Category: Rants

The HP dream screen is now determined, once again, to use GMT without adjusting for BST, despite having turne don the “US Summertime” option. We still have a dead Snapfish app that sponoesnt show content and spontaneously crashes, and similarly a Facebook applicaiton that, although it shows content, also spontaneously crashes after a few hours.

I am disappointed in this product greatly. It had so much potential. HP, you’ve dropped the ball badly on this. I see Toshiba has a similar device on the market now. Perhaps they’ll produce an SDK and let developers enhance the platform.

Last week I noticed the Beeb had a story on G.E.’s new hand-held ultrasound (story).

Developer GE Healthcare says the portable device, priced at about £5,000 in the UK, is not designed to replace existing machines.

I did a search around and found that it was actually released back in October 2009 (story).

GE has just unveiled this device at the Web 2.0 summit, and they estimate that its cost will be about $250,000.

So between 10th October 2009 and mid February 2010, some 19 weeks, the price has dropped by some US$240,000. That’s a drop of US$12,000 a week, US$1,800 a day, or $75 an hour. Imaging trying to put a purchase order together for one – you just can’t nail down a price. I would guess this isn’t a linear price drop, because in about 10 days from now (Feb 2010) they they would be free!
What will be interesting is when you can rent one for a few months for home use. Wow; wonder what interesting things people would ultrasound? Pets? Tracing the wiring in walls? Injuries? Perhaps they’ll be used by pro-sports players on the field to assess injury?