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A couple people were discussing the possibility of this exact thing on the notebook forums I host:

I like the idea though, Maybe if they could design a backlight that could just light say 2" around the mouse?

At the time I thought the idea was a bit far-fetched - seems like the HP engineers think otherwise.

When the new OLED technology becomes widespread this capability will be inherit to the display, and be controllable at the pixel-level. A simple color scheme using as much black as possible (ie white text on black) could conserve batteries significantly.

Dan East

Dan,

I just went to your site to check out what you've been doing since I left the PPC gaming scene in late '02. I might pick it back up when I get a PPC Phone. OMG, you've ported Quake II! Sure this is a pointless post but I dont think you get enough thanks for all that you've done for the community. I hope you at least get free tickets to Quake Con and a T-Shirt :).

PS: Thanks for dexplor.

In my experience with mobile 3D gaming so far (Visor, iPaq, Samsung 8100), the only thing that has been truly enjoyable was Dan East's wonderful port of Quake to the Pocket PC. I've been playing it since Beta 0.062 in 2001 and it has really evolved into a very playable game on the iPaq. With a PCMCIA wifi card I was able to walk around a large LAN party fragging to my hearts content. It was especially fun sitting next to my opponents and seeing the look on their faces when they saw that I was playing on a handheld. Hats off to Dan East, you rock.

With Stinger (smart) phones around the corner, and ATI with its latest mobile graphics chips, I expect we might see Quake on a cell phone. I think I saw a demo video from last years E3 of Quake on a 2" LCD for a cell phone, but I remember seeing the Pocket PC interface before the game launched so I'm not sure if the game has been ported.

Dan, if your out there how about some insight?

I have used PayPal for 3 years now as my primary method of payment from purchasers of my software (DEXplor). In fact, it is my preferred method of payment. Why? For starters, my total fee per sale ($13.95 retail) is only 6% (3.5% + $0.35). That is cheaper than anything else available to me as a small-time independent developer. Online stores (Handango, PocketGear) charge a whopping 30%. Even eSellerate (which I also highly recommend) charges 10%.

Next, I have a PayPal Visa card that I can use to directly access the money in my PayPal account immediately after a sale, without any additional fees (even if the account is overdrawn). I find that incredibly useful. It also tends to keep my PayPal balance low (most I've ever had in there at a time was still sub-$200). That is good, in that if PayPal freezes my account I have little to lose, but bad because it is too easy to access the funds. :)

After thousands of sales I have only had one charge-back because the CC was reported stolen after the sale. My account was never closed or frozen. The money was just debited out of my account.

I'm sure others have horror stories, however as a software developer I really have nothing to lose. After all, the software licenses I sell are virtual, and are of small dollar amounts. Heck, if someone really wanted to get a license illegally they could just hunt down the cracked version of my program and save themselves the larger repercussions of credit card fraud.

So I guess what I'm trying to get at is PayPal may have its problems, specifically when dealing with actual merchandise of high dollar amounts, but for ISVs it is a very good method of processing payments. After reading this story I will just make sure I never keep large sums of money in my account (which, unfortunately, has never been a problem in the past). It would also be wise to set up a checking account specifically for use just with the PayPal account, to eliminate the risk of tying up any external funds because of PayPal issues.

Dan East

I have the current version of the laptop, the M5312 and have had no major problems. The screen is the best part, really nice.

Oddly enough mine arrives tomorrow, it's the emachines M5312, nice bang for the buck although it screams out "powebook wannabe". Check it out:

• official site
• bestbuy page
• unofficial forum

It looks like OEMS will be rolling out notebooks with the new CPU right off:

Photo of Athlon 64 notebooks

Note also that the leftmost laptop appears to be made by Arima Computer Corporation, whose current production model is better known as the eMachines m5310. eMachines has made a very strong entry into the notebook market with that first model, and it appears they are trying to keep to the forefront by supporting the cutting-edge CPU.

Unofficial eMachines Notebook forum.

Dan East