Google is testing the balloons which sail in the stratosphere and beam the internet to Earth.
Hands up everyone who who two years ago thought Google's Project Loon that features internet access beamed to earth via balloons drifting in the stratosphere was... loony?
I did. Sure, balloons are way cheaper and less complex to build and launch than satellites, but they're difficult to steer using winds only and not exactly durable. Plus, they run out of gas and fall to earth eventually - after a 100 days or so - and I can't see them being popular with civil aviation authorities even though they are higher up in the sky than planes.
Google's ignored all that and is now working with Vodafone in New Zealand and Telstra in Australia to set up a ring of mass-produced stratospheric balloons around the Southern Hemisphere for uninterrupted connectivity.
That connectivity will arrive via 4G LTE and Google's designed some funky round red aerials to sit on the sides of houses for testing purposes. Other than that, neither Google nor its telco partners are willing to provide more details on Project Loon, like how well it actually works in their testing.
Project Loon connection performance should be OK with LTE technology.
If the balloons are 20 kilometres up in the air, that means data packet round trips of 40km in total which is far less than for satellites, resulting in much lower delay. Since internet traffic is mostly two-way, with data packets being sent to and acknowledged by receiving systems, having low delay or latency on links makes things responsive and perform better overall.
Still, 20km is a long distance for connecting to a fast moving object that you can't even see and traffic will have to go through telco earth stations to connect Project Loon to the rest of the world.
Project Loon is aimed at providing internet access for billions of people who don't have any way to connect currently; it should come as no surprise that Facebook is working on similar projects, including unmanned solar-powered airplanes that'll beam internet access down to people from the sky with infrared lasers, according to the social network's founder and boss Mark Zuckerberg.
I hope it'll be free and unfettered internet access, and not just a few billion more users to sell to advertisers, as per Google and Facebook's usual business models.
Smashphones
Not quite sure what started the craze or why, but there are lots of rich people who destroy high-end smartphones on YouTube, calling it testing.
"What happens if you shoot an iPhone 6?" Well, I can guess what'll happen actually. How about boiling a Samsung Galaxy S6 and an iPhone 6 Plus, to see which will die first?
The Transformer Book Chi T300 has a detachable, full-size keyboard with a mouse pad, as well as a touch-screen display. Photo / Juha Saarinen
Should you get a laptop or a tablet? Taiwan's ASUS answer to that question is "both" as exemplified by the unwieldy-named Transformer Book Chi T300 which has a detachable, full-size keyboard with a mouse pad, as well as a touch-screen display.
With the keyboard Dock firmly attached, courtesy of super-strong magnets, the T300 acts like a normal, clamshell notebook. Remove the keyboard and you have a Windows 8.1 tablet - and you can use the keyboard while it's detached as well, which is handy for presentation and operating a TV for instance via the T300.
This feature is called 2-in-1 and it's similar to Microsoft's Surface devices but ASUS's implementation works a bit better as the keyboard is heavier, making the T300 better balanced - the Surface is quite top-heavy as all the computing circuitry is integrated into the tablet part with the display.
The keyboard on the T300 is nice to use, and the 2560 by 1440 hi-res screen is great once you've upped the scaling in Windows 8.1 so you can read text and hit the things you want to poke with your finger.
The design of the T300 could do with some refinement though: first, ASUS should stop festooning its computers with ugly logo stickers.
In terms of hardware, the T300 is nicely built and feels solid enough, and weighs in at 1.45kg according to ASUS (750 grams for the slate with display, 700 grams for the keyboard dock). It's reasonably thin at 7.6mm for the tablet alone, or 16.5mm with the keyboard attached.
The design of the T300 could do with some refinement though: first, ASUS should stop festooning its computers with ugly logo stickers. Second, the keyboard can be difficult to remove and the supporting edge needs finer tolerances - as it is, the tablet unit wobbles disconcertingly when you move the T300. It won't come off thanks to the magnets, but this is a premium device and it's surprising to see such a miss.
Another miss is the keyboard battery charging. Given how heavy the T300 is, I expected the keyboard unit to have a battery that could power the top unit when attached, for longer life, and be charged together.
Not so; the keyboard battery is small and has to be charged separately via a supplied micro-USB cable. That's annoying enough, but to make it worse ASUS put the USB ports on the opposite ends of the keyboard and the tablet.
I was sent the 8GB RAM variant of the T300 that runs a 1.2GHz energy-efficient Intel Core M5Y71 processor and 128GB storage.
That model costs $1800 including GST, whereas a 4GB T300 with otherwise identical specs costs $1400. Paying $400 for 4GB of RAM is too much, and the 8GB T300 seems to have had a "New Zealand tax" applied, as it costs US$900 in the States.
Intel's Core M processors sacrifice some performance in for cool, fanless operation but the 1.2GHz T300 never felt sluggish, despite having to drive the very hi-res screen. On Geekbench 3 64-bit, the T300 scored 2392 in the single core test and 4106 in the multi-core one, which is pretty good.
The back of the T300 gets hot when worked out, and battery life seems to be around six to seven hours which is only OK and not outstanding. This could be due to ASUS needing to to fine-tune the T300 drivers to work better with Windows 8.1, but really, the company needs to hit ten hours or so to take on Apple MacBooks.
If New Zealand customers could get the T300 at US pricing, it'd be good value. The high cost of the T300 locally coupled with the short battery life and design flaws mean the T300 will have a tough time competing against other laptops - or iPads for that matter.
Update
There has been some confusion as to the specifications and pricing for the T300 in New Zealand. At one point, I was told that there are in fact three models of the T300, but that turned out to be wrong. ASUS has now through its PR agency clarified that the the following models of the T300 are for sale locally:
T300 4GB RAM, 128GB storage and 1,920 by 1,080 resolution screen: $1,399 including GST. T300 8GB RAM, 128GB storage and 2,560 by 1,440 resolution screen: $1,799 including GST
My apologies for the confusion.
ASUS' representatives also pointed out that the price in the US does not include 15 per cent GST - the US does not have a federal sales tax, which is instead collected at different levels statewide and locally. Only three US states do not collect any form of sales tax.
At today's exchange rate of NZ$1.34, US$900 amounts to 1,208.35; if you were to import an 8GB T300, paying GST brings the price up to $1,389.60, a difference of $409.40 compared to local pricing. Likewise, if you can claim the GST on a locally bought T300, it would be $320.80 dearer in New Zealand than in the United States. Figures given for completeness.
