Filed under: Spy Photos, Coupe, Hybrid, Performance, Ferrari, Luxury

Gallery: Geneva 2010: Ferrari 599 HY-KERS

Spy Shots: 2012 Ferrari 612 successor spied originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apple has been very busy on the mobile front, with the iPad launching in two weeks and iPhone OS and hardware upgrades expected this summer. However, Apple hasn't forgotten about its Mac business--sources for AppleInsider report that long overdue updates to Apple's Cinema Display and Mac Pro will be also appear by June.

Expected to join the 24" LED Cinema Display that Apple launched in October of 2008 is a 27" LED Cinema display based on the same panel currently used in the 27" iMac. Issues with the panels caused problems for Apple that resulted in shipping delays for the 27" iMac, though those problems have been rectified. The 27" LED Cinema Display has the same resolution as the current 30" Cinema Display, though it is 16:9 instead of 16:10. It's introduction should finally lay to rest the 30" model, which hasn't been updated in three years.

Apple is also said to be wrapping up an update to its Mac Pro workstation towers, which have only gotten a slight speed bump since they were introduced well over a year ago. Apple has been waiting for Intel to release new 32nm Xeon parts, codenamed "Westmere-EP," which were officially launched this week. These 5600-series Xeons have six cores compared to the current quad-core parts used in current Mac Pros. The process shrink from 45nm offers a 60 percent performance boost while maintaining the same power requirements of previous Xeons.

A Core i7-980X Extreme Edition processor, codenamed Gulftown, may be used in the lower-end single processor Mac Pro model. However, there are slight architecture differences between the Core i7 and Xeon variants. Apple may simply offer a single Xeon option as it does now.

Apple is also dealing with the issue that MacBook Pros have also not been updated in some time, despite the fact that mobile Core i3, i5, and i7 parts have been available since January. The delay may be due at least in part by licensing issues. These issues have prevented NVIDIA from building integrated controllers, like the 9400M used in all of Apple's current portables, for Intel's newer processors. However, NVIDIA's Optimus platform may provide the solution to work around the problem and maintain the MacBook Pro's sever hour battery life.

Additional delays may also be caused by constrained supply of Intel's mobile processors. Intel is reportedly giving priority to "major clients," according to sources for DigiTimes, so our hope is that Intel counts Apple on that category.

Read the comments on this post

Apple has been very busy on the mobile front, with the iPad launching in two weeks and iPhone OS and hardware upgrades expected this summer. However, Apple hasn't forgotten about its Mac business--sources for AppleInsider report that long overdue updates to Apple's Cinema Display and Mac Pro will be also appear by June.

Expected to join the 24" LED Cinema Display that Apple launched in October of 2008 is a 27" LED Cinema display based on the same panel currently used in the 27" iMac. Issues with the panels caused problems for Apple that resulted in shipping delays for the 27" iMac, though those problems have been rectified. The 27" LED Cinema Display has the same resolution as the current 30" Cinema Display, though it is 16:9 instead of 16:10. It's introduction should finally lay to rest the 30" model, which hasn't been updated in three years.

Apple is also said to be wrapping up an update to its Mac Pro workstation towers, which have only gotten a slight speed bump since they were introduced well over a year ago. Apple has been waiting for Intel to release new 32nm Xeon parts, codenamed "Westmere-EP," which were officially launched this week. These 5600-series Xeons have six cores compared to the current quad-core parts used in current Mac Pros. The process shrink from 45nm offers a 60 percent performance boost while maintaining the same power requirements of previous Xeons.

A Core i7-980X Extreme Edition processor, codenamed Gulftown, may be used in the lower-end single processor Mac Pro model. However, there are slight architecture differences between the Core i7 and Xeon variants. Apple may simply offer a single Xeon option as it does now.

Apple is also dealing with the issue that MacBook Pros have also not been updated in some time, despite the fact that mobile Core i3, i5, and i7 parts have been available since January. The delay may be due at least in part by licensing issues. These issues have prevented NVIDIA from building integrated controllers, like the 9400M used in all of Apple's current portables, for Intel's newer processors. However, NVIDIA's Optimus platform may provide the solution to work around the problem and maintain the MacBook Pro's sever hour battery life.

Additional delays may also be caused by constrained supply of Intel's mobile processors. Intel is reportedly giving priority to "major clients," according to sources for DigiTimes, so our hope is that Intel counts Apple on that category.

Read the comments on this post

Apple has been very busy on the mobile front, with the iPad launching in two weeks and iPhone OS and hardware upgrades expected this summer. However, Apple hasn't forgotten about its Mac business--sources for AppleInsider report that long overdue updates to Apple's Cinema Display and Mac Pro will be also appear by June.

Expected to join the 24" LED Cinema Display that Apple launched in October of 2008 is a 27" LED Cinema display based on the same panel currently used in the 27" iMac. Issues with the panels caused problems for Apple that resulted in shipping delays for the 27" iMac, though those problems have been rectified. The 27" LED Cinema Display has the same resolution as the current 30" Cinema Display, though it is 16:9 instead of 16:10. It's introduction should finally lay to rest the 30" model, which hasn't been updated in three years.

Apple is also said to be wrapping up an update to its Mac Pro workstation towers, which have only gotten a slight speed bump since they were introduced well over a year ago. Apple has been waiting for Intel to release new 32nm Xeon parts, codenamed "Westmere-EP," which were officially launched this week. These 5600-series Xeons have six cores compared to the current quad-core parts used in current Mac Pros. The process shrink from 45nm offers a 60 percent performance boost while maintaining the same power requirements of previous Xeons.

A Core i7-980X Extreme Edition processor, codenamed Gulftown, may be used in the lower-end single processor Mac Pro model. However, there are slight architecture differences between the Core i7 and Xeon variants. Apple may simply offer a single Xeon option as it does now.

Apple is also dealing with the issue that MacBook Pros have also not been updated in some time, despite the fact that mobile Core i3, i5, and i7 parts have been available since January. The delay may be due at least in part by licensing issues. These issues have prevented NVIDIA from building integrated controllers, like the 9400M used in all of Apple's current portables, for Intel's newer processors. However, NVIDIA's Optimus platform may provide the solution to work around the problem and maintain the MacBook Pro's sever hour battery life.

Additional delays may also be caused by constrained supply of Intel's mobile processors. Intel is reportedly giving priority to "major clients," according to sources for DigiTimes, so our hope is that Intel counts Apple on that category.

Read the comments on this post

PVI's color E-Ink displays are a perfect match for Kindles originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 19 Mar 2010 04:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

One of the changes in Lucid is that there are no longer tooltip popups when you mouseover appindicator icons. One of these icons is the battery icon. Now, in order to get your battery status, you must click on the battery icon. You then have to click in the window that you were previously working in to continue working. In previous versions of Ubuntu, all you had to do was move your mouse over the battery icon, see the status, and then keep on working. This new change is adding two additional steps to check the status of your battery, which takes extra time, plus reduces usability. I have filed a bug against this, and have also sent an email to the Ayatana Discussion list voicing my concerns. I’d like to know what your thoughts are, and hopefully this can be changed back!

Australian iPhone developer and accessory manufacturer 22Moo posted an updated render of its GameBone, its accessory designed to attach to an iPhone/iPod Touch and add console-style controls with a physical directional pad and real buttons (the new photo now shows only four face buttons, leaving out the two shoulder buttons visible in the previous render).

The GameBone's new design also features a 2000mAh battery for additional power, an LED to show charging state and capcity, start/select buttons, built-in stereo speakers, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and an omni-directional microphone. The accessory now attaches to the handset instead of using a Bluetooth wireless controller setup.

The controller won't automatically work with every game, as developers will need to incorporate GameBone into their titles first, but developer Manomio has already pledged support for the pad. Manomio's releases include Flashback for iPhone, the Commodore 64 emulator app, and an upcoming Amiga emulator app.

22Moo plans to release the GameBone in the fourth quarter of 2010. The company plans to make the GameBone software development kit available for free to all iPhone SDK developers who want work with an alternative to cumbersome virtual joysticks in April 2010.

[Via FingerGaming]

Thanks everyone for your questions to my previous post on this subject. Now the results:

Everyone should install the Maemo Extras application catalog. Just unleash your phone by installing this repository.

After you are done installing this we go to the questions:

• How is XMPP working out?
  Good, so go doing your Facebooking or Jabbering everywhere. not to speak you Google Taking
• The “Unlocks with ’sudo gainroot’” needs a footnote:
  * you need to enable the Maemo Extras application catalog (see above) and install “rootsh”
  * or, alternatively (and less conveniently), you need to enable R&D mode with the flasher command-line tool on a PC, with the N900 connected over USB
• Does the browser (fennec iirc?) include support for playing back Ogg video and audio?
  Ogg support can be added as an additional download. You do have the real Firefox now, or so claims Nokia.
• Telepathy supports skype? Haven’t heard of this, but it would be _really_ cool!
  As written in my post “you have skype, but no skype app which is a plus.” Yes telepathy handles skype as it handles any other protocol. MSN call support is coming soon as well.
• I’d really like to know how easy is to exploit all the cool features of N900 in a self made program (with Maemo SDK or maybe QT 4.6). I mean, the N900 has a built in camera, AGPS, accelerometer, FM-transmitter and so on... is it possibile to write a custom program that uses one or more of these things? For example (it is really just a weird example) if I want to take a photo with the camera each time the phone is “shaked”, I could do it? If I want to save my GPS coordinates every 30 minutes in a text file, I could do it?
  I guess I won’t be answering that question in this life time… If (and only if) I ever try programming anything for maemo it will be in Python. I guess you can do pretty neat things with QT + other libs as this application shows. A detailed example of that app here (De-Spotify related).
• Test a/v calling on gtalk,jabber using telepathy works or not?
  tried once and didn’t work. It could have been me or my other peer either being retarded or just using Linux with the wrong sound config (experienced it before and it had nothing to do with i.e. skype being wrong)
• I have seen many people talking about unexpected errors, slow performance, etc. What´s your overall experience?
  I experience it as the easiest piece of tech I have ever had. It really is fast and gives me no headaches.
• Can you install .deb packages that are valid for a standard PC?
  I guess I should elaborate in this question but I won’t. A deb package made in your PC for the N900 architecture (armel) should work. But a standard x86 deb will not.
• Can you install pidgin?
  Why on earth would I want to do that? Telepathy is totally integrated in my contact list and relevant applications… Pidgin in this context would be like having a skype application: Just overhead! Think of this as a new approach at the way you communicate, not a reproduction of an ineffective way of doing things.
• I assume you mention OpenSSH from a client perspective. Can the N900 run the server side? (not sure that makes sense, but I am curious)
  It can and it rocks.
• How many apps you feel it can run in parallel before it feels bloated?
  I have my screen full of phone related apps, browser windows, multimedia stuff and random apps (terminal, chess, camera) and it still does not feel bloated at all. I really mean it. I never get irritated by this phone!
• For how much you bought it and from where i am in Egypt and i want to buy one?
  I did not buy it. I am just borrowing it (sort of) from a friend @ Nokia.
• Its usefulness ...
  It helps me being more effective when I am on the move and at the office. So it really is useful. Not to speak of its awesomeness when enjoying my private time (i.e. camera & video features)
• I’ve ordered one that wont arrive for another month =( A few questions related to barcodes. Can you take a picture of a barcode show it full screen and have scanners scan it?
  I read somewhere that you should be able to do so. Google it mate. I don’t need that and really don’t have time to test that, sorry.
• Is there a barcode scanner tool? Bonus for price comparison tools. Sometimes I’ll be browsing used game stores and see a game fairly cheap and wonder whether I can get it cheaper elsewhere.
  Read  questions #14
• If it isn’t too much trouble, I would like to know how well emacs works on the device, I notice it doesn’t have a meta key.
  Have given emacs way too many chances in other devices to make my life harder in this one. I am really not the right person to ask as I do not feel emacs works at all anywhere (and the same goes for vi/vim so do not hate the player, hate the game!
• Web browsing while playing music (recorded or streaming); heard complaints that playback may become choppy.
  Works like a charm even under crappy wi-fi conditions.
• Listening to music over BT stereo headphones and answering calls. Voice commands over BT?
  Lost my BT headset for a while ago and I really am not interested in buying a new one. If someone has experience on this please answer in the comments.
• Video calling. I know it’s not there yet in the integrated skype. But what about Fring or Gtalk or Ytalk?
  Tried skype and it worked like a charm. Do not use any of the others, sorry.
• Voice announcements of incoming messages while listening to music over BT?
  No idea. Read #18
• Smoothness of video playback, whether recorded or streaming? (Again, heard complaints of choppiness.)
  I recorded the audio and video at a concert last weekend and it really worked well. It might just be me and my lack of interest in video/audio quality in general.
• Does it have what it takes to play h264 videos in mkv containers?
  How can i test that?
• Can you try different resolutions?
  Why should I ever wish that? Drop me the command and I will run them
• How is the sound quality on mp3, ogg and flac files?
  Great. Nokia ere is king among mobile producers. Nothing can even compare to it, specialy when playing from the speakers. When using headphones it just rocks!
• How is the performance like for traditional desktop apps(amarok, akregator, openoffice.org)?
  I dreamed of installing the debian extra for maemo but never got far with it. Now I really do not feel like blowing up my preciously nice working N900.
• How is the performance of the ‘big’ desktop environments (xfce, gnome, kde)
  Hope I never have the time to go through that operation so I won’t have an answer.
• I’d like to see tested is how well this device works as a phone while all the other crazy hacks are going on.
  Works like a charm!
• Test call quality, battery life, address book functionality, etc.
  Cal quality is good. Battery life could be better (will last one day and two at the most)  and Address Book functionality is very nice specially if you think about how well integrated everything is. I have had several smartphones over the years and never seen anything like this.
• I am curious how well the calendar works, and more importantly, how well it synchronizes with Google Calendar.
  I’ve heard it works like a charm although I do not use Gcalender so I couldn’t tell.
• Does it run X11?
  I want to know but I don’t. It might do as I can connect to external machines with ssh -X and get apps running on the N900 (such as eclipse)
• In other words, is it pie-in-the-sky to expect to use it as a full-blown Linux box?
  It ain’t a box, it’s a pone with debian. Isn’t that enough for you? It certainly works for me!

Thanks for reading!

The Palm Pre feels at times like the Jan Brady of the mobile world — lacking the Marsha-ish confidence and good looks of the iPhone, or the Cindy-like next-big-thing appeal of the Droid. Thus, no one pays it much attention or takes it terribly seriously. But that just means fans of the device gotta do for themselves, as in the case of Pre user Alexander Slansky, who created an app that turns your Palm OS device into a Boxee remote.

I was only able to use the Pre remote with my laptop, as I don’t currently have a TV hooked up to the software, but installing the app and getting it working didn’t take more than five minutes, and while some small beta-version bugs do exist, overall the app is pretty smooth.

The major catches seem to be that you have to have the WiFi on your phone enabled (which I find to be a big battery drain), and the UI design isn’t extremely intuitive — for example, the controls for play/pause/back/forward are hidden on the main screen in favor of the volume control, when both are essential pieces of functionality.

But now I have a remote for my computer without having to shell out twenty bucks for one of Apple’s flimsy-feeling clickers — and thus the important thing is this: I’ll be able to control my media remotely the next time I put my laptop on top of the toilet seat to watch TV while taking a bath (don’t judge if you haven’t tried it — because it’s awesome).

Boxee released a remote app for the iPhone/iPod Touch last year, and according to VP of Marketing Andrew Kippen via email, there is also a desktop control widget and a web-based remote that works on the Nokia N900. So far, there’s no remote yet for Android mobile devices, but “someone in the community” is working on it.

When asked if Boxee would be creating any new apps itself in the foreseeable future, Kippen replied, “While we may look at retooling our apps as we add new features, in the short-term we’ve seen the community respond (and respond well) to these needs, which allows us to focus on making great software to use the remote with.”

Related GigaOm Pro Content (subscription required): Why Boxee Must Evolve or Die

Before we get into the how-to, we felt it would be appropriate to explain a little bit about how this came to be. As many of you may remember, a couple of months ago we attended CES 2010. While there, we also attended the It Won’t Stay in Vegas Blogger party and ended up meeting the guys from Woot. After all of us spent a little bit of time appreciating the open bar, a group of us stood ended up standing around and talking shop for a while. All of a sudden, a member of our group, Jeremy Grosser, proposed the idea that Hackaday and Woot form a partnership. Basically, they would give us a heads up on what they are going to sell and we would write up a how-to on how to do something cool or useful with that product. Then, when the day came for Woot to sell the product, we would post our how-to. What you are reading right now just so happens to be that idea in action, the first official partnership between Hackaday and Woot. In this how-to, we’ll be taking apart the Wowwee Rovio mobile webcam robot, adding some super-bright LEDs for better see-in-the-dark action, and see how some software called RoboRealm can give it a little bit of artificial intelligence.

If don’t have a Rovio yet, you should probably head over to Woot and pick one up so you can follow along. Also, be sure to pick up a copy of RoboRealm at deals.woot while you’re at it. It is important to note that while writing this how-to, we used a modified design of the Rovio Head-Mounted LED hack, posted to RoboCommunity by [Rudolph].

Parts

- 6 super-bright white LEDs (Ours were rated for 3.3v with an intensity of 7000mcd.)
- 1 2N2907 PNP Transistor (We found ours in a 15 transistor combo pack from RadioShack.)
- 1 10ohm resistor
- 1 2.2k ohm resistor
- 22g solid hookup wire
- RadioShack 3×2x1″ Project Enclosure (We used the plastic back panel as a place to mount our LEDs.)
- 5mm LED holders (Optional. We ended up using them to mount our LEDs in their poorly drilled holes.)
- Heat-shrink tubing (Optional, but recommended.)
- A small strip of perfboard

We picked up most of our parts from RadioShack, but these parts are so common that you should be able to pick them up from any electronics components store.

Disassembly

The first step towards giving our Rovio some much needed extra light is, of course, to disassemble it. After turning the Rovio upside down, remove the six phillips-head screws and carefully remove the top shell to gain access to the Rovio’s internals. While you won’t be able to fully detach the top shell, you should be able to lay it next to the bottom part of the Rovio as seen above.

Inside of the Rovio, there are two main PCBs, the control board and the power supply board. For the purposes of this how-to, we will only need to modify the power supply board. To gain access to the power supply board, simply remove the two phillips-head screws that secure the board vertically. After you gain access to the board, you will then need to identify the ground and positive pads on the PCB. We will be tapping into these pads later to power our array of LEDs. One other item of interest to us is the white wire leading from the control board to the LED headlight board. This wire will allow us to control our new headlights through the Rovio’s web interface.

After firing up your soldering iron, you’ll need to solder two wires onto the power supply board. As you can see above, there are two areas with tiny little holes, allowing for easy access to both GND and VCC. After you have soldered both of these wires, screw the board back in and then turn your attention towards the white wire mentioned previously. After cutting the white wire, solder a length of hookup wire to the end of it and insulate it with appropriately sized heat-shrink tubing. Also, it’s probably a good idea to remove the LED headlight board entirely. This gives you three openings to run your wires out of from the Rovio to our new headlight panel. After you’ve removed the board, you can cut the wires leading to both the infrared LED and receiver. These function as a forward facing “radar” to alert the user if there are any obstacles ahead. We decided to salvage ours by placing them both in the new panel that we will soon be creating. If you choose to salvage your infrared “radar” as well, then remember to solder extension wires between the appropriate leads and the LED and receiver. We actually used some telephone tap connectors (from RadioShack) to extend the three wires leading to the infrared receiver, but soldering should work just fine. Now that you’re finished with all of the internal modifications to the Rovio, we can move on to the circuitry behind this hack.

The Circuit

In order to make sure that we can control our replacement LED headlights through Rovio’s web interface, we need to build a circuit that will detect when the headlights are triggered via the web interface and activate our headlights accordingly. To do this, we’ll use a PNP transistor to switch the ground of our headlight circuit. As you can see from the schematic above, the white wire that we mentioned earlier will be connected to the base of the transistor via a 2.2k resistor, the ground from the power supply board will be connected to the collector of the transistor, and the emitter of the transistor will be connected to the ground of the parallel array of LEDs. If you want to, you could probably add a few more LEDs to this design. Just remember, if you change the number or type of the LEDs, you will have to recalculate the value of the current-limiting resistor between VCC and the positive pin of the parallel LED array. After we’ve reviewed our schematic and we’re comfortable with it, we should be ready to breadboard.

As you can see, there really isn’t that much to our circuit as far as components go. The black and red wires come directly from the power supply board. Our voltage reading was right around 6.5v. Please note that your voltage may vary depending on the charge of your Rovio’s NiMH battery. The green wire was soldered to the white wire inside of the Rovio, and controls whether the transistor lets the ground flow to the LEDs. We found that the best way to test this circuit while breadboarding was to turn on the Rovio and turn on and off the headlights using the web interface. After confirming that the circuit works consistently, you can go ahead and solder the circuit onto some perfboard and connect to the Rovio.

The circuit really doesn’t take up much space on the perfboard. We decided to use the extra space on our board as a makeshift terminal block to extend the infrared LED. While soldering the circuit onto the perfboard, be sure to remember the orientation of your transistor. If you accidentally put it in backwards, you could switch the collector and emitter, burning out the transistor. We mention this only because we actually did it the first time we assembled our board, and we ended up having to swap in a new transistor before reassembling the board. After you’ve assembled and verified that your circuit works, we can move on to assembling our headlight panel.

Drilling and Wiring

On your blank panel, carefully drill 8 holes in any configuration you would like. When drilling your holes, be sure to use a 3/16″ drill bit. While it is actually slightly smaller than a 5mm LED, you can rotate the drill once or twice around to widen the hole. The main thing is that you don’t want to make the holes too large for the LEDs, which, incidentally, we ended up doing. One of them was so wide that we had to change the placement of our LEDs to make sure that they all more or less fit.

I don’t think that I need to get into too much detail here, but the major thing to remember is that the LEDs need to be wired in parallel. Also, be sure that you are connecting cathode to cathode and anode to anode, otherwise the whole circuit just won’t work. After you’ve completely assembled the panel, attach the wires the ground from your perfboard and the VCC from the power supply board to the circuit, and use the web interface to test that the LEDs get switched on when they’re supposed to be. If you decided to salvage the infrared “radar”, don’t forget to attach the infrared LED and receiver to the board in the two holes left over.

After you’ve finished with the drilling and wiring, you should be ready to attach the panel to the Rovio. While it was a little tricky for us, we were able to epoxy the panel to the underside of the front of the Rovio so that it looked like it was vertically mounted.

Now that your Rovio can see better in darker situations, lets take a look at RoboRealm.

RoboRealm

While investigating all of the different things that we could do with our Rovio, we stumbled upon a piece of software called RoboRealm. RoboRealm allows you to take video input from any webcam, including the Rovio, and run it through any number of different modules to process the images. After the images are processed, the software can even see if any pre-defined conditions are met, and if they are it will instruct the robot to act accordingly. Combine that visual input with the audio input/output on the Rovio, and you can do some pretty cool stuff. The interesting part about this software is that it officially supports the Rovio out of the box. We’ve had a chance to mess around with it a little bit, and as far as we can tell, it seems like pretty powerful software.

We already know all of the cool things that we want to do with this software and our Rovio, but we’re curious, what would you do with it? Leave us your answer in the comments, and if we see something that we find truly inspiring, we’ll do some research, write it up, and post a how-to explaining how to do it. Who knows, there might even be a brand new Rovio and a free copy of RoboRealm in it for the winner too…

"It keeps going and going and going" may be the slogan coined for Energizer batteries, but the same holds true for a nasty trojan backdoor that mysteriously slipped into software used to monitor rechargeable versions of the product....

The VNB132 variant features Intel Celeron SU2300 1.20GHz CULV processor whereas the VNB141 model pairs Intel Core 2 Duo 1.30GHz CPU. Both the laptops include 2GB RAM and a 250GB or 320GB hard disk. Graphics is powered by Intel GMA 4500MHD controller. There is Wi-Fi b/g/n, 7-in-1 card reader, three USB ports, 1.3MP Webcam, HDMI port and DVD Burner.

The VBN132 comes with 4-cell batteries and priced at $649. Whereas the VNB141 will include 6-cell battery and comes with a $829 price tag. Both the ultra-portables run Windows 7 Home Premium OS.

ViewSonic ViewBook VNB132 ViewSonic ViewBook VNB141

"Boasting a 4.8-inch resistive touchscreen (800 x 480 resolution), a Windows CE 6.0 underlying OS, HDMI / USB sockets (via adapters from a proprietary socket), a voice recorder, integrated speaker, 3.5mm headphone jack, 8/16/32GB of internal storage, an SDHC expansion slot, a battery good for 45 hours of music playback (or 10 hours with video) and a format support list that would drive you batty to read, there's a lot (lot!) to love about this thing on paper."

With a starting price of $299, it seems a bit steep for a device that is only a media player. I'm actually hoping that the Dell Mini 5 comes in around this price given the iPad's $499 price tag. Alternatively, given the underlying OS base, a web browser is possible, and combined with a bit of a price cut could give this some traction.

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

In the first series of comprehensive performance tests comparing Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 technical preview, released yesterday, to stable Web browsers in current use today, Betanews confirmed superb speed gains by the IE9 chassis in specific categories. Not everything in the new IE9 was faster than IE8, but in the computational department, the development team's Chakra JavaScript engine shows much-needed gains.

In anticipation of IE9, Betanews has been developing a radically improved set of performance tests to complement (and, in a few categories, replace) those we've used in recent months. Our objective is to determine not just how much faster IE9 is, but how much better and more efficient it will be, in computing data, in rendering on-screen objects, and in adapting to varying workloads.

Betanews estimates that the IE9 chassis on Windows 7 offers 9.32 times better raw computational performance than IE8 on Windows 7, on the same machine. That's a welcome number due in large part to vastly improved scores in the widely respected SunSpider battery, as well as high scores in a new set of variable-workload computational tests produced by Betanews. Specifically on the SunSpider, the IE9 preview scored a 44.77 on Betanews' relative performance index, compared to 5.59 for IE8. Our index is based on cumulative relative performance in each category of the test battery, compared against the score posted by an old, slow Web browser: IE7 on Vista SP2. This means, yes, IE9 (thus far) offers almost 45 times the computational speed of IE7 on the older operating system -- easily the single largest surge we've seen between generations.

A recent dev build of Google Chrome 5 on Windows 7 scored a 69.83 on that same SunSpider index, followed closely by the first stable version of Opera 10.5 with 68.64.

As Microsoft embraces HTML 5, it's also managing to eke out some marginal speed gains in the rendering department, although it must be noted that the IE9 chassis is running in an almost feature-less window with very minimal overhead. As of now, the IE9 preview offers 23% better rendering performance (CSS, DHTML, support for the Canvas element in HTML 5) than IE8.

Looking for the good

What Microsoft did yesterday was give outside developers, for the first time, direct access to just the engine of its next-generation Web browser, long before the functionality and usability features are attached to it. The reason, the Internet Explorer 9 product team says, is to elicit real-world feedback so that the product can be fine-tuned.

That describes exactly what we intend to do. Over the last few weeks, Betanews has been compiling a suite of next-generation browser tests, having taken into account the feedback we've received from both our readers and browser manufacturers, Microsoft included. As rapidly as browsers have evolved in just the past year, it's become clear to us that when we compare brands, at one level, we truly are comparing apples to apple trees, or lawnmowers to bulldozers. When we concentrate on the prowess or power angle, with all the adrenaline-rushing metaphors and superlatives, we sometimes forget that sometimes, what the world really wants is an efficient lawnmower.

Last year, IE General Manager Dean Hachamovitch asked me to take a closer, fairer look at Internet Explorer. Specifically, he said that there were architectural efficiencies to be found in the product line, if only we took the time to look for them.

How I opted to respond to that challenge was to focus on one under-appreciated aspect of the Web browser that will become more important as its components are transported to six-core desktop systems on one end, and Snapdragon handsets and netbooks on the other: scalability. Specifically, I started exploring whether there was a way to effectively measure how well a browser handles increasing workloads, of ever higher orders of magnitude.

Mozilla helped to begin making scalability an issue with its introduction of the TraceMonkey JavaScript engine in Firefox. Tracers make problems that appear complex in coding simpler for their processing engines to execute, by pre-processing instructions ahead of time, converting and optimizing long sequences into easily digestible, assembly language-like instructions. Theoretically, the simpler and longer the sequences, the easier the digestive process should become.

So in this new era, it becomes necessary to test the efficiency of a browser's capability to digest those long sequences, to make harder problems simpler for themselves. This is the scalability element which will represent 30% of the score in our revised Relative Performance Index.

Yesterday, Dean Hachamovitch played down the importance of just-in-time compiling as a factor in improving browser efficiency, promoting instead the option of moving the interpreter to a background process. But doing that alone, as we're discovering now, may not effectively combat what has historically been IE's biggest problem as a Web apps platform: the ability to fall off a cliff (see: "stack overflow") when problems get especially difficult. On new tests involving sorting algorithms, for instance, where recursion easily becomes thousands of layers deep, IE8 can spin off into a coma. So far, we have not seen the comatose effect in the IE9 tech preview, which could be the first sign of very good news for Web app developers.

What I was surprised to discover in crafting this new set of tests was that IE was not alone. Chrome can fall off a cliff too, just several orders of magnitude later (after 10 million iterations, for example, rather than 100,000). As the problem gets more and more complex, the gap between Chrome or Safari or the new Opera's performance and that of IE becomes wider and wider...and wider. And that's a problem because you could arbitrarily choose some point out in space, where Chrome is a thousand times faster than IE rather than, say, ten. Wait long enough and you might get 10,000.

And that, as IE proponents assert, would not be fair. It's actually the reason we chose not to include Google's V8 benchmark battery in our tests: because there does not appear to be a real-world correlation between the hundreds of times greater performance the V8 battery can report over IE, and the differences we see in ordinary use.

So the goal of our scalability tests is to recognize that smaller engines can still be efficient in what they do, even when they offer lesser horsepower. Maybe IE can't run a 10-million-iteration test. But the difference between its performance in 100,000 iterations and in 10,000 can be compared to Chrome's difference between 10 million iterations and 1 million. That factor may still be meaningful.

In the very first report of browsers' scalability compared to IE7 in Vista SP2, the IE9 tech preview in Windows 7 scored a 6.57 compared to IE8's score of 1.13. That means, we believe IE9's new "Chakra" interpreter offers 581.4% greater efficiency than IE8 at speeding up when workloads increase. Betanews is applying these new tests to the latest stable browsers from the other Top Five browser makers; and yes, Ross Perot fans, we'll have the charts ready when the numbers come in.

Fox News' Marc Siegel said he believed the findings of a 3-month-old email survey which found that 46 percent of primary care physicians would consider leaving their profession if health care reform passes despite the survey's questionable methodology because its findings were similar to a September 2009 Investor's Business Daily/TIPP poll. However, Fox News previously acknowledged that the IDB/TIPP poll was also "not scientific," and statistician Nate Silver stated that the poll was "simply not credible."

From the March 17 edition of Fox News' America Live:

MEGYN KELLY (ANCHOR): Well, the health care survey conducted back in December is getting some new attention today. It shed some light on how some medical professionals feel about the president's plan to reform the health care system. According to the survey which was conducted by The Medicus Firm, which is a national physician search firm, almost half of doctors who participated say they will either be forced to leave or will want to quit the medical profession if this bill actually passes. Joining us now for a fair debate, Dr. Kathleen London, a family practician, and Dr. Marc Siegel, a member of our Fox news medical a-team. Good afternoon, doctors.

[...]

So this, we're just being told that actually the New England Journal of Medicine, which was originally responsible for posting, not publishing, not conducting the survey, but for posting it on its web site later removed it. It's not a scientific poll, it's a survey, but does it bear any truth in your experience?

[...]

KELLY: Dr. Siegel, do you accept -- do you agree that this survey probably doesn't represent how most doctors feel about this overhaul?

DR. MARC SIEGEL: No, Megyn I don't agree. First of all, there were 1,200 physicians that were surveyed here, and it also reflected what was found in an IBS/TIPP poll that was done back in September where Investors Business Daily also surveyed over a thousand physicians.

Siegel was referring to a September 2009 IBD/TIPP poll which found that 45 percent of practicing physicians would consider leaving their practice if health care reform were passed.

Nate Silver: Poll is "simply not credible." In a September 16 post to his blog FiveThirtyEight.com, Silver listed five reasons why the IBD poll should be "completely ignore[d]":

1. The survey was conducted by mail, which is unusual. The only other mail-based poll that I'm aware of is that conducted by the Columbus Dispatch, which was associated with an average error of about 7 percentage points -- the highest of any pollster that we tested.

2. At least one of the questions is blatantly biased: "Do you believe the government can cover 47 million more people and it will cost less money and th quality of care will be better?". Holy run-on-sentence, Batman? A pollster who asks a question like this one is not intending to be objective.

3. As we learned during the Presidntial campaign -- when, among other things, they had John McCain winning the youth vote 74-22 -- the IBD/TIPP polling operation has literally no idea what they're doing. I mean, literally none. For example, I don't trust IBD/TIPP to have competently selected anything resembling a random panel, which is harder to do than you'd think.

4. They say, somewhat ambiguously: "Responses are still coming in." This is also highly unorthodox. Professional pollsters generally do not report results before the survey period is compete.

5. There is virtually no disclosure about methodology. For example, IBD doesn't bother to define the term "practicing physician", which could mean almost anything. Nor do they explain how their randomization procedure worked, provide the entire question battery, or anything like that.

Silver added: "There are pollsters out there that have an agenda but are highly competent, and there are pollsters that are nonpartisan but not particularly skilled. Rarely, however, do you find the whole package: that special pollster which is both biased and inept. IBD/TIPP is one of the few exceptions."

Fox News itself acknowledged that the poll is "not scientific." During Neil Cavuto's discussion of the IBD/TIPP poll on the September 16 edition of Fox News' Your World, the on-screen graphic indicated that the poll was "not scientific":

The Medicus Firm - a medical recruiting firm -- conducted the survey in December 2009. The Medicus Firm, a Dallas- and Atlanta-based firm that recruits and places physicians in jobs, was responsible for conducting the survey. It issued a press release about the results on December 17, 2009. A report written by the Medicus Firm subsequently appeared in Recruiting Physicians Today, an employment newsletter produced by Massachusetts Medical Society, "the publishers of the New England Journal of Medicine." The report also appeared on the NEJM "CareerCenter" website, but was taken down on March 17.

Methodology consisted of emailing doctors in the Medicus Firm's database. The NEJM CareerCenter article indicated that "[t]he survey sample was randomly selected from a physician database of thousands. The database has been built over the past eight years by The Medicus Firm (formerly Medicus Partners and The MD Firm) from a variety of sources including, but not limited to, public directories, purchased lists, practice inquiries, training programs, and direct mail responses. The survey was conducted via emails sent directly to physicians."

Survey write-up was essentially a promotional document for the firm. After discussing the results of its survey, Medicus touted the importance of physician recruitment firms "[a]fter health reform is passed and implemented":

What does this mean for physician recruiting? It's difficult to predict with absolute certainty, but one consequence is inevitable. After health reform is passed and implemented, physicians will be more in demand than ever before. Shortages could be exacerbated further beyond the predictions of industry analysts. Therefore, the strongest physician recruiters and firms will be in demand. Additionally, hospitals and practices may be forced to rely on unprecedented recruitment methods to attract and retain physicians. "Health reform, even if it's passed in a most diluted form, could be a game-changer for physician recruitment," said Bob Collins, managing partner of The Medicus Firm in Texas. "As competitive as the market is now, we may not even be able to comprehend how challenging it will become after health reform takes effect."

Fox pushed Medicus survey, falsely attributed it to New England Journal of Medicine. Several Fox News personalities highlighted the dubious survey and falsely attributed it to the credible New England Journal of Medicine. 

Fox ran wild with "not scientific" IBD poll.  Numerous Fox News media figures highlighted the IBD/TIPP poll, even after Fox News had described it as "not scientific."