Technology News and IT Business Intelligence

You can’t fault any service for not being capable of providing 100% uptime; but you also can’t help but notice the shockwaves when that one-tenth-of-one-percent comes around. This morning, Google is acknowledging that users throughout yesterday had difficulty accessing its Google News server, although it is not calling the event an outright outage.

News publishers whose promotional models rely upon Google News received notices from Google yesterday afternoon saying that users began having access difficulties at about 12:30 pm PDT (3:30 EDT) yesterday. Betanews is capable of tracking its own readership, along with referral sources, on a minute-to-minute basis; and we could actually see the event as though we were watching a seismometer. Assuming our instrumentation is accurate, our traffic from Google News began plummeting almost three hours earlier than this report, at about 1:00 pm EDT. Referral traffic from Google News began resuming its normal pattern at about 5:30.

Although Yahoo News typically receives 2.6 times the traffic of Google News, according to recent comScore estimates (42.3 million readers versus 16.2 million visitors last February), Yahoo is in reality a publisher and re-publisher of news from press sources, and actually does some of its own reporting in certain niches. Google News is a traffic redirection service which leads readers directly to sources, and news sites including those that get more traffic than Google News itself still rely upon Google News to help send readers their direction. Smaller Web publishers actually collect more readers through Google News than their own home pages.

But Google News is almost completely automated, which can mean that it takes enough small Web publishers complaining about traffic dips before administrators can act. Again, assuming our indicators are correct, the time between the start of the traffic event and the time Google was able to acknowledge it, was about three hours. A large news publisher that is not so automated may have been able to acknowledge and respond to a similar event sooner.

One of the more startling announcements we’ve received from Microsoft since the first word that Office will support OpenDocument Format as an alternative default, was last week’s news that access to its forthcoming Office Live Apps would be open to all users for free. We’re being told again and again that there’s no catch, no asterisk with small print behind it, that Microsoft is perfectly happy to let everyone edit Office documents online for free.

But does the Technical Preview give any indication that these Web apps are ready for prime time? For Microsoft to make its case against Google, Zoho, and others that produce free-for-general-use Web apps (although Google Apps’ continued free state has become debatable of late), it has to demonstrate that it can carry not just the look-and-feel, but also the functionality and reliability, of traditional Office applications into the Web apps space. This is especially true if Microsoft truly does have a plan to earn revenue indirectly from the product, whether through advertising or commercial derivative services.

Maybe Office Web Apps don’t have to be Microsoft Office, but as representatives have discussed with Betanews, the company’s feeling is that the final product does need to address the everyday needs of about 90% of its usage base, or perhaps 90% of the needs of all of its usage base. If that mark represents the goal post, then Microsoft has a long way to go still to reach that mark, based on what we’re seeing in the initial Technical Preview of Office Web Apps.

The storage format for Office Web Apps is ISO 29500/Open Office XML, which means its versions of Word, PowerPoint, and Excel will not display or edit the .DOC, .PPT, and .XLS files, respectively, from Office 2003. Right now, the Technical Preview of the Word app only displays Word files, without any editing facilities. This despite Microsoft having shown us relatively a relatively workable Word Web app with editing functionality as early as October 2008.

In Betanews’ initial tests, we uploaded a relatively complex Word document file to SkyDrive, the new name for Windows Live’s free cloud-based storage facility. This file was originally edited for typeset-quality, which meant that it was designed to be published in print exactly the way it appears. So it has not only inset illustrations, but also overlaying, semi-transparent objects with pointers and arrows, as well as a history of annotations representing the back-and-forth comments of various editors on the publishing project. And it utilized fonts which were not installed on our test machine — on purpose, we wanted to see whether the Word app would handle the situation as gracefully as Word 2007.

The Word Web app’s ability to display this almost horribly complex document was complete and thorough in almost every respect, leading us to believe that if Microsoft intends to let Web users see such features as overlaid graphic objects and embedded annotations, then it’s just one baby step further to eventually enable them to create and edit those features.

Although the Word app doesn’t give us any tools to check for whether it fudged such technical factors as the height of the footer or the widths of the margins on even- and odd-numbered pages, what we’re able to eyeball on the display leads us to believe it does take these variables into account. Specifically:

• Variations in odd- and even-numbered pages were handled accurately, including in the titling for footers.
• Custom page numbering was observed, which is important for a document such as ours that’s a chapter from the middle of a book (it doesn’t start at page 1).
• Parsing comments and annotation was handled smoothly, including placing comments outside the margin but near to the passages to which they refer, and accurately marking those passages.
• Anchoring embedded graphic objects to included illustrations, which are themselves anchored to points on the page rather than to elements of text, appears to be handled accurately.
• Font substitution seems fair, especially when a font used in a document is not installed on the system. The Word app does not use Web fonts in the standard sense, but rather a set of fonts accessible by Silverlight (so we were told by one Microsoft developer) plus those fonts installed on the client system. This way, a Word document that uses any number of fonts from the author’s system may be visible on the author’s system through the Word Web app in close to, if not exactly, the same way.
• Rules for included styles appear to be followed, which include for margins, paragraph bullets and numbering, and variable leading (vertical space between lines of text).

We did notice two important bugs, even for this early stage: Although our Word app rendered the document on-screen accurately, it was incapable of printing it at all — apparently, documents that exceed certain limitations on content cannot be printed. Also, despite the fact that we could scroll through the complete document, the “Loading” indicator in the middle of the page in the middle of the document, told us that the Word app didn’t know that whether it had actually completed loading the document — or more technically, whether it had reached the EOF (end-of-file indicator).

Next: Will Microsoft really deliver the full Office experience online?

The typical PC hardware introduction is targeted first at the high end of the product’s respective market, often referred to as the “enthusiast” or “early adopter.” This is the person expected to have more disposable income, willing to pay a premium to be first on the block, and the person I’m most often told by company representatives fits the description “Betanews reader.”

But the recent trend that has breathed new energy into the hard disk drive industry — energy it desperately needed during the worst days of the bad economy — has to do with consumption, and it affects more than just the high end of the market. Everyday PC users are finding themselves more comfortable with larger hard drives, so much so that average street prices for 1.5 TB HDDs are now approaching $125. It’s the mainstream that’s driving prices lower, but that’s also purchasing more drives especially now that external HDDs — once considered dead just a few years ago — have exploded into a commodity market. Now that consumers can simply plug them in and go, they’re as ubiquitous as printers.

This actually poses a problem for manufacturers like Seagate, which rely on a new product’s ability to drive a premium price for at least a few months’ time. This week, it’s premiering its Barracuda XT line, its first 2 TB drive using the new 6 Gbps SATA interface. Priced at $299 suggested retail, it does carry a premium, but a very thin one.

“The capacity trends have definitely been mixing up,” admitted Seagate product marketing director David Burks in an interview with Betanews. Burks was referring to his company’s assessment that as much as 9% of sales of desktop hard drives have been for 1 TB capacities and above, compared to less than 2% the year before. “The technology is allowing that, and people tend to buy the bigger stuff as it comes along. But part of it is definitely the fact that the applications that are using this capacity are hitting the mainstream, and users are actually filling up a lot of this data.”

Consumer video editing software may be to credit for this trend, far more than games. It’s a mainstream element of the market where users may be generating far more input — videos streamed in from DVDs, downloads, and old video tapes — than output.

Meanwhile, the enthusiast side of the market is actually not only more skeptical, but more conservative. For performance purposes, enthusiasts continue to use smaller HDDs as their main system drives (“smaller” in this case meaning 80 – 100 GB, which is almost as small as you can buy these days), while using high-capacity drives for storing data such as videos and other media. For that purpose, enthusiasts actually may not require the highest speed available, which for Seagate and SATA interfaces is now 6 Gbps. In fact, not only have many shared the fact that they haven’t seen their systems max out the 3 Gbps SATA already in use, but they recall the times when SATA bandwidth expanded to 1.5 Gbps, in such a way that actually created data retrieval bottlenecks for operating systems that weren’t expecting it.

Windows Vista, just off its delayed launch, was one victim of the bottleneck. MacBook Pro may have been another, as many customers found out the hard way.

So Seagate’s marketing push has to be a very careful one, especially if it wants to fully monetize its opportunity here: It’s targeting the Barracuda XT toward a buyer who will buy into the hope that 6 Gbps will immediately demonstrate double the transfer speed.

“We are trying to listen to who our customers are, and respond to their unique attributes,” said Burks. “For example, the games crowd is definitely going to be interested in kicking the tires on this drive. And that crowd happens to be very tech-savvy, they’re comfortable with upgrading their own systems often, with tweaking and tuning…We’ve noticed that some of those guys are using a utility program that Seagate offers for free download, called SeaTools. They’re deploying a technique called ’short stroking,’ which is essentially restricting the access on the media to the outer diameter where the performance is fastest, so they get a faster performing drive through the technique. They sacrifice some capacity, but in doing so — especially depending on the alternatives in the marketplace — they might be able to buy an XT drive and get a much better cost-per-gigabyte solution, and get the top performance out of that, relative to the alternatives, by using this technique.”

In other words, Seagate is actually willing to play down the capacity angle, for the benefit of customers at the high end who aren’t impressed by capacity anyway, and who may not even need it. What they care about is performance, so inspired by Asus and Gigabyte — two motherboard manufacturers that were the first out of the gate to support Barracuda XT — Seagate is touting its customization tools, and billing the “short stroking” feature as the storage counterpart to overclocking. Then it’s billing the fact that the XT drives have four platters compared to the two platters in its 1 TB drives. There was a time when fewer platters were better; but with short stroking, you actually want more perimeter surface.

It’s a bit like having a four-layer birthday cake instead of a two-layer one — you get more frosting that way.

Then later on down the road as the XT’s features become more mainstream (several weeks away, at least), its native form factor and specifications will be a better fit for the high-capacity customer with a huge drive C, or an appetite for huge external storage.

But how will Seagate be able to make its case to a very skeptical initial customer base, who already sees through the company’s campaign? Can Seagate’s SeaTools work like Gigabyte’s EasyTune, for example, giving the enthusiast the type of support and choices he craves for a drive that’ll eventually become food for the mainstream?

“Up to now, we haven’t been very good at that,” admitted Seagate’s David Burks, surprisingly, “but that’s exactly what we’re trying to step up and do better. We’ve seen people do this, we’ve got the wherewithal to make it a little easier, let’s do that. So we’re going to be publishing some instructional content that can say, if you’re wanting to tune for performance, here are some different mechanisms you can do that with using SeaTools, and with other tools in the industry.”

Seagate is also expanding its manufacturer’s warranty for Barracuda XT from three years to five years, even though analysts now tend to believe that mainstream users don’t hang on to their drives for longer than three years. Since the company predicts that streaming media applications will contribute to the “maxxing out” of the SATA 3.0 Gbps interface by the end of 2011, it’s making the case that some Barracuda XTs may stay in service as the principal system disks of workhorse systems — maybe not 2 TB, but certainly well-utilized — up to five years after first being put into service.

It’s a stretch, but a logical one, and a clever way to initially sell a high-end HDD into a market that may not require, or that may be skeptical of, its initial specs.

Even though it’s only got one Android device in its roster so far, wireless network operator Sprint today announced that it is turning over its network and product services to Android developers through the Sprint Developer Web site’s new Android section.

With the Android 1.5 “Donut” SDK update, Android developers gained access to the CDMA telephony stack, where previously only the GSM stack was supported. So now that support for Sprint’s wireless network protocol is built into Android, a Sprint developer program will help software developers exploit the “Now Network” and its strengths.

One such feature Sprint points out is its “Geofence” package, a mobile workforce management solution currently only available on Sprint’s J2ME and BlackBerry devices which can provide network-triangulated location fixes for employees and more.

Additionally, the upcoming Sprint Developer Conference on October 26 will give interested developers first crack at Sprint’s redesigned HTC Hero. Similar to the exclusive HTC Magic given away at Google I/O earlier this year, HTC will be giving away 400 free Hero handsets to the first developers who show up with to the HTC coding lab with the Android Development Environment 1.5 already installed.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board will make a grave mistake if it gives into Apple and other high-tech companies demanding a change to subscription accounting rules. FASB is preparing to vote on a rule change affecting GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) versus non-GAAP accounting. Apple is on record as supporting the change, which would artificially boost the company’s quarterly revenue and almost certainly its stock price. Some other companies, including Microsoft, could receive similar benefits.

Under current rules, companies defer subscription revenue. Since they deliver services over time, revenue is accounted for by X percentage every quarter. Microsoft has deferred revenue for years, but the numbers got really big starting in 2002, following the implementation of annuity volume-licensing contracts under Licensing 6. Four times a year, Microsoft states the total unearned revenue, how much deferred revenue it realizes as real revenue and how much more the company gains each quarter.

Nearly 12 months ago, Apple started reporting GAAP and non-GAAP results side by side — with fiscal 2008 fourth quarter earnings. CEO Steve Jobs clearly was dissatisfied with not officially reporting iPhone revenue, a large portion the company deferred. In an uncharacteristic appearance, Jobs joined the fiscal fourth quarter earnings call, where he droned on about GAAP versus non-GAAP reporting and how much higher Apple results would be when adding subscription revenue.

“Subscription accounting is the solution we adopted to let us provide free software updates to iPhone users under GAAP accounting rules,” Jobs told financial analysts. Non-GAAP results “eliminate the impact of subscription accounting,” which is a strange way to describe deferred revenue, unless the objective is to convey stronger performance regardless of accounting standards. For that one quarter, Apple revenue would have been 48 percent higher when accounting for subscription revenue.

By reporting GAAP and non-GAAP side by side, Apple did something most companies don’t ever do. For a reason. According to FASB standards, GAAP results are those officially reported. Sure, Microsoft and other companies report non-GAAP results on paper, but not side by side or aggressively as Apple did a year ago and continues to do today.

It’s sensible that Apple report non-GAAP earnings on some basis, if for no other reason than comparison to other mobile phone manufacturers using similar subscription revenue accounting methods. For example, Nokia reports non-IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) results.

Changing the Rules

The rule change is already approved in draft stage, which was a mistake that the vote could compound. I see industry lobbing to change GAAP/non-GAAP reporting as attempt by some companies to manipulate their quarterly results and share values. For Apple, the ability to add currently non-GAAP results to GAAP would be huge. For example, during fiscal 2009 third quarter, Apple reported revenue of $8.34 billion and $1.23 billion net quarterly profit. To get a sense of how much Apple executives loathe non-GAAP reporting, I will quote from the fiscal third-quarter press release:

Adjusting GAAP sales and product costs to eliminate the impact of subscription accounting, the corresponding non-GAAP measures for the quarter are $9.74 billion of ‘Adjusted Sales’ and $1.94 billion of ‘Adjusted Net Income.’

The current rules are goddamn sensible, because deferred revenue encourages accountability. Apple and AT&T sell iPhone under two-year contracts and deliver software updates over time to the smartphone and to iPod touch. Apple shouldn’t get the benefit of money upfront for a service delivered to the buyer over X time period. Deferred revenue accenuates Apple’s obligation to its iPhone buyers.

Something else: Device, service and software are intertwined. In an October 2007 blog, I asked, “ Who owns iPhone?,” after an Apple software update bricked some devices. That Apple can so easily change the device raises questions about ownership and how much the device-service-software is more of a lease, which by definition is a subscription. Similarly, Jack Consumer buys iPhone, which requires a carrier (presumably AT&T in the United States) and ongoing software updates from Apple. This binding of device, service and software demands accountability, which revenue deferral offers as customer obligation. The rule change would remove the obligation subscription accounting creates.

Microsoft could also benefit from rule changes, and it should not. Under current FASB guidelines, Microsoft must defer revenue from annuity licensing contracts, which obligate the company to deliver upgrades and other services to subscribers over two or three years. For fiscal 2009 fourth quarter, Microsoft’s reported income was $3.987 billion. But the number would have been $4.391 billion when reconciling GAAP and non-GAAP results.

Questioning the Reporting Record

Apple isn’t the only high-tech company asking for the accounting changes. But it is perhaps most prominent, because of blogs and news stories posted last week. Many stink of bad reporting or Apple bias. I don’t care which reason, as I’m going to piss all over them. I’ve randomly picked examples.

At the Apple 2.0 blog, Philip Elmer-DeWitt wrote that “Subscription accounting meant that Apple has been under-reporting earnings on its bestselling smartphone for two years.” Say, what? Apple hasn’t under-reported anything. Apple recognizes a portion of the deferred each quarter, which is like having money in the bank.

At ArsTechnica Chris Foresman wrote:

Apple ended up having to report two sets of figures for its quarterly and yearly earnings reports: GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) earnings, using the subscription revenue for iPhones, and non-GAAP earnings, which include the full revenue from iPhone sales. Needless to say, Apple would prefer to report the non-GAAP numbers, since it is a more accurate representation of the company’s performance in a given quarter.

Apple wasn’t forced to report two sets of numbers. The company chose to. The numbers as stated are accurate per quarter, if services revenue is deferred over the life of the subscription.

At Engadget, Nilay Patel wrote that Apple’s “stock price doesn’t always reflect the true amount of iPhone money coming in — in fact, Apple earnings reports now include a second, unofficial balance sheet that does away with subscription accounting to show off the real numbers.”

The GAAP results are real numbers. Of course, the meaning of those real numbers will change if FASB votes to officially put new rules into place. I contend that revised rukes would be dishonest, unless the buyer is allowed to pay for the product or service over X time period — the life of the contract. Payments over time would quite accurately reflect company revenues and further keep it honest.

Do you pay the guy doing repair work on your car, computer or home up front in full before any service is performed? No. You might pay something, but not the whole amount until the work is completed. The iPhone is a work in progress, as evidenced by two full software upgrades and ongoing updates. Should Apple reap before it sows? I say no.

The app store bubble continued inflating today, with Intel’s announcement of the beta of its week-old Atom Developer Program. It’s a system which will ultimately create app stores for netbooks running on Intel Atom processors, irrespective of the operating system.

“The netbook has become one of the most popular consumer devices in the market today, but its true potential has been limited by applications that are not optimized for its mobility and smaller screen size,” said Renee James, corporate vice president and general manager for Intel’s Software and Services Group, during a presentation at IDF today. “The Intel Atom Developer Program provides a great opportunity for developers to create useful and inventive applications that will unlock a netbook’s potential while opening a new sales and distribution channel.”

This new sales and distribution channel does not exactly exist yet, but developers are invited to sign up and submit their apps (entertainment, games, multimedia, security, travel, personal productivity, utilities, etc.) for approval. Eventually, they will be available in a network of app stores.

“Intel is working with netbook original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and other partners to create application storefronts through which validated applications will be sold,” the company said today. Partner companies such as Acer, Asus, and Dell are all expected to participate in app store development.

Like the app developer programs by Apple, Microsoft, and Palm, Intel is promising a 70/30 revenue split with developers. Naturally, this won’t take effect until the distribution program is publicly launched and apps are available to the public.

As it stands right now, the SDK is not even available yet, but Intel encourages developers to register for the program now, so they should expect an SDK to arrive in late fall.

At the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC today, Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski discussed the Commission’s plans for preserving net neutrality with the addition of two new tenets to the FCC’s existing open Internet principles.

“Why has the Internet proved to be such a powerful engine for creativity, innovation, and economic growth?” Genachowski asked, “A big part of the answer traces back to one key decision by the Internet’s original architects: to make the Internet an open system.”

Both of the new policies will be focused on Internet Service Providers, a link in the chain of Internet access whose power has been the subject of debate for years. The first of the new open Internet Principles will prevent ISPs from regulating the content and applications their subscribers can access, and the second will call on ISPs to be more transparent about their traffic control systems and network management policies.

“We cannot know what tomorrow holds on the Internet, except that it will be unexpected; that the genius of American innovators is unlimited; and that the fewer obstacles these innovators face in bringing their work to the world, the greater our opportunity as citizens and as a nation,” Chairman Genachowski said this morning.

“Today the free and open Internet faces emerging and substantial challenges. We’ve already seen some clear examples of deviations from the Internet’s historic openness. We have witnessed certain broadband providers unilaterally block access to VoIP applications (phone calls delivered over data networks) and implement technical measures that degrade the performance of peer-to-peer software distributing lawful content. We have even seen at least one service provider deny users access to political content. And as many members of the Internet community and key Congressional leaders have noted, there are compelling reasons to be concerned about the future of openness.”

Chairman Genachowski proposed today that the FCC adopt former Chairman Michael Powell’s “Four Freedoms” (PDF here) as commission rules, and add the two new ISP-specific policies, which Genachowski referred to as “non-discrimination,” and “transparency.”

“The fifth principle…means [ISPs] cannot block or degrade lawful traffic over their networks, or pick winners by favoring some content or applications over others in the connection to subscribers’ homes. Nor can they disfavor an Internet service just because it competes with a similar service offered by that broadband provider. The Internet must continue to allow users to decide what content and applications succeed.”

In regards to the transparency principle, Genachowski said, “Today, broadband providers have the technical ability to change how the Internet works for millions of users — with profound consequences for those users and content, application, and service providers around the world…We cannot afford to rely on happenstance for consumers, businesses, and policymakers to learn about changes to the basic functioning of the Internet. Greater transparency will give consumers the confidence of knowing that they’re getting the service they’ve paid for, enable innovators to make their offerings work effectively over the Internet, and allow policymakers to ensure that broadband providers are preserving the Internet as a level playing field. It will also help facilitate discussion among all the participants in the Internet ecosystem, which can reduce the need for government involvement in network management disagreements.”

After several months of intense research, helped along by literally hundreds of reader suggestions, Betanews has revised and updated its testing suite for Windows-based Web browser performance. The result is the Comprehensive Relative Performance Index (CRPI). If it’s “creepy” to you, that’s fine.

We’ve kept one very important element of our testing from the very beginning: We take a slow Web browser that you might not be using much anymore, and we pick on its sorry self as our test subject. We base our index on the assessed speed of Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 on Windows Vista SP2 — the slowest browser still in common use. For every test in the suite, we give IE7 a 1.0 score. Then we combine the test scores to derive a CRPI index number that, in our estimate, best represents the relative performance of each browser compared to IE7. So for example, if a browser gets a score of 6.5, we believe that once you take every important factor into account, that browser provides 650% the performance of IE7.

As you’ll see, we believe that “performance” means doing the complete job of providing rendering and functionality the way you expect, and the way Web developers expect. So we combine speed, computational efficiency, and standards compliance tests. This way, a browser with a 6.5 score can be thought of as doing the job more than five times faster and better. Here now are the eight batteries we use for our suite, and how we’ve modified them where necessary to suit our purposes:

• The Nontroppo CSS rendering test. Up to now, we’ve been using a modified version of a rendering test used by HowToCreate.co.uk, whose two purposes have been to time how long it takes to re-render the contents of multiple arrays of <DIV> elements and to time the loading of the page that includes those elements. The reason we modified this page was because the JavaScript onLoad event fires at different times for different browsers — despite its documented purpose, it doesn’t necessarily mean the page is “loaded.” There’s a real-world reason for these variations: In Apple Safari, for instance, some page contents can be styled the moment they’re available, but before the complete page is rendered, so firing the event early enables the browser to do its job faster — in other words, Apple doesn’t just do this to cheat. But the actual creators of the test themselves, at nontroppo.org, did a better job of compensating for the variations than we did: Specifically, the new version now tests to see when the browser is capable of accessing that first <DIV> element, even if (and especially when) the page is still loading.Here’s how we developed our new score for this test: There are three loading events: one for Document Object Model (DOM) availability, one for first element access, and the third being the conventional onLoad event. We counted DOM load as one sixth, first access as two sixths, and onLoad as three sixths of the rendering score. Then we adjusted the re-rendering part of the test so that it iterates 50 times instead of just five. This is because some browsers do not count milliseconds properly in some platforms — this is the reason why Opera mysteriously mis-reported its own speed in Windows XP as slower than it was. (Opera users everywhere…you were right, and we thank you for your persistence.) By running the test for 10 iterations for five loops, we can get a more accurate estimate of the average time for each iteration because the millisecond timer will have updated correctly. The element loading and re-rendering scores are averaged together for a new and revised cumulative score — one which readers will discover is much fairer to both Opera and Safari than our previous version.
• Celtic Kane’s JavaScript suite. The independent developer who calls himself Celtic Kane is noted for developing a battery of simplified tests, which first became noteworthy for having demonstrated the rendering ability of Opera over its competition at the time, Mozilla Firefox and IE7. What impresses us about CK is its ability to render a “signature” of eight integer scores that distinguish just about each version of each browser we test — whereas many other tests are susceptible to variations in the environment, CK is relatively quite stable. As before, each of the eight tests in the CK battery (array handling, date and timing object manipulation, error handling, math objects, regular expressions, string objects, DOM manipulation, and AJAX declarations) are judged for relative performance against IE7, and the result is averaged for a cumulative score.
• SunSpider JavaScript benchmark. Maybe the most respected general benchmark suite in the field focuses on computational JavaScript performance rather than rendering — the raw ability of the browser’s underlying JavaScript engine. Though it comes from the folks who produce the WebKit open source rendering engine that currently has closer ties with Safari, though is also used elsewhere, we’ve found SunSpider’s results to appear fair and realistic, and not weighted toward WebKit-based browsers. There are nine categories of real-world computational tests (3D geometry, memory access, bitwise operations, complex program control flow, cryptography, date objects, math objects, regular expressions, and string manipulation), some of which overlap with Celtic Kane, although we feel those that do overlap should be treated more importantly anyway. All nine categories are scored and average relative to IE7 in Vista SP2.

Next: The additions and changes we’ve made…

Three laptop computers, all of them cool-looking, all with well-respected brands, all have the features you want, all sell for the same price. This isn’t going to be a toy for you; it will be, for at least the next few years, the engine for your work and your livelihood. How do you make a purchasing decision? You check online to see which one is the better performer, and which one other customers prefer.

Five Web browsers, all of them cool-looking, all with well-respected brands, all have the features you want, all of them…are free. But this isn’t going to be a newspaper reader or a Twitter feed carrier for you; it will be, for at least the next few weeks, the engine for your work and your productivity. Sure, you’ll install all of them. But which one will you install as your default, and which one will you trust with your everyday applications?

When the everyday functionality of Microsoft Office moves to the Web, and PCs are sold not with Office installed but with desktop shortcuts to Office Web Apps instead, and when the applications you run depend on the Web browser you choose, the decision you make about Web browsers will be more important than ever before. If you care about whether an AMD processor that sells for eight dollars less than its Intel counterpart can perform at the same levels under overclocking, or whether adding a second graphics card will crank out ten more frames per second after you add that fourth monitor, then you should care about the performance of your software platform. The differences here are not so incremental.

At Betanews, we’ve been testing Windows-based Web browsers with greater and greater accuracy throughout this year, with the objective of being able to give you a simple and indisputable way to consider their all-around performance. All through that time, we’ve been listening to your responses as to how we can improve our methods, and we’ve been getting a lot of responses.

Here’s what we’ve learned from you:

• You want a simpler, flatter index. Just as the Dow Jones Industrial Average represents the general state of investment in the American economy for any point in time, you need one number that represents the all-around performance of every browser in the field, something you can remember and discuss.
• You also want all the data. Specifically, you want to be able to see exactly how that final index number is obtained. Our verbal explanations haven’t always been enough, and you know from personal experience that a browser we’ve called relatively slow is actually faster in the areas that matter specifically to you.
• You want us to cast our net wider, and find a fairer and more accurate way to assess basic performance. You’ve told us that page load times, to you, represent basic performance — if a page loads faster, it’s a faster browser. But timing how fast a browser loads Yahoo or Facebook, for example, is a process loaded with uncontrolled variables — the pages change, the network ebbs and flows, and ads can be textual or in interactive Java 3D. You need a fair and regulated means for assessing real-world page loading speed.
• You warned us not to trust browsers’ different methods for reporting their own load times. Since different browsers work in various ways, for example, they fire the JavaScript onLoad event at different times, for different reasons — so we can’t accept onLoad as the complete “finish line.” Instead, we need to pay attention to the whole page loading process, specifically with regard to how soon the scripts inside a page can access the elements of that page and start styling and displaying them.

We already had four tests in our previous Web browser suite, and after careful research, we’ve added four more that focus on areas that you say matter to you, and that some of you say we’ve overlooked. And as usual, you’re right: If we’re going to claim to measure “all-around” performance, we need to cover all the bases.

On the next page, we introduce our new solution and our response to your many, many very good suggestions. This is your comprehensive index.

Next: How Betanews will measure Web browser performance…

In a flashback to the more prosperous years before the current “deep recession,” hordes of truly enthused journalists crowded dozens of vendors’ booths at a revitalized Pepcom pre-holiday event in New York City last week, waiting for their turns to get up close and personal with forthcoming consumer electronics wares.

ViewSonic, a company known until now mostly for its monitors, introduced a total of four new PCs at Pepcom’s press event Thursday night.

The ViewSonic entries include the Windows XP-driven All-in-One PC VPC100 (shown above), plus three Windows 7 systems: the 13-inch ViewBook Pro VNB131 notebook; 10-inch ViewBook VNB102 netbook; and PC mini VOT132 (below), an Intel Dual Core Atom 330 processor-based mini-netbook aimed at serving as the centerpiece for building your own all-in-one system.

ViewSonic’s 10-inch VNB102 wraps an Atom N270 CPU, 1 GB of RAM and a 160 GB hard drive in a traditional netbook form factor, for $349 with a three-cell battery or $399 for a six-cell version.

Also in its bustling booth, ViewSonic showed off two new palm-sized MovieBooks for playing back movies on a 4.3-or 5-inch screen while you’re on the go.

For its part, Samsung gave its first US look at two more Windows 7 netbooks: the N140, a 10.1-inch, 2.8-pound replacement for the NC10, touted as raising battery life from five hours to 11 hours; and the N510, an 11.6-inch device featuring an HDMI port, along with an Nvidia Ion graphics chip for running high-definition movies and 3D games.

Slated for US shipment in November, the N140 will run Windows 7 Starter Edition while the N510 will run Windows 7 Home Premium Edition, said Jason B. Redmond, a senior manager at Samsung for marketing communications. The N140 will come in both black and burgundy flavors.

Redmond told Betanews that Samsung will also update its existing Go netbooks, first rolled out last summer, with both 3G wireless and Windows 7 Starter Edition following Microsoft’s launch of Win7 on October 22.

Asus made the first public display anywhere of its already announced 14-inch UL80V ultraportable and 16-inch N61Vg multimedia notebooks, along with its 20-inch EeeTop ET2002 HD entertainment center and two new netbooks: the 8.9-inch Disney Netpal for kids and the 10.1-inch Eee PC 1008HA Seashell.

Although the Asus notebooks were outfitted with Windows 7, the Disney Netpal still sported Windows XP. In sort of a proof-of-concept, though, Asus installed Windows 7 on the Seashell just for the Pepcom event, to show that the new OS will work on a netbook.

Josh Norem, senior technical marketing specialist at Asus, told Betanews that all of Asus’ recently announced notebooks and netbooks will be running Windows 7 by the November time frame.

He hedged a bit, however, when asked about other future products from Asus, perhaps in reaction to press leaks of an Asus product roadmap, widely circulated a few weeks ago.

Will Asus release additional Windows 7 products in November? “Probably,” Norem answered on Thursday. Are any more Linux netbooks on Asus’ drawing boards? “Not at this time,” he replied.

As for the revamped Skype video phone, a major update to the “industry first” announced at a Pepcom event last year, the new and more streamlined unit — known as the AiGuru SV1T — features a touch screen and other enhancements for much easier dialing and navigation.

Norem said Asus is targeting its latest desktop VoIP videophone at senior citizens and others who are daunted at the thought of making Skype calls on a PC. The phone runs its own WebOS, produced by Asus, according to Norem.

Meanwhile, other vendors, including Lenovo have also been pre-announcing Windows 7 PCs over the past month or so.

As sort of a counterpoint to the Windows 7 frenzy, HTC gave hands-on demos in New York City on Thursday of the Hero, an Android phone set for release by Sprint in October. But will the new consumer electronics products — whether Windows 7- or Android-driven — stimulate consumer spending enough this holiday season to give the economy a significant jolt? No doubt we could all use a little Christmas this Christmas.