splitting the adam

Gear report: the iPad

Naturally, most of my friends weren't terribly surprised when I told them I was getting an iPad. I had formulated the strategy back in January when Mr. Jobs threw his little coming-out party. When we first got our house, I had a Viewsonic smart display--a wireless Windows CE-powered touchscreen terminal that allowed me remote access to my main PC upstairs. Unfortunately, the housewide upgrade to Windows7 meant I lost that access, so the Viewsonic went out via eBay and I picked up a Compaq TC1100 tablet. A big thicker, a bit heavier, and burdened with a proprietary stylus, but also more powerful--even capable of streaming video.

So, I placed my order (a base 16GB unit, no 3G) just a couple of days after sales officially started, and got the unit, as promised, on April 3. In fact, to their credit, Apple apparently cut a deal with UPS, as the delivery folks called me to invite me to come out to their normally-closed-on-Saturday offices to pick it up.

So, after nearly three weeks, what's the word?

The word is 'impressive'.

THE HIGHS:

• Design. As you would expect, the same clean, simple elegant design you expect from any Apple product. The rather large bezel looks a big awkward, but definitely serves a purpose. Also, the external speakers sound great.


• Speed. Wow. Slick, smooth, stutter-free.


• Interface. Yes, it's a giant iPhone, but who cares? Great multitouch activity, and the onscreen keyboard--which I'm using to write this--is pretty touch-type friendly.


• HD apps. Software designed take full advantage of the iPad display is gorgeous.


• Kindle for iPad. All the goodness of the Kindle store, plus full color and animated page turning. Only thing this doesn't do--that iBooks does--is change fonts.


• Goodreader. $1 full-function reader for PDFs and Word docs, among other things, and a movie player for mp4 files you can't import into iTunes. Drag and drop capability in iTunes makes it dead simple to transfer files.


• Apple's case. Feels great, low profile, and multifunctional stand capability, for either typing or watching videos. Only downside is the challenge of getting the unit in and out of the nonskid slot.


• Battery life. Unlike my MacBook Air, this thing just keeps going and going and going...

THE LOWS

• Weight. The downside to feeling sturdy and substantial is that it also feels heavier than it looks. It does feel lighter than either the aforementioned Compaq or Viewsonic, but quite a bit heavier. I can still read in bed or in an easy chair, but it sometimes feels a big more awkward.


• Fingerprints. Great shades of Elvis, this is probably my biggest single gripe. It's most noticeable when you watch a movie, but is still annoying otherwise. A Boxwave screen protector has fixed that problem.


• iBooks. What a shame. About one fifth the selection of Amazon, no recommendation engine, and I found several listings of books which had no description whatsoever. Who expects someone to drop $10 on a book without knowing what it's about? And for all this, I now have to pay morer for my Kindle books?


• App prices. Even though I was used to paying $10 or more for software back in my Pocket PC days, I kinda got spoiled by cheap iPhone apps--so all of a sudden things seem a little pricier.

So, as I said--"impressive"...

My brush with celebrity (geek edition)...

So we're in New York (I'm covering the New York Auto Show, while my partner sightsees for a couple of days, and then we spend a couple of days in Brooklyn), and finishing up a delicious Italian dinner in midtown with some friends. I duck out to hit the bathroom, and, as I'm waiting to go in (it's a single unit setup), an older gentleman exits, sitting down at the table just near ours. He looks really familiar...

Back at our table, I look up a name on my iPhone, and discreetly show the photo to my friend Matt, who's sitting next to me.

"Hey! Is this guy sitting right behind me?"

"Umm... Yeah. Who is it?"

"Walt Mossberg. He's the technology writer for the Wall St Journal."

At which point the gentleman in question (along with, I learned, his wife and son) gets up from his table, ready to leave. And he sees his photo on my iPhone as I'm showing it to Matt.

"That is so bizarre."

I apologized for the semi-stalkerish behavior, and mentioned I had just read his iPad review that morning (and that mine was en route for a Saturday delivery). He asked what I would have done had he written a negative review, at which point I sheepishly replied I'd probably have gotten one anyway.

I can't imagine I'm the only geek to spot him in public, and he was friendly and courteous the entire time. So, no harm, no foul, and a funny story...

iThink iWill...

Well, it's finally here. With a level of anticipation unmatched by about anything in recent memory except Avatar, Apple unveiled the iPad--a/k/a the Tablet, the iSlate, or, as a few tech blogs are now referring to it, the JesusPad. It was interesting to revisit the New York Times tablet bingo card (below; click to expand)) to see how right and wrong many of the assumptions were--slate format, soft QWERTY keyboard, no stylus, and $499 for the entry-level, 16GB, non-3G model.

 

So, what'll I do? As the title of the post suggests, I'm on board--likely for the entry level model. The extra $130 plus AT&T provided data plan fees doesn't seem worth it, given that I've already got an iPhone for on-the-road surfing, and I don't anticipate huge amounts of media storage required, given that I'll use my iPhone and iPod for music and podcast listening. Part of the appeal is, of course, from a pure design/aesthetic point of view--and the large-scale multitouch screen functionality looks pretty appealing as well. I'm currently using a Compaq/HP TC1100 tablet in the kitchen for quick surfing, but this looks to be about half as light and twice as fast. And, yes, I already have a Kindle, so I don't know if I'll be buying as many books here--especially at the quoted $12.99-14.99 price point, versus $9.99 or less for most Kindle books--but the ability to run the Kindle app here means I'll still have access to my ebooks. Yes, the absence of flash is annoying (no watching Hulu in bed, for one thing), but it sounds like there are workarounds out there.

Living in a Google (or a Bing) world...

The New York Times recently did an interesting study based on Google's and Bing's auto-fill features. What if you type a single letter into their search boxes? The Google list--all sites and companies--was quite interesting. I'm sure my Microsoft-employed brother will be pleased to know his employer nabbed the H and X slots...

A - Amazon
B - Best Buy
C - Craigslist
D - Dictionary.com
E - eBay
F - Facebook
G - Gmail
H - Hotmail [Still? Huh.]
I - IMDB
J - J.C. Penney
K - Kohl’s
L - Lowe’s
M - MySpace
N - Netflix
O - Office Depot
P - Pandora [But way to go, Party City, for nabbing the No. 2 spot.]
Q - QVC [The No. 3 spot is "Quotes about life." Nothing specific, just, you know, life.]
R - Realtor.com
S - Southwest Airlines
T - Target
U - USPS (for United States Postal Service)
V - Verizon Wireless
W - Wal-Mart
X - Xbox 360
Y - YouTube
Z - Zillow

7 up...

Well, after fiddling around with the Windows 7 Release Candidate on my MacBook Air for the past several months, I took the plunge--over the past two weeks--upgrading three of our home PCs with the official Windows 7 package. In the words of Monk, "Here's what happened..."

• First up was my partner's PC, a six-year old Dell desktop running the latest XP. According to the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor, apparently I was kinda screwed. I only had 512MB of RAM, versus the recommended 1GB, and my graphics card wouldn't provide the appropriate Aero experience. I did a bit of research (and talked to my brother, who works for Microsoft), and discovered that numerous people have gotten 7 running fine on 512MB RAM, as long as you're keeping things relatively simple. So, since my partner basically surfs and does email (no high impact gaming), it was worth a shot. I hooked up an external hard drive, and the Windows Easy Transfer was, in fact, quite easy. I ran a clean install, re-transferred the single Easy Transfer file, and then went to Ninite.com, which allows you to create a single install file for a number of common free apps (Firefox, iTunes, Windows Essentials, etc). Fired it up for the final reboot, and we had two issues. First (and most critical) was the fact that the unit would not recognize the Belkin wireless-G adapter--and, of course, being cut off, I couldn't simply go online to find a driver. I called Belkin, and the nice gentleman who answered the phone explained that drivers for 7 would be ready "in two or three weeks." Good gods. I took a chance and downloaded and unzipped the Vista driver to a flash driver, and then used that on the Dell. Success! Second issue was easier to fix--I had to go online to get an updated driver for the audio card. Now it works fine--it even kept the old Firefox bookmarks.
• Next up was the MacBook Air. This would be slightly more complicated, as there is no easy way to upgrade from 7RC to the final version; I've seen a method described online, but it seems a bit outside my comfort zone. So, I got a full copy of Vista from my brother, backed up the files on my Windows partition, and started from scratch. Turned out to be a little more complicated, as I had to re-start the process when I discovered I hadn't created a large enough partition to install Vista and then install 7 on top of that. Once I fixed that problem, things seemed to go rather well, so we can mark that unit "up and running."
• Finally, the big task--my own desktop. It's a six-year-old HP Pavilion running XP. Fortunately, my RAM and memory card were green-lit, so first step was running Easy Transfer--which took quite a bit longer given the number of files and settings being backed up. Once 7 was installed, things were...rocky. First issue was 7 not recognizing my display's widescreen aspect ratio; after poking around online for an updated driver, it turns out that a second reboot fixed everything. Second issue--as yet unresolved--is the disappearing taskbar. For all the wonderful things I've heard about the taskbar, it only shows up about 1/4 of the time; when it disappears, the Windows start button remains (rather Cheshire-cat-like), but the rest of the bar is gone. I can right-click on the start button and control properties--auto-hide, location, etc--but nothing worked. A call to Microsoft is in order soon. Finally, my iTunes library is royally fragged; part of the issue may have been the fact that, while I had been maintaining my library on an external drive, I still had some files on my C drive, so I tried a consolidation. Also, when I first plugged in my 20GB 5G iPod, iTunes asked if I wanted to transfer some content off my iPod back to my PC. The bottom line? I have numerous songs with two listings--that both point to the same file. I'm considering simply uninstalling iTunes and starting all over again, but it sounds like others are having similar issues, so perhaps an iTunes fix is forthcoming. Everything else--wireless keyboard, sound, graphics--is working fine, though.

Overall grade? B+ (and we'll see if that changes depending on whether Microsoft can solve my disappearing taskbar issue)...

Not the lunch meat...

Over the past week or so, this blog has been besieged by spam comments. Fortunately, Typepad's filtering system keeps you, my few and faithful readers, from seeing them, but each and every one is bouncing into my personal mailbox. Therefore, you'll see that future comments require a verification code (just to prove y'all are human). Sorry for the inconvenience...

New tech toys

Several years ago, I purchased a Viewsonic Airpanel 'smart display' to act, as it were, as my 'kitchen PC'. Based on Windows CE, it connected wirelessly to my desktop XP Pro and let me run just about all my apps. I was a big fan; I even wrote a review for Make magazine. Unfortunately, with my imminent transition to Windows7 and the fact that Microsoft got out of the smart display business years ago (even before I bought my unit, I think), I'm pretty much out of luck. So, with plans to sell the Airpanel on eBay, what to do?

Now, I do currently own a Fujitsu P1120 Lifebook--a netbook-sized device (back before there were such things as netbooks) with a nifty touchscreen. However, at 800Mhz and 256MB RAM, it does to run...rather...slow... So, started poking around on eBay, and scored myself a sweet deal on a Compaq/HP TC1100 tablet PC. With 1GHz and 1GB RAM, it's got a bit more oomph. The detachable keyboard, swivel base, SD card slot, rotating screen, and touchscreen all work pretty well; surfing with Chrome is fast, and the handwriting recognition seems pretty handy. I'm not terribly keen on the proprietary stylus, but it seems like a small sacrifice.

I'm also taking my first experimental steps with Linux. I stumbled across a program called Wubi, which is a Linux installer that works on Windows--it automatically partitions your drive, installs one of four flavors of Linux, allows you to access the files on your Windows partition, and can be removed using the Windows uninstalled. I first tried it (with Xubuntu) on the Lifebook; it worked fine (especially after downloading a utility to calibrate the touchscreen), but it seemed like surfing with Firefox on Xubuntu was actually slower than Chrome on XP. I've now got it on the tablet as well (I'm actually writing this post on it). The touchscreen still works well, but other things--the rotating screen and handwriting recognition--aren't working, and I'm not quite enough of a Linux geek to fiddle around too much with it.

Nevertheless, I'm now reconnected in the kitchen; all I need to do now is get the Airpanel up on eBay...

iPhone redux...

Yes, I did get a new iPhone 3GS--and sold my old iPhone 3G on Gazelle--but it's a bit early for a review. In the meantime, Woot offered up a hilarious list of 'bugs' in the new 3.0 operating system...

• Multimedia messaging does not support sculpture, macrame, or interpretive dance.
• Voice memo recordings totally don't sound like me. I don't sound like that, do I? Seriously?
• Turned on adult content filter but everybody in my videos still has their clothes on.
• Adding a task to calendar did not result in task getting done.
• Clicked this blue "compass" icon but kept getting some stupid web browser.
• Still no apps to cure the nagging feeling that I should've bought a Palm Pre.
• The touchscreen is now on the back of the phone instead of the front.
• Gone to the bathroom four times already today, and Remote Wipe hasn't worked once.
• Spotlight search crashed with memory overload error trying to index my Harry Potter cosplay photo collection.
• Tried out tethering, but I think I broke my finger smacking that phone around the pole.
• Apple still hasn't fixed the no-hardware-keyboard bug.
• "Cut" function does not apply to monthly AT&T bill.

"It's a floor wax! It's a dessert topping!"

On the eve of the launch of the iPhone 3GS*, a look at a fictional phone in a brilliantly executed website and video that does even more than Apple's wunderkind: the Pomegranate NS08. Thanks to Gizmodo for the find...

* No, I haven't quite decided if I'm getting the new hardware, as Apple's fascist policies have done a one-eighty since last summer. While I was able to upgrade from the regular iPhone to the 3G at the subsidized price, that is not the case this year. I'll play with the new OS and see how that works...

We can send a man to the moon...

...but apparently we can't teach our technology to be more politically correct. Thanks to Gizmodo for the heads-up...