Blings:

• Seven passenger seating
• Outstanding value
• Super practical

Dings:

• Hit with the ugly stick ten too many times
• Gutless V6
• Low-hanging tailgate devours foreheads

Ruling: Comfortable and practical, but as sexy as a pair of orthopedic shoes.

When the lowly Hyundai Excel launched back in the mid 1980’s, it set the reputation for Korean-built cars in the United States. A reputation tied to words like crap, junk, deathtrap and “is that all you could afford?”. They did what every future successful manufacturer did; they came in at the bottom of the market with a product priced so low that they were bound to gain some market share. And of course, by having one of the lowest-priced cars available in the Excel, paired with the simultaneous move of Japanese manufacturers into the higher-priced segment, Hyundai carved out a slice of the automotive pie for themselves. It may have been the crusty, moldy, stale part, but a slice nonetheless.

But like the Japanese before them, my how far the Korean reputation has come in such a short time. Just look at Kia, a company that went from making steel tubing for bicycles in the 1950’s to South Korea’s second largest auto manufacturer. Now a part of Hyundai, Kia has been steadily building its reputation as a quality Asian automotive brand. No doubt the 10 year/100,000 mile warranty brainchild paid off in spades for both makes, selling hundreds of thousands more cars, generating the necessary cash flow they needed to improve quality and reliability, and build cars like the Rondo.

First Impressions

When you first look at the Rondo, it’s hard to decipher exactly what it is. It has the apparent dimensions and front-wheel-drive powertrain of a compact car, seven-passenger seating capacity of a minivan, and the headroom, cargo space and fold-flat storage of a crossover utility vehicle (CUV). Although the Rondo seems to defy classification with it’s versatility, there’s a growing number of cars which are similar.

The Rondo competes closely with makes like the Subaru Forester, the Mazda5 and the Honda Fit, however, the Rondo’s seven-passenger seating features an ace up the sleeve. And because the Rondo blends the styling characteristics of a minivan, CUV and compact car, it unfortunately adds up to one rather unattractive machine. The Rondo isn’t even approaching the vicinity of a ’looker’ and most definitely won’t earn you any respect when you pull up at your weekly wive’s club shindig. But like most cars which are androgynous in their styling, what the Rondo lacks in looks, it more than makes up for in a blend of hatchback, minivan and crossover to make one serious, hyper-practical car.

Performance

The Rondo is available with either a four or six-cylinder powerplant. Our tester came equipped with the six, which we found to be completely lacking in punch. The 2.7 liter V6, which gets 18 city/26 freeway, only puts out 192 horsepower under full motivation, hardly offsetting the 110 pounds of weight penalty over the four-cylinder. On the freeway, the V6 could hardly muster enough power to overtake 18-wheelers on those precarious two lane stretches, and the racket it made at full-throttle wasn’t confidence inspiring.

Further, the erratic five-speed automatic transmission frantically shifted back and forth like a plate spinner in an earthquake. Shifting and power delivery wasn’t smooth with the V6. We might as well have been driving a four-cylinder, because that’s exactly what the V6 sounded and felt like. So save yourself a few extra mpgs and a thousand bucks, and stick with the 2.4 liter four-banger which puts out a respectable 167 horsepower.

The Rondo really doesn’t get your spirited driving mojo going, but on the backroads, for a seven passenger vehicle, it handled far better than say, a minivan, so that’s good. On the freeway, which we spent nearly 500 miles driving, the Rondo’s upright seating position was comfortable, and road noise was minimal.

Build

An area where Korean cars previously always fell apart, literally and figuratively, has been in build quality. It seems Kia has recognized this historical shortfall, because the Rondo is really put together well. The plastics are of Honda quality, rattles and squeaks cannot be heard, and the doors open and close with that precise exactitude of a Toyota.

Source:http://reviews.carreview.com

Dell’s XPS series has brought serious multimedia and computing power to both desktops and laptops for a few years now. The XPS lineup of laptops manages to keep on top of the latest advancements in hardware technology by updating configuration options every two or three months. Remarkably, they manage to keep them pretty affordable too. Dell’s current 15.4-inch XPS M1530 brings a solid set of performance oriented hardware at a midrange price.

Standout Features

• 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T8300 processor
• 4GB of RAM
• 500GB hard drive
• GeForce 8600M GT video card
• High connectivity

Features

From a strictly aesthetic point of view, the Dell XPS M1530 is about as pretty as one could hope for. The Dell XPS M1530 manages to pack a Swiss Army knife’s worth of gadgets while still preserving a minimalist professionalism. Add the color options Dell gives you (pink, black and blue), and you’re looking at an elegant, yet still personalized laptop.

With a comparably strong graphics controller, the GeForce 8600M GT, powering video, HD movies will look stellar on the Dell XPS M1530’s 1440 x 900 resolution screen. No stuttering either, thanks to Intel dual-core processing. Feel like running some apps in the background while you enjoy the Quantum of Solace? Go right ahead, 4GB of RAM equate to smooth sailing when running multiple applications simultaneously.

The Dell XPS M1530 is going to delight the multimedia user more than anyone else. The Dell XPS M1530 has a remote control that tucks comfortably into the chassis of the notebook itself. The remote control in conjunction with the HDMI output on the Dell XPS M1530 allows it to link up with your HDTV for home theater quality audio and video.

Users looking to stay connected at work, home, and everywhere in between will be happy to learn that the Dell XPS M1530 ranks highly in terms of connectivity. In addition to standard wi-fi and Ethernet, you’ll find the option to include Bluetooth.

The only real complaint we have about the Dell XPS M1530 is the underwhelming video card. We’d love to be able to buy the Dell XPS M1530 with a 512MB video card. Unfortunately, the GeForce 8600M GT only has 256MB of dedicated memory.

Summary of Reviews from Across the Internet

Users are pleased with the thin and light build. The Dell XPS M1530 weighs about 6 pounds.

The Dell XPS M1530’s onboard speakers produce mediocre sound. Headphones are a must.

Summary

Ultimately, the Dell XPS M1530 is a jack-of-all-trades in the laptop arena. The Dell XPS M1530 will handle multimedia, wi-fi networking, internet, resource-intensive applications, and even manage some casual gaming on the side. For the user with a very specific set of needs, likeDVD authoring, the Dell XPS M1530 might not be the best laptop out there. But, for the civilian user with a love of multimedia and a need for versatility, the Dell XPS M1530 is a great candidate—especially at the price.

More portable than a flying carpet with its own luggage set.

With expensive, ultra-portable laptops becoming more popular than a debauched stag weekend in Prague, we actually get quite excited when one worthy of our attention comes along. Packing both power and performance into one of the smallest notebooks on the market, Dell's Latitude X1 is as sexy as it is competent, making it the ideal travel companion.

With tiny dimensions, this is a lightweight laptop that can easily be thrown into your small luggage. Where many systems this size will scrimp on components, the X1 excels with an ultra-low voltage Pentium M processor and ample system memory. However, this does come at a cost, as the X1 can only run for a couple of hours from its internal battery.

A 12.1-inch widescreen LCD ensures plenty of viewing space for any task. It has a good level of colour and contrast, while the surround is strong and resilient, providing plenty of stability during transit. There's room for a broad and surprisingly well-spaced keyboard, making typing comfortable over those long journeys.

Strong wireless connectivity comes courtesy of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth: both are ideal for browsing the Internet and synchronising outboard peripherals whilst on the move. However, to keep things so compact, there's no provision for high-speed graphics or DVD recording, so the X1 is best suited to business tasks.

Unfortunately, due to the sheer power that's been crammed into such a small box, a fair deal of heat is produced and prolonged use on your lap can become uncomfortable. It is rare to get such high performance from such a small laptop, even in today's ultra-compact-obsessed era, but Dell has succeeded where others have failed.

While the price is high, there's no denying that the small size, high power and sleek looks make this a tantalising portable prospect.

Source:http://www.t3.com

The denizens of Hollywood and Silicon Valley have, by and large, vastly different value systems, role models, even tastes in cars, food and clothing.

Adobe Systems

Adobe’s concept of how Flash video could look on the TV.

But they increasingly agree on one thing: a standard for online video called Adobe Flash.

Flash was once known primarily as the technology behind those niggling Web ads in the 1990s that gyrated and flickered on the screen. Today, it is a ubiquitous but behind-the-scenes Web format used to display Facebook applications, interactive ads and, most notably, the video on sites like YouTube and Hulu.com.

Now Adobe Systems, which owns the technology and sells the tools to create and distribute it, wants to extend Flash’s reach even further. On Monday, Adobe’s chief executive, Shantanu Narayen, will announce at the annual National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas that Adobe is extending Flash to the television screen. He expects TVs and set-top boxes that support the Flash format to start selling later this year.

For consumers, what sounds like a bit of inconsequential Internet plumbing actually means that a long overhyped notion is a step closer to reality: viewing a video clip or Internet application on a TV or mobile phone.

For Hollywood studios and other content creators, a single format for Web video is even more enticing. It means they can create their entertainment once in Flash — as the animated documentary “Waltz With Bashir,” from Sony Pictures Classics, was made — and distribute it cheaply throughout the expanding ecosystem of digital devices.

“Coming generations of consumers clearly expect to get their content wherever they want on it, on any device, when they want it,” said Bud Albers, the chief technology officer of the Disney Interactive Media Group, who will join Adobe executives at the convention to voice Disney’s support for the Flash format. “This gets us where we want to go.”

Adobe, based in San Jose, Calif., is among the oldest Internet powers but perhaps one of the least visible to users. Founded in 1983, the company first developed a common language for laser printers called PostScript and later built or bought popular desktop publishing tools like Illustrator and Photoshop.

In 2005, Adobe acquired Macromedia, the originator of Flash, and expanded from making software to create and share digital documents, like Adobe Acrobat and the PDF file format, to dominating the budding market of tools to create online graphics and video. Last year the company reported net income of $871.8 million on revenue of $3.6 billion.

According to Adobe, Flash is now on 98 percent of all computers, and about 80 percent of Web videos are viewed using it.

Adobe says Flash was installed on 40 percent of cellphones shipped last year, and it recently announced efforts to increase that penetration by abolishing the licensing fees it was charging handset makers, much as it offers the Flash player free to consumers and video sites like YouTube.

Adobe makes money on Flash by selling software to help companies create and deliver Flash content to the Web.

Some major players in the phone market do not support Flash. Most notably, Apple, maker of the iPhone, says Flash uses too much processing and battery power. Mr. Narayen says handset makers will ultimately not be able to resist, since it will make viewing the Web on a phone no different from surfing on a PC.

“Anyone who wishes to deliver Web browsing on smartphone devices, supporting Flash will be an integral part of the experience,” he said.

Despite its problems wooing Apple, Adobe considers the television screen the last great frontier for Flash. To support the new effort to bring Flash to the TV, it has signed partners including Intel, Comcast, Netflix and Broadcom, the company that makes many of the components that go into cable and satellite set-top boxes. (The New York Times Company has also agreed to support this initiative to bring Flash to the TV set.)

While television makers like Sony and Samsung are not involved yet, analysts say integrating Flash — or at least some kind of Internet video — into the living room television is inevitable.

“It’s hard to differentiate TVs these days. They’ve gotten about as big and thin as you can get them,” said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Interpret LLC. “This idea of being able to standardize on Flash-based content across devices and platforms will be something TV vendors can get excited about because it will distinguish their products.”

One company standing in Adobe’s way is Microsoft. Its rival to Flash, called Silverlight, is used by Netflix and the BBC, among others, and was used by CBS to stream the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament and by NBC last year to stream the Olympics.

Microsoft says the second version of Silverlight has been installed on 300 million PCs since it became available six months ago. It also claims that Silverlight better supports live, high-definition video in what is called 1080p resolution, which is paramount to bringing Internet content to large HDTVs.

“I can’t imagine what could be more important on a television than high video quality,” said Brad Becker, director of rich client platforms at Microsoft — and a former Adobe executive. Adobe executives say the new Flash for televisions will support such high-definition video.

Some analysts are not counting out Microsoft just yet. They say the company has a significant presence in the living room with devices like the Xbox 360 game consoles that can stream movies to a TV. Microsoft, with annual revenue that is 17 times that of Adobe’s, also has the resources to finance an escalating competition.

“There hasn’t been a true competitor to Adobe for quite some time and Microsoft could potentially start bridging the gap between the PC and the TV even more effectively,” said Josh Martin, an analyst at the Yankee Group. “Maybe they could start putting out some of the fire that Adobe has long held.”

Source:http://www.nytimes.com

Here’s a great example of the intelligence that drives R.I.M.: The phones all have simple, memorable, logical names instead of incomprehensible model numbers. There’s the BlackBerry Pearl (with a translucent trackball). The BlackBerry Flip (with a folding design). The BlackBerry Bold (with a stunning design and faux-leather back).

Well, there’s a new one, just out ($200 after rebate, with two-year Verizon contract), officially called the BlackBerry Storm.

But I’ve got a better name for it: the BlackBerry Dud.

The first sign of trouble was the concept: a touch-screen BlackBerry. That’s right — in its zeal to cash in on some of that iPhone touch-screen mania, R.I.M. has created a BlackBerry without a physical keyboard.

Hello? Isn’t the thumb keyboard the defining feature of a BlackBerry? A BlackBerry without a keyboard is like an iPod without a scroll wheel. A Prius with terrible mileage. Cracker Jack without a prize inside.

R.I.M. hoped to soften the blow by endowing its touch screen with something extra: clickiness. The entire screen acts like a mouse button. Press hard enough, and it actually responds with a little plastic click.

As a result, the Storm offers two degrees of touchiness. You can tap the screen lightly, or you can press firmly to register the palpable click.

It’s not a bad idea. In fact, it ought to make the on-screen keyboard feel more like actual keys. In principle, you could design a brilliant operating system where the two kinds of taps do two different things. Tap lightly to type a letter — click fully to get a pop-up menu of accented characters (é, è, ë and so on). Tap lightly to open something, click fully to open a shortcut menu of options. And so on.

Unfortunately, R.I.M.’s execution is inconsistent and confusing.

Where to begin? Maybe with e-mail, the most important function of a BlackBerry. On the Storm, a light touch highlights the key but doesn’t type anything. It accomplishes nothing — a wasted software-design opportunity. Only by clicking fully do you produce a typed letter.

It’s too much work, like using a manual typewriter. (“I couldn’t send two e-mails on this thing,” said one disappointed veteran.)

It’s no help that the Storm shows you two different keyboards, depending on how you’re holding it (it has a tilt sensor like the iPhone’s).

When you hold it horizontally, you get the full, familiar Qwerty keyboard layout. But when you turn it upright, you get the less accurate SureType keyboard, where two letters appear on each “key,” and the software tries to figure out which word you’re typing.

For example, to type “get,” you press the GH, ER and TY keys. Unfortunately, that’s also “hey.” You can see the problem. And trying to enter Web addresses or unusual last names is utterly hopeless.

Furthermore, despite having had more than a year to study the iPhone, R.I.M. has failed to exploit the virtues of an on-screen keyboard. A virtual keyboard’s keys can change, permitting you to switch languages or even alphabet systems within a single sentence. A virtual keyboard can offer canned blobs of text like “.com” and “.org” when it senses that you’re entering a Web address, or offer an @ key when addressing e-mail.

But not on the Storm.

Incredibly, the Storm even muffs simple navigation tasks. When you open a menu, the commands are too close together; even if your finger seems to be squarely on the proper item, your click often winds up activating something else in the list.

To scroll a list, you’re supposed to flick your finger across the screen, just as on the iPhone. But even this simple act is head-bangingly frustrating; the phone takes far too long to figure out that you’re swiping and not just tapping. It inevitably highlights some random list item when you began to swipe, and then there’s a disorienting delay before the scrolling begins.

There’s no momentum to the scrolling, either, as on the iPhone or a Google phone; you can’t flick faster to scroll farther. Scrolling through a long list of phone numbers or messages, therefore, is exhausting.

Nor is that the Storm’s only delayed reaction. It can take two full seconds for the screen image to change when you turn it 90 degrees, three seconds for a program to appear, five seconds for a button-tap to register. (Remember: To convert seconds into BlackBerry time, multiply by seven.)

In short, trying to navigate this thing isn’t just an exercise in frustration — it’s a marathon of frustration.

I haven’t found a soul who tried this machine who wasn’t appalled, baffled or both.

But wait, there’s less. Both of my review Storms had more bugs than a summer picnic. Freezes, abrupt reboots, nonresponsive controls, cosmetic glitches.

My favorite: When I try to enter my Gmail address, the Storm’s camera starts up unexpectedly, turning the screen into a viewfinder — even though the keyboard still fills half the screen. (R.I.M. executives steadfastly refused to acknowledge any bugs. I even sent them videos of the Storm’s goofball glitches, but they offered only stony phone silence.)

It’s all too bad, because behind that disastrous software and balky screen, there’s a very nice phone.

It runs, after all, on Verizon’s excellent cellphone network. If you’re one of the few remaining rich people in this country, you can even use this phone overseas (roaming rates are as high as $5 a minute). The phone features are excellent; calls are loud and clear.

The Storm has voice dialing, copy-and-paste, programmable side buttons, removable battery and a standard headphone jack. You can open and even edit Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint attachments. Even Mac fans can get in on the action, thanks to a free copy of the Pocket Mac software.

You also get expandable storage; an eight-gigabyte memory card comes in the box. The Web browser is the best yet on a BlackBerry: double-tap to zoom, drag a finger to scroll. The camera is dog slow, but it has a very good flash, a 2X zoom and a stabilizer; it takes decent, if pale, pictures and movies. (And goodness knows, it’s easy to start up. Just enter a Gmail address ...)

There’s even GPS, with turn-by-turn directions as you drive ($10 a month extra). The Storm can show voice mail in an Inbox-like list, like the iPhone does ($3 a month extra). The screen (480 x 360 pixels) is bright and beautiful.

Honestly, though, you’ll probably never get that far. When you look at your typing, slow and typo-ridden, and you repair the dents you’ve made banging your head against the wall, you’ll be grateful that Verizon offers a 30-day return period.

How did this thing ever reach the market? Was everyone involved just too terrified to pull the emergency brake on this train?

Maybe R.I.M. is just overextended. After all, it has just introduced three major new phones — Flip, Bold, Storm — in two months, each with a different software edition. Quality-control problems are bound to result; the iPhone 3G went through something similar.

Web rumor has it that a bug-fix software update is in the works. Until then, maybe Storm isn’t such a bad name for this phone. After all — it’s dark, sodden and unpredictable.

Source:http://www.nytimes.com

The legislation would have also created the world’s first government agency to track and punish those who steal music and film on the Internet.

The contested bill had initially passed the lower house of parliament last week. Few lawmakers appeared for Thursday’s vote to finalize the measure.

When the vote was held in a near-empty National Assembly, the bill was rejected by a vote of 21-15.

The music and film industry had supported the bill, aimed at boosting industry receipts and cracking down on illegal downloading.

Critics say it will be too tough to apply and encroaches on freedoms.

Source:http://www.nytimes.com

LAS VEGAS — As the music, film, television, newspaper, book and video-game industries strain to find a way to thrive in the new digital marketplace, one seems to have figured it all out.

Zumobi, via PRNewsFoto

Piper Jaffray, a market research firm, expects cellphone downloads like music, videos and games to be a $13 billion market by 2012, compared with $2.8 billion this year.

It is that trailblazer known as the phone company.

Consumers are using their mobile phones to download tens of millions of games, songs, ring tones and video programs. And they shell out money for these items, even as they resist paying for similar digital goodies online using their computers.

It is a curious equation: pay for stuff on a tiny, low-resolution screen while getting some of the very same games and video free on a fancy widescreen monitor.

At its annual trade show in Las Vegas last week, the phone industry pushed new software stores, video players, games and content. Their efforts are based on a digital twist on Pavlov: The phone rings and we pay.

“There’s been no expectation that anything would be free,” said David Chamberlain, an analyst with In-Stat, a market research firm. “The telcos have been very careful not to give stuff away.”

By contrast, he said, “a lot of people on the Internet are wondering — why did we let all this stuff go for free?”

It may have to do with each industry’s origins. “Information wants to be free” has long been the rallying cry for many Internet pioneers. As the mythology goes, the designers of the Internet envisioned it as utopian and open — two words rarely used to describe the phone experience.

One example of the stark difference between the phone and the computer is the concept of micropayments. Newspapers and other content producers have examined the method — getting people to pay for content with a nickel here and a dime there — as a possible answer to their revenue problems on the Web.

But the phone industry has had a micropayment system for decades. Ever since the local telephone company charged a customer an extra 35 cents to hear a recorded weather forecast, the phone industry has been charging for content.

Couple that pervasive billing culture with the ability of consumers to get what they want, whenever and wherever they want it (playing Tetris while waiting in line at Starbucks, for example) and you have a powerful alchemy. Piper Jaffray, a market research firm, published a report recently saying it expected consumers to spend $13 billion on downloads to their phones in 2012, up from $2.8 billion this year. The report called Apple’s popular iPhone application store “a tipping point in consumer consumption” over phones.

Apple’s payment model strongly resembles that of the phone industry. A consumer enters his credit card data once, and all subsequent downloads are automatically charged to that account.

By making the process convenient, Apple has been able to sell software applications that, accessed through a computer, would be free. LiveStrong’s calorie-counter app, for example, is free online but a version of it costs $2.99 in the iPhone App store.

But to some consumers, paying on the phone feels different, and more reasonable, than paying online. Sabrina Sanchez of Pleasanton, Calif., a mother of two teenage boys has found herself with mounting bills from downloaded navigation tools and games, like a Star Wars game that turns their iPhones into light sabers.

Ms. Sanchez said she finally started setting down rules in February when her 12-year-old racked up $25 in charges in a month.

“I don’t want him to get used to the instant gratification,” she said. “It’s like a slot machine.”

Ms. Sanchez said she and her children were much more likely to buy things like games on the phone than on the computer. “I have not bought a casual game on the Net. The kids have bought a couple, but not like on the phone.”

Content developers say consumers like the instant gratification of downloading on the go. By contrast, PC users have to go through a few more steps to pay for items online because, most of the time, they must enter credit card information for each purchase.

Research shows that the more steps a person must take to pay, the less likely he is to buy something. Besides, people have simply become used to paying for things on the phone.

One paid service on phones is TV shows, sold through services like MobiTV of Emeryville, Calif., which packages television programming for phones. About 5.5 million people in the United States are paying $10 or more for MobiTV from AT&T, Sprint and Alltel. “People can’t carry around a 48-inch plasma TV,” said Ray DeRenzo, senior vice president of MobiTV.

But there are others who question how much longer consumers will be willing to pay for content on the phone.

Paul Jacobs, the chief executive of Qualcomm, which offers a mobile TV service called MediaFlow, said the company expected before long to start offering broadcast channels free while charging only for premium programming, like cable shows.

Despite the success of paid phone applications, there are thousands of free applications available. One company, called GetJar, offers some 20,000 services, including games and productivity software, and has been getting 33 million downloads a month.

Apple has plenty of free applications too; Skype, which lets you make free calls over the Internet was downloaded one million times in the first 48 hours after it was introduced last week.

Still, providers of content for mobile devices remain happy about their ability to get paid. One is Kinoma, a Palo Alto, Calif., company whose $30 browser software lets mobile phone users surf the Web and organize their music, among other things.

Brian Friedkin, the company’s co-founder, said he had sold “many thousands” of downloads — though they are features that are free on a PC.

“It’s tough to say why mobile users are more willing to pay,” he said. “But it’s great for us.”

Source:http://www.nytimes.com

I.B.M. appears on the verge of acquiring Sun Microsystems, a longtime rival in the computer server and software markets, for nearly $7 billion.

The two companies have been negotiating for weeks, ironing out terms of an agreement that would turn I.B.M. into the dominant supplier of high-profit Unix servers and related technology.

I.B.M. is offering $9.50 a share, down from a bid of $10 a share, said people familiar with the discussions who were not authorized to speak publicly. The new agreement would restrict I.B.M.’s ability to walk away from the deal, these people said.

Even at $9.50 a share, the deal would value Sun, based in Santa Clara, Calif., at close to $7 billion. It is close to a 100 percent premium based on Sun’s value before rumors of an acquisition spread last month.

Representatives of I.B.M. and Sun declined to comment. People familiar with the negotiations say a final agreement could be announced Friday, although it is more likely to be made public next week. I.B.M.’s board has already approved the deal, they said.

I.B.M., based in Armonk, N.Y., has spent weeks poring over Sun’s patents and licensing agreements. Some 100 lawyers have been working in a hotel in Silicon Valley on intellectual property matters.

Although in a slump of nearly a decade, Sun is one of the largest sellers of server computers and is known for systems based on its Sparc chips. It has a vast software portfolio, including the Solaris operating system , the open-source MySQL database and the Java programming language.

“Sun has obviously been a lost child for many years, but they have some great assets,” said Rebecca Runkle, director of technology research at Research Edge, an equities analysis business. She said that Sun and I.B.M.’s cultures would mesh in their commitment to large research and development projects.

Sun’s software assets would fit into I.B.M.’s long-term strategy of chasing higher-profit software and services sales. It could also give I.B.M. more strength in competing against Oracle, which has sold its database software on top of Sun systems for years.

I.B.M.’s acquisition of Sun would disrupt that long partnership with Oracle. I.B.M. could also undercut Oracle by more actively promoting the free MySQL software, which has become the most popular database software with Internet companies.

Hardware inherited from Sun could present antitrust concerns. I.B.M. faces an antitrust complaint from T3 Technologies over its dominance in the mainframe market. By buying Sun, I.B.M. would gain close to total control over robotic tape storage devices used to file data on mainframes.

Sun has a sales and technology partnership with Fujitsu for the sale of Unix servers. If I.B.M. buys Sun, Fujitsu and Hewlett-Packard will be the combined company’s only major competitors in the Unix market, a possible concern for regulators here and in Europe. Sun faces a patent infringement lawsuit from the storage maker NetApp and has countersued. NetApp has a sales pact with I.B.M.

Silicon Valley executives, including Paul S. Otellini, chief of Intel, have said that Sun has spent months seeking a suitor.

Shares of I.B.M. rose more than 3 percent on Thursday, to $100.82, and Sun’s shares rose more than 2 percent, to $8.21.

Source:http://www.nytimes.com

AT&T announced on Tuesday that customers in Atlanta could get a type of compact PC called a netbook for just $50 if they signed up for an Internet service plan — an offer the phone company may introduce elsewhere after a test period. This year, at least one wireless phone company in the United States will probably offer netbooks free with paid data plans, copying similar programs in Japan, according to industry experts.

But this revolution is not just about falling prices. Personal computers — and the companies that make their crucial components — are about to go through their biggest upheaval since the rise of the laptop. By the end of the year, consumers are likely to see laptops the size of thin paperback books that can run all day on a single charge and are equipped with touch screens or slide-out keyboards.

The industry is buzzing this week about these devices at a telecommunications conference in Las Vegas, and consumers will see the first machines on shelves as early as June, probably from the netbook pioneers Acer and Asustek.

“The era of a perfect Internet computer for $99 is coming this year,” said Jen-Hsun Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia, a maker of PC graphics chips that is trying to adapt to the new technological order. “The primary computer that we know of today is the basic PC, and it’s dying to be reinvented.”

An unexpected group of companies has emerged to help drive this transformation — firms like Qualcomm, Freescale Semiconductor and Samsung Electronics, which make cheap, power-saving chips used in cellphones and are now applying that expertise to PCs.

As in any revolution, the current rulers of the kingdom — Intel and Microsoft, which make the chips and software that run most PCs — face an unprecedented challenge to their dominance. Microsoft is particularly vulnerable, since many of the new netbooks use Linux software instead of Windows.

“A broad shift in the consumer market toward low-cost PCs would clearly put pressure on the revenues of nearly every player in the value chain, from component suppliers to retailers,” wrote A. M. Sacconaghi, a securities analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, in a report last month. “However, we believe the impact would be especially negative for Intel and Microsoft, who today enjoy near monopoly positions in their respective markets.”

So far, netbooks have appealed to a relatively small audience. Some of the devices feel more like toys or overgrown phones than full-featured computers. Still, they are the big success story in the PC industry, with sales predicted to double this year, even as overall PC sales fall 12 percent, according to the research firm Gartner. By the end of 2009, netbooks could account for close to 10 percent of the PC market, an astonishing rise in a short span.

Netbooks have trouble running demanding software like games and photo-editing programs. They cater instead to people who spend most of their time dealing with online services and want a cheap, light device they can use on the go. Most of the netbooks sold today run on an Intel chip called Atom, which is a lower-cost, lower-power version of the company’s standard laptop chips. And about 80 percent of netbooks run Windows XP, the older version of Microsoft’s flagship software.

The new breed of netbooks, built on cellphone innards, threatens to disrupt that oligopoly.

Based on an architecture called ARM, from ARM Holdings in Britain, cellphone chips consume far less power than Atom chips, and they combine many functions onto a single piece of silicon. At around $20, they cost computer makers less than an Atom chip with its associated components.

But the ARM chips come with a severe trade-off — they cannot run the major versions of Windows or its popular complementary software.

Netbook makers have turned to Linux, an open-source operating system that costs $3 instead of the $25 that Microsoft typically charges for Windows XP. They are also exploring the possibility of using the Android operating system from Google, originally designed for cellphones. (Companies like Acer, Dell and Hewlett-Packard already sell some Atom-based netbooks with Linux.)

The cellphone-chip makers argue that the ARM-Linux combination is just fine for a computer meant to handle e-mail, Facebook, streaming video from sites like YouTube and Hulu, and Web-based documents.

Freescale, for example, gave free netbooks to a group of 14- to 20-year-olds and watched what happened. “They would use it for Internet access when eating breakfast or on the couch, or bring it to class for taking notes,” said Glen Burchers, the director of consumer products marketing at Freescale.

Mr. Burchers said a number of companies already making netbooks would show a new round of machines using cellphone chips at the Computex trade show in Taipei, Taiwan, this June.

Qualcomm, the San Diego company that built an empire on chips for cellphones, recently introduced Snapdragon, a chip created for smartphones and ultralight computers. Already, the company has announced deals to sell the chip to 15 major device manufacturers, including LG, Acer, Samsung and Asustek. Qualcomm said some Snapdragon devices appearing this year would have screens of 10 to 12 inches.

Intel and Microsoft warn that consumers should remain skeptical about the performance of a computer that costs less than $300.

“When these things are sold, they need clear warnings labels about what they won’t be able to do,” said Sean M. Maloney, the chief sales and marketing officer at Intel. “It would be good to wait and play with one of these products before the industry gets carried away.”

Still, the rise of netbooks could hurt both companies. In its last quarter, Microsoft posted the first sales decline in its history for the PC version of Windows. It blamed netbooks for the drop. On average, Microsoft charges computer makers $73 for Windows Vista, the version of Windows used in desktop and high-powered laptop PCs. That is triple what it receives for a sale of Windows XP for a netbook.

For Intel, the Atom chips represent lower-profit products, which could turn into a major sore spot if consumers become comfortable with netbooks and start to view them as replacements for standard computers.

In his recent report, Mr. Sacconaghi speculated that 50 percent of consumers could get by with an Atom-based computer for their everyday tasks. PC makers like H.P., Acer and Dell, which face razor-thin profit margins selling laptops, could use the rising competition to place more price pressure on both Microsoft and Intel, Mr. Sacconaghi said.

The big winners in the rise of netbooks that use cellphone chips could be the cellphone carriers, which would have access to a whole new market: PC users.

Intel, meanwhile, expects cheap netbooks to expand the PC market to include hundreds of millions of children who have cellphones but no computers. The company has dozens of deals in the works with service providers to seize on this potential, Mr. Maloney said. As for the emerging competition, he said Intel would show off some surprising computer designs at Computex as well.

Mr. Huang of Nvidia said the PC industry sat at an inflection point. “Disruption will come in from the bottom and forever change the market.”

Source:http://www.nytimes.com