The New Nation - Internet Edition

HP mini notebook for students and businessmen

Mahbubur Rahman Khan

If Bangladesh is an advancing boat in the sea of technology, in an attempt to expedite its move in forward Hewlet-Packard (HP) brings attractive mini notebook cum laptop for the Bangladeshi boatmen.

HP unveiled three new inspirational HP notebooks-13.3 inch HP Pavilion dv3000, 12.1 inch diagonal Compaq Presario CQ20 and 8.9 inch HP 2133 Mini-Note PC on 31st July at a market of Dhaka city.

Designed by HP's award winning design team, the HP Pavilion dv3000 Entertainment Notebook PC comes in a new HP Pavilion form factor of 13.3 inches with a full-sized keyboard. It exudes a strong sense of style and professionalism with its new 'Mesh' HP Imprint Finish that presents an array of tiny squares, which give a visual representation of structure, strength and precision.

Primarily targeted at mobile road warriors, games and entertainment hobbyists, the HP Pavilion dv3000 Notebook Entertainment PC gives mobile freedom while keeping you connected on the go. It offers the latest in Dual Core processor technology to manage any productivity or multimedia application. The notebook computer also comes with latest NVIDIA card to deliver superb graphics for gamers and multimedia users. Using Intelâ Centrinoâ Duo mobile technology that ensures extended battery life and a reliable wireless connection, the HP Pavilion dv3000 Entertainment Notebook PC gives confidence to go the extra mile. The full-sized colour-matched keyboard enhances ergonomic comfort and ease of use, and increases wear resistance and overall durability.

HP recognizes that security is critical for all consumers to safeguard their precious family photos, personal data. Alleviating the need to memorize multiple passwords, an integrated Fingerprint Reader offers the latest in biometric technology so easy access to online shopping and personal emails. The HP 3D Drive Guard protects the hard drive while users are on the go to prevent data corruption or loss and system failure caused by operational shock.

The HP Pavilion dv3000 Entertainment Notebook PC is available in the country at an estimated street price from Tk 168,999.

The Compaq Presario CQ20 introduces "Unity," a new Imprint with circles layer upon each other to build a framework of strength and unity to evoke harmony and completeness. All combined as an eye-catching design under a smooth, high gloss coating to reflect a user's personal technology style.

The Compaq Presario CQ20 Notebook PC offers the latest must-have mobile technology in a versatile notebook that's built to travel. A 12.1 inch diagonal High Definition display with Bright View teachnology and immerse sound from an Altec Lansing speaker system make watching DVD a pleasure. Users can research online, send e-mail and work on projects at the same time.

The new notebook join the HP Pavilion dv2000, HP Pavilion dv6000, HP Pavilion dv9000, HP Pavilion tx2000, Compaq Presario C700 and Compaq Presario V6000 to expand the company's comprehensive portfolio of consumer notebook offerings.

The new Compaq Presario notebook is built for lasting performance and ease of use at a value. Selected new Compaq Presario notebook features QuickPlay which clean interface enables fast and easy access to entertainment playback and more. Adding music to photos and videos is as simple as dragging tunes from the user's playlist.

The Compaq Presario CQ20 Notebook PC is available at an estimated street price from Tk 102,900.

KP Sim Category Manager, Personal Systems Group, HP Asia Emerging Countries, said, "True to its design and innovation promise, HP was the first notebook manufacturer to offer a signature in-mould HP Imprint design for its consumer notebook computers. The HP Imprint designs are a reflection of HP's attunement to consumers' personal styles and design preferences."

He added, "The 'Mesh' and 'Unity' HP Imprint Finish are welcome additions to the growing collection of inspirational designs that indulges a personal touch to computing. Conceived through inspirational imagery, travel stories and lifestyle trends, they emboy the synergy and blend of technology and fashion that speak of progressiveness and inspiration."

Seminar on computer programming held at the British Council

On July 2008, a special seminar on computer programming, "Getting Started in Programming: What exactly it is and why we should do it" was held at the British Council. The speaker of the seminar was Shasuddin Ahammad, the course coordinator at Daffodil Institute of IT (DIIT). The speaker highlighted on the basic concept of Programming and the demand of the Programming track in the job market.

He also described on how the young generation can establish career through using their talents and how the programmers can earn foreign currency even working at home. The seminar became a live event with the pleasant presentation of Shamsuddin Ahammad. It may be mentioned that, the seminar was organized jointly by the British Council & Daffodil Institute of IT (DIIT).

Intel's Larrabee-- more and less than meets the eye

Peter Glaskowsky

Intel announced on Monday that it will be presenting a paper at Siggraph 2008 about its "many-core" Larrabee architecture, which will be the basis of future Intel graphics processors.

The paper is a pretty thorough summary of Intel's motives for developing Larrabee and the major features of the new architecture. Basically, Larrabee is about using many simple x86 cores-- more than you'd see in the central processor (CPU) of the system-- to implement a graphics processor (GPU). This concept has received a lot of attention since Intel first started talking about it last year.

The paper also answers perhaps the biggest unanswered question about Larrabee-- what are the cores, and how can Intel put "many" of them on a chip when desktop CPUs are still moving from 2 to 4 cores?

Intel describes the Larrabee cores as "derived from the Pentium processor," but I think perhaps this is an oversimplification. The design shown in the paper is only vaguely Pentium-like, with one execution unit for scalar (single-operation) instructions and one for vector (multiple-operation) instructions.

That's the basic answer: Larrabee cores just have less going on. A quad-core desktop processor might have six or more execution units, and a lot of special logic to let it reorder instructions and execute code past conditional branches just in case it can guess the direction of the branch correctly. This complexity is necessary to maximize performance in a lot of desktop software, but it's not needed for linear, predictable code-- which is what we usually find in 3D-rendering software. But the vector unit in Larrabee is much more powerful than anything in older Intel processors-- or even in the current Core 2 chips-- because 3D rendering needs to do a lot of vector processing. The vector unit can perform 16 single-precision floating-point operations in parallel from a single instruction, which works out to 512 bits wide-- great for graphics, though it would be overkill for a general-purpose processor, which is why the vector units in mainstream CPUs are 128 or 256 bits wide at most.

Apple iPhone 3G clicks well

Internet

Calling the iPhone 3G a success is a bit of an understatement. Cupertino set the stage for frenzied iPhone 3G demand across the globe with the original iPhone and demand likely isn’t going to die down anytime soon. With iPhone 3G stock shortages reducing the initial rush of iPhone 3G subscriptions down to a relative trickle, Apple has been ramping up production in their Taiwanese manufacturing plant to try and meet stock-depleting demand. But, the big question is, just how many iPhone 3Gs does Apple plan to produce in their first year of iPhone 3G sales?

According to a source “close to Apple,” the iPhone 3G production ramp has hit 40 million units for the first 12 months of production. The production number equates to an impressive 800,000 units being churned out of the Foxconn manufacturing plant every single week. Foxconn is Apple’s component integrator in Taiwan, and the company recently expanded their operations in anticipation of increased hardware orders from the likes of Apple.

Still, Foxconn is estimated to be working above capacity. Even with newly expanded production capacity, 800,000 units per week is not a small number, by any measure. And, the incredible production volume has led to speculation that the new batch of iPhone 3Gs coming out of Taiwan may be more prone to manufacturer defects.

The sheer volume of iPhone 3G production could lead to a decrease in quality control, which means more potential problems for Apple down the road.