Android 4.3 (still Jelly Bean) is becoming available. It will be introduced formally in a week or so. The Nexus 7 (tablet) will probably be released that day too.

There has been no word about Nexus 4 (phone) going back to LTE. But there are already methods to converting the phone for LTE use for T-Mobile members wanting to take advantage of the new LTE (4G data) network being introduced all over the USA this year. It is operational in Portland and Honolulu, for example.

I’ll keep you posted.

Intel’s Upcoming Processors

My latest home processor upgrade was a while ago, a Q6600 quad-core 2.4 GHz processor with 65 nm technology. I’ve been running it overclocked at 3.0 GHz for years with no difficulties, aided by a better CPU fan.

If you look at the chart above, you’ll see it’s a few generations old. Kentfield was down-sized to Yorkfield at 45nm. Then came the Nahalem and Westmere processors and the (still-popular) Sandy Bridge and its down-sized brother the Ivy Bridge at 22nm.

HASWELL – 4^th  GENERATION CORE PROCESSORS

The just-released and soon-to-be-released Haswell processors are the current rage. They are the ones that have a new, lower-powered design and the multi-fin transistors that deliver faster response and are scalable to have different speed/power characteristics by playing with the number of fins. This is big news and represents a major improvement over the last big improvement, the high-K metal gate transistors of the 45nm Nehalem-era.

For the few of you that complain that I’ve told you all of this before, yes, I know. But it takes several times going over it in different manners to bring it home, so, bear with me. (At least it does for ME!)

The Haswells are an attempt to have a line of processors that scale well from server-grade, down through enthusiast-grade, through desktop-grade and into the ultra-light laptop grade.

NEW ULTRA-LIGHTS

This last category is very interesting to a lot of people who are tired of carrying their “luggable” laptop around, but don’t feel they have enough “horsepower” in a tablet computer or want a “real” keyboard for more than just texting to friends.

These are currently represented by touchscreen and non-touchscreen laptops running Windows 8 (the regular version). My opinion is that the most desirable machines to come out will have a keyboard and a touchscreen and will be able to run all the traditional Windows software, including Photoshop. You would expect them to have an HDMI port or an advanced wireless interface to your big screen TV. They would have USB3 connectors so you could connect to an external hard drive or blu-ray player with blazing speed, when at home. The biggest deals are that the graphics will be quite good for an integrated-graphics system and the battery life should be in the 6 or 8 hour range, and still fit in an extremely-lightweight frame. An additional feature is the use of a solid state drive (SSD). So you keep the operating system and relevant documents on the SSD and other things are in cloud storage or on your external hard drive at home, or, of course, a USB3 64 GB thumb drive.

The mobile processors, made for the ultra-books, use a soldered-on connecting grid, meaning the processor is not upgradeable on the ultra-book – hardly a concern for most of us.

DESKTOPS

There are a variety of fast, low-powered processors. For over-clocking, you might want to consider the “K” series (“K” at the end of the name) which give overclocking ease. Asrock mother boards claim to have a capability of overclocking a wider range of the Haswell processors, but I haven’t checked them out, yet. You have the usual choice between i7 and i5 processors, which is the difference between, respectively, hyper-threading or not. You have the choice of speeds and the size of L2 cache. The top-of-the-line being the fastest speed quad core, K series, with the biggest cache. All of them use the 4600 (“IRIS”) graphics processor, but at varying speeds.  Should be good enough graphics for all but the gamers.

BAY TRAIL PROCESSORS FOR TABLETS AT CHRISTMAS

This is a big change, and is rumored to be related to work at Intel at Hillsboro. The System(s) on a chip (SOC) to come out at Christmas are for the Windows 8“RT” machines like the Microsoft Surface RT ($499). The “bid” deal is that the processor will run either Windows 8 RT or Android (4.1). This is direct competition to the ARM machines and, for “hackers” like me, the opportunity to have both operating systems on the same tablet. It’s a gamble, but I think it will work and, maybe even, work really well. Probably, by then RT will have a service pack and come into its own, as many of the Microsoft operating systems do after the first service pack.

The difference, here, is horsepower. These will have less compute power but be more flexible than ultra-lights, with either Android or Windows apps, and have long battery life and a price range in the $500 range, compared to, maybe, twice that much in the ultra-lights. Unless you catch the Black Friday Special, either processor grade will be expensive for ultra-lights or tablets. Look for the ability to accept a micro-SD card to add 32 GB flash memory or, by then, 64 GB cards.

OVERVIEW

Here, the world will vote with its pocketbook as to which direction the market will go. It’s a bit like trying to predict politics or the news; you take your best guess and wait for some unpredicted event to alter the direction of it. I suspect that low cost (Android) and low-cost SOCs (ARM or, now, Intel) will prevail. But a machine that can also run traditional Windows software is a big plus. So, I will look closely at an Intel tablet-with-keyboard machine that has a micro-SD slot. I don’t need to crunch video-making for You Tube on a portable, and my phone or tablet worked fine for talking to Facebook or WordPress while in Kauai.

Probably go to Secret Beach and be home for sunset and whatever fireworks we can see from here.

The visit to the Famer’s market was entirely sucessful. I say this in case you go here or Maui. The prices are competitive with portland prices for fruit and the papaya, mangos, and finger bananas are tree-ripened and the best you will ever taste. Few farmers grow pinapple and the ones at Costco are $2.50 and hawaiian-grown and the best I’ve eaten.

Bread prices are astronoical, like $6.50 for no-name bread. We got lucky and found (of all things) my favorite Portland bread at Safeway “Daves Killer Bread, Good Seed variety” for $4.74. That’s about a Fred meyer price for that. So, you find the occassional loss leader, used to bring people into the store.

We went to an over-the-top restaurant ‘keoke’s Paradise’ that specializes in fake Hawaiian ambiance. Loved it and the food was just right and the local music and mixed drinks went down well. It’s hard to get kitch right, but they did a good job. We hit this place once each visit to Kauai.

I wouldn’t waste my money on five-star dining on one of the most remote islands in the world.

 The local fish and fruit are quite good. Today we’ll find some coconut and maybe a mango smoothie at Banana joe’s (fruit stand) up north, were we’re moving today to a condo that has a view of both sunrise and sunset. 

There’s a good shave ice place up there. We’ve tried a couple here and they rated b+, but we’re going for the A- one up there. There is such a good coffee house that we’ll give that a try, also. All these places are from guidebooks or Internet searchs. Starbucks Gold Coast in a  drip machine has served us well, so far. I’m glad the airport dogs didn’t alert tp the coffee bag when we flew here.

I use “The Ultimate Kauai Guidebook” as my basic reference. It is in its 8th edition at Costco. There is one in the Condo (7th edition) and I own a 3rd edition. Local handouts are best for farmer’s markets location and days of week, and better for fireworks displays and slack-key (guitar) concerts and hula shows. 

I check or double-check with Google. It’s about fifty-fifty between Internet and local activity maps. The guidebook gives real-person appraisal of what’s a “must see” and what’s hype. Have you ever read “How to keep your Volkswagon alive – For the Compleate Idiot”? Could have been the same guy writing it. Simple, humerous, and knowledgeable.

Gotta go, the sun came out and the farmeer’s market, just down the street, just opened…

We went down to Poipu because the next few days are going to be cloudier. Later in the week, when we’re on the north shore it should be sunny. Make sense? We can go to the botanical gardens down south on the rainy/cloudy days (better photography). Poipu was crowded and sunny, but with a 15mph trade wind,so it was pleasant.

We finally re-found Costco and stocked up on a few food items and a huge bunch of macadamia cans. 

Turns out we still had our phone number associated with a Foodland card from our 2007 visit to kauai. Got a few things there, too, at the prices that are reserved for regulars. Walmart is competitive with local prices which are HIGH. Costco has the best deals but you can’t get small quantities.

Navigation with the bluetooth hands-free gadget worked for finding Spouting horn from Poipu. The trick is to have a data signal when you ask it to calculate the route. It can give you turn-by-turn instructions even if you lose the data signal mid-route as long as you have the may stored in the phone using the local storage option on later versions of Google Map available on Android (4.1+)  Other times I could not get a signal to begin the navigation. Would have needed to go to McDonalds or Starbucks to calculate the path.

The audio book (Killing Lincoln) was an absolute sucess, by the way. The 6-hour flight would have bee less fun for me.

the ocean is about 100 feet of the lanai. The sound is loud and soothing. It gets down to 70 at night. Very soothing.

Scene from my lanai around 6am.
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