Pat Moorhead

Palm Pre Review (videos)

With all the buzz leading up to the Palm Pre launch, you would think that the Pre would kill off all other smartphones. The other phones are still alive I am happy to report for the sake of my trusty BlackBerry Bold. The Pre officially launched and I finally got the chance to get my hands on it. It didnâ€™t disappoint as it has some key distinguishing features like a GUI optimized for real multitasking.

How Valuable Are Smartphone Battery Life Figures?

I do a lot of hands-on research on smartphones. I do this for two reasons. First, I believe they are fast becoming one of the prevalent cloud clients, and second, they are fast becoming a popular device to consume video. AMD obviously is involved in building the cloud with the AMD Opteron Processors but also conversion to make a video smartphone-friendly can take a tremendous amount of compute power, and ATI Radeon HD 4800 series graphics and AMD Phenom II X4 processors do those conversions quite well.

BlackBerry Bold: My Business Workhorse

Smartphones are increasingly becoming the most important factor in portable cloud access. What makes them unique is their portability and versatility. One minute a phone, the next a web browser, the next a video broadcast client. After blogging on the Android G1 and the BlackBerry Storm, and as co-owner of an iPhone (wife's), people asked me why I didn't blog on my personal workhorse, the BlackBerry Bold. Well, I aim to please and here it is.

The Significance of HD Palmcorders to Netbook and Notebook Design

Low-priced, 720P HD pocket camcorders (palmcorders) are gaining market momentum and I believe consumers are drawn to the value proposition of low cost, high quality, portable, and convenient video capture and playback. As these devices proliferate, it leaves me contemplating how consumers will respond when they discover just how many of these notebooks or netbooks can't effectively play back that content. Whether or not low end notebooks or netbooks were designed to do this isn't relevant, as a recent NPD blog posting (citing new research) may suggest.

HP, AMD & MTV Notebook Design Contest Winners (CES 2009)

Art-inspired notebook designs are becoming more popular as consumers view their gadgets as truly personal. AMD, HP, and MTV reached out to the community and asked them for their art-inspired designs and received almost 17,000 entries. I grabbed on video the top designs from 4 different continents. I wish I were this creative.

Poor Spore Performance on Your New Notebook

Spore, the popular "casual" game from EA, has received as much sales and fanfare as it has controversy from its DRM policies. Spore sold 1M copies and 25M creations were created in its first 2 weeks so no one questions its popularity. But, does anyone question the quality of the visual experience between different notebook technologies? They should, as there are big differences that could really impact their enjoyment. One would expect that today on modern notebooks these differences wouldn't exist but they definitely do.

My Perfect Mini-Notebook

After testing seven netbooks (Asus Eee PC 4G, Asus Eee PC 900, MSI U100, Dell Inspiron 910, HP 2133, Geode reference design, Asus Eee PC 1000H ), over the last five months, I now know what I want to see in future designs. This may not be the same for all 6,699,999,999 people on earth, but perhaps for a handful or two of like-minded people.