Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Asus showed off a number of new notebooks featuring Bang & Olufsen’s Icepower audio amplification technology at a glitzy launch party here today.

The audio technology, which has been the talk of audiophile circles because of its use in a number of highly-rated power-efficient amplifiers, promises improved sound over existing laptop offerings.

Icepower will come in a number of Asus’ N-model laptops as well as its top-of-the-range NX90 Multimedia Notebook. There’s a reason why it’s called that, instead of a laptop, because you’d not want to place this 4.8kg machine on your lap (a small bag of rice weighs 5kg).

“Usually the June show is quieter than the March event, because people have already used up all their bonus money from the Chinese New Year,” said a PC hardware distributor friend, when I met him at the PC Show today.

Sure enough, if you walk around this quarter’s IT bazaar at Suntec City, which runs until this Sunday, you’d notice that there aren’t the usual big Sony booth or telecom operators taking up entire sections of a floor. These guys are still at PC Show today, but the show just seems smaller than the one in March.

So, what are the bargains?

I’ve been wanting to swap out my old Razer Tarantula keyboard for a while now, seeing how the lettering is all gone, and I sometimes have to second-guess where the right keys are. I finally did that yesterday with a Logitech K350 wireless keyboard.

Now, you may think I’m downgrading from a performance gaming keyboard to just another boring wireless typepad. But for me, it’s more like switching to something that suits what I do now, which is, sadly, 95 per cent typing e-mail and articles and 5 per cent games.

In the latest use of technology for its “3G Army“, the Singapore Armed Forces is giving each new recruit a laptop – no, not to surf porn, or update Facebook on, but to learn how to strip a rifle and throw grenades. Yes, throw grenades.

I’m sure Singapore readers of The Straits Times would have read the story that first came out last Saturday, but it is still something of a shock to many of us guys who’ve already done two or two-and-a-half years of national service plus a decade of reservist call-ups the old way.

Because there was a time when you would have to actually get drilled countless times on what to do before throwing a live grenade. You work with a dummy grenade, learn that you have to pull out the pin carefully, keep your palm clasped and NEVER drop the thing.

If you screw up during training, you got a smack in the head or a yelling you will never forget – even if you are throwing a grenade 10 years down the road (Singaporeans are liable for call-ups up to 40 years old for enlisted men, and 50 for officers).

Sony is reportedly dropping support for other operating systems on the PlayStation 3 (PS3) through a firmware update that will be rolled out to users on April 1.

In a blog post, Patrick Seybold, Sony’s senior director for corporate communications and social media, said version 3.21 of the PS3 firmware “will disable the ‘Install Other OS’ feature that was available on the PS3 systems prior to the current slimmer models, launched in September 2009.

More flat-screen TVs, portable hard disks, printers and laptops were what I expected when I joined the mass of humanity that had congregated at the IT Show at Suntec Singapore yesterday.

Arriving just before noon, I could still find many lots in the carpark. And there weren’t so many people carting away large-screen TVs and printers on trolleys. Is it because everyone already has two TVs and three printers at home, thanks to spending crazily at previous shows?

My tiredness of the bargain-hunting, however, soon disappeared when I saw how cheap these new Intel Core i3 and i5-based laptops were going for.

I’m talking about prices from S$999 for an entry-level Dell Inspiron with a 14-inch screen. Cute with bright colours like cherry red and ice blue, it comes with enough horsepower from the dual-core processor to crunch everyday work. It helps too that Windows 7 now doesn’t suck up as much resources as Windows Vista previously.

I wrote a piece for the Sunday Times published today about the emergence of the smartbooks – netbooks which use mobile processors and Linux/Google operating systems instead of the usual Wintel duopoly. I drafted the specs from the info provided and e-mailed it back to the computer company for them to confirm the specs. Everything was in order, except the OS part which the PR wanted me to
“pls state OS to be ‘comprising of a customer user interface layer, built on a custom Linux-based OS.”

In other words, a Linux OS. “That’s rubbish” was my response and I simply told him/her that the sentence was a total waste of valuable space on the newspaper. He/she said he/she did not understand why I used the word rubbish and went on to send me more info:

Q. What is the OS for Skylight and why did you choose it?
A. The Skylight User experience is comprised of a custom UI layer built on a custom Linux base OS.   The average user will not be aware that the OS is based on Linux.  We chose this approach because it provided the flexibility to deliver a simple, discoverable, and fun gadget based way of presenting web applications and media.

Q: Is this a Lenovo Operating System?

A: That depends on your definition of “Operating System”.   We have created a unique software stack optimized to achieve a specific user experience focused on web applications, media and cloud computing.    The focus of our investments have been on the User Interface layer.

Q: What did you base the OS on?

A: Lenovo’s Skylight Interface runs on Embedded Linux.  ThunderSoft is Lenovo’s Linux System Integrator.

Q: Are you working with a Linux distribution partner? Who is it?
A: Yes Thundersoft.  Lenovo recognized the value of running Linux as a base platform for the Skylight User Interface for everything from performance to extensive customization.   This allowed us to pick the best and most appropriate elements to solve the SmartBook equation.   An extensive team of partners along with internal development teams from Lenovo and Qualcomm worked together to pick, customize and create what we needed to provide a world-class solution.

Yes my friend. It is still a Linux OS.

Linux users are often at the mercy of hardware vendors when it comes to device drivers. The open source community often needs to turn to reverse engineering to churn out drivers from proprietary ones. As long as the majority of hardware is made for Windows and OS X machines, Linux users will need to wait until the community figures out the nuts and the bolts of a piece of hardware before a Linux driver can be written.

Take Nouveau for example. The open source project started in 2006 with the aim of building high quality drivers for Nvidia graphics cards. Although Nvidia provided a Linux driver several years ago, it was a basic driver with no 3D support. The Nouveau project gained momentum and a year later, its driver soon outperformed Nvidia’s in 2D performance.

While some Linux drivers can be as good as proprietary ones from hardware vendors, others only allow basic functionality with sometimes abysmal performance. My interest in Linux was rekindled recently when I installed Ubuntu 9.10 on my three-year-old Macbook. The basic hardware like the keyboard and graphics worked right out of the box after the installation, with the exception of the iSight webcam which only worked after I installed a software that reverse engineered the right driver out of Apple’s proprietary iSight driver.

Driven by commercial interest through a stranglehold over the unique features of its hardware, it is not in Apple’s interest or any hardware vendor to release open source drivers. A recent feature in Linux Magazine on the Nouveau project pointed out that Nvidia “still gains far too much advantage by keeping their driver closed. They get support for brand new models, extra performance, better power management, extra features like VDPAU, and certain technology components can remain a company secret”.

Meanwhile, Linux users have to continue tinkering with their boxes to make things work, but with the support of the community through hundreds of thousands of forums and interest groups on almost every Linux distro, there’s bound to be a workaround out there. But hey, it’s also what makes computing fun isn’t it?

One of the questions I often get from friends coming up to Hong Kong is if stuff is cheaper here or in Singapore. In many cases, the answer is “not really” or “just a little” – but in the case of the Synology DS210j that I bought for my bro recently, it was a helluva lot cheaper!

At HK$1530 (which is about S$278 at 1S$:5.5HK$), you’d be paying almost 50% more if you bought one from Synology’s dealer in Singapore (Memory World) which has priced it at S$408. Plus according to the Synology forum (post dates back to 2007 though), Synology does provide international warranty.

So why the DS210j? Only the Qnap TS210J II comes close to the DS210j’s transfer rates, but is more expensive. The rest of the 2-bay NAS competition, like the D-Link DNS-323 are generally slower. Oh, and its DLNA compliant too, so fits in with the plan of adding those ‘media extender’ devices to stream video and audio later.

I was just gushing down a bowl of extremely salty French Onion soup at TGIF near the Marriot Grand Hotel in Moscow where I am staying when I saw Jobs flashing the iPad in some Russian news channel. That was enough for me to spend the next 90 minutes watching Job’s keynote.

Two things struck me from the iPads launch today:

1. Apple is really going into a closed lock-down system.

   The iPad will be utilising Apple’s new 1GHz processor (Apple now totally owns the hardware and the OS).

   It also launched iWorks (competitor to MS Office) for US$9.99 for each of the spreadsheet, presentation and word processor software (called numbers, keynote and something else I cant remember) It also launched iBooks – an e-book reader and store.  With App Store and iTunes Music Store,  now Apple also owns the software and services platform.

   Apple struck a deal with AT&T for adding 3G at US$29.99 per month for unlimited access. So like the iPhone, you are stuck again with a specific telco. And my guess is the two will work together to lock-in consumers and share the money.

   It looks like the Apple way is increasingly becoming a closed, lock-down system. I dont like lock-down systems and it sure makes Microsoft (who only controlled the OS and the apps and tried with the browser) look like an angel in comparison.

2. Is the iPad simply a glorified smartphone?

   Yes, it did look cool watching Jobs spin the thing round, but what exactly is the Apple 1GHz processor? Early rumours are swirling that it is simply one of the many 1GHz ARM processors (ARM licences its processor tech to people like Nvidia and Qualcomm to make smartphone processors) around. The same architecture that powers the Google Nexus One smartphone. But can it be powerful enough to support a mini-laptop? In case you are still wondering why the iPad does not support the ability to run multiple apps at the same time, perhaps this is the answer!