Leave it to Microsoft to make netbooks complicated.
It appears likely the tech giant will offer three different versions of Windows 7 for netbooks. HP officials told Computer World about its plans to offer three different configurations of Windows 7 for netbooks, which suggests Microsoft will roll out this structure for other companies’ netbooks as well.
According to HP, the following three Windows 7 options will be available: Windows 7 Starter Edition, which will only be able to run three apps at a time; Windows 7 Home Premium for consumers; and Windows 7 Professional edition, aimed at business users. That could lead to three pricing options for Windows 7 netbooks, depending on the version you choose — in addition to pricing variations when netbooks ship with Linux instead.
We’ve known this was coming, but plenty of you will no doubt be excited to hear it’s finally here. That’s right, HP’s just made MIE installation files available for the Mini 1000 — great news if you’ve wanted to get in on all that MI action. As you can see above, they’ve unleashed one version to install the recovery tool from an XP machine onto a USB flash drive, and one to install the image from Linux machine to a USB flash drive. There is absolutely no guarantee these images will work with anything other than the Mini 1000, of course, so… watch out!
The TouchSmart tx2z isn’t the first multitouch laptop out, but HP’s pretty adamant that it’s the first multitouch “consumer” convertible tablet. Semantics aside, we’re interested in finding out just how impressed you early adopters are with what the company has crafted. Are the multitouch capabilities as awesome as you had hoped? If not, what areas could be improved? Would you still recommend it to prospective buyers looking to give their digits a bit more work? We get the feeling we’ll see loads of multitouch laptops gracing our presence over the next few months / years, so make sure you really unload on this one. It’s what makes progress possible, people.
Looks like anyone in the U.K. hoping to buy a new HP netbook with Linux is going to be sorely disappointed. For reasons unspecified, the company’s decided not to offer the Mini 1000 or the Mini 2140 with a pre-install of Linux — standard options for the U.S. versions of both. Current U.K. HP Linux offerings include the 2133, but it’s an older model, so the lack of it for the newer models may signal a trend moving forward. HP will apparently offer its Ubuntu-based Mobile Internet Experience as a download, however, so all hope’s not dead. Well, you can’t always get what you want, can you?
The white space debate over how (or whether) to utilize unused frequencies in the broadcast spectrum has been going on for nearly two years now, and, despite all the ups and downs (and fear mongering), the various members of the White Spaces Coalition have continued to fight the good fight in the hopes of bringing faster downloads to more places. The latest initiative/olive branch is the formation of the White Spaces Database Group, mapping areas of unused spectrum and enabling devices to verify what frequencies are available based on positional information (likely GPS or cell tower triangulation). It’s still early days so there aren’t any details about the database itself yet, except that the group intends to keep things “open and non-proprietary” and will work with the FCC to populate it. Now, can’t we all just get along and work toward a summer of worry-free wireless?
We’re actually pretty high on HP’s Mini 1000 Mi Edition, which trades in XP for a custom Ubuntu build with a slick, polished interface, and it looks like early Mini 1000 owners can now get in on the action as well — a Mi Edition installer will soon available for download. If you’re currently running Mi Edition or know someone who is, you can actually build an installer flash drive right now, but we’d wait for the official Windows-based utility to appear in the next few days. No guarantees that HP’s Mi Edition installers work with any non-Mini 1000 machines out there, but given the proliferation of drivers and tools for hacking OS X onto various netbooks, we’re definitely hoping the community takes to hacking the much more open Mi Edition the same way.
Another day, another deal. Check out Gearlog’s finds for Wednesday, Feb. 4:
1. Buy anything from Buy.com and get a free domain name from GoDaddy.com. Today’s deal at Buy.com is the HP OfficeJet Pro L7590 Multifunction Printer. Originally $299.99, the printer is on sale for $135.99. Not a bad deal for a printer and a free domain name.
2. Taxes can be a drag, so save 40 percent off of H&R Block’s TaxCut 2008 Premium Federal + State + e-file software. TaxCut 2008 is Amazon’s Deal of the Day. Get the package for only $29.99, saving you $20 off the original price.
3. Kohls’ deal of the day is the HoMedics iPod speaker system for $29.99. The speaker system is normally $49.99. It offers 360-degrees of sound while charging your iPod.
I installed Windows 7 Beta on an HP TouchSmart PC over the weekend, getting cozy with the new touch and multitouch features, then loaded up a sweet two-handed Air Hockey demo. Have a look:
The basic touch and multitouch actions found native to Windows 7 are nothing to oooh and ahhh over, but there are a lot of little intuitive moves and conveniences that work well, even in the beta stage. More importantly, developers in and out of Microsoft are now getting all touchy, and we plan to track that pretty closely. But first, here’s the starter menu of touch and multitouch maneuvers:
Tap: The quick screen touch doesn’t reveal an arrow cursor, but the screen ripples outward, like water, plus there’s a tiny crosshair where you are actually tapping. The TouchSmart makes a beep (and when you tap with a second finger at the same time, that touch emits a higher-pitch beep).
Tap and hold: The “right-click” behavior is very well constructed: You tap and hold, and a circle swirls around your finger. Let go to reveal the right-click menu.
Flick: When you enable flicks, you can swim through longer pages and menus a lot faster, both vertically and horizontally. When you reach the end of the menu or screen, the window recoils a bit, indicating the termination.
Type: There’s a surprisingly MacBooky on-screen keyboard lurking just off frame in Windows 7. You tap the screen’s edge for it to stick out just a bit; tap it again and out it slides to center screen, sizable to your fat-fingered liking.
Zoom: In spite of new concerns over multitouch patents, this zoom behavior is pretty much identical to the one seen in Apple products (and on Microsoft’s Surface as well). You put two fingers on the screen and move them together to zoom out, and separate them to zoom in. I will note that this was easier to do with two hands—one-handed pinching was probably too micro for the TouchSmart screen.
Rotate: Same as zoom, this is straight out of the basic multitouch playbook. Just move two fingers in a circular fashion, and the photo rotates. And again, it was easier to use two hands than one. (I found that amazing bee shot in the video on Flickr—it’s by a user called aussiegall who has some beautiful nature close-ups.)
Draw: Two-fingered drawing is a multitouch phenomenon I don’t fully understand, but that’s probably because I’m not much of an artist. It’s cool to show off—and at this point, it’s the epitome of the finger Paint interface, because three or more fingers is still apparently taboo—but it seems to be a function awaiting a purpose.
The Windows 7 Media Center touch interface is really cool, especially if you’re using MC in a cramped dorm or kitchen, where the “10 foot” remote-control experience just ain’t happening. I ran the following video back in November, showing pretty much the same experience I can now pull up on the TouchSmart I have here, only they had more content, so it looks cooler:
A multitouch interface designer called IdentityMine created, among other things, a simple two-person multitouch Air Hockey demo to run at PDC 2008. Since it’s still available for download, I grabbed it and challenged my wife to a duel. We’re both out of shape, hockey-wise, but man was it a bloodbath:
In case you were wondering, I installed Windows 7 Beta in two ways on the TouchSmart PC, both which had different advantages. First, I upgraded from Vista, keeping all the drivers, etc. intact. Though I was able to get going quickly, the experience was hampered by touch software that HP ran on top of Vista. To get at the control that come native in Windows 7—which I highlight above—I had to partition the drive and do a clean install. Though I had to gather up some drivers and install them manually with some trickery, I got the more honest Windows 7 touch and multitouch experience.
I am happy that HP is pushing its TouchSmart platform to consumers with such enthusiasm, and I’m happy that Microsoft decided to weave touch into the fabric of its OS. One day we may even take it for granted, like keyboards and mice now. The real question is, what will developers do? I’m going to spend the next few days investigating more touch and multitouch applications and interfaces, because while Microsoft and HP should be praised for supplying the capabilities, the goodness will come in what developers do with them.
In reality, HP should’ve made sure that its iPAQ Data Messenger shipped alongside the Voice Messenger back in December, but given that it didn’t, we suppose it’s a small victory that the handset is finally up for pre-order in the UK today. Of course, getting any halfway intelligent Briton to spend £419 ($593) on this already forgotten WinMo 6.1 device (with Mobile World Congress just weeks away, no less) is a challenge we’re thrilled to not be responsible for.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
