Category: Products

Dell includes channel in desktop-as-a-service move

Posted on August 27, 2013 by - News, Products

Dell logoDell is looking to include the channel in its desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) strategy and it is about to offer two options for channel partners. The first one will be straightforward, much like the usual resale relationship, but a deeper approach will let the partners themselves “own” the customers, reports MSPmentor.

The cunning plan is that organisations will find it a lot easier to get into the DaaS business without the hassle of building their own infrastructure. Such an approach should appeal to potential providers, including telecoms, reckons Dell. So far the push will apparently be limited to the American market, where the service launched a month ago, in cooperation with system integrators MCPC from Ohio.

However, the model itself sounds relatively flexible and it should be relatively easy to expand. Dell Director of Sales Enablement Terry Vaughn said the company has already come up with a playbook for the service, which resembles a franchise model. Affiliate/referral margins are percent of revenue in a monthly recurring model, while the co-delivery model requires the partner to achieve Dell certification, but it also provides better margins of 15 to 20 percent.

“We know what we are selling this for direct in the market place, and we are holding the pricing consistent,” said Vaughn. He added that the approach is designed to avoid any channel conflict.

In addition, Dell is offering a free proof-of-concept trial for anyone willing to give the new DaaS strategy a go.

Dell to sell new Latitude ultrabooks, laptops

Posted on August 27, 2013 by - News, Products

dell-latitude-7000-330pxDell has revamped its range of business friendly Latitude products, with a nice ultrabook on top. The Latitude 7000 is the new anorexic flagship, while Latitude 5000 and 3000 series products are designed with SMBs, education and small customers in mind.

The 7000 is quite a looker, a far cry from dull business designs of the past. The 12-incher is 20mm thick and it weighs just 2.99 pounds, which is not bad but it’s still a bit bulkier than the MacBook Air. However, unlike the Air, it is also available with a 14-inch screen, tucked underneath a carbon lid. All the usual business features are on board, like Intel vPro processors, TPM, optional fingerprint and smartcard readers, as well as NFC.

Battery life should be good, too. Dell promises up to 8.5 hours on a small three-cell power pack, which is pretty good. It can use existing E Docks as well as wireless WiGig docks. USB 3.0 and HDMI are on board as well. Although it’s thin and light, it is rather rugged and it complies with MIL-STD 810G.

dell-latitude-7000-600px

Base models ship with 1366×768 matte screens, but they are available with 1080p touchscreens, with a pane of Gorilla Glass on top. The 14-inch is available with a matte, non-touch 1080p panel. Both models ship with SSDs as standard, but the 14-inch version can also be ordered with a hybrid drive for more storage on a budget.

The entry level 3000 series and the mid-range 5000 series come in two sizes, 14 and 15 inches. They can also be ordered with touchscreens and due to their size they offer a lot more options under the bonnet, including discrete graphics, a bigger choice of processors, three different battery sizes and hard drives ranging up to 1TB, or SSDs up to 256GB.

Pricing starts at $599 for the 3000 series, but the sleek 7000 series is a lot pricier, starting at $1,049 in the US. There is still no word on 5000 series pricing.

AMD updates roadmap, reveals new delays

Posted on August 27, 2013 by - News, Products

AMD, SunnyvaleAMD has a new roadmap which sheds more light on upcoming Volcanic Islands GPUs, as well as Kaveri and Kabini based product releases, and delays.

New GPUs are coming soon. AMD will hold a launch event in roughly a month and it is widely expected to launch the new Hawaii card at the event, which will be held – in Hawaii. AMD has already announced that Kaveri products will hit the channel in mid-February 2014. They will be joined by new Kabini SKUs later on, reports Digitimes.

The new Kabini chips will enter mass production in February and they will be announced in March. It appears that this batch will be focused on desktops and big notebooks, as most of them will be quad cores with a 25W TDP. The first desktop Kabini parts were supposed to launch in the second half of 2013, but now it appears they have been pushed back to March. Last week we reported that Kabini is struggling with limited availability and the delay explains it, at least on the desktop front.

Kabini’s successor, Beema, has also been delayed. It was supposed to launch in March 2014, but now it seems it will launch in the second half of 2014 or maybe even in early 2015, which is very bad news indeed.

According to the roadmap, AMD’s FM1 and AM3 sockets will be phased out by the end of the year. In 2014 AM3+ will account for 30 percent of AMD’s desktop processor shipments, while FM2/FM2+ will account for the remaining 70 percent. Kabini will use ST3 and FS1B sockets.

Looking ahead to 2015, AMD should release Carrizo APUs based on the new Excavator architecture and Nolan should replace Beema in the low end. However, delays are possible and when it comes to AMD they are the norm, not an exception.

AMD Jaguar products still thin on ground

Posted on August 23, 2013 by - News, Products

jaguar-peltIn late May AMD officially launched its first Jaguar-based APUs. Kabini was supposed to end up in all sorts of products, from cheap and cheerful notebooks, to AIOs and traditional desktops.

Temash is an even more frugal version of the chip, so it was intended for ultraportables, hybrids and similar form factors. Both chips arrived with much fanfare and got a lot of praise from the tech press. They are the most interesting consumer products to come out of AMD in 2013.

However, it’s been exactly three months since the launch and there really aren’t that many actual products to buy. There are some Jaguar-based notebooks and desktops in EMEA and US, but even they are available in a handful of shops, in rather limited numbers. The Acer Aspire V5, HP Pavilion Sleekbook TouchSmart 11, Samsung ATIV Book 9 Lite are Temash powered ultraportables and they are readily available in most European markets, albeit in a limited number of shops. So far they appear to be the only Temash notebooks in stock in Europe.

It is even worse with Kabini. There’s the Lenovo Thinkpad E145 in two SKUs, Toshiba Satellite C70/C75 and a huge Packard Bell 17-incher, which is practically the only Kabini notebook available on the continent, at least the only one to be found in price search engines. It’s only available in two Austrian shops, which is still better than the Lenovo and Toshiba, as nobody appears to have them in stock at the moment.

Then there’s a couple of Acer SFF desktops and a Packard Bell all-in-one, and that’s about it. There’s also not a single mini-ITX board yet, which is bad news for HTPC enthusiasts and tinkerers. It also may indicate that the first batches of Kabini chips are destined solely for OEMs, but we can only speculate.

In any case three months into the launch AMD’s most promising chip of the year is very hard to come by. This is very bad news for AMD. Kabini had the potential to wipe the floor with Intel’s obsolete 32nm Atoms and it should have enjoyed a few months on the market before Intel rolls out new 22nm Bay Trail parts. Now it seems this won’t be the case. The Bay Trail launch is just a few weeks away and it is becoming apparent that AMD failed to capitalize on its lead.

AMD informed us that is has product in stock in the US and EMEA. However, volumes and the number of actual design wins remain a concern. Jaguar is an excellent product with lots of potential, but with the PC market in shambles, it might struggle to gain traction and get plenty of design wins, as vendors and disties are still sitting on heaps of unsold Cedarview and Brazos products.

Lenovo cooks up BYOD for channel

Posted on August 22, 2013 by - News, Products

lenovo-logoLenovo wants to tap the BYOD trend with a new demo kit, offered to its channel partners and customers. The new “Combat Kit” aims to make BYOD simpler and less challenging. It could also reduce the suicide rate among IT specialists in charge of sorting out the mess that is BYOD.

The kit features several Lenovo devices, mostly tablets and hybrids. Partners can pick the ones that best suits their needs and hand them out to end users, reports CRN. The kit includes the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, ThinkPad Helix, ThinkPad Twist and the ThinkPad Tablet 2.

Lenovo brand ambassador Stephen Miller said the sales cycle is changing. In the past, companies would buy ten computers and every end user got the exact same one. With the consumerization of IT, the old one-size-fits-all approach simply doesn’t cut it anymore.

“Now it’s difficult. Everybody wants a different device,” said Miller. “You have confusion around what to sell, and end users don’t know what to buy because of the paradox of choice.”

The kit would effectively allow users choose the device that works best for them. Miller said end users can get a hands on experience, and then partners can sell the device that the end users actually want. There seems to be a lot of interest in the kit and there’s already a waiting list, but Miller said partners should still sign up.

Asus launches NFC thing

Posted on August 19, 2013 by - News, Products

asus-nfc-dongleNFC is slowly taking off, but adoption is still limited. The technology is there, most phones and tablets ship with NFC chips, but very few people and businesses actually use it.

Now Asus has an interesting product that could help bring NFC to desktops and notebooks, but there is a catch.

The company’s NFC Express receiver is a USB 3.0 device that could have quite a few uses. It could allow users to log in using Windows 8 and NFC tags and it could allow the transfer of photos and images without WiFi.

The catch is that the device was designed to be used with Asus Z87 motherboards. It also ships as an accessory with the Z87-DELUXE/DUAL motherboard. It can also be bought separately and it uses two USB 3.0 ports.

Logging into Windows without a password sounds interesting, but NFC dongles could have a lot of other applications. Cheap, off-the-shelf devices could be used to upgrade existing PCs or POS systems in retail outlets. However, for this to happen NFC needs to see a lot more adoption across the board.

Android tablets still lack tons of iPad apps

Posted on August 15, 2013 by - News, Products

NexusSales of Android smartphones and cheap tablets are skyrocketing, but the same isn’t true of high-end Android tablets. While many models feature impressive hardware that could easily go toe to toe with the iPad, the app ecosystem just isn’t there yet. 

According to Canalys, out of the top 50 paid and free iPad apps in Apple’s US App Store, 30 percent are nowhere to be found on Google’s Play Store. Another 18 percent were available, but they were not optimized for tablets, which means they look and feel like oversized phone apps. Just 52 percent were available through the Play Store, optimized and ready for tablets.

“Quite simply, building high-quality app experiences for Android tablets has not been among many developers’ top priorities to date,” said Canalys senior analyst Tim Shepherd. “That there are over 375,000 apps in the Apple App Store that are designed with iPad users in mind, versus just a fraction of this – in the low tens of thousands – available through Google Play, underscores this point.”

Canalys expects all this to change, as the user base grows and Google introduces improvements to the Play Store. However, Google simply has to do more to support developers to invest time and money in high-quality Android apps for tablets. Since pricey Android tablets don’t sell well, the user base will remain limited. Most people who buy Android tablets go for cheap and small models, hence it is safe to assume that they are not willing to invest in premium apps and services, either.

The other problem facing Android developers is fragmentation. Apple developers need to design tablet apps for just two screen resolutions and form factors, both of which use the same aspect ratio. They don’t face nearly as many as many challenges as Android developers, who have to deal with dozens of different resolutions, form factors, Android versions, APIs and application processors.

Worse, at the end of the day Android developers have a very limited market for bespoke tablet apps, as the user base is still small and it’s growing from the ground up, i.e. growth is coming from low-end tablets that weren’t designed with anything serious in mind.

Pricey PCs kill any hint of recovery

Posted on August 13, 2013 by - News, Products

pc-sales-slumpPC shipments have been slow for months and they should start bottoming out soon, but the PC cause is being undermined by pricey laptops, analysts believe. A new breed of high-end designs based on Haswell parts is shipping, but their prices seem out of touch with reality. 

Buyers just don’t want to pay the premium for new chips, touchscreens or new form factors – and that premium can be quite steep. Most new Haswell laptops and ultrabooks cost a lot more than the average budget laptop and quite a few of them are priced north of £1,000.

“The thought that you can sell a $1,400 notebook is ridiculous. The mess is partly credited to Windows 8,” said Roger Kay, president and principal analyst at Endpoint Technologies Associates, reports IDG News Service. “In their bones they don’t get it. They refuse to deal with the reality of what’s going on.”

Mikako Kitagawa, research analyst at Gartner, believes laptop prices have stabilized and may even creep up. PC vendors are trying to position laptops as premium products compared to tablets, which means they are more likely to focus on high-end and mid-range models, with higher margins.
This may leave more room for cheaper brands, who could focus on entry level laptops, but then again such laptops are experiencing high cannibalization rates from tablets, so the trend is a mixed bag at best. Still, someone always finds a way to make the most of a crisis and we reckon Chromebook makers could do well in such a climate.

However, things aren’t that great in the high-end, either. Now that most people are used to dirt cheap laptops and equally cheap tablets, convincing them to pay more for “premium” models won’t be easy.

Other than prestige or brand snobbery, it’s really hard to make a convincing case for high-end laptops right now. There will be no shortage of executives willing to pay £1,000 or more for a stylish piece of kit, or enthusiasts who go for even pricier, boutique offerings. However, most users will probably be better off buying a budget model for £500 and spending the rest on a tablet, or a vacant apartment complex in Spain.

Seagate intros first 3.5-inch hybrid drive

Posted on August 12, 2013 by - News, Products

seagate-longmontSeagate seems to believe in traditional desktops. The company has introduced the world’s first 3.5-inch hybrid drive in two flavours, 1TB and 2TB. Seagate has been making hybrid drives for years, but all of them were 2.5-inch models and most of them ended up in laptops.

However, the new ST1000DX001 is a big 3.5-inch desktop drive with as spindle speed of 7200rpm. Most 2.5-inch SSHDs spin at 5400rpm, so the new desktop drive should end up a bit faster. In addition, it should be cheaper than 2.5-inch drives and it’s available in 2TB, which is not the case with 2.5-inch hybrids that range from 320GB to 1TB in capacity.

The drive has an integrated 8GB NAND drive on top of 64MB of cache. Of course, it supports SATA 6Gbps and Seagate’s pitch says it delivers “SSD performance and HDD capacity”. This is pushing it to say the least. While it should end up faster than Seagate’s plain 3.5-inch drives, it won’t come close to proper SSDs in most scenarios.

However, that is beside the point. Traditional mechanical drives are on their way out and they will be replaced by hybrids. Enthusiasts and professionals will keep using SSDs are their primary drives, but for storage they’ll now be able to rely on hybrids and that sounds like a very nice mix.

The only trouble is that it’s not exactly what we’d call cheap. Early listings in Europe put it north of €110, which is quite pricey for a 3.5-inch 1TB drive, even if it is a hybrid.

AMD Kaveri to hit channel in February

Posted on August 9, 2013 by - News, Products

AMD, SunnyvaleAMD’s next-gen APU, codenamed Kaveri, won’t be coming to market this year. Although AMD plans to launch and ship the chip toward the end of the year, it won’t appear in the channel until February 2014.

Earlier this week tech site VR Zone  reported that Kaveri would be delayed, which was no surprise as few people expected it to show up this year. AMD’s roadmap indicates that the chip is indeed launching this year, but in its response AMD has now officially confirmed that availability is expected in early 2014.

Kaveri is AMD’s fourth generation mid-range APU. It will pack up to four Steamroller CPU cores and it will be the first AMD APU to feature GCN graphics. The previous two generations were 32nm parts based on Piledriver CPU cores and WLIW4-based GPUs, hence the 28nm Kaveri with a brand new CPU and GPU cobmo looks like a huge upgrade.

Mobile Kaveri chips should start shipping later in 2014, AMD said.

It should be noted that the new chips will require FM2+ compatible motherboards and the first boards were launched by Asus a few weeks ago. Although they are backwards compatible with FM2 parts, they don’t appear to be a worthwhile investment at this point. There is still plenty of time to stock up on FM2+ boards before Kaveri shows up.

Acer wants to grow Chromebook, Android business

Posted on August 9, 2013 by - News, Products

acer-logo-ceAcer has committed the ultimate act of Windows heresy – it wants to expand its presence in the Chromebook and Android space. The shift was revealed by Acer president Jim Wang during the company’s latest conference call.

“We are trying to grow our non-Windows business as soon as possible. Android is very popular in smartphones and dominant in tablets…I also see a new market there for Chromebooks,” said Wang.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Wong expects Android and Chromebooks to account for 10 to 12 percent of Acer’s revenue this year. However, that figure could rise to a whopping 30 percent next year. At the moment, Chromebooks account for about three percent of Acer’s shipments.

Yesterday it emerged that Acer suffered a massive drop in EMEA shipments last quarter. It took a 44.7 percent hit compared to Q2 2012. With that in mind, it is abundantly clear why Acer is trying to tap other markets.

Over the past two years most PC makers, including Acer, tried to enter the Android tablet market and they don’t have much to show for it. Windows tablets are still dead in the water and earlier this week Acer slashed the price of its relatively new W3 Windows by 20 percent.

It appears that Chromebooks will be Acer’s next bet, as the Chromebook market is not nearly as saturated as the tablet market. However, Chromebooks also lack the mass consumer appeal of cheap and fun tablets.

Acer’s Win8 tab price slashed

Posted on August 7, 2013 by - News, Products

acer-w3Acer has decided to cut the price of its first Windows 8 tablet by over 20 percent, despite the fact that it was launched less than two months ago. Things can’t be going well when a brand new product has its price slashed in a matter of weeks, but this is hardly Acer’s fault.

The Acer Iconia W3 tablet will now sell for $299 for the entry level 32GB model in the US, which is a nice $80 discount over the original list price. Acer said the cut would be applied in other markets as well, reports Focus Taiwan. Granted the W3 is a rather odd device. Most consumers associate Windows 8 with big, elaborate and  overpriced tablets or hybrids, but the W3 is a cheap 8-incher.

In any case this does not bode well for Redmond. Over the weekend it cut the Surface Pro price by $100 and a couple of weeks ago it also gave the doomed Surface RT a 30-percent haircut. It is clearly not going well and Acer’s decision is just the icing on the cake.

What’s more, Microsoft’s own cuts came a few months after the launch, while Acer decided to slash the price of a brand new device which is still rolling out in some markets. Last month it was rumoured that Acer would replace the W3 in September, after just three months on the market.  If this is indicative of a wider trend, and that appears to be the case, we have to wonder why vendors would even bother with Windows 8 tablets?

Analysts estimate that a total of 1.8 million Windows tablets were shipped in the second quarter, giving both Microsoft’s tablet operating systems a combined market share of 4 percent.

Microsoft cuts Surface Pro price

Posted on August 5, 2013 by - News, Products

surface-proA couple of weeks ago Microsoft was forced to concede defeat and slash the price of its Surface RT tablets by about 30 percent. It later took a $900 million hit for a mountain of unsold RTs and CEO Steve Ballmer told the world that the company got carried away and built too many tablets, just in case anyone did not know that already.

Now Microsoft is cutting the price of its other tablet, the x86-based Surface Pro. The cut is far less substantial, $100 or just around 10 percent. However, the Surface Pro will remain quite expensive even after the cut. The Pro, like other Windows 8 tablets, is just too expensive to build and Microsoft doesn’t have much wiggle room. The Surface Pro will now cost $799 and $899 in 64GB and 128GB flavours.

It’s hardly a bargain and the Surface Pro is not a successful product. It never was, like its Windows RT based sibling. Analysts believe Microsoft sold just 1.5 million Surface tablets to date, but since there is no breakdown between the Surface RT and Surface Pro, we don’t know how many Surface Pros are in the wild.

Judging by the sales figures, the Surface Pro might be a very collectible oddity in a couple of decades. It might even end up in a few museums, where curators will use it to explain to our kids how Microsoft lost the plot in the early 2010s and single-handedly wrecked the PC industry.

Windows 8 market share creeps

Posted on August 1, 2013 by - News, Products

samsung-aioAfter failing to save the PC market from its inevitable nosedive, Windows 8 is struggling to gain market share. It is still growing, but at a snail’s pace and the dominant Redmond flavoured operating system remains Windows 7.

New data from Net Applications has revealed that July was a pretty bad month for Windows 8, as it saw a miserable 0.3 percent gain.

Windows 8 ended the month with a share of 5.4 percent, while Windows 7 went up from 44.37 to 44.49 percent. This basically means that some people are still buying Windows 7 gear, or upgrading existing systems to Win 7. It is not good news, since Windows 8 was released last October.

In fact, Windows 8 overtook Vista just a few months ago and Vista still has a 4.24 percent share, although it is declining. Windows XP on the other hand just refuses to die. Its share actually went up from 37.17 percent to 37.19 percent last month. Clearly Redmond seeded XP with a few cockroach genes, but since it will discontinue support for the venerable OS in April next year, the share should plummet over the next few months.

Although Apple is getting a lot of attention, Windows remains the dominant platform worldwide, with a 91.51 percent share, up from 91.51. OS X and Linux were down 0.01 and 0.03 percent respectively.

Windows 8.1 and the imminent demise of XP should fuel more growth for Windows 8.x, but the gains will be limited. Windows 8 will end its first year on the market with a single-digit market share. Given the state of the PC market, this is hardly surprising.

Forrester thinks Chromebooks

Posted on July 31, 2013 by - News, Products

chromebookChromebooks are relatively new devices and they have yet to make their mark, but Forrester Research believes they have what it takes to make their presence felt in enterprise markets.

Although sales are still relatively low, bear in mind that Chromebooks are going after a limited niche market and that market does not include businesses, at least not for the time being.

However, Forrester’s latest Chromebook report concluded that businesses should rethink their approach to Chromebooks. At the moment only 28 percent of enterprises have some interest in Chromebooks, while 82 percent are interested in laptops. Despite the not-so-encouraging figures, Forrester’s research shows that there are a number of circumstances where Chromebooks may trump PCs, Macs and tablets in a business setting.

First of all Chromebooks are relatively cheap and they could be offered to specific classes of workers in a mixed environment with PCs and tablets, all at a relatively low cost. They are also a good fit for organizations that have adopted Gmail and other Google apps and services. Lastly, organizations that plan to deploy devices in a customer-facing think kiosk setting should be interested in Chromebooks.

Analyst J.P. Gownder argues that Chromebooks offer the prospect of radically reducing the amount of time IT staff spends keeping the devices going. Instead of wasting time on installing software and creating images on laptops, the techies could be freed up to do something a bit more productive. Due to their simplicity and reliance on Google’s cloud-based services, Chromebooks offer high uptime, low service costs and scalable deployment.

Windows and Microsoft Office have been a staple of businesses for decades, but Chromebooks might have what it takes to disrupt Redmond’s (strangle) hold on the market. They are cheap to procure, easy to deploy and even easier to maintain. Although many punters still view Chromebooks as a cosumerish replacement for netbooks, these advantages could transform them into a viable alternative to proper laptops in a number of settings.