marypcbuk

I've always said that the main reason Intel develops Moblin is to scare Microsoft; any time Redmond isn't playing ball, Intel holds up Moblin (I can't bring myself to call it MeeGo every time) like a scary hand puppet and waves it around until the 'softies cave in. Perhaps they haven't caved recently (or perhaps my utter speculation about Windows 8 on ARM is near to the bone), but Intel spokesperson James Reinders made some remarkably candid comments about Microsoft and Windows performance on Atom (twice, so it wasn't mis-speaking).

Personally I'm very happy with Windows 7 on Atom (in as much as I'm happy about Atom at all - I like the battery life but tend to hate the tiny keyboards), and I'm grateful that Windows VP Steven Sinosfky went through what must have been the pain of using a netbook as his main PC for months to make sure Windows 7 would make me happy (oh, and all you other Atom users too), but it did remind me that Origami died a death. Of course now that I know that Microsoft worked with Toshiba to create the nice, simple Media Controller interface on the JOURN.E Touch and that they brainstormed the 'three screens plus cloud' mantra together I'm wondering what we might see on the Windows 7 tablets that HP and, I think I can say, Toshiba will bring out this summer. 

Reinders also talked about Atom and embedded Atom in a way that made me think that Intel is trying to use Moblin/MeeGo as a scary puppet to wave at Google as well; Intel thinks embedded devices - smartphones, MIDs, what Qualcomm calls SmartBooks even though that's a trademark in Europe,in-car systems and all the other devices that are going Android and Chrome (or maybe RIM or - very successfully for Ford - Windows CE or, of course, iPhone and iPad) - need a better operating system. I'm inclined to agree - though of course I personally think it should be some variation of Windows 8 (I do seem to have a theme this week) rather than Moblin/MeeGo. But what I mostly think is that if Intel is using the same puppet to wave at both Google and Microsoft, then they are certainly wearing what an old friend of ours calls the Brave Trousers.

It's hard to tell Toshiba's new Tecra and Satellite Pro models apart; that's actually quite deliberate. But it's the Reel Time document history you get on the notebooks that could be the most interesting feature. Find out why in my first take over on ZDNet UK...

Like just about every other computer maker, Toshibahas a netbook on the way. But its new premium ultraportable Portégé R600, announced this week, is the real lightweight. Read my first look at Tom's Hardware - with a photo of the truly tiny motherboard.

This is the successor to the tiny R500 that Steve Ballmer taunted Guy Kawasaki with at MIX this year. With the SSD and without the 75g DVD drive it's so light you can't quite believe it's a PC. It's lighter than the NB100, Toshiba's netbook, which looks like a Portege that's shrunk in the wash. I weighed the battery: 305 out of the 770 grams (add a hard drive and the DVD drive and you might crack 850g). It's almost enough to make me give up on tablets (I really do waver back and forth between HP and Toshiba as my favourite supplier and they're going in very different directions).