www.battery-home.com

On Monday Apple released the MacBook Air SMC Firmware Update 1.2, available now for compatible models via Mac OS X’s Software Update mechanism.

According to Apple’s documentation, “This SMC firmware update adds compatibility for the latest service replacement batteries…. After this update has successfully completed, your SMC Version will be: 1.23f20 [for original MacBook Air models, or] 1.34f8 [for more recent models].”

In general, SMC Firmware Updates update the System Management Controller on Intel-based Macs. The SMC controls power and thermal management features, including the battery and fans. In this case, new replacement batteries from Apple are apparently different enough that they require the use of this updated version of the SMC firmware.

Advanced Micro Devices has quietly released a low-voltage chip that has made its way into a new netbook from Acer, forcing the chip designer into the netbook space.

The single-core AMD Athlon 64 L110 processor is being used by Gateway in the LT3103u netbook, which was announced earlier this week. This is AMD’s first chip to reach netbooks, which are laptops with small screens designed for basic tasks like Web surfing and word processing. Gateway is owned by PC maker Acer.

The low-voltage processor is a variant of the Neo chips that AMD has designed for thin and light laptops, which have larger screens and offer more functionality than netbooks. The Athlon 64 L110 chip runs at a clock speed of 1.2GHz, has 512KB of cache and draws about 13 watts of power.

Most netbooks today carry Intel’s Atom chips, with Via’s low-power Nano processor in a distant second place. AMD in the past has derided netbooks, saying that though the PCs were inexpensive, they didn’t offer full functionality.

So the sudden emergence of an Athlon chip in a netbook comes as a surprise, especially because AMD has repeatedly said it would not enter the netbook space. The company still maintains a stance of not being interested in netbooks, but a spokesman softened that rhetoric on Thursday.

“AMD has fully anticipated that our technology would eventually appear at the upper end of the netbook space,” said Steve Howard, an AMD spokesman. Though the chip was designed for ultrathin notebooks, AMD did not want to restrict the desire of PC makers to use it in different form factors, he said.

Gateway’s laptop can be defined as a prototypical netbook, but with better integrated graphics than typically found in Atom-based netbooks. The US$399 laptop has an 11.6-inch display, weighs about 3.14 pounds (1.4 kilograms) and measures about an inch thick. It includes AMD’s ATI Radeon x1270 integrated graphics and the RS690 chipset. The laptop is designed for Internet and basic applications like word processing, Acer America said in a statement.

AMD perhaps didn’t intend for the low-power chip to be in Gateway’s netbook, but it made its way there nevertheless, said Dean McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury Research. Unlike Intel, which has specially designed Atom for netbooks, AMD does not want to design chips for netbooks.

If AMD had a choice, it would rather put the chip in more expensive laptops to extract better margins, McCarron said. The low margins of $400 laptops don’t help AMD financially, so the company may try hard to limit the chip’s usage in other netbooks, he said.

But the chip could be used in PCs or servers where power efficiency is a concern. For example, Intel’s Atom is now being used in servers, so AMD’s netbook chips could end up there as well, McCarron said.

China said its deadline for Web filtering software to be distributed with PCs had not changed on Tuesday, despite growing protests from the U.S. government and Chinese Internet users.

Foreign and domestic PC makers are still required to ship the filter program with all PCs sold in China beginning July 1, the state-run China Daily said, citing an unnamed source in the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

China first issued the mandate last month and has said the software is meant to protect children from pornographic and other “harmful” content online. But the program, called Green Dam Youth Escort, also blocks political content including Web sites that mention Falun Gong, a spiritual movement banned as a cult in China.

The mandate could escalate into a serious trade dispute if China actually bars foreign PC makers from selling computers without the software, said Simon Ye, a Gartner analyst. State media last week cited an unnamed official saying foreign PC makers like Dell might not be able to meet the deadline.

Some kind of compromise is much more likely before the deadline, said Ye. Barring sales by a company like Dell would disrupt China’s PC market and could trigger protectionist responses by the U.S., he said.

Hewlett-Packard and Dell were the second- and third-largest PC vendors in China in the final quarter last year, claiming over one-fifth of PC shipments in the country, according to IDC statistics.

Dell is still reviewing the government mandate, a company spokeswoman said, declining to comment further.

Resistance to China’s mandate has grown in the weeks since it became public. Representatives from multiple U.S. government offices met with Chinese officials last Friday to express concerns about the requirement to ship the software, said Susan Stevenson, spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. Embassy officials representing the State Department, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and the Commerce Department met with officials at China’s MIIT and commerce ministry, she said.

The U.S. has asked China for a dialogue about the potential impact of the mandate on trade, effects on the free flow of information and “serious technical issues” raised by use of the software, Stevenson said.

Chinese Internet users have also mounted resistance to the mandate. Ai Weiwei, a well-known artist and dissident, was using Twitter messages on Tuesday to call for an Internet boycott the day of the government deadline. Ai urged Internet users not to go online on July 1 for work, email, news or other purposes.

“Do not give any explanation of your actions,” Ai wrote in his Twitter feed. “Make July 1 a day of commemoration for the Internet.”

China’s deadline for the installation of Web filtering software on new PCs hasn’t changed, it said Tuesday, despite growing protests from the U.S. government and Chinese Internet users.

Foreign and domestic PC makers are still required to ship the filter program with all PCs sold in China beginning July 1, the state-run China Daily said, citing an unnamed source in the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

China first issued the mandate last month and has said the software is meant to protect children from pornographic and other “harmful” content online. But the program, called Green Dam Youth Escort, also blocks political content including Web sites that mention Falun Gong, a spiritual movement banned as a cult in China.

The mandate could escalate into a serious trade dispute if China actually bars foreign PC makers from selling computers without the software, said Simon Ye, a Gartner analyst. State media last week cited an unnamed official saying foreign PC makers like Dell might not be able to meet the deadline.

Some kind of compromise is much more likely before the deadline, said Ye. Barring sales by a company like Dell would disrupt China’s PC market and could trigger protectionist responses by the U.S., he said.

Hewlett-Packard and Dell were the second- and third-largest PC vendors in China in the final quarter last year, claiming over one-fifth of PC shipments in the country, according to IDC statistics.

Dell is still reviewing the government mandate, a company spokeswoman said, declining to comment further.

Resistance to China’s mandate has grown in the few weeks since it became public. Representatives from multiple U.S. government offices met with Chinese officials last Friday to express concerns about the requirement to ship the software, said Susan Stevenson, spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. Embassy officials representing the State Department, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and the Commerce Department met with officials at China’s MIIT and commerce ministry, she said.

The U.S. has asked China for a dialogue about the potential impact of the mandate on trade, effects on the free flow of information and “serious technical issues” raised by use of the software, Stevenson said.

Chinese Internet users have also mounted resistance to the mandate. Ai Weiwei, a well-known artist and dissident, was using Twitter messages on Tuesday to call for an Internet boycott the day of the government deadline. Ai urged Internet users not to go online on July 1 for work, email, news or other purposes.

“Do not give any explanation of your actions,” Ai wrote in his Twitter feed. “Make July 1 a day of commemoration for the Internet.”

Calls to China’s MIIT went unanswered Tuesday morning.

China’s deadline for the installation of Web filtering software on new PCs hasn’t changed, it said Tuesday, despite growing protests from the U.S. government and Chinese Internet users.

Foreign and domestic PC makers are still required to ship the filter program with all PCs sold in China beginning July 1, the state-run China Daily said, citing an unnamed source in the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

China first issued the mandate last month and has said the software is meant to protect children from pornographic and other “harmful” content online. But the program, called Green Dam Youth Escort, also blocks political content including Web sites that mention Falun Gong, a spiritual movement banned as a cult in China.

The mandate could escalate into a serious trade dispute if China actually bars foreign PC makers from selling computers without the software, said Simon Ye, a Gartner analyst. State media last week cited an unnamed official saying foreign PC makers like Dell might not be able to meet the deadline.

Some kind of compromise is much more likely before the deadline, said Ye. Barring sales by a company like Dell would disrupt China’s PC market and could trigger protectionist responses by the U.S., he said.

Hewlett-Packard and Dell were the second- and third-largest PC vendors in China in the final quarter last year, claiming over one-fifth of PC shipments in the country, according to IDC statistics.

Dell is still reviewing the government mandate, a company spokeswoman said, declining to comment further.

Resistance to China’s mandate has grown in the few weeks since it became public. Representatives from multiple U.S. government offices met with Chinese officials last Friday to express concerns about the requirement to ship the software, said Susan Stevenson, spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. Embassy officials representing the State Department, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and the Commerce Department met with officials at China’s MIIT and commerce ministry, she said.

The U.S. has asked China for a dialogue about the potential impact of the mandate on trade, effects on the free flow of information and “serious technical issues” raised by use of the software, Stevenson said.

Chinese Internet users have also mounted resistance to the mandate. Ai Weiwei, a well-known artist and dissident, was using Twitter messages on Tuesday to call for an Internet boycott the day of the government deadline. Ai urged Internet users not to go online on July 1 for work, email, news or other purposes.

“Do not give any explanation of your actions,” Ai wrote in his Twitter feed. “Make July 1 a day of commemoration for the Internet.”

Calls to China’s MIIT went unanswered Tuesday morning.

Apple’s newest aluminum MacBook Pros are pretty slick in most regards, but some investigative folks had discovered what they believed to be a shortcoming in the models: in some units the SATA drive interface ran at a mere measly 1.5Gbps when even its predecessor, the non-Pro 13-inch MacBook, supported double that speed.

Owners of MacBook Pros that shipped with solid-state drives (SSD), meanwhile, reported that they had the 3Gbps interface, leading many to scratch their heads at the inconsistency. (Never mind that the traditional hard drives in the affected models can’t even take advantage of the 3Gbps speeds.)

Apple on Monday moved to correct that matter by issuing a firmware update for the June 2009 MacBook Pros. MacBook Pro EFI Firmware Update 1.7 lets those MacBook Pros use the 3Gbps specification, though Apple also warns that it has not offered drives that support the faster speeds–all previous and current MacBooks use 1.5Gbps drives–so the use of faster drives remains unsupported. The download is 3.35MB and requires Mac OS X 10.5.7.

Apple also issued an iMac EFI Firmware 1.4 Update for 20-inch and 24-inch early 2009 iMacs, which fixes problems where machines using ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphics cards would intermittently stop responding, as well as issues with waking from sleep while in Boot Camp. It’s a 1.7MB download that requires Mac OS X 10.5.6 or later.