Into Tech

New portable PCs are in flood at the moment, with announcements from companies such as Lenovo, HP, Sony, Toshiba and Acer. This is not a coincidence. It has been triggered by Intel’s announcement of the new Centrino 2 platform, codenamed Montevina, which is being used in more than 200 new laptops.

Five years ago, the launch of the Centrino platform had a big impact on the market, and led to most notebooks having built-in Wi-Fi. Montevina is the fifth iteration of this platform, and calling it “Centrino 2″ suggests that Intel has similar hopes for it. However, that doesn’t seem likely. Montevina is an upgrade worth having, but you may not notice you’ve got it.

The main change is the inclusion of faster Core 2 Duo processors, codenamed Penryn, based on a new 45nm process technology, instead of 65nm. The new processors use less power and emit less heat, which should result in thinner notebook PCs with better battery life. They will also work with faster (but pricier) DDR3 memory chips.

Vista buyers will be pleased to hear that the new chip set includes Mobile 45 Express graphics, which Intel reckons is roughly 70% faster than the X3100 graphics in the previous Santa Rosa platform. You also get some video-processing in hardware, which should help with playing DVD and Blu-ray movies on the widescreens that now seem to have taken over. As usual, the graphics fall short of top gameplaying standards. However, Montevina lets you switch between the built-in graphics and a separate graphics processor without restarting the PC. Using the built-in graphics for word processing, web browsing and similar tasks saves battery power.

The one thing that could make Centrino 2 revolutionary is its support for WiMax, or Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access, the 802.16 standard. This is, to put it crudely, a long-range version of 802.11 Wi-Fi. One of its aims is to deliver broadband speeds - perhaps 10Mbps - to mobile users. Wi-Fi works over metres, whereas WiMax works over kilometres.

However, Mobile WiMax will only become compelling when two things happen. The first, expected “later this year”, is the release of Intel’s Echo Peak - the codename for a card that supports both W-Fi and WiMax. This could make WiMax as common as Wi-Fi is today. The second thing is the arrival of WiMax services.

If you live in the US, you can be reasonably hopeful about both of those things. If you live in the UK, you may not get either in the near future. According to the WiMax Forum, “currently there are more than 305 deployments of WiMax services in 118 countries worldwide”. Some are being rolled out in the UK - one is in Milton Keynes - but most mobile users will probably have to wait until Ofcom auctions its “4G” spectrum and the winner(s) get round to installing transmitters and developing service platforms.

I think WiMax should be a global standard, like GSM. However, Ofcom is selling off our 2.6GHz wireless spectrum on “a technology and service neutral basis”. This means phone companies will be able to buy it and use it for something else - such as LTE or Long Term Evolution - instead of WiMax.

LTE, the next version of 3G telephony, is still under development and won’t appear for years.

This doesn’t mean WiMax is doomed. I’ve already seen an LG home router that provides both Wi-Fi and WiMax, and cybercafes could adopt them. With WiMax, you should have no problem getting broadband in your garden, or several streets away.

It seems Sony has sneaked out another firmware update for the PS3 but before you rush to download it, we’d caution that waiting a few days might be prudent considering what happened to some early adopters of the 2.40 patch.

That said, we’re not sure there’s anything all that exciting arriving in this one. The official word on the PlayStation blog goes like this:

There’s little doubt that one of the coolest things on display at recent consumer technology trade shows has been OLED TVs, with Sony’s little XEL-1 leading the commercial charge.

The XEL-1 is a beautiful piece of design but is hampered by the fact that it’s a weeny 11in telly with a not-so-weeny price tag of around £1,250. Yes, £1,250. Still, even little OLED TVs are better than no OLED tellys and, according to Sony, the XEL-1 will go on sale here next year.

Picking an MP3 player

I have tunes bought from the Apple site, but I also use Windows Media Player and have music that isn’t iTunes compatible. I would like to get an MP3 player that will let me play all my songs. I also want it to have a radio.
Meriel Whale

JS: I don’t know of any player that can handle music protected by Apple’s digital rights management (DRM) and also Microsoft’s. Apple has avoided supporting WMA (Windows Media Audio) and hasn’t licensed Microsoft’s DRM. Apple also hasn’t openly licensed its own FairPlay DRM so that companies such as Sony and Archos can use it. You must therefore go for one DRM or the other, depending on which is most important to you. You can rescue the incompatible tunes by burning them to disc in audio CD format then re-ripping them to WMA, AAC or MP3. However, this will lead to some loss in quality.

Choosing an MP3 player is partly a matter of taste, and it’s worth trying them in a shop to see which you like. Look at the 8GB iPod nano, even though it doesn’t play WMA files or have a built-in radio. Other 8GB models to look at include the Sony NWZA818, the Creative Zen (model 70PF216000115), and the SanDisk Sansa e280. All three can play WMA, protected WMA and MP3 files, and the Sony and Creative Zen models also play unprotected AAC files. The Sony has the best sound quality, beating iPods etc in a H-Fi World review. However, it does not have a radio, and the other two do. Since these players generally cost around £70 each at Amazon.co.uk, you could also get an iPod Shuffle and cover all bases for roughly the cost of an 8GB iPod nano. For the future, I’d suggest never buying any music files that include DRM.

Power on, or not?

My service provider told me that I would shorten the life of my router (Netgear DG824M Wireless) if I were to continue my practice of switching it off as a way of reducing our energy consumption. I had been in touch with their support staff over occasional brief interruptions in my broadband connection.
Graham Rooth

JS: I don’t know of any reason why turning a router off should shorten its life. On the other hand, I had two routers die in about three years: I turned them off and they never came back on. I now leave mine on all the time, and stand it on Blu-Tack legs to get some air underneath. Routers consume relatively little power - probably around 8-15 Watts - but you could measure yours with an energy monitoring plug.

Hard and soft firewalls?

I am using a broadband router which has a firewall built in. Is it still necessary to run a software firewall?
Steve Gorwits

JS: Yes. The firewall in the router should stop most probes, but if your PC gets a virus or Trojan from a USB drive, a program you have downloaded or some other source, the router will not stop it from calling out. And after it calls out, your router firewall will not block the response. You need a software firewall to control the programs running on your PC: not only malware but also legitimate programs that access the net without telling you.

Windows problems

Could you tell me why I keep getting “Internet Explorer cannot display the web page”? Also, is it safe to use Microsoft Updates, as I read that these were causing problems.
M Alderson

JS: There are a lot of reasons why IE might not display a web page, and Microsoft has a trouble-shooter. One reason not covered is that you might have a virus or browser hijacker, which can result from failing to install critical Windows Updates. These can sometimes cause some problems, but not as many as can be caused by not installing them.

A password password?

Hotmail now makes me enter my password twice. After the first time, the page refreshes and says my username or password is incorrect. If I retype my password, it lets me in.
Harry Annison

JS: This seems to be a recent Hotmail bug and it affects Mac and Linux owners with various browsers, not just Windows users. The trick is to bookmark the second page when it appears, and go straight to that page in future. The address will look something like bit.ly/2im8EV, and this may work for you.

Backchat

· Following our discussion of firewalls, “Bill Blagger” provided a link to firewall tests. The results are exaggerated because if a firewall fails the first test, it doesn’t get to take the others. But Comodo and Online Armor come through as the best free firewalls.

Get your queries answered by Jack Schofield, our computer editor at jack.schofield@guardian.co.uk

Sony Ericsson is in trouble right now, with recent profits plunging and the announcement of 2,000 job cuts, but are they going to let that spoil their birthday party? Nope.

The Walkman phone is celebrating its third birthday, which is why Sony Ericsson has launched 3 new models, along with 7 new accessories. The W902, W595 and W302 are promising the ‘best-in-class sound quality’ but what else are you getting? This is how they stack up:

With petrol prices on the rise and nothing but doom and gloom from the oil mongers you’d think car manufacturers would be all over the electric car market by now.

So far progress has been rather slow, but news that the Japanese are preparing for some major activity should be an encouraging sign.

Last August we wrote about a very promising Sony add-on for the PS3 called PlayTV that would essentially allow you to turn the PS3 into a digital video recorder (DVR). Sony was supposed to launch it ‘early this year’ and, surprisingly, in the UK first. Of course, nada.

However, official news in today says the PlayTV will launch on Se3ptwember 10 and, yes, in the UK first.

If you thought the questions about what technology standard we’d be using to watch movies was settled when Blu-ray won the next generation DVD standards battle, then you’re in for a bit of a surprise. In taking nearly half a decade to decide which standard would make it, the DVD camps left open plenty of opportunity for online competitors to start making their moves. The technology for delivering movies online has been rapidly improving. But, of course, what we didn’t count on was that it would just create a huge new mess.

Earlier this week, there was all sorts of talk about Netflix streaming movies to the Xbox as part of Netflix’s effort to get consumer electronics companies to build in support for Netflix streaming. As we warned when that announcement was made, it’s a bad idea for Netflix to focus on a proprietary streaming solution, as it’s only going to set up another standards battle. And, indeed, Blockbuster is working on its own such solution. Then, of course, everyone knows that Apple’s in the market with the AppleTV. And don’t forget Sony, which is selling a special (extra expensive) TV for downloading movies. And, of course, there are countless startups in the market as well.

Oh, and how could we forget Amazon? The company is now announcing its own proprietary online store for streaming movies and TV. This one piggybacks a bit on Sony’s awful plan (meaning if you buy that super expensive internet-connected TV, you’ll also be able to stream movies from Amazon).

But the end result is a total mess for the entire market, and that doesn’t help anyone. All of the players should take a look at how badly the multi-year DVD standards battle hurt the industry. It makes people unwilling to buy certain hardware, as they don’t want to be stuck with the “loser” a year from now. What’s wrong with coming up with a single standard for streaming movies from any particular service to various TV-connected devices and computers? Then let the different providers compete on actual services provided? That would increase adoption, and let these companies do what they do best, rather than fighting a can’t-win battle against too many other competitors.

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Here’s a nice little idea from Sony to give its in-car navigators a bit of added appeal.

Upcoming devices as well as current models with upgraded maps will be able to offer information on petrol prices of local garages.

Amazon is certainly looking to get a strong foothold in the future of digital media, recently announcing the availability of MP3 downloads in the UK and details of is streaming video service in the States.

Well the latter kicked off today, for those who are interested, with a new online store of TV programmes and movies available to a select number of Amazon.com customers for trialling before opening to a wider audience later this summer.

What’s most interesting about the new service, aside from the fact that you can stream content immediately without having to download, is that Amazon has signed a deal with Sony to send content direct to your TV.