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From Business Week comes a longish article about Lenovo’s ultralight X300 ThinkPad laptop. There’s a picture on the top of the web version of the article that shows a disassembled version of the laptop. It’s the first Lenovo model to carry the ThinkPad brand name.

Weighing in at 3 pounds, the X300 fits inside an interoffice mail envelope and uses flash memory for file storage, just like the MacBook Air. Lenovo is a major sponsor of the 2008 Olympic Games, and the company will supply hundreds of X300s to Olympic staff this summer.

Walt Mossberg of the Wall astreet Journal gave the X300 a glowing review. He’s been a big fan of Apple products for the last couple years. In fact, Mossberg’s biggest problem with the X300 is the Windows operating system. He notes that unlike the MacBook Air, the X300 has 3 USB ports, an RJ-45 jack, a DVD drive, and users can change and add their own batteries.

Designing a laptop computer is tricky work

Laptop computers are highly integrated devices that combine a battery, screen, input devices, and ports with the computer’s core hardware. The final product must withstand everyday use, as well as the occasional drop.

Corporate clients have very specific requests. For example, some companies want security features like power-on passwords, asset tags, and encrypted network cards. It’s much easier to engineer security into a product’s hardware than adding software or dongles after delivery.

Other companies are willing to sacrifice speed and features for rugged construction and reliability. Panasonic Toughbooks have become very popular with police departments and construction firms.

Give the people what they want

The average consumer tends to judge laptops on price, looks and entertainment features. Preinstalled software can dictate the purchase decision, especially the operating system. The ability to expand and maintain the computer is not an important consideration.

Anyone who uses a laptop as their home computer needs to use an external hard drive or a second computer to backup their data. At any moment, that laptop computer could be stolen or damaged. Read my 30 September 2006 article for some tips.

One example that I pointed out on 5 December 2006 is the slotless optical drive that Apple includes on its laptops. Acer and other companies have also put these drives in their laptops. They have no tray, so there’s nothing to use as a cupholder. But, if a user inserts a non-standard CD or DVD into a slotless drive, there is no safe or reliable way to remove the disc. The optical drive must be replaced at a service center.

Business Week has updated a popular article from 2005 on business blogging. The new version is well worth reading. It now covers social media, including social networks. and provides many examples of how these Internet services have become sources of competitive advantage for some companies.

In a few industries, blogs and social networking have become key success factors. Higher education is well on its way.

Here’s an interesting statistic: only 27 percent of US Internet users read blogs. If you’re reading my blog regularly, I guess you’re an early adopter!

Hawaiian Telcom CEO Mike Ruley was dismissed yesterday. His replacement is Stephen Cooper, co-founder or Kroll Zolfo Cooper, a New York City-based interim management firm. Cooper is best known as the Enron’s CEO during the company’s bankruptcy. Today’s Star-Bulletin article has a brief biography of Cooper. Kevin Nystrom, a senior director at KZC, will join HawTel as COO.

While Cooper stated in today’s Honolulu Advertiser that HawTel is not a “distressed company”, it’s now clear that the Carlyle Group is unhappy with their acquisition’s performance. HawTel has lost thousands of subscribers to mobile carriers and Time Warner Oceanic’s VoIP services, leading to US$137 million in financial losses since 2006. I mentioned some of the operational issues on my old blog on 16 November 2006, and last week BusinessWeek discussed how market forces have affected the US telecom industry overall.

The Advertiser noted that Ruley put his Kahala home on the market in early January, which is a possible indication that changes were coming at HawTel. The company has eliminated over 100 management positions since October 2007.

According to BusinessWeek, Amazon.com is revisiting an earlier plan to purchase Netflix. Amazon Unbox has failed to attract download customers with its limited library of Windows Media-based videos, so buying an established atom-based service like Netflix makes sense. Amazon’s model is based on selling and shipping physical objects. By link their customer preferences engine to the Netflix customer database, Amazon could move merchandise.

Customers want their rental DVDs ASAP

Blockbuster’s recent Total Access ad campaign points out a growing weakness in the Netflix business model: customers are now accustomed to renting movies in Internet time - even if that means driving to the local Blockbuster to swap a DVD.

It’s a nice twist, as a few years ago Blockbuster was losing market share to Netflix. Given the pathetic DRM that is baked into purchased video downloads, most e-consumers will choose the DVD over a software media player.

Regardless of the outcome, Amazon, Blockbuster and Netflix each need to counter iTunes’ dominant position in the US video download market. iTunes users seem comfortable with that delivery method.

This article appeared in my old blog at http://www.bloglines.com/blog/wsodeman?id=206

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2006/tc20060208_760555.htm?chan=rss_topStories_ssi_5

Peter Burrows of Business Week reports on Cisco’s recent performance. Cisco is the dominant vendor of networking equipment worldwide. I think of Cisco as the Internet’s plumber. Your packets moved through a Cisco switch or router at some point in their journey.

If you use a Linksys router or network appliance at home, you’re using a Cisco product. Cisco purchased Linksys in 2003, and has been integrating operations and marketing ever since. Linksys is positioned as an entry point for SOHO (small office and home office) users who need networking equipment, and who may need higher-powered Cisco equipment when their business expands. At the same time, Cisco engineers have been remaking the Linksys line, using best practices from Cisco’s enteprise networking equipment.

A virtuous cycle occurs when a company moves from one “favorable circumstance” to another over time. Amazon, eBay, Microsoft, Intel, Google and Apple have all benefited from the creation and maintenance of their own v-cycles.

One might argue that Nintendo and Sony are risking their v-cycles, at least in the video game market. Wii and PlayStation 3 each have their own issues.

Cisco has apparently built its own v-cycle around advanced networking technologies, including VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol). VoIP telephones are connected to an RJ-45 jack, not a telephone RJ-11 jack. Remember that RJ-11 also provides electrical power for telephones.

So how does a VoIP telephone get enough power to operate? Users could plug the telephone into an AC outlet, but there’s a neater way. Through a handy protocol called Power over Ethernet (PoE), special switches can connect these phones to the network and deliver 13 watts of power, which is enough to keep a telephone and a small display screen running.

PoE can’t deliver enough power to keep a laptop computer running, which is one reason why laptop computers need their own power source - either AC current or batteries.

PoE features aren’t built into most older network equipment, so any company that wants to deploy VoIP in its offices has to buy PoE switches from Cisco, Foundry or another hardware vendor.

PoE and VoIP adoption are powering Cisco’s virtuous cycle - at least for now.