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But owning the desktop is like being the sexiest nun in the convent. Microsoft put on a good show last week at its Windows 8 launch, but the only thing that really matters is how well Windows performs in mobile device markets.Given Microsoft's continued reliance on an outdated, licence-based revenue model, Microsoft may have an uphill battle winning in mobile.For many years, I've been predicting that hardware will soon be free, subsidized by service providers who use open source software to build low cost devices optimized for their services. Amazon, for instance, is reported to lose money on every Kindle Fire sold. And at $250 for a decently powered laptop, I can't imagine there is much profit in the Chromebook either. The profit comes in the services you purchase or experience while using the device. As the senior vice president of Chrome at Google says in the New York Times: "Above all, it brings all of Google services, built straight into the device."
In Google Land, in other words, the hardware and software is going to be cheap and free, respectively, with money being made through advertising or other services, largely invisible to the cost-conscious consumer. Yes, there are premium buyers happy to pay for Apple or Microsoft devices, but the majority of the market is heavily trending toward "cheap and free."And when that happens, Microsoft (and, eventually, Apple) can kiss goodbye to the developer ecosystem critical to winning over users. Developers go where the volume is, and that volume is Google's to lose.Microsoft could pull an Apple and sell a consolidated device like the Surface. I mean, really pull an Apple and dump its hardware partners. In Apple's world, there is no distinction between iOS and the iPhone or iPad. You buy them together or not at all. Microsoft is flirting with this strategy for Surface, but it's unclear whether it will have the stomach to continue. Working with partners is perhaps too deeply ingrained in its DNA.It might not be enough, anyway. Apple is happy to occupy the premium segment of the market, even as Google's Android takes the mass-market lower-end. Where does this leave Microsoft? It's unlikely to be able to beat Apple at the top and its strategy ensures it has no chance of beating Android at the bottom. Even suing Android into oblivion (or fat patent royalty fees, which raise the cost of Android for users), is unlikely to succeed.
Apple has been setting the terms for competing in the new world of mobile for years. But the mantle of market leadership is shifting to Android, and the rules are very different in a Google-dominated world.Fortunately, Microsoft has plenty of experience playing Google's online game, what with Bing and Hotmail and its other online services, coupled with associated online advertising. Unfortunately, Microsoft still doesn't know how to pay for these services effectively, bleeding $2.5bn from its Online Services Division last year.Can Microsoft turn this ship around? Of course. Google's dominance is not set in stone, any more than Apple's was. But there's a lot of hard, painful work for Microsoft to do in a Google-dominated world, much of it Microsoft un-learning most everything that made it successful.
Matt Asay is vice president of corporate strategy at 10gen, the MongoDB company. Previously he was SVP of business development at Nodeable, which was acquired in October 2012. He was formerly SVP of biz dev at HTML5 start-up Strobe (now part of Facebook) and chief operating officer of Ubuntu commercial operation Canonical. With more than a decade spent in open source, Asay served as Alfresco's general manager for the Americas and vice president of business development, and he helped put Novell on its open source track. Asay is an emeritus board member of the Open Source Initiative (OSI). His column, Open...and Shut, appears three times a week on The Register. You can follow him on Twitter @mjasay.What can I say? On the basis of a short test, with very few other users on the same network and a operator-supplied device, EE’s 4G service delivers excellent speeds well in excess of other cellular data technologies but with a crucial caveat: only where it is available. I didn’t have go far into a building and away from the windows to see 4G fall back to HSPA+, or travel far from the centre of town to see the same cut-off.
For the moment, EE’s HSPA+ performance was good - much better than O2, I found, though it’s a much busier network of course. But, were I a punter, I’d want to be paying for 4G not 3G-and-a-bit.As a consumer myself, I try and use Wi-Fi wherever possible, at home and at work, for the generally better bandwidth it delivers. EE’s 4G can provide me with WLAN-comparable speeds, but not with enough coverage for me to make the switch. When I’m out and about, checking email, looking up web information or pulling down map data, I can live with HSPA+, especially since it’s cheaper. So why pay extra for high speeds now and then but generally the same speeds I’m getting anyway?I won’t be rushing to use 4G, then, at least not for the time being. EE’s network has the potential to deliver very high broadband speeds, but in too few places. As I said at the start, EE is still building out its network, and coverage can only improve. But there’s little mileage for me in being an early adopter. The Register will continue to monitor EE’s roll-out and, in due course, other operators’ LTE services.
Lenovo’s convertible Ultrabook, the Helix, has made an appearance on the company’s Israel website.The Windows 8-running laptop sports a removable display which operates independently of the keyboard section, Asus Transformer style.Lenovo hasn’t said much about the device, but the Israeli site notes it’ll have an IPS LCD display and come with a digitiser stylus for folk who don’t want fingerprints all over their screen. Lenovo promises a ten-hour battery life.Over here, Lenovo is pitching the Ideapad Lynx, also a Windows 8 convertible, but this one with a 16-hour battery life, in part thanks to incorporating just a 1.8GHz dual-core Atom chip. Gaming notebooks are a secret hobby of mine. I don't actually game that much – even my wife logs more hours than I do – but gaming notebooks are the only way to get the best of the best in a luggable form factor. Alienware is the name to beat in this space, but I've always wondered how they managed to survive the Dell acquisition.
I started out with a Dell XPS Gen 2. This system was an absolute beast; it survived my physical punishment than any system I've ever owned. My first Alienware was an Area-51 m5700 – essentially a rebadged Clevo. It had the performance the XPS simply didn't.When I read the announcement in 2006, I feared the worst. Gaming notebooks you could drop down two flights of stairs while running were about to become extinct! In 2009, I went looking for a new notebook, and was crushed to find that the XPS line was no more. I got an Alienware M17x instead.This lasted for nearly three years, but the right hinge on the monitor seized up about three months before the warrantee expired. I emailed them and asked if they'd be so kind as to send me the parts. They no longer had these parts in stock; would I like a full refund? I went for it, tossed in another $1,000 and I am typing this article on the result: the absolute top-of-the-line M18x circa Dec 2011.The dual Radeon 6970s are perhaps overkill for minecraft, but 16GB of RAM and a quad core made it more than a gaming rig to me. This system is a "luggable" testbed – a virtual server with its own custom carrying case. More importantly, by having top-end video cards, it actually talks proper DDC/CI to LaCie monitors. This means that I can use it to test their hardware calibration – something I can't do with my netbook.
This is the niche that Alienware occupies. Because my clients have high-end requirements, I've worked with high-end notebooks from many manufacturers: MSI, Asus, Sager and so forth. But today's Alienware has a niche-within-a-niche. It makes luggable, full-featured systems that offer the very best modern technology has to offer, wrapped inside the closest thing you can get to indestructible without actually being milspec. Alienware does not make disposable computers.By contrast, Dell survives almost entirely by making disposable computers – the two would seem to be each other's antithesis. Alienware's Frank Azor took time out to discuss the company's history.Azor is quick to point out that mixing corporate DNA wasn't easy: "For the first two years we weren't very integrated, [and were] still really competing with each other." There was some market repositioning needed by both companies. High-end workstation products by Alienware were axed, and Dell discontinued my beloved XPS gaming notebooks.
According to Azor, "When we decided to replace the XPS gaming brand with Alienware, we didn't replace the teams, we consolidated them – the best of both teams together." This seems in keeping with my experience. My M18X has Alienware-class performance, but inherited the "little things" – like big fat power plugs that survive obscene amounts of insertions – that made the XPS so durable.Azor says "the Dell business has been very receptive to picking and choosing the categories we want to work in". Give Alienware access to Dell's global supply chain, bargaining power and so forth, but let Alienware choose its own direction. Miraculously, Dell complied and everyone has benefited.Azor is proud of Alienware, and his role in it. His voice changes when he talks about the early days of the company. "I'm a co-founder," he says. "Employee number 4." He reports that Alienware remains a very healthy business unit and is thankful to have access to Dell's might.One area he expressed a particular displeasure with was the state of monitors. He believes that we need to be collectively pushing the industry to support higher resolution panels; it is something he has been working on and there were hints that this may come to fruition soon.

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