Android marches on

Posted on May 30, 2009 by Mark Urbin

Andy Rubin, Google’s senior director for mobile platforms claims that Android will be on 18-20 mobile phones from over a half dozen manufactures by the end of the year.

It will be interesting to see how much of the iPhone/Blackberry Smart Phone market all the G-Phones manages to get.

Google’s Android on more platforms than WINCE (or Window Mobile, which is what they changed the name to after somebody in Microsoft marketing figured out what WIN CE spelled) and Android starting to crop up on netbooks.  If this isn’t causing people at Microsoft to chug Maalox ™ by now, it should soon.

Filed under: Android, cell phone tech, Google, Operating Systems | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a comment »

The netbook market

Posted on May 22, 2009 by Mark Urbin

I hear that netbook sales have flattened. The pundits blame it on market saturation. I blame it on manufacturers missing the whole point.

I was at a large compute store the other day and all the “netbooks” they had were running full versions of XP and 120 Gig or larger spinning hard drives.  

The netbooks that sold like hotcakes were lean and fast running.  They booted LINUX of flash ROM and had Solid State drives.  Small, but then it’s a flipping netbook! If you need extra space it’s got SD and USB slots.

To summerize, the sale of small laptops is flat.  The netbook market may pick up again when units running Android hit the street.

Filed under: Android, netbook | Tagged: , , | 5 Comments »

GPS system in danger

Posted on May 20, 2009 by Mark Urbin

The U.S. Air Forces has dropped the ball on this one. It is reported that GPS satellites could start dropping next year, and the USAF, who maintains the system, may not have replacement satellites ready for launch. 

This is seriously bad project management on the part of the USAF.  This is a vital system that the entire US military, as well as millions of civilians, depend on.

Filed under: Miltech, Space | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a comment »

Dell jumping on the Android Netbook bandwagon?

Posted on May 6, 2009 by Mark Urbin

Microsoft is rushing to get Windows7 out the door. One reason is so they can push it into the netbook market.

Netbook manufacturers have been looking at alternate OS solutions, including Google’s Android (it’s not just for Cell Phones anymore).

The latest rumor is that Dell is working on an Android based netbook. 

If a major retailer like Dell starts shipping Android on systems, I’m betting that somebody in Microsoft OS sales is going to buying a lot of Malox ™.

Filed under: Android, Microsoft, netbook, Operating Systems, tech rumors, Windows7 | Tagged: , , , , | 2 Comments »

The end of the Vista Era

Posted on May 4, 2009 by Mark Urbin

The Vista OS has not been good for Microsoft.  Pushed out quickly into the supply chain, new Vista users found a very different GUI, old reliable programs that would no longer run, digital music they had purchased would no longer play due to DRM issues, and a new version of Office that required a fair amount of effort to find old familiar tasks. 

Then there was the brutal ad campaign from Apple, including the one with my old High School classmate, Mary Chris Wall. 

Microsoft has been working hard on a replacement OS, called Windows 7.  The Windows 7 team learned from the mistakes of Vista, and trimmed a lot of useless code, making it much more efficent. In addition, they have worked to expand their driver coverage, which was severly lacking when Vista was released.

Now the rumor is that Microsoft will stop selling Vista once Windows 7 is released.  It seems that Microsoft would like to forget about Vista, and hide in the same hole that they dropped the Windows Millennium OS in.

Filed under: Microsoft, Operating Systems, Windows7 | Tagged: , , , | 4 Comments »