Phoenix Mars Mission Touches Down

If you are a fan of space exploration like me, tonight (Sunday night - May 25, 2008), was a huge night. The Phoenix Mars Lander successfully touched down almost seven hours ago. We’ve just now received the first color photographs back (black & white ones were sent earlier to show the condition of the lander as well as its landing site) - you can view the photographs here (NASA.gov). Other than deploying its parachute a little later than expected, it looks like it was a successful landing.

This is the first spacecraft to set down near the North Pole of Mars, and will be looking for water, among other things. It even has a scoop and some small ovens to scoop up materials and look for certain things.

It’s an exciting mission - it was the first successful powered landing since the NASA Viking I & II spacecraft set down in the 1970s.

Relevant Sites:
- Phoenix Mars Mission - Official Site (Arizona.edu)
- Photo Gallery (Arizona.edu)
- Spaceflight Now - Mission Status
- Mars Exploration Overview (NASA.gov)
- Phoenix Mars Lander - (NASA.giv)

Netflix Player by Roku

Quite a few of us have Netflix accounts (Netflix is a online DVD rental company - they mail DVDs out to you, you watch them, send them back in the pre-paid mailer and then get a new one).

Netflix and Roku have announced theNetflix Player. It can be purchased for $100 (a one-time fee and separate from your Netflix account fees) and it streams up to 10,000 different movies and TV shows directly to your TV through a variety of connections (HDMI, Component, Composite, S-Video) and it accesses the internet / content through either a wired or wireless ethernet connection.

Before you say “what does this have to do with ultraportables”, bear with us. A lot of us travel. A lot of hotels are now offering high-speed internet, but the movie/channel selection on the TV is limited (unless you are willing to pay additional charges). If you happen to have a Netflix account, once you’ve set this up online (you plug in a number from the box into your Netflix account and from there it’s tied to your account), you could conceivably take it around with you as you travel (at least in the US) and it’s small enough to pack with your other gear.

Picture quality is limited by your network speeds. Netflix will be offering HD content in the future, and the player can be easily upgraded to handle HD content (no additional charges).

You can find out more here:
Roku.com/NetflixPlayer

Lenovo ThinkPad X61 Tablet and Solid State Drives

Not sure how long Lenovo has been offering this, but in addition to offering flash memory-based Solid State Drives (SSDs) on their 13.3-inch Lenovo ThinkPad X300s, they are also offering 64GB SSDs for their 12.1-inch Lenovo ThinkPad X61 Tablets (non-widescreen), as well as some ThinkPad T61s.

These are not being offered on their non-Tablet ThinkPad X61.

The advantages they list:
- Faster boot times
- Faster application load times
- Lower power usage
- Less heat production
- Greater durability
- Quiet operation

Cost of those advantages: $1030 (USD) on top of the base price.

Read: Lenovo and Soild State Drives (US)

Broadband Problems - DLSReports.com

Should you find yourself having problems with your broadband connection in the US or Canada, like I did (which I initially attributed to the heavy storms we had yesterday morning into yesterday afternoon), if you are still able to get some kind of connection, you need to make a visit to DSLReports.

Now the name is misleading - it’s not just DSL, the DSLReports.com forums cover just about everything:

Canada: TekSavvy, Bell Sympatico, Rogers, just to name a few

US: Comcast, Road Runner, Charter, AT&T, Verizon Fiber Optics (I really wish I had fiber access in my area!)

Anyways, what I was hearing from my local broadband “tech support” (I’m using the term loosely here, as the support wasn’t much) was not matching the problems I was having. I guess my problems were not in their scripts (although it turned out I was definitely not alone in these problems). Through the DSLReports.com forums, I was able to track down the problems and fix them on my own.

So if you are on broadband and in the US or Canada, bookmark or remember DSLReports.com. If you are lucky enough to have an alternate connection, or your connection is just workable enough to get on there, you may very well save a lot of frustration talking on the phone to somebody.

February 10th Odds and Ends

A roundup of interesting articles from the past week.

Wired Magazine: Like Apple, Intel Wants to Put the Internet in Your Pocket - Discussion of Intel’s Silverthorne and Intel’s efforts at pushing beyond that, to where we can have a near-desktop like internet experience in a mobile device we can practically carry in our pockets.

CNET Blogs: “Which is sturdier, a MacBook Air or an HP business laptop?” A quick first-look at the MacBook air at how it stacks up against an HP notebook and how sturdy it feels and how it’s handling heat.

Akihabara News: Evergreen’s Mini Trackball for Your Laptop - a very small trackball made for travelers and those desiring a very small device - weighs in at 77 grams/2.7 ounces.

Engadget: Dell XPS M1330 update BIOS hints at upcoming Blu-Ray/DVD combo drive - a new BIOS update for the M1330 mentions “Blu-Ray / DVD +/- RW Combo Drive”.

AppleInsider: Rumor: possible Apple event brewing for late February - Might or might not be somewhere around the 26th. Could it be time for Penryn-based MacBook Pros, etc.?

LifeHacker: Remove Stains from a MacBook with Toothpaste - apparently toothpaste can clean up white MacBooks

jkOnTheRun: HP wants to sell you a Tablet PC - HP has produced a cool little video detailing the advantages of convertible/Tablet PC laptops.

GottaBeMobile: How Cool Is The HP TC1100 Tablet PC? mentions that the TC1100 makes an appearance in the above video showing off the 2710p convertible.

Engadget: Dell further clarifies how and where it’s dropping AMD The Engadget crew spoke with Dell about whether or not Dell was dropping AMD CPUs from their lineup. There was an image that went up on a Dell site indicating that AMD CPUs were not going to be sold anymore (or rather Dell products with said CPUs). Dell’s response: Not sure how/why the image appeared, AMD-based consumer computers will be in stores only except for certain desktops and the Inspiron 1501 notebook. Business-oriented lines (including the Latitude) that have AMD CPUs will still be sold online, and so on. Read the full article for all the details. Kind of an interesting/murky situation if you ask me.

Finally,

CNET Blogs: Windows Vista SP1 - Benchmarks - Robert Vamosi has put Microsoft Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) through it’s paces, including Adobe Photoshop CS3, file copying, iTunes encoding, and DVD battery life tests.

As you know, Vista SP1 has been released to manufacturing and some users are already getting their hands on it.

That wraps it up for this week in review.

Site Update Part II

We are happy to have finished the new design for the site, as you can see, and will start a massive update in the next few days, concerning bringing certain lists up to date, as well as a lot of information we’ve missed over the past six months or so. We are also working on our large comparison chart, listing everything laptop mentioned on the site.

Monday, May 7, we’ll resume normal/daily updates.

Thanks for your patience.

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