posted by David Angell on January 13, 2009
Guest post by Randy Nickel, Wireless Marketing Director, Mobile Platforms Group
By now you take for granted that any notebook (or Netbook) you purchase has Wi-Fi built-in. The essential need for flexible connectivity that made Wi-Fi ubiquitous on notebooks is becoming a must-have feature in consumer electronic (CE) devices. In the near future printers, smartphones, digital cameras, personal media players, digital photo frames, game consoles, even televisions, DVD players and speakers will include Wi-Fi. By 2012, In-Stat estimates a whopping 1 billion new devices will ship with Wi-Fi with notebooks comprising less than one third of the total.
Sounds great, right! Here’s the catch. Once you purchase these devices, you have to go through the frustrating task of connecting them to your Wi-Fi Access Point (AP) to link up to your notebook and the Internet. Connecting a notebook to the Wi-Fi network is straightforward because utilities like Intel® PROSet/Wireless software and a full size keyboard and display ease the configuration process. However, this simple task is daunting on a CE device that often has no display or keyboard, not to mention configuring security. Even if you are able to connect your digital camera to your home AP, what do you do after that? Map a drive to your notebook from the digital camera so you can copy pictures directly from the camera to the notebook. Wait, there’s no Microsoft Windows Explorer on the camera. And so on.
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tagged: cedevices, intelcentrino2, intelmywifi, mywifi, wifi, wifipan, wireless
posted by Daniel Snyder on January 12, 2009
And now ladies and gentlemen, something completely different from the self-congratulatory, back-slapping, post-CES euphoria flooding the airwaves. Oh yes, there was amazing technology, amazing innovation and a sense of hubris in light of the economy and hard times all around. Less bling, more practical solutions. I think I even got a door held open for me a time or two by someone I didn't have to tip, hehe.
The Intel booth was packed with enthusiastic techies and I met with over fifty of the best and brightest tech press in the world. Their knowledge and class always blows me away. We chatted
Core i7, 45nm innovation, Atom, and Classmate PC. And as everybody at CES talked, we drank bottled water. Lots of it.Bottled water which, when emptied, couldn't find a recycling bin for a hundred miles. Literally. Turns out the
Or worse -- as a recent issue of the Economist writes about in depth - the ocean. Guess how much plastic is floating in the
And yet almost all the exhibitors are companies "embracing sustainability," "going green." Exhibitors want to be seen as embracing the environment, so why not lean on the local convention authorities to embrace it too? A two-watt power saving in your glitzy gadget or fifteen more minutes of battery life is great, but I'd love to see technological innovation reach other areas in desperate need of greening.
Not all is doom and gloom of course. A highlight for me was meeting Anisha Ladha, Intel's e-waste Program Manager. Kudos to Intel for giving her primo CES booth space to talk about how
we reclaim more than 3 billion gallons of wastewater each year in our factories.
Anisha is passionate, with an environmental engineering background and tons of experience at all levels. And months in advance of last year's show, she spent ergs trying to figure out who in show management could help make CES more environmentally friendly. She hit dead ends everywhere, with the fundamental issue being that "LVCC doesn't recycle." When she investigated offering reusable Intel branded beverage mugs she met with an even bigger quagmire of costs, rules, status quo and LVCC labor laws.
Imagine a "gentle nudge" program where attendees reused a water bottle and had it scanned at each meeting to collect a goodie at the end of the show? Maybe a collection of iTunes MP3s with "green" in the title (that's only slightly tongue-in-cheek), or a raffle for a more power efficient, sleek and light Centrino 2 notebook?
Let's not continue letting this convention be a study in "you can lead a CES gadgeteer to bottled water, but you can't make him (or her) recycle." Anisha, myself and several others I talked to last week are going to do our part to help make sure our respective companies walk the walk as well as talk the talk on green. Companies may make broad declarations on sustainability, but it is the employees themselves that must act to make words reality. Let's hope we have enough voices chime in to really unleash the "green"!
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tagged: CES 2008, classmate pc, Core i7, green, Intel, sustainability
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