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of tools the tradeeither communicates at distances minum wrist rest. Instead a Win- up to 30 feet via a Blue- of a mouse, there’s a dows XP tooth dongle plugged into flush-mounted TouchDisc Home or your computer. The Edge for controlling the cursor Linux oper- has lithium-ion batteries, and scrolling, with two Intel ating system, which charge in a stand/ buttons for selecting. A Classmate PC and it includes charging station that backlight follows your fin- two USB ports, matches the glossy black ger movements. Just above Most of the press about an Ethernet jack, two-in- design of the keyboard. it is a volume slider that cheap laptops for young one card reader, and head- Inserted on edge, a five- also backlights the move- students has focused on phone and microphone minute charge will pro- ment of your fingertip as MIT’s OLPC (One Laptop jacks. Stereo speakers are vide enough power for a you slide up and down the per Child), but now Intel built in. Intel has put to- day, and a two-hour control. The on-off switch has rolled out its own, gether an education soft- charge is sufficient for two for the keyboard is in the called Classmate PC. ware stack that will be months of regular use. same area. The row of Announced in April, the available in eight lan- The most striking thing hot-keys is backlit in second-generation, Intel- guages and is working about the Edge is its orange when you touch powered PC is described with more than 80 soft- design. About a half-inch the function key. by the chip maker as a ware, hardware, and con- thick, the face is a high- www.logitech.com “netbook,” and it certainly tent providers to develop gloss, laser-cut black Plex- looks like a computer for what they call “a complete iglas, bordered at the The two biggest problems kids. Simple to use, the infrastructure.” The price bottom by a brushed alu- with taking notes—trying laptop is wireless capable, for the Classmate in its to remember what you has longer battery life (up second-generation format weren’t able to get down to five hours), a water- is $400. and trying to read your resistant keyboard, and www.intel.com/intel/ own hurried scribble— better shock resistance worldahead/classmatepc are solvable. The Live- (sports a rubberized case scribe PULSE™ Smart- and carrying handle). It The Logitech diNovo™ pen has a simple has a Celeron M proces- Edge keyboard is a answer. While you’re sor, nine-inch LCD screen, high-end peripher- writing, it’s listening. 512MB memory, a 30GB al that combines The PULSE is a hard drive, and an inte- design and computer and digi- grated webcam. You can technical excel- tal recorder as well get the computer with lence. Cordless, it Logitech diNovo™ Edge as a ballpoint pen. 56 STRATEGIC FINANCE I May 2008 Tech Forum Reports of the Demise of XP Are Premature N Michael Castelluccio, Editor I THE ORIGINAL SCHEDULE FOR THE DISAPPEARANCE of hardware that does all that the buyer may want it to do, Windows XP was to be June 30, 2008. On that day, the and you’re only going to sell one, maybe two if the hard- software was to be withdrawn from store shelves. The not- ware is really good, to each customer. I have hand tools quite seven-year run would complete the out-with-the-old that were handed down to me from my grandfather—some cycle as the current Vista operating system still struggles from companies that were so good they’re no longer to ramp up its corporate installation base. around. Care to count how many Windows you have pur- And why would you want to deep-six the most widely chased since version 3.1? installed operating system in the world when you own all The real question with XP is why has Microsoft recently the licenses? It’s the software world’s version of planned announced a reprieve that will extend availability to OEMs obsolescence, refined years ago by both software and (original equipment manufacturers) until June 30, 2010? hardware manufacturers into the “upgrade cycle.” Create The company is already talking about Windows 7, the next a near-perfect operating system for a particular piece of Windows after Vista. Rumors fueled by Bill Gates project a continued on next page of microdots on the get an online account to out using the Solar Power, paper’s surface, and the store and share 250MB of a conventional charge DPS (Dot Positioning Sys- notes. The 1GB Pulse can produces up to 15 hours tem) records the path of store more than 100 hours of talk time and 700 hours the pen as it writes or of audio and more than of standby. The system sketches. Plugged into 16,000 pages—the 2GB ºhas a 95dB high-perfor- your PC via a USB con- model doubles those mance speaker with 16-bit nection, the patterns are capacities. The Dot Paper echo-cancellation and Livescribe PULSE™ recreated on-screen. Other is available in notebooks; noise reduction and Smartpen “paper buttons” on the downloadable templates advanced call manage- sheet of paper let you turn let you print your own ment, including voice dial, It will read back to you on the recording function DPS paper. last number redial, hold, what you missed and or open special calculator www.livescribe.com mute, and three-way show you on your PC functions that will solve calling. www.anycom.com what you wrote. And the mathematical problems as The ANYCOM Solar ingenious thing is that the you write them—just Car-Kit is a hands-free software, called Paper check the display that’s Bluetooth phone car-kit Replay, syncs up the audio embedded in the pen’s speaker system with a you’ve recorded with what upper barrel for the high-performance solar you’ve written. Tap on the answers. There are dual panel on the back that words or drawings you microphones in the pen, faces the sun. You attach it made, and the Pulse pen or you can use the 3D with suction cups to your replays what was recorded recording headset that windshield. With the pan- as they were written. The also has microphones that el, three hours of sun will writing system works with will record, in stereo, at produce 30 additional special Dot Paper note- head level. The Page minutes of talk time. Two books. A high-speed, Viewer software lets you LEDs indicate Bluetooth infrared camera records search, view, and replay link, call status, and solar the position of the pattern notes. With the pen you and battery status. With- ANYCOM Solar Car-Kit May 2008 I STRATEGIC FINANCE 57 continued from p. 57 release date some time in 2010. Does all this make Vista just a place- holder that was unable to unseat its predecessor? The XP Petition On January 14, 2008, InfoWorld post- ed an appeal to its readers online to sign a Save Windows XP petition. Not willing to be forced to the next version in the upgrade cycle, the editors asked their readers to “Join us, and tell Microsoft that you want to keep ASUSTek Computer Inc. XP available indefinitely. Not for anoth- er six months or a year but indefinite- plex and cumbersome to work on with capacities up to 8GB instead of ly.” The magazine created a separate these budget laptops, and (2) Linux a hard drive, 512MB of RAM, a built-in Web page, www.SaveXP.com, and by runs very well on these machines webcam, SKYPE, available external the middle of March they had and has one other additional storage, and so on. They won’t fit in 106,491 signatures. The page is still advantage—it’s free. your pocket like Apple’s wildly suc- up, and there’s even an offer of free The three most visible ultra- cessful iPhone, but the Eee’s seven- code for the little app at the top of compact laptops are MIT’s OLPC inch color screen is a much larger the page that has a countdown clock (One Laptop per Child—http:// page on which to read your e-mail. for the time left to save the OS. laptop.org), Intel’s Second Genera- There should be a serious push of In the end, it wasn’t the public out- tion Classmate PC (www.intel.com/ these ultra-compacts in June. One cry that forced the embarrassing intel/worldahead/classmatepc), and item that still has to be settled is an decision to carry last year’s model ASUS’s Eee PC (http://eeepc.asus. appropriate nickname/classification. forward. Nor was it the less than com). The initial development of Wikipedia suggests that they might spectacular takeoff of Vista in the these miniaturized laptops has soon be known as Netbooks, but work world. It was a new class of focused on the educational market— Intel, at least for now, prefers to call undersized, underpowered, ultra- international and third world in MIT’s them MIDs (Mobile Internet Devices). compact PCs. case—but cost and portability of Whether MIDs or Netbooks, these In April, Eric Bangeman reported these has inspired Intel to branch really small laptops will present the on the Ars Technica site: “Previously out into a new low-power chip devel- buyer with a real choice in operating scheduled to be pulled from shelves opment cycle featuring their recent systems: XP or Linux. And since the less than three months from now, XP Atom microprocessor.