The Pipeline: It's summer -- time for tiny digicams and small laptops
Each week, the Pipeline looks at the mainstream media, and reports back on what's going on in that parallel universe. Here are this week's findings.
We can only assume that, with Memorial Day upon us, the editors at The New York Times have summer vacations on their minds. How else to explain that this week's Circuits package includes not one, but two items on ultra-portable gear?
David Pogue's travel-friendly column covers the latest pocket-size digital cameras, which, as Pogue points out, are major improvements over their small-and-thin predecessors from, oh, about six months ago: "[T]his spring, the world's camera companies have shattered one of the longest-running compromises: if you want a camera the size of a credit card,
lower your photographic expectations. Now arriving on store shelves is a new class of digital camera: beautiful,
wafer-thin models, so small that your credit card could cover one – at least physically. They take sharp, vivid,
high-resolution photos once the realm of much bulkier models." Pogue's picks of the litter — at least in terms of photo quality — are the Nikon S1 (pictured) and
Canon SD400, though he awards style points to Sony's T7. We'd like it too, if we were willing to forgive Sony for foisting yet another proprietary card format on us (it takes Memory Stick Duo cards, which might be good if you also own a PSP, but doesn't help if you've invested in the more common SD cards — or even the full-size Memory Sticks used in most of Sony's Cyber-shot cameras until recently).
Just in time for those summer plane trips, The Times also takes a look at some ultralight laptops, including the
Toshiba Libretto U100 and
Sony?s Vaio T350 (pictured) optimized for Cingular?s Edge service. While the article doesn?t pick any winners, it provides a good spec sheet for comparing the models featured. One thing that?s clear from the comparison: ultralights without optical drives will soon be anomalies.
We say it?s about time; who wants to carry a laptop and not be able to watch DVDs and burn CDs?
These Cameras Are Lean but Not Spare
A Ream of Features in Computers the Size of a Memo Pad
Over at Fortune, David Kirkpatrick delves into the rumors over the possible use of Intel chips in Macs. Kirkpatrick points out that the idea of putting Intel chips in Macs is nothing new; Intel execs have been coveting Apple?s business for years. And he points out that Apple, Intel and others are already running Mac OS X on Intel boxes in their labs (which shouldn?t be a huge surprise, given the fact that NEXTSTEP, OS X?s predecessor, was running on Intel over 10 years ago). Kirkpatrick highlights some potential benefits to Apple from an Intel alliance,
including access to high-power, low-heat chips ? something Apple desperately needs if it?s ever going to put out the equivalent of a G5 Powerbook.
Also:
Stephen Wildstrom, BusinessWeek -
Leaky Web Sites Tell All About You
John Dvorak, PC Magazine – To Tag or Not to Tag, That Is the Question
Rob Pegoraro, Washington Post -
AOL Concocts a Mess With Netscape 8.0