaged Toshiba Gigabeat'.

His comprehensive panning also includes the prediction that Zune's wireless capability - a unique feature over iPod - will 'dramatically' drain the player's power. He tells Red Herring: ”While we find Wi-Fi a nice feature, we believe that Wi-Fi power requirements are still quite steep, and so we are skeptical that battery life will be strong on Zune. In fact, our analysis indicates three to six hours of battery life vs. 10 to 14 hours on a typical iPod.'

Posted by Chris Keall at 5:18 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

Lenovo has just joined the flaming battery debacle that has so far seen mass recalls of Dell, Toshiba and Apple notebooks.

This just in from their PR:

AUCKLAND, New Zealand, September 29, 2006 - Lenovo and International Business Machines Corporation, in cooperation with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission today announced the voluntary recall of approximately 526,000 lithium-ion batteries manufactured worldwide by Sony Corporation. In the interests of public safety, Lenovo will offer customers free-of-charge replacement batteries for all recalled batteries.

Although no make or model of battery is immune from some overheating or failure, Lenovo has confirmed that these batteries can be subject to overheating, posing a potential fire hazard, and Lenovo is advising customers to check if they are using one of the affected batteries as follows:

The recalled batteries were sold with or sold separately to be used with some models of ThinkPad notebook PCs.

T Series (T43, T43p, T60)
X Series (X60, X60s):
R Series (R51e, R52, R60, R60e)

Battery Part/model number

ASM P/N FRU P/N
92P1072 92P1073
92P1088 92P1089
92P1142 92P1141
92P1170 92P1169 or 93P5028
92P1174 92P1173 or 93P5030

Additionally, since these batteries work with any T4x Series or R5x Series system, customers who ordered an extra battery or received a replacement battery for any T4x or R5x Series notebook PC between February 2005 and September 2006 may also have a battery subject to recall.

IBM and Lenovo sold these batteries with new notebook PCs or as replacement batteries between February 2005 and September 2006. Customers can continue to use their notebook PC by turning off the system, removing the battery, and plugging in the AC adapter and power cord to power the system. Customers should use only genuine ThinkPad batteries obtained from either Lenovo or an authorized reseller.

Following reports of an incident at Los Angeles International airport, Lenovo has reacted swiftly, announcing this recall less than two weeks after the incident was first brought to the company’s attention. Lenovo estimates that between five and ten percent of ThinkPad notebooks sold during period of February 2005 to September 2006 are affected by the recall.

Sony has agreed to financially support the recall.

Customer Contact Information

Customers should contact Lenovo to determine if the battery used in their notebook PC is subject to this recall. Please visit www.lenovo.com/batteryprogram or call the New Zealand Service Centre on 0800 733 222 and select option #1.

Posted by Chris Keall at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

Yes, named after cars and promising 'lightening speed' from Oct 26 (and make sure you check our blogs for a repeat of our reader speed test survey on that date to see if anybody really does hit close to 7.2Mbit/s). Juha has all the details here.

Posted by Chris Keall at 11:24 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 4 )

Make sure you're under cover. Remember the satellites feeding images to
earth.google.com are constantly snapping new pics ... as this Dutch woman, indulging in some topless sunbathing, soon found out courtesy of a local TV station.

Posted by Chris Keall at 2:19 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

I was moping around waiting to talk about mobile technology to an NZICA meeting recently when a speaker from
Marsh & McLennan came on, talking about future risk factors. One he mentioned was EMFs, or electromagnetic fields - the low-level radiation emitted by CRT monitors and cellphones. I thought this debate had pretty much faded away (certainly, LCD monitors have eliminated it on your desktop). So it was interesting to hear a stuffed-shirt insurance analyst telling a conservative audience that EMFs could be 'the next asbestos'. He noted that studies so far were contradictory. Most rule it out, but because any cancer caused by EMFs could gestate over decades, and PCs and cellphones are comparatively recent phenomena, no one will be able to say for sure for a while.

Certainly, the advent of 3G cellphones, which have much, much higher emissions than older generation cellphones (if still relatively tiny, and well within official health guidelines) may re-ignite this debate.

Incidentally, our man from M&M also said he'd been talking to the Australian Wheat Board. While it's an organisation that's certainly no friend of the greenies, the board does blame the widespread Aussie east coast drought of the past couple of years on global warming.

Pictured: EMF-shielding garments on display at the Computex computer show in Taiwan.

Posted by Chris Keall at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 1 )

Vodafone is promising its first 3.5Mbit/s '3G broadband' product on Oct 1. Called the Vodem, it's a wireless modem that will connect your latptop or desktop to the internet at a theoretical top speed that matches the fastest flavours of land-line DSL - though Vodafone cautions in a press release that day-to-day speed will more in the region of 800Kbit/s to 1.2Mbit/s. That's still blistering compared to the 80Kbit/s to 120Kbit/s real-life speeds you get from current Vodafone 3G phones, and around 384Kbit/s from data cards.

Yes, to take advantage of '3G broadband' (that is, Vodafone's move to a much faster wireless broadband technology called HSDPA), you will need to buy a Vodem, or a new cellphone that's HSDPA-compatible.

3G broadband will initially be available in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, with a launch data plan of $49/month for 1GB. If you bust your cap, data surcharges will be a nose-bleed $0.50 a megabyte, or $500 a gigabyte (scary, but actually better than the $1 a megabyte gouge on most 3G plans today). The service will be extended to other towns over the next 18 months.

The Vodem will cost $429; an HSDPA PC Card will be available for $529, and Samsung has two HSDPA cellphones on the way for $999 and $1099 respectively.

Telecom has its own comparable 3G upgrade coming during 2007, which will boost its T3G service to EV-DO Rev A technology and a 3.1Mbit/s theoretical maximum. Around the same time, Vodafone is promising a fresh upgrade to take it's network to 7.2Mbit/s, while Telecom says its coming (some time, some day) EV-DO Rev B upgrade will leap-frog it back into the lead, taking its service to 73.5Mbit/s (love that point-five).

A Vodem will land at PC World HQ in a few days, so we'll let you know how it goes.

Posted by Chris Keall at 11:52 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

In an interesting piece of corporate cross-pollination, Google CEO Eric Schmidt has joined the board of Apple. While no official reason was given beyond standard PR blather, it's no secret the two share a common enemy: Microsoft - which is targetting Google with its coming Windows Live search engine (which will replace MSN search), and Apple with its Zune player (which, in Microsoft's mind at least, is supposed to take on the iPod by Christmas).

We're talking a tight alliance here. Google and Apple already have one board member in common (Arthur Levinson, CEO of biotech giant Genentech), while former US Vice President turned film maker Al Gore is both an Apple director and a long-time Google advisor.

So what next: Google search ads for iTunes? An iTunes channel on Google? An all-out merger? You read the wild speculation here first.

Posted by Chris Keall at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 1 )