Posts by Christopher Estep

Microsoft plays ads-funded Office 2010 Starter gambit

Hatred of Change

What I'm seeing is Olde Fashioned FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt). Before you brand it as a bad idea, at least try it; you may well be pleasantly surprised! And to the OpenOffice.org folks, I have nothing against OO (in fact, on Linux I use OO); however, OO has no mail application (Outlook is the Office 2010 application I use the most, just as it has been in every version of Office since 2000), and until OO actually includes a decent mail application (Evolution comes to mind) it will be, at best, a secondary productivity suite for me personally. (Evolution comes the closest to Outlook functionwise, and I don't use Outlook as an Exchange client.)

US punters don't want mobile music

The US Point-Of-View

Most of us that have mobile phones that can play back MP3s instead want to copy them from our already-extensive collections on our PCs (as opposed to downloading them a second time); at least that's how this US mobile phone user sees it. I already *have* the MP3, I'd rather not have to download it again, thank you very much. My biggest complain regarding MP3-capable mobile phones(whether GSM or CDMA or variants thereof) is that moving MP3s between PC and phone (especially from the PC to the phone) is difficult, if not impossible - and that the *phone*, not the PC, is often the culprit (lack of connectivity, even when both PC and phone support Bluetooth, due to the overly-restrictive Bluetooth profiles on mobile phones, is the biggest culprit).

Intel gears up for for 45nm frenzy in 2008

Kentsfield? Yorkfield? Bloomfield? How about "Minefield"?

AMD needs to pull a hat out of a rabbit (a lot harder than pulling a rabbit out of a hat). First, AMD is having major issues digesting ATI Technologies (they are still having problems with that); then, the launch of Barcelona (not merely Opteron, but Phenom as well) has turned into a relative non-event (due to processor flaws and inferior performance compared to their Intel competition, namely Kentsfield and Clovertown). The only pressure Intel is under is from Intel itself (AMD certainly isn't mounting any at this point). Intel is pausing because it pretty much has to: not due to any sort of resurgencew from AMD, but to stave off would-be regulators seeing AMD practically implode. Intel wants AMD to recover to avoid being tied up in red tape; therefore, it has to pause in beating them black-and-bloody-blue.

Intel delays quad-core Penryns to pummel Phenom?

More Like Unsold Inventory

The bigger issue for Intel is unsold inventory in the channel (such as X38/P35-based motherboard inventory). Besides, so far, Phenom is, quite literally, no threat even to Kentsfield (existing Q6600/Q6700), flaw or no flaw. Intel doesn't even need *Wolfdale*, let alone Yorkfield (dual-die Wolfdale) if it really wanted to plow AMD under: all it would have to do is take the Kentsfield strategy even further downstream by taking the current E6x40 Conroes and making cheap Kentsfields (Q6440 anyone?) out of them. (Sub-$300USD Kentsfield is a problem for AMD right now; how much worse would a sub-$200 Kentsfield be?) Intel is, quite literally, sitting pretty: AMD is having problems digesting ATI, has Phenom problems,

Poor take-up of e-tax system

Brits vs. the US

Apparently, British e-filing procedures (at least for businesses) are more complicated than such procedures in the US. (In fact, over one-third of all U.S. businesses file electronically.) Or is the resistance coming more from the accountants that are thinking they will be out of business because of electronic filing?