I’m looking to publish it this week, so keep posted!

To those of you that actually have and use these devices for this purpose, how does it work for your needs? The question isn’t entirely rhetorical, as a dialogue on this subject might be productive, but it should be obvious by now that I am of the tablet camp that believes they are essentially toy computers, meant to be used for recreation and media consumption. I own a rudimentary first generation tablet, (a Coby with barely the guts to qualify) and I bought it with the full knowledge that I shouldn’t expect much from it in the productivity department. I was pleasantly surprised to see the workability of Google Docs, as well as the ability to plug in a keyboard and mouse, but I still knew that this tablet could never be a true alternative to a laptop or destop.

And really, how could it? I have no reliable form of text input, still one of the largest forms of modern communication, and I lacked even the most elementary tools to do any work of merit. Formatting in text editors was choppy at best and abysmal the rest of the time, spreadsheets were cumbersome, and nearly every program that had a tablet analogy both underperformed and significantly reduced my working speed and efficiency. This brings me to my main point; these tablet offerings are simply not suitable replacements for a good school laptop or even a netbook.

When comparing the best of the tablet field with the worst of the laptops, hardware begins to come to a surprising equality. Battery lives are similar, performance is in the same ballpark, and everything in between has its ups and downs. But the real difference between the offerings is the software. Both iOS and Android are simply not capable of the same things as Windows, and convincing yourself otherwise so that you can play with a new toy is not the way to go about it.
If you want a tablet, get one, but if you want something to take notes on and work effectively with, get a laptop or even a netbook. This hunt-and-pecking on a touchscreen to type your notes is completely ridiculous. You don’t look cool folding over your smart cover or unfolding your bluetooth keyboard, you look like someone who demands absolutely nothing from your electronics.

Well, we can /rant that one and move on to a more positive look! If not a tablet, then what is the best way to carry the least weight and still be able to do a lot? My personal solution that came only after foolish and expensive guess-and-check is a netbook/ultraportable and a desktop. I find even a 13” laptop to be excessive for carrying everywhere, so I was an early adopter of the netbook, and I’ve never looked back. Even the slothly Atoms can do quite a bit if you tweak the system properly, and my newer Brazos ‘notbook’ can easily do anything I ask of it. With the low power low cost processors that AMD is offering up, I see no point in ponying up for an overpriced ultrabook, at least until the market settles. The second side of this coin is that when you are toting around something as easy (and likely) to steal as a laptop, don’t sink too much cash in it. I don’t think I know a friend who hasn’t had a laptop stolen, broken, dropped, stepped on, or overheated, and the name of the game is to keep that sunk cost low. The reasoning for the desktop should be fairly obvious as well, parts are interchangeable and cheaper, repairs are simple, performance is astronomically higher than laptop parts, and screens are spacious and easy to work in. At a time when a basic netbook can be found for $200, a similarly basic desktop is $400, and an iPad with keyboard and case is easily over $600, there is simply no budgetary justification for skipping to class with an iPad under your arm.

So for those of you headed to college soon, or maybe sending a young-un off to college soon, the recommendation of this geek is to lay off the iPad, and stick to the good old x86 computing. I mean they have a smartphone already, don’ they?

The things I am less excited about are the huge changes more around the periphery, in the Graphical User Inerface (GUI) and user experience (UX). As many have noted, the Windows Phone 7 GUI has made quite a mark on Windows 8.

I had to steal this from http://www.geeky-gadgets.com , because I literally couldn't find Paint in Win8

While I would normally be completely for this, as it means MS is trying something new, they seem to have forgotten some lessons I thought they learned in Vista.

1. I have to click an icon to get to a normal desktop
Yeah, I know apps are really great and all that, and that everyone wants to chase the iPad like a sprinting bunny with a clock, but seriously? My desktop is an App? How does this make a lick of sense in any UX system? Ah, yes. It doesn’t.

2. There is no easy way to move around the main App Panel
Either you use arrows, drag the scroll bar along the bottom or you scroll with the mouse wheel. Drag the panel with the mouse? Nope, even though it was the first thing I tried.
Let me be clear here: This UX system works nothing short of great for phones or tablets. It might even be great on touchscreen computers. But this crap doesn’t fly here in the x86 hood.

3. Four actions are required to shut down the computer
At first, I was psyched when I saw that Windows 8 had implemented a KDE-like feature of being able to mouse to a corner (the start button corner) and have a new panel come up. This is a great idea to borrow from open source GUIs when using a cursor based interface. But then I realized I needed to still click “Settings”, then the power symbol, then “Shut Down”.
Windows! Noooooooooooo!

Property of Lucasfilm, I think.

You had done so well when you made Shut Down the default feature and a key button on the start menu! We’ve effectively doubled the actions required to shut down.
Yes, I know I can just Ctrl+Alt+Del and Shut Down from there, but in any well-adjusted user’s mind, this is a function restricted to freeze ups and crashes. Not for normal use.

If I were to rate it as is, it would be in the range of a 6 out of 10. Without the terrible UX choices, it would easily be a 9. A solid system with a few small changes and great performance. The UX mishaps definitely put it at 3 less than that. My thoughts? I’ll be buying Windows 7 quite soon.

Now I am fully aware of the doom that insulting readers portends, so I have no ambitions to do so here. Instead, I would like to take a look at Llano from a completely different perspective than all of the reviewers previously mentioned. I would like to briefly discuss both calculational performance and public response from an engineering business perspective.

There are three main areas potential consumers have voiced concern with in the comments to Llano reviews. The first is in regards to Llano’s CPU performance, which is less than its Intel competition. The second is looking at its GPU performance, and how this places the product in the current markets. The final concern is one of product positioning, with Llano being pushed as a “mobile first” part.

x86 Processing
It is well known know that Llano lags its Sandy Bridge competition, and some commenters remarked that this is a big problem in the current market. From AMD’s perspective, Llano was never positioned to beat Sandy Bridge in x86 performance, ala their blog post “Exposing the Phantom x86 Bottleneck”. This was a fight that was no longer profitable, so they diverged.
Other commenters with similar concerns argued that CPU performance is still the key to a “good computer” or a “good experience”. This can become a gigantic technical discussion that I won’t delve into here, but suffice it to say this, in some workstation applications, as well as a few very specific use cases, this holds true, in that regard, Llano is not for every consumer.
-Another CPU related concern was that the CPU is too slow to even keep up with the GPU, not feeding it enough data to be effective. Speaking from a technical perspective, that is a somewhat silly statement. As this is a business perspective, I’ll just leave these benchmarks, and this fantastic set of articles, and we can move on knowing that any internal bandwidth issues have been addressed already.

Graphics
Next up is concerns with the GPU power, first off, I saw it commonly stated that the Average Joe does not utilize the power of this GPU. It is becoming more and more evident that GPGPU computing is on the rise with adoption of HTML5, GPGPU-capable browsers, and OpenCL. For example, in some recent fun with bitcoin mining, I saw the tremendous benefit of OpenCL use, and the gains in utilizing a GPU. This is exactly the type of adoption that will only become more common in the future.
The next concern is that GPGPU computing is only utilized in a few, uncommon, scenarios. Again, I would reiterate that market trends and the hype/growth of the Cloud is only pushing more use of hardware like GPU for more and more common uses. There is also the phenomenon of trends in high-performance markets like supercomputer being utilized later in regular computer use, in essence, a “Supercomputer Trickle-Down Effect”.
The final concern is that this hardware falls in a need gap, not being good enough for gamers, who all use discrete graphics, and too much for the average user. AMD already has a response planned for this, with a build in competitor to Nvidia’s Optimus technology in their dual graphics framework. While the performance benefits are minimal now, power savings are still quite significant, and when looking at this launch as a platform, the implications both present and future are significant.

Mobile
On the mobile side of customer concerns, some commenters thought battery life is the only real draw of the new platform. First off, battery life is of enormous importance in this segment, possibly the most important factor for buyers, and there are many other performance benefits, as evident in the benchmarks.
The second concern is that Llano cannot transition to the desktop successfully. As seen in the Tom’s Hardware article, Llano performs roughly equal to a similarly clocked Phenom II. These processors suit the market fairly well now, and combining this with much better integrated graphics in one package with lower power draw enables easier OEM utilization, as well as new form factors. There are no real roadblocks to this selling very well in it’s target market, given it is a needed process shrink of current technology, allowing for very respectable clock rates.

Conclusions
The biggest thing that makes Llano a successful product for its launch is the market segmentation that it provides. For a potential consumer, they can now look at two otherwise identical mid-range laptops, one AMD and one Intel, and being a well informed consumer they know a few key things:

1. Both laptops will have comparable battery life
2. The Intel one will have, very roughly speaking, twice the CPU power in its most favored applications
3. The AMD one will have roughly twice the GPU power in its favored applications

This allows for a simple choice of market segmentation, does the consumer Photoshop more or play Portal 2 more? This segmentation is not only better for the choices of the consumer, but it finally allows AMD and Intel to stop butting heads on exactly the same ground. Some markets are ceded to AMD while other markets remain in Intel’s court. This allows each chip maker to follow different paths and end goals, becoming leaders and specialists in each. Perhaps the all around consumer will find herself using an Intel in the workplace, but plopping down in front of an AMD at home, in this case, both companies still profit.

Another interesting tidbit is that AMD either knowing or unknowingly is taking the “Honda Entrance” to reapproaching the market after a long stint of being barely viable. Let me explain:

The Honda Entrance
When Honda was looking to enter the US market in the 60’s, they had an internal conflict on how best to do it. Some executives thought that they would do best earning placing in high-performance motorsport events, gaining notoriety and using this to sell their products. The oppsite faction thought it would be best to enter in the smaller, lower power motorcycle market, getting a reputation there and building upwards. Honda took a somewhat two pronged approach, but the tactic that made them present in most every business case study afterwards was their entrance in the low end. They launched with small reliable workhorse motorcycles marketed to the every-woman and man, and built a fantastic reputation as such. They then transitioned to bigger and bigger markets, and are now one of the largest motor companies in the world, especially in the US.

Despite their many supposed attempts to the opposite, AMD has followed this tactic by launching in chronological order, Brazos, Llano, and Zambezi. Brazos, while a small splash, made a significant impression, outclassing every netbook platform available, and bringing gaming possiblility to a market that very rarely saw it otherwise, at the same time delivering very impressive battery life. AMD has started small, and has plans to end big. This is a tactic that has proven frighteningly successful in a large range of markets and products, and should not be underestimated yet again, especially not by Intel.

Links:

Tom’s Hardware – Llano

Anand Tech – Llano

PC Per – Llano

Legit Reviews – Llano

Llano’s Linux Performance

Honda Entrance Case

The Essentials

Just so I don’t gloss over any of the basics, here’s how computers work in one sentence:
A computer functions by processing information, stored as ones and zeroes in binary, by doing computations (hence, compute-er!)on that information.
In a computer’s day to day activities information must be input, stored, recalled, processed, and displayed.

Processor: Or Central Processing Unit (CPU) as it is often called, is the part of the computer that does all of the major number crunching, or processing, that lets the computer do pretty much anything. In the automotive analogy, this is your engine. It powers the computer and determines many factors of the system’s performance.

Graphics Card: Or Graphical Processing Unit (GPU), is the part of the computer that allows the computer to display the number crunching on screen. This is where the analogous rubber meets the road, and is becoming increasingly difficult to make a strong analogy for because of major shifts in how this specific piece of hardware is interacting with the system as a whole lately, but that is a article for a different time. For the time being, this will have to be the transmission and suspension. This part allows the power of the engine to be perceived by the user, and also makes some big differences in the types of workloads, or driving, that you want to do.

Memory/ Storage: Or more specifically Random Access Memory (RAM) and storage drives. These are two different types of storage that the computer can utilize to save and recall data, they are split primarily by the amount of access, very similar to short term and long term memory in your brain. But we aren’t using a brain analogy, are we? In that case, this is the fuel intake and fuel system. This determines how much the engine can chug at any one time, and can very much effect performance if not tuned for the workload.

Motherboard: AKA mobo, is the component that lets all of the parts of the computer communicate. It’s really as simple as that.
In the automotive analogy, this is the chassis of the car. To have a powerful, reliable car, you need a well built chassis, the same applies to computers.

Well that’s the basics. Not too bad, right?
But just as if you threw together a CPU, GPU, memory, storage, and mobo, or if you slapped together an engine, transmission, suspension, fuel line, fuel tank, and chassis, the end product would be neither a computer nor an automobile, as you and I know them. The remaining parts may not be truly essential, but really help the device mesh with current systems, like humans, the internet, and roads, respectively.

Power Supply: Also PS or PSU (Power Supply Unit), gives juice to the system, turning the AC out of the wall into DC that the computer runs on. This is similar to the fuel tank in the car analogy, but unlike the car analogy, your computer’s power supply is not hooked directly into your RAM. It would explode.

Screen and Speakers: Pretty self explanatory, but not seen as equal in many cases. I cannot stress enough the great experience that can be provided to anyone doing media work, gaming, or even just watching Netflix, and the importance of good quality speakers. Even companies are starting to wise up and produce good quality speakers for reasonable prices, so the importance of balancing these two in any type of media heavy environment is critical. Oh, and as far as the car analogy goes, this is pretty close to the shock absorbers and the wheels. This is how all that money put into the rig really gets to show it’s performance to you.

Mouse and Keyboard: Again, pretty simple, but terribly overlooked. This is your interaction with the computer, plain and simple. These are the only parts you should ever truly interact with on a day to day basis, and should be treated as such. I’ll discuss more in the next section, but for the analogy, consider this the interior, steering system, and dash layout. This is how you make the car do what you want it to do.

Case: The body that holds all of the guts together. Looks are very important here, and completely subjective, but this part also influences system temperatures and noise level, which can make a huge difference in the day to day use of the computer. In car terms, this is the body of the car, providing external protection for sensitive inner parts, and also needing good aerodynamics for the car to remain quiet and efficient.

Operating System: This is the software that puts all of your hardware to work, giving you a Graphical User Interface (GUI) in many cases, to get your work done in a hopefully intuitive and efficient manner. The car analogy for this becomes more difficult, as this is software and not hardware, but it essentially is the system of known norms for interactions with a car such as lights, turn signals, mirrors, traffic signs, road markings, and many other conventions for car-human interaction.

Well that pretty much wraps it up, and I’d like to take the car analogy one step further to help provide a bit of basis for budgeting and choosing parts in future sections. Logically, with computers, different workloads require different hardware, just as different uses for cars require different part choices. The analogy gets a bit iffy, but hopefully gets the general idea across, as I’ve split computer usage into 3 main areas for future consideration in this series, depending on usage:

1. General use: This includes web browsing, viewing HD videos, light gaming, and infrequent use of taxing things like photo/video editing, file conversion, and software development. This is very similar to commuting and everyday car driving. You may do some speeding or drive on a dirt road out to your favorite campground occasionally, but any economy or regular sedan will get the job done. Similarly, for most general use, pretty much any modern computer will get the job done. Even netbooks.

2. Gaming: Anyone who games knows exactly what I’m talking about. Modern FPSs, Action RPGs, and sprawling RTSs need some serious computing muscle to pump pixels to screen. While most people would think this means you need the computer equivalent of a Ferrari, this is not the case. What gamers need is more like a Jeep. Games with taxing graphics are the car equivalent of rough roads and off-roading. You need a strong engine, to be sure, but most importantly, your transmission (no one rock crawls with 2-wheel drive) and suspension must be up to snuff if you hope to survive off the charted paths.

3. Editing: Photo, video, whatever it is, editing requires some pretty significant computational power to run quickly and smoothly. And just as sports cars brought massively powerful engines and finely tuned performance to consumers, high end computers with high power CPUs and gobs of RAM are bringing similar performance for these workloads.

This just scratches the surface of computer’s complexity and doesn’t even hope to dig into software needs for computer use, but hopefully some of the basics and some of the common use-cases are represented strongly enough that everyone is on the same page!

At my last Wondercon, I was in the middle of my usual tactic of perusing the independent and small booths for the nuggets of awesomeness they almost always hide at large conventions. A large orange poster caught my eye, and I investigated further. What I found was a longtime artist with his first completely self-driven comic, Egg, by Chris Sturgill.

I spoke with Sturgill for a few moments, and looked through the books, and they caught such an interest that I grabbed all three issues for some mid-Con-weekend reading. I figured I would try to read an issue or two, then keep an eye on the comic for the future. What I did was sit down and read the three issues about as fast as I’ve ever read (which isn’t that fast), and finished desperately wishing there was more.

The story is one of a bumbling everyman, Walter Norris, and the adventure he finds himself in after a chance encounter on his 30th birthday. The setting is San Francisco in the not-too-distant-but-still-grungy future. Walter begins to learn about a conspiracy behind the pharmaceutical giant BluLife, and their wonder nano-drug of the same name.

The world that Sturgill weaves is a distopic future that I found all too believable. After the Great Recession continues, the USA’s economy takes a steeper nosedive, and soon after China follows. In the financial void, India solidifies itself as a superpower and world leader. The world is flushed out with apt changes in society and culture, making an interesting critique of current and previous policies throughout the world.

Maybe I’ve been watching too much X-Files lately, but the mix of action, humor, conspiracy, social commentary, and mystery seems very akin to that series, albeit with a more modern, corporate-focused conspiracy.

One thing that struck me strongly was how well done the action and pacing was, especially for a brand new series. Good storytelling techniques are paired with a healthy mix of humor and action to keep the plot skipping along merrily, and all of these factors come together really well in the end product. Even the mixing of American and Indian cultures is woven in and out of the story, reminiscent of Firefly in a way, and very well portrayed throughout the issues by Sturgill.

For me though, there is one scene in the issues that solidifies this comic as one that I will be following for a good time to come, and definitely up with my personal favorites in the sci-fi comic arena. I won’t give too much away, I promise, but at the end of issue 3, there is a fight scene between an unarmed, but very mysterious character I have chosen to name Egg, and a squad of future armed-to-the-teeth SWAT police. The fight begins as the SWAT team leader is yanked through a door he just kicked in, and Egg reveals himself in that doorway, apparently uncaring of the danger he faces.

The scene erupts in gunfire, and the lady protagonist bystander drops a cup of tea she is holding. The fight scene progresses, beautifully coreographed, and the fluidity of Egg’s movements is contrasted with the small panels and choppiness of the panel’s style. Throughout the entire fight, we watch as Egg demolishes the squad, and we watch as the cup of tea falls to the ground, pacing the entire scene flawlessly. It reaches a climax as one officer puts a shotgun to Egg’s stomach and fires point blank, at the same time the cup hits the ground, breaking in perfect unison at the bottom of the page.

I reread this scene at least three times, just marveling in the fantastic pacing, timing, and subtle hints to the characters throughout. I was sold.
All I can say is that I am eagerly anticipating the next issue of Egg, which can’t come soon enough.

Egg #1-3 are available online now
No. 1: http://www.comixpress.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=21&products_id=1201
No. 2: http://www.indyplanet.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=3700
No. 3: http://indyplanet.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=4376

Blog: http://www.eggcomic.com/

While AMD seems to have been spending the past 3 years or so smashing its weight against the behemoth of Intel by increasing single thread performance, Bulldozer is a sign of a more directed and focused effort to use a bit more tact, rather than go head to head with the giant. Bulldozer is generally more focused on throughput, parallelism, and working well in tandem with a powerful GPU.

Meanwhile, Intel has been blowing out the doors with Sandy Bridge, focusing on single thread performance improvements, really pressing the limits of instructions per clock cycle (IPC), and mixing in a little fixed function hardware magic (Quick Sync). To give an idea of how to frame all of this, here’s a recent AMD positioning slide from X-bit Labs, showing how AMD plans to sell Bulldozer against the current juggernaut that is Sandy Bridge.

Courtesy of X-bit Labs

X-bit Labs: AMD Positioning

The things to take note of here are where Bulldozer is competing, the 8-core models are slated to go up against the i7-2600, the 4-core models are slated to battle the variety of dual core Sandy Bridge models, and the 6-core models fall somewhere in between, presumably in the same region that the i7-950 seems to be hanging about in.

Sandy Bridge Microarchitecture

Sandy Bridge architecture has been covered in great detail elsewhere, and in much greater detail and clarity than I could ever hope to, but I’ll reiterate the basics and link to my favorite articles at the end. Sandy Bridge is built from bottom to top for quick single threaded performance and high IPC rates, and it achieved it, irrefutably. This is supported by a large and complex micro-op decoding front end and L1 cache that helps push instructions through the CPU at truly prodigious speeds.There is also a bit of fixed function logic mixed in, called Quick Sync, that makes video encoding/decoding absolutely fly. All of this speed is also taken advantage of by utilizing Hyper-Threading Technology, effectively doubling the thread count in software, helping to apply that speed in threaded applications.

Courtesy of Real World Tech

Real World Tech’s look at Sandy Bridge

Tom’s Hardware Sandy Bridge Review

Bulldozer Microarchitecture

Contrasting this with the way that Bulldozer is built, Bulldozer is designed for throughput and parallelism from the start. For everything from the advanced prediction and deep pipeline to the splitting of the floating point and integer schedulers and increasing bandwidth throughout, Bulldozer is designed to get instructions in large, highly threaded piles, and move those instructions through in massive quantity. The thing that has gotten everyone talking about Bulldozer though, is that each pair of cores is situated into a module, and each module shares a number of different resources. One of the most noticeable is the floating point schedulers and operators.

This means that for every 8-core Bulldozer processor, there are actally only 4 “sections” to do floating point work separately. These FLOP’ping areas are beefed up significantly, but they are less in number. All of this parralelism is supported by a L2 cache that is 4 times that of Sandy Bridge’s (per core), as well as a number of beefy buffers throghout. The integer section of the hardware is not shared, meaning that integer calculation has an almost absurd 8 cores worth of hardware to utilize.

Courtesy of Real World Tech

I’m thinking the next step at this stage is to divide and conquer. So the first section I’ll put up will be part 1 (planning), sections a, b, and c. It will still be quite lengthy, but hopefully still manageable. There will be a companion article to this that explains the basics of computers , so you can expect that as well.

As far as a timeframe, I’m going to  say that at least one portion of this will be online within a week (before 6/2). So keep 2eaking and stay posted!

Part 1: Planning
a. Determining Use
b. Identifying key parts
c. Budgeting
d. Selecting parts
e. Ordering