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HP Gets Back into Tablets and PCs
October 29, 2011 | 
Author HP has announced that it will be back in the PC and Microsoft saddle again. It will be delivering a Windows 8 tablet according to yet another new CEO, Meg Whitman. But this was a necessary but not sufficient condition for HP’s survival. Abandoning the PC and tablet businesses was a disastrous decision.
HP like Microsoft has to be a major player in the tablet PC game. Tablets are just going to become dockable PCs with touch+gesture operations, long battery life, plus lightweight portability.Still rapidly improving computing power is going to make tablets > laptops and notebooks in performance. Brobdingnagian Workstation PCs for software development, modeling/simulation and high level media creation work will become a niche. The business and consumer PC maintstream will be dockable tablets. And right now Windows 8 may be the best price performance fit for that Dockable Tablet World. Smart recovery move by HP. But why the hell make the Apotheker appointment?
Marketwatch gives Wall Street’s assessment of the recent HP moves… and they are blunt:
Hewlett-Packard shares were up Friday, a day after the company said it’s keeping its personal computer business, ending speculation that the world’s top PC maker might exit that business…H-P shares gained 3.5% to close at $27.94, the top gainer on the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The stock remains deep in negative territory for the year, however, down about 34% as investors have questioned the company’s strategic direction and frequent management upheavals.
“The entire H-P saga of the past 14 months has been among the saddest and [most] confusing examples of self-inflicted damage that we have seen in our 13 years of Wall Street research,” Richard Kugele of Needham & Co. wrote in a note to clients entitled “A circus without the popcorn.”
Amen.
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Newest Browsers HTML5 Benchmarks
There has been an almost complete new set of browsers released in the last two months from all the major browser vendors. So these new browsers are included in these tests using the revised HTML5Test.com 450 item benchmark. The browsers are ranked by their % compliance scores with Google Chrome the best and IE 9 and 10 the worst.
| Browser HTML5 Compliance Rankings | |
| Browser | HTML5 Test Results |
| Chrome 14.0885 | 341/450=75.8% +13 bonus points |
| Firefox 7.01 | 313/450=69.6% + 9 bonus points |
| Safari 5.1 | 293/450=65.1% + 9 bonus points |
| Opera 11.50 | 286/450=63.6% + 7 bonus points |
| IE10 2nd preview | 231/450= 51.3% + 6 bonus points |
| IE9.0.8182 | 141/450=31.3% + 5 bonus points |
The real problem here is that there are some contentious HTML5 standards such as touch and gestures, Web Offline, Metadata, Web Database have to be agreed to. And the various vendors are starting to set out seriously different positions. Given that HTML5 and Adobe AIR are the last two cross platform development tools that can claim any degree of portability among desktop+mobile OS[yes AIR runs on iOS], HTML5 compliance now becomes a critical issue not just for developers and users but IT shops and CIOs.
Virtual Sign of the Times
This ad for VMWare underlines some themes that are beginning to percolate to the top in IT in general. First, is the OS Mess. There are now roughly double the number of operating systems today that have to be programmed for. But second, there is nary any cross platform tool that will produce write once run anywhere reliable portable code. C/C++ ? Yea right even with tools like Qt this is a major undertaking. HTML and JavaScript? Look at the recent HTML5 and other Web standards achievements - its back to the squalid past. Java nd Flash? Remember Apple has cut-off Java and Flash from iOS mobile devices,. Microsoft is not allowing Flash on Windows 8 IE and the status of Java on Windows 8 is also precarious.
So the new cross platform solution is to run virtual machines. There is so much computing horsepower just waiting around on dual and quad core processors let alone GPUs also brimming with untapped cycles.So have VMs tap them and just run the desired OS inside your own favorite box or server [and double the learning curve as the system admin and troubleshooting are not just different but subject to virtual constraints]. Some of the virtual machine vendors are starting to tap more effectively into these resources underutilized CPU cycles – the add for VMware Fusion 4 is typical.
Apple’s Mac sales, which are rising 22% in a PC market that is down to nearly 0%, may be profiting from this virtual opportunity. So you absolutely must run Windows – do it on your Mac with a charge of $50+the cost of your version of Windows. Now Microsoft does not care-they get a high margin Windows sale. Intel is okay – Apple is running Intel chips. PC hardware manufacturers may have their noses out of joint the most. But the inverse of this, running MacOS on a PC is impossible – MacOS/X looks for unique signature of Apple hardware. How long will Microsoft tolerate this imbalance? Virtually forever, remember they get a high margin sale and running Windows 7 on a Mac might get some users to switch back to Windows as their base OS. And thus you have a Virtual Sign of the Times.
Amazon Shakes IT Markets
At a time when Apple is considering retiring its iPod, Amazon is shaking the whole IT industry to its core. Amazon is doing a Google Android and Apple selling software and hardware cheap to enable its online business to profit from many more tightly linked customers. Amazon is selling for cheaper than ever before a tablet and several e-Books that will replace the iPod thank you very much and supply Amazon with a steady stream of content customers who will more than make up the difference for the deep discount pricing on the new Kindles. And the key to all this is Amazon’s Cloud prowess as evidenced in new book X-ray, Silk Browser, and “free-anywhere-in-the-world as long as your connecting to Amazon” 3G services. And the cheekiness of the announcement is as savory as a succulent bite into a delicious apple:
Now first, consider that Kindle the device provides 10% of Amazons revenues. Next consider that the Kindle Store Ecosystem is not identical to but very much like the Apple AppStore and iTunes, it capture a healthy chunk of all sales for content that is used on all those Kindles. Now consider what Amazon did today:
1)Announced the Kindle Touch for $139 without advertisng [$99 with advertising];
2)Announced Kindle refresh at $79 with advertising [$109 without] in new form factor: lighter weight, but same screen size;
3)Announced the Kindle Fire at $199 with :
+ 7.5″ x 4.7″ screen 1024 x 600 pixel resolution at 169 ppi, 16 million colors.
+ TI OMAP dual core processor at 1.2Ghz
+ 8GB of stoage plus Amazon EC2 storage for all Amazon content
+ one USB2 Connector
+ 3.5 mm stereo audio jack, top-mounted stereo speakers.
+ complete set of WiFi connectivity options
+ fast SILK browser which takes advantage of Cloud Processing
+ Amazon UI interface with simplified gestures/touch screen operations
-No HDMI output
-No camera either front or back
-No GPS capabilities
-No BlueRay support
-No 3G or 4G connectivity
-No memory expansion with SD-Card
+ One month of Free Amazon Prime service for free TV, movie downloads
+$199 Price with no online advertising
The Kindle Fire pricing at 40% of 32GB iPad 2 sets a dramatic new price point for tablets given the quality of the processor, the RIM Playbook caliber screen, solid WiFi connectivity, free cloud storage, and speed of the new Silk browser. Yes, the giveaways are not trivial with no HDMI, no memory expansion and no cameras. Still, the Amazon price point will set the price bar for any contemplated iPad 2S and many other new entry tablets.
But the Amazon IT Shake-up is not confined to price alone. Amazon’s Silk Browser becomes a new and impressive entrant to the Browser Wars. Can Silk have creamed Google Chrome’s performance clock[and using technology easily within Google's reach]? Likewise the Amazon EC2 connect sets a high bar for Apple and Microsoft, which are due on the Cloud “Real Soon Now”. And Microsoft must be really shaking in its boots about missing the whole tablet market window. And Google and Apple now have competition for the cross subsidy financing for their operations [Apple through AppStore, iTunes, plus carrier subsidies and Google through its advertising revenue streams].NetFlix has a competitor for its streaming services[Amazon has a lower price and more services but NetFlix has a big advantage in number of media[Netflix =9900 movie versus Amazon=2200 movies; NetFlix=35,000 TV episodes versus Amazon=9,600 TV episode]. Plus the new Kindles put pricing and feature pressure [especially Amazon's new book X-Ray feature] on Kobo, Nook, and the many other e-readers in the market. And the list goes on and on – especially if Amazon buys Palm from HP.
Talk about Joseph Schumpeter full earthquake shaking and disruption in Consumer IT!
Microsoft Continues Web Mischief
When your total browser market share is declining by 1% per month [see wikipedia note here] and you are courting developers for your new Windows 8 OS which features HTML5 as a key developer component [the only cross platform tool of any import being offered byMicrosoft], the last thing Redmond would want to do is create some Web mischief. Well Microsoft’s hardball tactics appear to an endemic condition. Latest mischief – if you cant beat Google cause their Adsense ads to disappear in your browsers. The following screenshots are taken using IE9 and the preview of IE 10.
Google Adsense is missing in IE9 – the Big Gap under options at right of screen shot
But if you turn on the “Compatibility View” then Google Ad Appears
Most interesting is what happens in IE 10 Preview – the Future of Microsoft browsing:
The Preview edition, with no Compatibility View toggle switch
This shows that Microsoft continues to act in bad faith on browser operations. Redmond forces users to click on an icon to restore viewing that all 4 other major browsers have no problems with. Now readers can understand why ye Editor had so many caveats in the review of Windows 8 – a very promising offering that has the disadvantage of being under the influence of Microsoft “management”. Also please explain to me why Congress is investigating Google now and left Microsoft unexamined and unscathed throughout the 200o-2008 period when Redmond did not update its IE browser, gave away free editions of its BI software to prop up SQL Server sales, and had the worst record for security and reliability with its monopoly Windows and IE browser systems.