At this year's VS Live and Windows Anywhere event, Microsoft showed of new technology it plans to launch with Longhorn for laptops and PCs, Techworld reports.
The company plans to offer a system based around the SPOT technology used in Microsoft's line of watches. Users will be able to see mobile phone style displays on the top of laptops containing various pieces of information; Microsoft foresee the screens showing the time, appointment and email information as well as common information like the laptop's status. At a demo during the event, Microsoft showed off a demo with calendar, contacts, tasks, inbox and media player working.
Microsoft will be pushing the technology to laptop makers to coincide with Longhorn, expected to be launched in 2006.
Sriram Viji, a program manager at Microsoft told Techworld that the technology would be similar to mobile phones and would be powered off the laptop's battery. The data would be cached allowing it to function when the PC is turned off; also included is a small processor and flash memory. The hardware could be programmed to wake up the computer periodically to download and update information. Microsoft will be offering information to developers around the time of the first Longhorn beta, expected around June of this year.
The technology will be supported in all version of Longhorn, yet will have a special focus and use for laptop users. This is one of the first peripheral pieces of gear to emerge for Longhorn, and it sounds impressive; the excitement, and expectations, are building.
View: Read more @ Techworld | Microsoft
The company plans to offer a system based around the SPOT technology used in Microsoft's line of watches. Users will be able to see mobile phone style displays on the top of laptops containing various pieces of information; Microsoft foresee the screens showing the time, appointment and email information as well as common information like the laptop's status. At a demo during the event, Microsoft showed off a demo with calendar, contacts, tasks, inbox and media player working.
Microsoft will be pushing the technology to laptop makers to coincide with Longhorn, expected to be launched in 2006.
Sriram Viji, a program manager at Microsoft told Techworld that the technology would be similar to mobile phones and would be powered off the laptop's battery. The data would be cached allowing it to function when the PC is turned off; also included is a small processor and flash memory. The hardware could be programmed to wake up the computer periodically to download and update information. Microsoft will be offering information to developers around the time of the first Longhorn beta, expected around June of this year.
The technology will be supported in all version of Longhorn, yet will have a special focus and use for laptop users. This is one of the first peripheral pieces of gear to emerge for Longhorn, and it sounds impressive; the excitement, and expectations, are building.
View: Read more @ Techworld | Microsoft
"So i happened to look over my finances this past weekend and i realized something: i'm broke. which is odd, because i had a bunch of liquid capital in my checking account last time i checked, and now all of a sudden i have nothing.
i realized the root problem was that google's relocation process requires the employee to pay all the expenses up front and then get reimbursed for them later. that means you have to cover an apartment hunting trip, your final relocation, lease termination fees and temporary housing expenses all in advance. not to mention that they don't pay out your signing bonus and relocation money until your first paycheck (which i haven't received yet). finally, add in the fact that i had to put down two months rent as a deposit for my new lease, and i'm flat broke.
on the plus side, this first paycheck is going to be huge... (which unfortunately means i'll probably end up getting taxed huge on it. doh!)
which led me to thinking about the "benefits" package at google. as i thought about it, i realized that most of the "benefits" actually seem to be thinly veiled timesavers to keep you at work. take for example: free lunch and dinner. now this one is an awesome value proposition for google; i'm not exactly sure why other companies don't also recognize the value and join in. consider this: it probably costs google a maximum of $3 per employee for lunch and $5 per employee for dinner. so that's only $8 per day, but if you think about the fact that the employee now probably only takes a half hour lunch break and also stays late working, the company actually realizes far more than an $8 gain in employee output. not to mention that most people think this is a great "benefit" and google gets a ton of positive press on it. in short, this "benefit" is designed benefit the company, not the employee.
then look at all these other fringe "benefits": on-site doctor, on-site dentist, on-site car washes... the list goes on and on with one similarity: every "benefit" is on-site so you never leave work. i'm not going to say this isn't convenient for us employees, but between all these devices designed to make us stay at work, they might as well just have dorms on campus that all employees are required to live in.
next, let's look at the health care benefit provided. arguably, this is the biggest benefit companies pay out for their employees. google definitely has a program that is on par with other companies in the industry; but since when does a company like google settle for being on par? microsoft's health care benefits shame google's relatively meager offering. for those of you who don't know, microsoft pays 100% of employees' premiums for a world-class PPO. everything you can possibly imagine is covered. the program has no co-pays on anything (including prescription drugs); you can self-refer to any doctor in the blue cross blue shield network, which pretty much means any licensed professional; and you can even get up to 24 hour-long massage sessions per year.
lastly, google demands employees that are 90th percentile material, so what's with the 50th percentile compensation? the packages would've been decent when the company was pre-IPO, but let's be honest here... a stock option with a strike price of $188 just doesn't have the same value as the ones of yesteryear. even microsoft adjusted their base salaries to 66th percentile years ago when it was clear that their stock options weren't as much a part of the total compensation package as it used to be. for a post-IPO company like google, it only seems fair that they adjust things accordingly.
all in all, despite these rants, i still chose to come to google. the work environment, projects and risk/reward equation were all more enticing than up in redmond. but just like when you look for apartments in SF, no option is ever perfect. " (from here, mirrored at Bloglines)
just curious ,do you really get SO excited with these kind of things?
but let's keep guessing that this is only the first step and that something bigger will only follow
Who would like to have a calendar showing on the laptop when it's off, given it would drain battery power?
I don't really get it..
Won't you just have to recharge it more often as a price for this feature?
Maybe a simple calendar doesn't drain too quickly though, but having a media player? :o
As far as how much power it will use, I'm guessing its larger screen will need about 3-4 times the amount of power a cell phone needs to keep its screen running all the time. Seeing as how laptop batteries have about 40-80 times the capacity of a cell battery, I'm not concerned about power drain. If you are, I'm sure there will be a way to turn it off.
Last edited by 74534 on 11 Feb 2005 - 15:15
*edit: huh ok, it's supposed to show info on a screen outside the laptop, right? hmm weird.
I guess you have to give them credit for trying something new. They should probably take polls on this kind of stuff first before trying to make it industry standard though.
To the other morons who keep claiming this will drain the battery, this is really nothing more than leaving your cell phone on standby. It even sounds like this could use less battery power than that. Either way, my older Ericsson phone can stay on standby for over a week before it needs to be recharged. You will need to plug-in the laptop to recharge due to normal use long before drains battery power due to this new auxiliary display.
Last edited by 313 on 11 Feb 2005 - 02:48
Select from a bunch of mp3s from your harddisk - cache them to ram - and listen to MP3s all without having to waste time waiting for windows to boot, power your monitor or hdd (after caching) etc.
Obviously some interesting changes in case designs and bus technology would have to take place but wouldn't it be great to only power what your using rather than have your pc running at full tilt for everything, whether it needs to or not?
That's awesome! I'm sure some lame "union" or company will sue them for that too for hurting the sales or wrist watches or some bull.
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