Om’s Notebooks vs. Netbooks: Can You Tell the Difference? post sparked a healthy amount of debate when it went up Monday. Given how closely I’ve followed the burgeoning netbook sector since its birth, the discussion quickly caught my eye. Despite his observations as to how netbook makers are trying make their offerings more robust, however, crucial differences between notebooks and netbooks remain — differences that, as some astute commenters pointed out, allow netbooks to fill the gap between what’s offered by smartphones and what’s offered by full-featured notebooks. Here’s how. Continue »

Ask a netbook owner why he or she bought one of the small laptops and you’re sure to get a number of reasonable answers. However, the response likely won’t be, “For the killer graphics performance!” Intel’s GMA 950 core has been the bread-and-butter hardware solution for graphics since the netbook market was born in late 2007. The chip is fine for a basic, all-around graphics experience, but quickly starts to falter when stressed with high-definition video or other graphic-intensive tasks. Enter Nvidia with its ION solution, which found its way into the new HP Mini 311, an 11.6-inch netbook starting at $399. At this price point — and with the high-definition video functionality and DirectX 10 support that Intel netbooks can’t currently match — consumers are sure to be swayed towards a PC-quality graphics experience on a mobile computer, meaning the netbook market could see some serious changes. Continue »

As the Master of Ceremonies at our recent Mobilize 09 event, I think I had the best seat in the house. Actually, I stood all day, but the chance to meet and introduce every speakers and panelist was like a backstage pass to the mobile web itself. In short, it was one of the most enlightening experiences I’ve had since starting this career. And while there’s no way to share every nuance of the event, Colin Gibbs has penned an informative overview of it in his Mobilize Wrap-up, published at GigaOM Pro (subscription required).

While our live-blogging provided a look at the day’s happenings as they unfolded, Colin’s wrap-up (in my colleague Liz Gannes’ words) shows the “forest, not just the trees,” by focusing on the major themes of the day and summarizing the mobile web as seen by the thought leaders and attendees of Mobilize 09. From app stores to ultraband and social media trends, Colin captures the essence of our event and tops it off with a look at our LaunchPad companies — the visionaries that translate today’s trends into tomorrow’s mobile web solutions. If you weren’t able to attend Mobilize 09, Colin’s piece is the next best thing to actually having been there. And unlike me, you can enjoy it sitting down.

Om and I are both big fans of the PogoPlug from Cloud Engines. Using it earlier this year, we turned ordinary external drives into remotely accessible Network Area Storage devices. But even good products can evolve into better ones. Today, Cloud Engines announced a product partnership with Seagate called the FreeAgent DockStar. This $99 docking mechanism holds a Seagate FreeAgent Go external drive but also connects directly to a router to leverage the PogoPlug cloud functionality. A $29 yearly PogoPlug subscription is required for file-sharing, but the first year is included with a DockStar. Additional storage devices are supported through the three USB ports on the dock.

Will the DockStar be a rock star for consumers? The clean-looking device is far smaller and cheaper than other NAS solutions on the market, although the price doesn’t include an actual hard drive. Continue »

Microsoft, after months of anticipation, today launched its latest digital audio player, the Zune HD. It’s a complete revamp of the device’s previous versions — it utilizes a bright OLED touchscreen, adds a web browser and HD radio tuner, and runs on a new Tegra processor from Nvidia. But while Microsoft hopes to “out-iPod” the Apple line of audio players with some extra features, the question isn’t “Which device has more features?” Rather, it’s “Which device has the features that consumers want most?” More importantly — will Microsoft eventually fold its Zune platform into Windows phones? Continue »

What if virtually every cellular handset on the planet enjoyed accurate location awareness? That’s the question I pondered after meeting with GloPos, a startup that’s about to leave stealth mode whose self-learning software algorithm enables any basic GSM or CDMA cellular phone to provide extremely precise locational data without using GPS — or even Wi-Fi, for that matter. The patent-pending technology offers positioning to within 1-40 meters, including indoor and underground locations.

Think about it — your old RAZR from 2005 suddenly gains precise location awareness that rivals or beats the location fixes from a high-end smartphone of 2009. With near-global handset support, and no additional radios required, GloPos could effectively commoditize location. Continue »

As a netbook fanatic, you’d think Nokia’s unveiling of the Booklet 3G, its first foray into the netbook world, today would have me doing my geeky dance of joy. I’m waiting for Sept. 2nd — when the handset maker and mobile service provider is expected to disclose the bulk of the device details — before I decide whether to kick up my heels and do a little jig.

It’s difficult for me to get excited about the Booklet 3G as not only is it late to the party, but it doesn’t appear to offer much more than the netbooks already on the market. Case in point: The Booklet 3G will run Microsoft Windows using the Intel Atom platform. I originally thought this might be the next-generation Atom — aka the PineTrail platform — but All About Symbian indicates the CPU is a 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z530. That’s the same processor that’s been available in Dell’s Inspiron Mini10 netbook for the past several months. Continue »