TechWire

First decent iPhone demos

Courtesy of Engadget. Also, check out PCworld.com's impressive stress test.

3 Ireland boss slams "backward" iPhone

The head of music at 3 Ireland, Graeme Slattery, has called the iPhone "a step backwards" and says that it would have "little chance" of success in any European market without heavy modification.
In an interview to be published on Sunday, he said that the iPhone's lack of bandwidth capability, lack of downloading ability and lack of operator software were big barriers to the gadget's chances in Europe. He also said that the commercial model adopted in the US, where customers must sign up to a 2 year, $60-per-month plan, plus pay the full, unsubsidised $500/$600 handset price, "hadn't a chance" of working in the Irish market.
"I expect that it will prove reasonably successful in the US," said Slattery. "But they only started texting about two years ago. We're more advanced in Europe."

More laptops for under €500

Harvey Norman has reduced the price of its Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Li7105 (Intel Celeron M440 1.8GHz, 512MB Ram, 80GB hard disk, DVD re-writer, Vista Home Basic) to €497. (Or you can get a 1GB version of the same laptop from Dabs.ie for €545 including delivery.)

60 year old US 'guru' gives iPhone thumbs up

Walt Mossberg, the Wall Street Journal's grand old man of technology coverage, has given the new iPhone a positive reception compared to business smartphones such as the Palm Treo and the Blackberry. As for what we young folks in Europe call 'texting', he (and co-writer Katherine Boehret) had this to say:

"The iPhone's most controversial feature, the omission of a physical keyboard in favor of a virtual keyboard on the screen, turned out in our tests to be a non-issue, despite our deep initial skepticism. After five days of use, Walt -- who did most of the testing for this review -- was able to type on it as quickly and accurately as he could on the Palm Treo he has used for years. This was partly because of smart software that corrects typing errors on the fly."

So in a test against bulky, business-oriented smartphones, the iPhone is off to a good start. (Thanks to Adam for the link tip.)

Eamon Ryan: forget what I said before, broadband penetration level is just fine

A week in government and there's one hell of a shift in Eamon Ryan's (Minister for Communications) views on the state of broadband penetration. Two months ago, it was crap, dire and awful. Now, it's going just grand. Hard not to be a cynic.

iPhone for Meteor?

A week from today, the ill-fated iPhone will be launched in the US on AT&T.
But what about Ireland? Industry focus is now on Meteor, it seems. It is the only non-3G network with no huge emphasis on garnering revenue from music downloads via its own network (which the iPhone won't facilitate). And it is definitely the favourite if T-Mobile has secured Apple's European carrier deal.
Quite how the €600 iPhone would sell on Ireland's low-cost, pre-paid, cheap calls network could be interesting to follow.

Blu-Ray edges ahead of HD-DVD

Seems like Blu-Ray is edging ahead of HD-DVD in the war of the high definition film formats. Today's Financial Times (subscription required) reports that Blockbuster Video (which owns Xtravision) has increased the number of stores renting Blu-Ray titles to almost 2,000 while restricting the number of stores with HD-DVD titles to 275.
Here, Xtravision rents Blu-Ray titles (for €5.25 a night), but where are the HD-DVD movies?
My view is that Blu-Ray will increase its advantage because every Playstation 3 console sold has a full-on Blu-Ray player on board. To play HD-DVD titles, you need an Xbox 360 plus a €200 player add-on, which most people probably won't buy.

(Decent) laptops for €450

Did I say sub-€500 laptops? And how! Check out this decent Lenovo 3000 C200 for an astonishing €455 (including delivery). Is this the cheapest mainstream laptop on the Irish market? Are we nearing the €400 laptop?
This Toshiba Satellite L30 for €509 (including delivery) is also pretty decent, though it only has a 60GB hard drive.

Welcome to the era of the €500 laptop

One of the predictions I humbly made at the beginning of the year (in Computers In Business magazine, link unavailable) was that a standard laptop would cost no more than €500 by the end of 2007.
Looks like this has now happened, with Dell's latest Inspiron pricing. Note that this machine is no slouch on performance either, with Vista, 1GB of Ram and an 120GB hard drive. So what do you get for the extra €275 you're likely to spend in a shop for, say, a HP Pavilion? Is it worth spending the extra money? The main difference seems to be the presence of a dual core chip (the Inspiron has a single-core chip), slightly better graphics card and a 1 year service guarantee (versus Dell's 90 days service warranty). The screen, too, is probably a little better on the HP model (I haven't actually seen Dell's Inspiron yet).
But another €50 gets a dual core chip on Dell. So are the remaining extras worth a 50 per cent extra outlay? It's up to you.

Rebelio.ie: good selection, so-so prices

The latest tech webstore to come onto my radar is rebelio.ie. It's pretty good, but not necessarily that cheap. For example, a set of Harmon Kardon Soundstick II MP3 speakers (the best MP3 speakers outside Bose, in my view) costs €213 on rebelio.ie but only €165 on Komplett.ie (both prices include delivery).