NOTEBOOK PC PC : DISCUSSION

One Cable to Rule Them All
Posted in Notebook PC | October 4, 2009 7pm

This past month both AMD and NVIDIA announced graphics processors with over 2 billion and 3 billion transistors, respectively.  In the next two years we’ll see GPUs with  5 billion transistors on a single chip.  Yet we still need about half a dozen cables plugged into our PCs at any given time.  That’s one for a USB keyboard, one for a USB mouse, one for a display, one for Ethernet, one for a CF/SD card reader and one for power.Notebook manufacturers are currently working on designs for the next-generation of docking stations.  As notebooks get more popular, connecting them to bigger keyboards, larger displays and other devices becomes more important.  But today I’d rather not talk about making existing docking stations look cooler, but rather the future of external interfaces to PCs. Last month Intel showed off an unexpected new technology called Light Peak:

It’s a four-fiber optical interface capable of transmitting up to 40Gbps of data (that’s 10Gbps per fiber).  That’s 5 gigabytes per second of data across a single cable made up of four fibers.That’s enough bandwidth for USB 3.0, display and ethernet all across a single cable.  All of the sudden our six cables are down to two - and our need for a conventional docking station disappears.  All we need is a cable.The first Light Peak components will ship in 2010 and don’t expect this to stop with desktops and notebooks.  Light peak is expected to transition to handhelds, consumer electronics and other devices outside of the PC space.By 2011, we may truly have one cable to rule them all.With components available in 2010, do you want companies like ASUS and other OEMs to start working on designs now or should they leave it up to Apple/Sony to start first, then follow later as it’s often the case with these sorts of technologies?

NOTEBOOK PC PC : DISCUSSION

Building a Safe Computing Platform for Your Children
Posted in Notebook PC | September 23, 2009 4pm

I don’t have kids, but I can’t imagine how difficult it must be raising them in today’s world.  Not only is a much bigger world than it was just a few decades ago, but it’s a far more complex one. Chances are that your child can interact with, whether virtually or physically, an order of magnitude more people than they would have just ten years ago.  Social networking is huge and it’s realistically impossible to keep your child away from the Internet.How does this impact your technology purchasing decisions?  When does your child get a cellphone?  A smartphone?  A desktop?  A notebook?   Do they get the best in class, do they get something worth the money or just the bare minimum.  On the one hand you want to instill appreciation of value in your child, but on the other you want him/her to be limited by slow hardware.  A budding developer or entrepreneur can do a lot with the latest technology - stifling that would be a shame: children have the minds capable of dreaming and the energy capable of executing on that.The more technology you give your child however, the greater the dangers are.  So how do you maintain the balance?  Do you err on the side of less technology or is there another solution?   Can we use technology to improve security and protection for your child online?If you have kids, what security issues would be most important to them (if any)?  In the early days it was all about parental locks and web filters, but we have much better hardware now - so what's next? Generally keyloggers and other similar things are viewed as spyware but what if you're a parent - should you be keeping very close tabs on what your child is doing online?Obviously I would hate if my parents did this, but it’s not difficult to imagine you being able to clone your child’s desktop on your own. You could keep tabs on what your child is doing, who he/she is talking to and what they are viewing online.  It’s a total invasion of privacy, but would you appreciate it regardless?Are privacy rules different for a child living in your household?  Do you want the option to be invasive in order to protect your children, at least until a certain age?Perhaps we do something a little more elegant, employ some NSA techniques to monitor communications instead.  Rather than monitoring everything your child does perhaps you only start monitoring if certain keywords appear in his/her communication, or certain sites are hit.  Again, I’d hate it if my parents did this but I want to get the feedback from those of you with children out there.  What would you like to see OEMs offer for security for child-friendly computers?

NOTEBOOK PC PC : DISCUSSION

Protect Ya Neck: Preventing Intrusion/Malware/Spyware
Posted in Notebook PC | September 4, 2009 11am

Last week we talked about PC theft recovery/prevention and the hardware/software options that were technically possible today.  Continuing the trend I’d like to talk about software vulnerabilities, in particular, what steps do you take to make sure your PC is protected against hackers, malware and/or spyware?Personally I think basic monitoring of all incoming and outgoing connections is important.  All OSes do this, it’s a matter of if or how they alert you.  On one end of the spectrum too much knowledge can be an annoyance.  Your PC makes tons of connections every day to outside servers for updates, to resolve names/addresses and sometimes just to phone home depending on your applications.  Being notified about every single one of these connections can easily be a pain.  Having no knowledge however is even worse.Under OS X I use an application called Little Snitch.  It actively monitors connections to/from your computer.  Nearly everything is blocked by default, but after an hour of using your computer you get an idea of what you need to leave open and what you can just allow on a case by case basis.  Most good software firewalls offer this functionality but the Little Snitch UI is quite intuitive in my opinion. 

I’d like to see integration taken a bit further.  It’s one thing to inform the user that your PC is trying to access the outside world, but it’s another to help educate them what this connection could mean and whether there’s need for alarm.  I would hope that Windows Firewall was a bit more effective in merging a good dictionary/wiki of this sort of information with a decent UI, but I don’t believe it’s quite there yet.  I’d like to see OEMs work with the ISVs to put together something simple in approach and have it come pre-loaded on machines.  The reason we get the software bundles we do on our machines is because of marketing agreements between the ISVs and the OEMs;  I’d like to see OEMs put software on their machines because of user demand instead.Which brings me to the call to action: what do you guys do to protect your PCs?  Do you just rely on Windows Firewall or do you use a more robust security suite?  Have you ever had anything get by your security measures?

NOTEBOOK PC PC : DISCUSSION

Realistically Futuristic Ideas on Dealing with a Stolen PC
Posted in Notebook PC | August 23, 2009 7pm

For a notebook to feel theft-proof, what features would you expect to see?  In the early days it was just about supporting a Kensington lock but now technology has advanced enough to the point where you can start getting some sci-fi like features on your PC.A notebook with GPS knows its physical location.  You could force it to only allow itself to be turned on if the notebook is physically located in places you've pre-approved.  Even better, you could have your notebook phone home if it's not with you, sending along its current location as soon as it has an active internet connection.  All of this functionality could be embedded in the hardware, all you'd need is for the GPS receiver to always be turned on.The other idea is supporting something like a remote-wipe similar to what's available on the Apple iPhone and Palm Pre.  The idea is that you visit a website somewhere that lets you send a wipe instruction to your PC.  The wipe command could be implemented either as a software layer on top of the OS, or as a remotely operated hardware switch that power cycles the machine and fires up a separate boot sequence that secure erases the hard drive.The physical implementation of such things isn't impossible, it just requires some hardware and infrastructure.  The question is: would you pay for such a thing?  If so, how much?Have you ever had your PC stolen?  Did you recover it?  Share your stories in the comments.  Do you have any more or less elaborate ideas for ways to make your PC more theft-proof, or at least secure after it's been lost?