Elegant Ubuntu Touch OS impresses for phones and tablets

BARCELONA, Spain--Ubuntu is coming to your phone and tablet, and in style. I got my hands on the forthcoming Ubuntu Touch operating system for smartphones and tablets at mobile industry shindig Mobile World Congress , and I'd say on first impression it knocks rivals like Firefox OS and Samsung-backed Tizen into a cocked hat.

Ubuntu Touch is developed by Canonical and set to be available to the public in October. Manufacturers are yet to be confirmed, but you can try the software right now on selected Google Nexus devices. I tried out the new OS installed on a Google Nexus 4 smartphone, and the tablet version on a Google Nexus 7 slate.

The phone and tablet versions are identical in design and operation, except the tablet version has wider screens. Here's how the new OS works.

(Credit: Technonet)

At the top of the screen at all times is a thin black bar that shows the usual status indicators: battery, time, and phone signal. But it also has a search button, so you can always instantly search no matter what you're doing or which app you're in, on phone and tablet. Very handy.

Instead of shortcuts to open apps, the home screens show you your "stuff": messages, music, videos, and so on. The main home screen has a selection of the highlights, such as favorite videos. I like the widget for recent messages, as it displays messages in a Cover Flow-style sideways-scrolling carousel showing pictures of your friends -- a much friendlier and more human way to see who you're communicating with than a list of text.

Swipey happy people
Swiping left and right takes you to home screens dedicated to different types of content: one for video, another for music, and so on. That puts your content on a home screen instead of in an app, making it quicker to reach.

The interface does away with buttons. Instead, you begin by swiping your finger in from the edges of the screen. Swipe in from the left to reveal the main menu, a column of app shortcuts down the left side of the screen. You can change the order of the apps and features in the column, to make sure you always have your favorite apps close by.

(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)

Swipe in from the right side, and you scroll back through the apps you have open, in the order you visited them. The apps slide over quickly, although if you have a bunch of apps to scroll through before you reach your destination, it's not as fast as the Android task switcher, which pops up thumbnails of open apps to go straight to the one you want.

Swipe down from the top for notifications and settings. Here you see a handy list of messages, including e-mails and other types of message. The coolest thing about this is you can reply right there in the notification screen, without having to open an app -- just tap on the message and a text box appears so you can type a quick reply.

Swiping up from the bottom reveals a menu, called the HUD or head-up display, that varies in each app. For example, in the photo gallery app you can crop or retouch pictures, with plenty of options to play with, including color balance and saturation.

The app situation
Like Android, iOS, and other smartphone operating systems, you can download more apps and games to customize your phone. One of the most important factors in deciding whether to buy into a new smartphone OS is the number -- and more importantly, the quality -- of the apps available. Like all new platforms, Ubuntu is therefore trailing behind the established Google Play for Android and Apple's App Store.

But alongside the native apps, Ubuntu Touch supports the open and increasingly popular standard HTML5. Web apps that work online should work on Ubuntu -- so even though there's no official app store yet, Ubuntu already has access to HTML5 apps including big names like Facebook, Twitter, and Evernote.

Phone apps work on the tablet, too. Unlike on the iPad, where phone apps are marooned forlornly in the middle of the screen, Ubuntu phone apps sit on the right side of the tablet screen, leaving the other two-thirds of the screen for a different tablet app. Both apps work simultaneously and independently, and when you're done with the phone app, you can just swipe it off the screen.

But on first impression I'm hugely taken with Ubuntu Touch. It's elegant, thoughtful, and versatile, while remaining beautifully straightforward. Compared to the messy Android copycats Firefox OS and Tizen, it's by far the strongest potential rival to Android, iOS, and Windows Phone. In fact, I prefer it to iOS, which long ago lost its shine, and heck, maybe even to Android, too. Fingers crossed that manufacturers and phone carriers get behind it, because I'd happily lay down my own cash for an Ubuntu Touch phone.

ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity vs Apple iPad 4

Display

Starting off this battle with the most important component in a tablet (this is the way I see things, opinions may vary from one person to another), the ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity uses a 10.1 inch Super IPS+ LCD display running at a 1920 x 1200 (16:10 aspect ratio) pixel resolution. The PPI density rests at 224, one of the highest values we’ve seen so far on an Android tablet display. Colors are bright and vivid, while its brightness makes it easy to use the Infinity in bright daylight. However, the opposition that the Transformer Infinity faces is a really tough one.

The Apple iPad 4 uses the same Retina display that was used by the third generation iPad, namely a 9.7 inch LED-backlit IPS TFT display running at a 1536 x 2048 pixel resolution (4:3 aspect ratio), and amounting at an impressive – for a tablet – Pixel Per Inch (PPI) ratio of 264. Brightness, saturation and color reproduction is spot on, while viewing angles are as wide as they come.

Although the display on the ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity is of very high quality, the reality is that the retina display used on the Apple iPad 3 and iPad 4 is the best tablet display currently available on the market, no doubts about it! In addition, despite the fact that the ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity has a display larger by 0.4 inches across the diagonal, the actual screen real estate is roughly equal between the two tablets due to the different aspect ratios.

Build Quality and Design

When it comes to the design of the various iPad models, it looks like the general principles followed by Apple have not changed all that much since they have designed the original iPad. The iPad 2 was only a bit different than the original iPad, the third iPad changed even less, while the Apple iPad 4 looks exactly like its predecessor. However, this is not necessarily a bad thing, given that most people tend not to be against the glass and aluminum combination used by the Cupertino based manufacturer.

The fourth generation iPad measures 241.2 x 185.7 x 9.4 mm (9.50 x 7.31 x 0.37 in) and weighs in at 662 g (1.46 lb). Moving on!

Back in the Android camp, the Transformer Pad Infinity uses the same combination of glass and aluminum, although the circular effect on the back plate is somewhat more interesting than the finish used by Apple’s products, although this is a subjective assessment. In all fairness, two tablets that use the same build materials and carry displays of roughly the same size cannot be very different one from another. If you’re going to like one, you’re going to like them both, and the other way around.

The ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity measures 263 x 180.8 x 8.5 mm (10.35 x 7.12 x 0.33 in) and weighs 598 g (1.32 lb).

As you can see for yourself, the ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity is slightly thinner and lighter than the Apple iPad 4, although differences are really to small to be of ultimate importance in choosing between the two!

Internal Hardware

This is actually the only sector that Apple has decided to improve upon with the Apple iPad 4. As a result, the iPad 4 dumps the A5X System On a Chip (SoC) used by the iPad 3, and uses the new Apple A6X SoC instead. Apple has not shared any details about the A6X, but has indicated that it will feature 2 times the CPU capabilities and 2 times the GPU capabilities.

The ASUS Transformer Pad Infnity features an overclocked Nvidia Tegra 3 Soc consisting out of a quad-core Cortex A9 processor (that runs at 1.6GHz per core when in quad-core mode and at a 1.7GHz when running in single core mode), an Nvidia GeForce ULP (standing for Ultra Low Power) GPU. Add 1 GB into the mix, and what you get is a tablet that is only a little more powerful when it comes to its CPU / GPU combination than the budget Nexus 7. This is one sector that the ASUS Transformer Infinity cannot be placed in the same league as the iPad 4. The Infinity is not the most sluggish of all tablets, not by the least of it, but a difference in real-life performance is surely to be noticed between the Infinity and the Apple iPad 4.

We’ll have to wait for benchmark results to flow in before we can confirm Apple’s claims, but it it worth mentioning that, if Apple did not distort the reality (and they unfortunately tend to do a lot of that), the Apple A6X SoC is significantly faster than anything else currently available in the Android ecosystem. Until Samsung’s Exynos 5 or Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 Pro SoCs make their way into tablets, the Apple iPad 4 is the most powerful tablet there is, and by a couple of lengths at that!

Both the ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity and the fourth generation iPad come in 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB variants, but only the Android tab can work with SD cards (of up to 32GB in size). In addition, both tabs come with LTE compatibility options (as they should, given that they are top-end tablets).

On to the cameras, it is really beyond me why anyone would want to take pictures with a tablet, but just for the sake of mentioning all aspects, the Apple iPad 4 uses a 5 MP primary sensor and a 1.2 MP secondary one, while ASUS have opted for an 8 MP primary sensor and a 2 MP secondary camera for their Pad Infinity.

One further thing that needs to be discussed is the docking station that ASUS has designed for the Transformer Pad Infinity. Basically the lower end of a laptop, the docking station will act as a keyboard as well as additional battery for the Transformer. Although you shouldn’t expect the Pad Infinity to magically turn into a full-fledged laptop, it’s really nice for typing on the go. In all fairness though, there are similar accessories for the iPad, it’s just that they are not manufactured by Apple themselves, but by third-parties instead.

Operating System and Software

Ok, so now on to the bit that separates these two tablets the most, the ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity has been initially launched with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich but fortunately, it has been since updated to Android 4.1 Jelly Bean (in fact, the Pad Infinity is the only tablet other than Google’s Nexus 7 to officially run Android Jelly Bean). In the other corner, the Apple iPad 4 will run iOS 6, the latest version of Apple’s mobile OS.

Although the number of tablet-optimised apps is larger with the iPad, Google has really tried to incite Android app developers to optimize their apps for tablets, not only smartphones. Currently, most of the major Android apps have tablet-optimised versions, although there are still plenty of apps that display a stretched version of the smartphone interface on a tablet. However, this is not as big of a problem as it used to be in the past (quick joke: probably the main indication for this is the fact that Apple dissed a few non-tablet optimized apps when they announced the iPad 4 and the iPad Mini).

On the other hand, with an Android tablet, you’ll be able to do almost everything you want: customize everything, install apps from any source you want to, even change the way that the OS works (by installing custom mods). With an iPad, you’re kinda stuck with the simplicity that Apple has designed for you, and there’s no way to change that. In addition, all iPad apps need to be pre-approved by Apple before they get into the Apple App Store – the only way to install apps on an iPad.

If customization and widgets is what you’re looking for, Android 4.1 Jelly Bean is the right way to go. If all you want to do is browse the web and play Fruit Ninja, you’re probably better off with an iPad.

ZTE V98 is a metal-backed 10-inch Windows 8 slate

BARCELONA, Spain--ZTE's V98 tablet was initially announced in September of last year but it's shown its face again at Mobile World Congress. The V98 is a 10-inch tablet packing an Intel Atom processor and full-fat Windows 8. I went in for a closer look.

In terms of design, the V98 is pretty unremarkable. The front is home to an unbroken sheet of glass, bordered by machined aluminum edging. That metal continues all the way around the back too. The full-metal jacket gives the V98 a more premium feel, although aesthetically, it's unlikely to get your heart racing.

It feels reasonably well put together, and the metal casing should help protect the delicate internals from the wear and tear of screen-swiping life. The only problem I found was in the flap that clips open to reveal the microSD card slot. It feels extremely flimsy and easy to snap off and didn't sit flush against the casing when closed.

The 10-inch display has a 1,366x768-pixel resolution. That's the minimum I'd expect to see on a screen of this size. Ideally, I'd like to see a bit more to help get the best out of high-definition video, but if the tablet is cheap enough, having fewer pixels is probably forgivable. It seemed fairly bright with decent colors, although I was viewing it under extremely bright lights, so I'll save my final verdict on the display for the full review.

Inside the tablet is an Intel Atom Z2760 processor clocked at 1.7GHz along with 2GB of RAM. Those are some low-end specs, so again, I'm really hoping that ZTE will match it with a cut-down price. The V98 is running full Windows 8, rather than the tablet-specific Windows RT. Although it looks basically the same, full Windows 8 allows you to install regular desktop software like iTunes or Spotify, rather than relying solely on the meager selection of apps in the Windows 8 Marketplace.

Swiping around the colorful interface of Windows seemed pretty swift and responsive, with little lag when opening settings or switching to desktop mode. I wasn't able to spend much time with the device, but it seemed to have enough juice for the essentials of Web browsing and high-definition video streaming.

How it handles more intense tasks like photo and video editing remains to be seen, but those specs really aren't built to handle hard-core computing. If you're after a slate with some real junk in the trunk, take a look at tablets like the Acer Iconia W700 -- its Intel Core-series chips let the slate dive into much more power-hungry tasks.

ZTE hasn't explicitly stated how much the V98 is going to cost, but given the specs, I wouldn't expect a price higher than 400 pounds ($600 U.S.) at the most. It's due to go on sale later this year in China (ZTE told us in the third quarter), so I expect to hear more about general prices and availability elsewhere nearer the time.

Nokia Lumia 720 is like a 920 'light'

ARCELONA, Spain--Of the four new handsets Nokia introduced at Mobile World Congress, the Nokia Lumia 720 is by far the highest-end.

The Windows Phone 8 device has a 4.3-inch LCD display with a ClearBlack filter that reduces outdoor glare and with the highly sensitive screen that responds to your navigational gestures, even if you're wearing gloves or have long nails -- just like the Lumia 920 and 820 series.

Nokia says its target demographic are younger, trendier, social people who don't require the highest level of hardware technology, but who still want some quality. To that end, the 720 carries wireless charging, and a 6.7-megapixel camera with an f/9 aperture intended to capture low-light conditions (like nightlife), and LED flash.The rest of the body looks achingly familiar with squared-off edges and a more consistently flat body than the much rounder Lumia 820 series. The 720 has the same unibody design, but this time adds a microSD card slot that you can expand up to 64GB. There's also 8GB of internal memory and 7GB online storage through SkyDrive.

You'll also find a 1.3-megapixel camera, which supports Skype HD and has a wide-angle lens for fitting more faces into self-portraits. Photo-editing tools include "digital makeup" to whiten teeth, enlarge eyes, and give skin a softer glow. I tried this out, and maybe it's because I'm outside the target demographic, but I found the facial modification filters a little creepy.

A closer look at Nokia's Lumia 720 (pictures)

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Nokia primarily intends to sell the Lumia 720 in Asia and Europe in spots where LTE isn't as critical a selling point as it is in top-tier U.S markets. China Mobile will sell the 720 in the second quarter.

In addition to the handset, Nokia also announced a new wireless charging holder that has a charging coil in the bottom and an NFC tag you can program to boot up Nokia Drive navigation or other programs.

Nokia will sell its Lumia 720 for 249 euros at full retail price, or about $338.

Apple iWatch: Rumours, specs, features and release date

The Apple iWatch is rumoured to be in some form of production right now – we round up the news and speculation on its specs and new features 

Apple is rumoured to be developing a wrist watch of some description, which would most likely synch up with an iPhone or iPad to give you updates on you’re wrist, allow you to control other devices and pull data from the cloud.

Supposedly a team of ‘about 100 product designers’ are working on the iWatch – including managers, marketers and software and hardware engineers who previously worked on the iPhone and iPad. That’s according to two people ‘familiar with the company’s plans’, which puts them in a remarkably small category.

According to the two in the know, the project is ‘beyond experimentation phase in its development.’

Features

A further two informers claiming to be au fait with Apple’s various super-plans say it is experimenting with a ‘wristwatch-like device made of curved glass’,operating on iOS. The NYT notes Corning has developed bendable glass last year called Willow Glass which could be used to wrap around something wrist, and cites Forrester’s claim that “Apple’s certainly made a lot of hiring in that area”.

There are also claims Apple is in discussions with Chinese manufacturer Foxconn, which makes a large number of iPhone and iPad parts, about producing an iWatch. Foxconn are apparently working to make more power-efficient displays and stripping down chips, aimed at multiple Foxconn customers. This Wall Street Journal report also claims Apple has hired employees with backgrounds in sensors and related tecehnologies.

Apple iTV, Siri and iCloud

While many have dismissed the idea of a Apple iWatch in the past, some are coming around to the idea in think pieces. The Cult of Mac notes that recently Siri and iCloud has become massively important to Apple – and that these two technologies actually lend themselves very well to a wristwatch strategy. It also points out that it would be particularly well suited as a remote control to any TV that may be being worked on. The Apple iTV is an entire area of speculation in itself, which we’ve collated and summarised for you here.  

It has also been pointed out that an iWatch wouldn’t be such a dramatic new area for Apple, since the square iPod Nano with watchstraps can act as, well, pretty much a watch with knobs on. A Blog To Watch also concurs that Siri integration will be key.

Battery

There are reams of speculation on precisely what tech the device would have under the hood, which at this point may seem like a rumour bridge too far – but certainly one thing that would seem obvious is some form of better battery performance, since you wouldn’t want to take a watch off and charge it twice a day like can be required for a smartphone. On this point, some have highlighted a patent Apple owns for wireless charging

A keyboard that rises up from flat touch screens

A startup creates a physical keyboard for touch-screen devices, like smartphones or tablets, that appears when you need to type and disappears when you're done. 

A few weeks ago, right before the new Blackberry 10 phones were announced, I dragged a cameraman to San Francisco's Financial District during lunch hour and asked random strangers to name Blackberry future. Care to guess what the results of my highly unscientific poll were? Even iPhone and  Android users agreed -- the famed keyboard is BlackBerry's top trait.

Increasingly, we "mobile device addicts" are favoring our smartphones and tablets over our traditional computers to meet our digital demands. Trouble is, a lot of us still despise typing on these beloved touch-screen devices. One Silicon Valley startup has created a new kind of keyboard that could help reduce typos and other fat-fingered mistakes.

Fremont, Calif.-based, Tactus technology uses microfluidics to make physical keys bubble up from the surface of a touch screen when you need to type and disappear, when you don't. Microfluidics may sound foreign, but if you've operated an inkjet printer you've used the technology.

So how do keys appear out of nowhere? It starts with a panel that has channels built into it. The channels are filled with a non-toxic fluid. By increasing the pressure in the channels, the fluid pushes up the surface of the panel, creating an actual key. What's more, Tactus says the pressure will be adjustable, so the keys could feel a bit squishy, like a gel pack or they could be harder, like the plastic keys on a laptop.

Tactus demo-ed a working prototype for us, but they're still refining the technology. Right now, there's an audible noise when the keys appear. It should be silent in the final version. And the surface has to be rugged. You wouldn't want to spring a leak, after all. Durability tests are part of that process since Tactus needs to guarantee the surface can't be punctured by a newly manicured fingernail or a 3-year-old trying to scribble on your smartphone with a pen.

Currently, the technology is limited in that it's a fixed single array. You wouldn't be able to use the Tactus keyboard in both portrait and landscape mode, for example. But the goal is to make the third generation of the product dynamic. "The vision that we had was not just to have a keyboard or a button technology, but really to make a fully dynamic surface," says cofounder Micah Yairi, "So you can envision the entire surface being able to raise and lower depending on what the application is that's driving it." Meaning it could display a keyboard when you're typing an e-mail, a number pad when you're dialing a phone number, and perhaps letter tiles when you're playing Words With Friends.

Tactus says it wants to be in production by the end of 2013 or beginning of 2014. Executives were mum about which companies they're talking to. Just one partnership has been announced to date, with Touch Revolution, a Bay Area company that makes touch displays. Tactus VP Nate Saal says, "There are more and more touch screens being integrated in devices... from your mobile phone, cell phone, into refrigerators and appliances and I think those are all opportunities for Tactus to really improve the interface and usability of those devices."

Logitech intros Ultrathin keyboard case for the iPad Mini

Keyboard cases for the iPad mini are starting to proliferate, with Belkin, Logitech, and others introducing new models. Set to ship in early February, Logitech's Ultrathin Keyboard mini is a smaller version of its popular $99.99 Ultrathin Keyboard Cover for the larger iPad.

The relatively lightweight aluminum case/keyboard acts as a screen cover for your iPad Mini and adheres magnetically like Apple's Smart Cover. When you're ready to use it, you pull it off and prop up the iPad in the slot built into the keyboard (yes, it connects to your iPad via Bluetooth). The only problem with it is that it doesn't protect the back of the iPad, which can get scratched up fairly easily if you aren't careful.

The keyboard/case also comes in white (click to enlarge).

(Credit: Logitech)

Logitech says the keyboard offers "a traditional typing layout in a small 7-inch form factor, plus iPad Mini Function shortcut keys for the commands you use most often, such as copy and paste."

The keyboard has an instant On/Off feature -- your iPad Mini automatically wakes up when you open the cover and switches to standby when you close it -- and Logitech says the keyboard has a three-month battery life based on usage of 2 hours per day. It charges via USB.

Making these smaller keyboard cases for the iPad Mini can be a challenge. The few I've tried, including the Belkin Portable Keyboard Case for the iPad mini, have felt a little cramped and had a few other shortcomings despite an otherwise good design. As soon as I get a review sample in, I'll let you know how it stacks up against the competition.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch Ultrabook

Lenovo's Think Pad X1 Carbon was one of the best Ultrabooks when it launched last year. The 14in Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch adds Windows 8 and a touchscreen to the already impressive mix of stylish design, quality build and solid performance. The additions make this ThinkPad thicker and heavier, but it couldn't be described as either bulky or too heavy. Rather the Carbon Touch is now more like other Ultrabooks, unlike its noticeably svelte predecessor

ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch: Performance

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch comes with a choice of Intel i5 and i7 processor, and either 4GB or 8 GB of SDRAM. The model we tested had an Intel Core i5-3247U chip running at 1.8GHz with 4GB RAM. There's also a 128GB SSD, although we could see only 111.78GB, and before we even started nearly a third of that was gone to the OS.

Running Windows 8 this makes the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch a zippy performer. General office work, web streaming and movie playing are all perfectly snappy. This was born out by our PCMark7 benchmark score of 4,783. The best-performing Ultrabooks such as the i7-toting Sony vaio duo 11 and Dell XPS Ultrabook attained scores of around 4,900 so the X1 Carbon Touch is in good company. It also boots up quickly.

A 4,900 general performance score was also attained by the best gaming laptop we have tested recently - the Alienware X 17. But don't expect the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch to be a gaming rig. It's not. It's a business laptop with integrated Intel graphics, so you could squeek through less-intensive games on their lower settings but that's about it.

One final note on the X1 Carbon Touch's performance: in our tests it ran hot on the underside. Use it on a desk and you'll never notice, but when we tested the Carbon Touch on our lap we soon had hot legs - and not in a good way.

ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch: Battery life

Lenovo makes a couple of big claims on behalf of the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch's battery: namely that is lasts for 8.2 hours, and that it goes from zero to 80 percent charged in just 35 minutes. The latter claim we found to be true: this laptop charges quickly, which could prove criticial on the road. The overall battery life was not quite up to the hype, in our experience.

But the good news is that the touchscreen hasn't affected the battery life overmuch. We found the battery life performed much the same as the older, non touch X1 Carbon. We tested that model's measured battery life at 6 hours, 11 minutes. The X1 Carbon Touch is broadly the same: use it for five, even five and a half hours and you should have no problems. And on standby it lasts for days.

ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch: Display

The Lenovo ThinkPadX1 Carbon touch has a 14in a 1600x900 display. And, glory be, it's a matt display - perfectly usable under bright lights. It's even usable outdoors, at a pinch. Obviously the matt means you lose some of the vibrancy of a glossy screen, but we didn't find the Carbon Touch to be at all washed out. Viewing angles are pretty good - you could defintely gather a few people around this laptop, although it doesn't look great from above.

And it's a touchscreen.

I have to say I wasn't expecting to use the touchscreen. It's a laptop, right? But it turns out Windows 8 and touch do make good bedfellows, even when you have a perfectly good keyboard, trackpad and mouse. It helps that Lenovo has given the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch a 10-finger multitouch panel. It's responsive - to gestures as well as taps.

I've used the X1 Carbon Touch for over a week now, and my experience is this: when selecting things, switching and closing programs, scrolling lists and connecting to a Wi-Fi network I naturally reach out and touch. And that's in the Modern UI and in the Desktop interface. I don't image I'll ever type by touch, but it really does make sense to use a touchscreen this good. And the applications for gaming offer good potential.

ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch vs 13in MacBook Pro with Retina Display

It's worth comparing the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch with 13in Apple MacBook Pro with Retina Display. The MacBook is a similar screen size, is in essence as fast (4,596 points), lasts much longer on battery (~9 hours), and this flavour of the the Carbon Touch costs a little more. The Carbon Touch has a touchscreen, which the MacBook doesn't. But Apple's laptop has a much better display.

Dell: Going private is the 'best' move for the company

The company says that it brought in a "prominent management consultant" to help it determine what to do, and everyone agreed going private was the best move.

(Credit: Dell)

Despite growing concern from major shareholders, Dell believes its decision to go private is the best one.

In Securities and exchange,, Dell reported that it "considered an array of strategic alternatives." The company also hired a "prominent management consultant to help it assess the Company's strategic position." Those alternatives, along with the consultant's assessment, led Dell down the path of going private.

"Based on that work, the Board concluded that the proposed all-cash transaction is in the best interests of stockholders," Dell wrote in its filing. "The transaction offers an attractive and immediate premium for stockholders and shifts the risks facing the business to the buyer group. In addition, and importantly, the go-shop process provides stockholders an opportunity to determine if there are alternatives that are superior to the present offer."

Dell's SEC filling today to the kerfuffle that erupted on Friday when Southeastern Asset Management, which owns 8.5 percent of Dell's shares and is the company's largest outside shareholder, said that it opposed the computer maker's plans to go private. In a letter sent to the Dell board, Southeastern said that the deal "grossly undervalues the company."

Dell earlier this month announced a $24.4 billion deal led by founder and CEO Michael Dell and investment firm Silver Lake Partners. Dell and Silver Lake are paying $13.65 per share to finance the deal. Microsoft is contributing a $2 billion loan to help them buy back the remainder of the company's shares.

Reuters reported on Friday that Southeastern might not be alone. An unnamed source told Reuters that Harris Associates, Yacktman Asset Management, and Pzena Investment Management, which together own 3.3 percent of Dell's shares, might also be against the deal.

Despite Dell's attempts today to quell unrest, this might get worse before it gets better. Southeastern said in its letter than it's willing to launch a proxy fight against Dell to stop its action.

Top five Thunderbolt storage devices: Performance meets capacity

Top five Thunderbolt-based desktop external storage devices on the market.

The Thunderbolt technology can be applied to a lot of things, but currently, the most popular use is in storage products. In this regard, it's similar to USB 3.0 but offers about twice the transfer speed, and you can also daisy-chain as many as five storage devices together using a single Thunderbolt port without degrading the data rates.

Most Thunderbolt storage devices are geared toward Macs. And their pricing, while progressively getting lower since Thunderbolt was first introduced a few years ago, is still quite high when compared to USB storage devices. The good news is now most, if not all, Thunderbolt storage devices on the market come with a Thunderbolt cable included, which would cost another $50 if you had to buy one yourself.

That said, if you own a Thunderbolt-enabled computer -- especially a Ma -- and need a superfast storage device for professional needs such as video editing or backups, Thunderbolt storage is worth the investment. The following are the top five storage devices of this type, designed for desktop use, that I have reviewed, sorted with the most recently reviewed first. This list will be updated on a regular basis as I review more of them.

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(Credit: Dong Ngo/Technonet)

LaCie 5big Thunderbolt
Introduced at CES 2013, LaCie's 5big Thunderbolt is the first five-bay Thunderbolt storage device that doesn't offer RAID 5. Instead, it's just a JBOD device that relies on Mac OS's software RAID to manage its internal drives. This is similar to the Pegasus J4 and hence offers only RAID 0 and RAID 1. Since this is a five-bay device, the best use of it is a dual-RAID configuration with two drives in RAID 1 for important data and the other three in RAID 0 for fast access.

The trade-off for the lack of RAID 5 support is the fact that the 5big Thunderbolt is comparatively affordable, with the 20TB version costing $2,200. The RAID 5-capable Pegasus R6 offers just 12TB at the same price.

In my testing, the 5big Thunderbolt offered excellent performance, making it one of the fastest storage device on the market. The 5big Thunderbolt also comes in a 10TB version that costs $1,200. 

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(Credit: Dong Ngo/Technonet)

WD My Book VelociRaptor Duo
The My Book VelociRaptor Duo is the second Thunderbolt drive from Western Digital, the first being the WD My book Thunderbolt Duo. Unlike the Thunderbolt Duo, which uses energy-efficient WD Green hard drives, the new My Book uses two of the latest 1TB VelociRaptor hard drives in RAID 0 as its storage. In case you haven't heard, WD VelociRaptor internal hard drives are arguably the fastest and most reliable on the market. The result: the My Book VelociRaptor Duo is by far the fastest dual-bay Thunderbolt drive I've tested. This, plus the fact that a Thunderbolt cable is included, makes the My Book VelociRaptor totally worth its $850 street price.

And since the drive can offer top performance only when its two internal drives are set up in RAID 0, you should get two of them, daisy-chained together, for backup purposes. 

(Credit: Dong Ngo/Technonet)

Promise Pegasus J4
The Pegasus J4 is a somewhat smaller version of the LaCie 5big Thunderbolt above. This is because it uses 2.5-inch (laptop) drives, and while it's a four-bay device, it also doesn't support RAID 5. Instead, it also a JBOD storage device that relies on the Mac operating system to offer RAID 1 or RAID 0.

The advantage of the J4 is the fact that's very compact, just about the size of the Mac Mini. It offered very fast performance in my testing, considering it supports laptop hard drives, which tend to be slower than desktop drives. Advanced users can also use it with solid-state drives (SSDs) for even faster performance.

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(Credit: Dong Ngo/Technonet)

WD My Book Thunderbolt Duo
The WD My Book Thunderbolt Duo is the first Thunderbolt storage device from Western Digital. The drive is basically the Thunderbolt version . It has two drive bays accessible from the top. Inside, you'll find two SATA hard drives of 2TB, 3TB, or 4TB each, so the Duo can offer 4TB, 6TB, or 8TB of storage space when formatted in RAID 0. In RAID 1, you'll have half of that.

The My Book is shipped with low-powered hard drives, an in my testing, it was the slowest Thunderbolt storage devices on the market, although still much faster than any other non-Thunderbolt external hard drive. What makes it one of the best deals, however, is its pricing. At $800 for 8TB, it's the most affordable among all Thunderbolt storage devices, in terms of cost per gigabyte.

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(Credit: Dong Ngo/Technonet)

Promise Pegasus R6
The Promise Pegasus R6 is the thoroughbred of the Thunderbolt standard. It's the first Thunderbolt storage device, and up to now it's still the fastest of its type. On top of that, it's one of the only two multiple-bay Thunderbolt storage devices on the market that has built-in hardware RAID and therefore offers all types of RAID configurations, including advanced RAID setups such as RAID 5 or RAID 6. The device's six included hard drives are user-serviceable and can be hot-swappable in case failure occurs.

The negatives of the R6 include its high cost (about $2,200 for 12TB), and the noise and the vibration it generates during operation. But if you want something that's for now the be-all and end-all of Thunderbolt-based storage, this is the one.

Source-Technonet