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As of December 2009, My husband Tom is a full time employee for Microsoft. I have been writing about Microsoft technologies for over a decade and his employment status does not change nor affect my opinions.
Deb-TechDebra Littlejohn Shinder's Technology & Security Blog
July 13 Outlook Social Connector for Facebook: Thumbs UpI like Outlook 2010 a lot. The few complaints I had about it back in the beta stages (such as default to Conversation view) were fixed in the final release. One gripe I had when 2010 came out, though, was that the Outlook social connector, which is a really cool feature, was available only for LinkedIn and MySpace. I use LinkedIn for my “professional only” networking, but MySpace? Seriously? It seems to me that most folks I know use Facebook, Live Messenger and Twitter for their online socializing. Well, I’m able to integrate Twitter into Outlook with the Twinbox add-on, and now today Microsoft has released social connectors for Facebook and Live Messenger. I downloaded and installed the 64 bit version and it works great. I really love having all that information right there in Outlook, without having to go to the Facebook web site or bring up my Live Messenger client. Here’s what it looks like:
Note the Facebook updates in the “People Pane” at the bottom, when you preview an email message from a contact with whom you’re connected on Facebook. If you do want to go to the contact’s FB page, just click the little FB icon under his photo and it will open the browser to his FB page. The social networking updates aren’t the only useful info in the People Pane. If you click the envelope icon just to the right of the picture, this pane will display a list of previous emails from that person. Click the paper clip icon and you’ll see attachments you’ve received from the person in the past. The calendar icon will display meetings with the person. I always said that for me, Outlook is the interface. That’s more true than ever before with the new functionality that the People Pane and the social connectors provide. June 03 Windows Media Center – my wayI love Windows Media Center. We’ve been using it since way back when it first appeared in a special edition of XP, and it’s just gotten better with each version. But there are ways to make it better, still. I wrote about that for next week’s issue of Win7News, which will be published next Thursday at www.win7news.net One of the things I talk about in that article is Media Center Studio, with which you can change the standard (boring) background of the WMC application to a graphic that’s more to your liking. Here’s what my WMC looks like now:
Check out the newsletter for more about how to improve Media Center. Meanwhile, you can get Media Center Studio, a free download, here:
May 12 Server 2008 R2 Help Needs HelpOkay, so let’s say I’m brand new to Windows Server and I just installed Server 2008 R2. Now I want to find out about setting it up as a VPN server. So what’s the logical approach? I open Help and Support and type “vpn” in the Search box.
Instead of usual .chm file that I’m probably used to if I’m migrating from an old Server 2000 environment, I get a list of questions. But that’s okay, because there’s one that looks like it should be exactly what I’m looking for: “Enable RRAS as a VPN Server” (number 12). Full of confidence that I’ll soon have all the info I need, I click on it.
But alas, here’s what I get when I do: “Topic not found.”
Not available in this version of Windows? But, but, but … I know Server 2008 can be set up as a VPN server. True, Microsoft is pushing DirectAccess hard as the replacement for the VPN, but they haven’t killed RRAS or taken away the ability to set up a PPTP, L2TP or SSTP VPN server – at least not yet. So I thought well, maybe it’s because this server doesn’t have Routing and Remote Access (RRAS) enabled. Maybe that’s what they mean about “this version.” Yeah. Surely that’s it – although really, isn’t it the folks who don’t have it set up yet who are mostly likely to consult the Help files? But this is software documentation; nobody said it had to make sense. So I install RRAS. And still get the same message. And reboot. And still get the same message. Oh, what about that link to “more support options?” Surely that will take me someplace where that specific topic is covered.
Er, no. They just go to the front pages of TechNet sites where a search for “Server 2008 R2 VPN” doesn’t turn up much. So I start a web search for “Server 2008 R2 VPN Server” – and don’t find much. Okay, so setting it up in R2 is the same as setting it up in 2008, which is the same as setting it up in 2003. But you could say that somewhere. Anywhere. My copy of Windows Server 2008 Inside Out has sections/chapters devoted to DHCP, DNS, AD, all the usual topics … but no RRAS. Has RRAS become Windows Server’s redheaded stepchild? How hard would it be, really, to put a pointer to a web site that has some really information, like step-by-step instructions for configuring VPNs? Or even give me the info right there in the local Help file? What if my server isn’t yet connected to the Internet? Oops – I forgot: the future is all going to be in the cloud. And heaven help us all.
May 02 Zune, Part 2: The Magic of PodcastsMy Zune was working great for playing music but, truth be told, that’s not the main thing that I wanted it for. I wanted to be able to listen to the MP3 recordings of my favorite talk radio shows while I was walking the dog. A simple matter, except that the shows are a couple of hours long and the walk is usually half an hour, so I want to be able to pick up on the next walk where I left off. I could do that by pausing the show and then starting it up again, but the problem is that if I did want to listen to music or do something else on the Zune in between, my place in the radio show was lost and it started over from the beginning. As mentioned before, I’ve never had a lot of interest in MP3 players before, but I was almost certain that I’d heard my husband talk about being able to “bookmark” his place in audio books. I did a little research and according to the web sources, this “resume” behavior differs for different types of content. Music files don’t save your place, presumably on the assumption that you would want to hear a song from the beginning every time. But podcasts do save your place, which also makes sense. So all I had to do was make the Zune think my radio shows were podcasts. That should be easy enough – the Zune syncs with my Windows 7 library and there is a Podcasts library so if I just put the shows there, the Zune should see them as podcasts, right? Sadly, no. Doing that resulted in them still ending up in the Music section on the Zune – and in fact, there was no Podcasts section on the device that I could find. Turns out the solution was pretty simple, but not exactly intuitive. If you have MP3 recordings of radio shows, audio books or other content for which you want to be able to stop and resume from that point next time you play it, you need to change the genre tag (property attribute) on it to “Podcast.” In Windows Explorer, just right click the file and select Properties, then the Details tab. In the Genre box, type “Podcast.” (After you do this once, “Podcast” will become a choice that you can select with a checkbox). You don’t have to tediously change one file at a time. You can select a whole group of them (using the CTRL or Shift key as you normally select multiple files) and right click, choose Properties | Details and edit the genre tag for the whole batch. Now when you sync your Zune, those files will be recognized as podcasts and a Podcast section will magically appear in the main menu. And you’ll be able to stop and resume just as you should be. Very good. It would have been nice if the product documentation told you all this, though. :) Something else I discovered by trial and error is that you don’t have to scroll through that whole list of songs to find the one you want, after all. You can press the # box or any of the alphabet header boxes and you’ll get a screen with the whole alphabet, where you can choose the first letter of the song’s name to go straight to that section. The documentation didn’t mention that, either.
April 26 Learning to love my ZuneMany of you have been into MP3 players for a long time now. My husband, son and daughter are all “pod people,” who go through life with tell-tale wires hanging from the earbuds in their ears, who never answer when you ask them a question because they’re listening to the music or talk show or audio book, not to you. All this time, I’ve resisted becoming one of them. Oh, I like music as much as the next guy or gal. When I was young, I had quite the impressive collection of vinyl albums (and still have boxes of them in a closet). I still remember with great pride and fondness the wonderful Marantz sound system that I bought in the 1970s, and when I finally got rid of it, just a few years ago, it hurt to let it go. And it’s not that I have anything against digital music. I have a decent collection of songs on my hard drive and I listen to them via my computer’s Bose speakers or my Shure earplugs while I’m working at the computer. But I never was very interested in taking them mobile. In the car, I have a handful of favorite CDs that I listen to, or I listen to recordings of my favorite talk show host. Still, I’m much more visually than audio oriented and I do have some hearing problems that complicate matters. So when a friend told me he was sending me a 32 GB Zune HD as a gift, I was appreciative but not very excited. In fact, I figured I would probably end up giving it to Tom. But I did want to try it out first, and maybe write about it. After all, for a writer, everything that happens is potential fodder for an article or blog post. The Zune arrived last week and I have to say I was impressed, “out of the box,” by its sleek look. I’d only seen the older models before and they were big and clunky. This one is just as nice looking as an iPod Touch, and it’s considerably smaller than my Omnia II smart phone, as you can see in the photo below.
I charged it up and liked the look of the interface, too. It’s very responsive and pretty intuitive. When you “roll up” the home screen (which you can personalize with your own wallpaper background), you get a scrollable list of options – music, videos, pictures, radio, marketplace, social and Internet, as shown in the next figure.
Connecting to my wi-fi network was quick and simple, and the web browser works well, and supports the “pinch” motion for resizing (unlike the browser on my phone):
Despite all these nice features, my relationship with my Zune got off to a somewhat rocky start. The problem began when I wanted to add songs and pictures to the device. I had the Zune software installed on my primary desktop computer, a powerful Nehalem-based machine with 9 GB of RAM. I didn’t want to put all of the media that was in my libraries onto the Zune, though, so I chose the option to allow me to pick the specific files. Well, that didn’t work so well. I went through the tedious process of dragging them, one by one, to the icon representing the Zune, but when I clicked Sync, I got a message saying the device was already synchronized. I fought with it for hours and never could get it to add more than eight songs. A few it added with no problem. Others took several tries. Some it obstinately refused to add, no matter what. I tried the drag and drop method, the right click method, nothing worked. I was ready to give the thing to Tom after all. But I was annoyed because I really liked the device itself. I decided to try it out on a different computer, although I didn’t have a lot of hope that would make a difference. I tried to install the Zune software on my older Dell XPS system and got a message saying the software couldn’t install. I did some web research and found a KB article with a file package that had to be installed first. After I installed that, the Zune software installed and I plugged my Zune in. It immediately started syncing and all the songs I had chosen were duly transferred. I was amazed – and very, very pleased. To test whether it was just a fluke, I added more songs and some pictures and did it again. It worked like a charm.
Something that really impressed me was the sound quality, even with the cheapie earplugs that came with it. And when I plugged in my Shures, it was fantastic. Even my audiophile son was impressed. I don’t really like earphones, though. So I tried connecting the Zune to my car sound system through the auxiliary input jack. It sounded great. I quickly realized this was a much more efficient way to listen to my songs and talk show recordings in the car, rather than burning a bunch of CDs. I had an extra pair of powered computer speakers lying around, so I set those up in the bathroom, where I like to listen to audio while doing my hair, brushing my teeth, etc. I plugged them into the Zune and that sounded great, too. I could move the bulky DVD player/TV that I had been using for this in the past and save a lot of room on the vanity. It plays videos nicely, although the tiny screen isn’t ideal for that. However, you can also get a dock for it that has an HDMI out jack, allowing you to display the Zune’s videos on an HD TV. That might be cool. I looked at Best Buy for a regular dock/charger with speakers. They had a dozen for the iPod/iPhone but none for the Zune. That was annoying, but you can find them online. And of course, the Zune does more than play music and videos. You can also put your favorite photos on it, although I still prefer using my phone for that, since the screen is bigger and the AMOLED screen on the Omnia has a beautiful display. The phone also has a microSD card slot, so I can upgrade the amount of storage or swap out cards for access to different data. Still, I did put some of my pictures on the Zune and it displays them nicely.
I’ll probably do most of my mobile web browsing on the phone, too, since I have an unlimited data plan and 3G connection and don’t have to worry about finding a wi-fi hotspot. But I do like some features of the Zune browser better, especially the multi-touch resizing support. One thing I don’t like is the Zune’s on-screen keyboard. It is extremely difficult to hit the right letter and I found myself getting very frustrated with that. I’m spoiled by the Swype technology on my Omnia II, with which I can type around 50 wpm. On the Zune, I was probably typing around 2 wpm due to having to back up and correct every other character.
Bottom line: I started out not really caring about the Zune one way or the other, progressed to being extremely frustrated with it, and ended up loving it. My preference would be to do everything with one device – my phone – but in the meantime I’ve discovered there are advantages to having a separate device, especially when it comes to battery life. I’m used to needing to charge the phone every day or two if I use it much, but the Zune battery lasts much longer. Getting to know – and like – the Zune also makes me more excited about the upcoming Windows Phone 7 devices, since they reportedly will have interfaces very similar to the Zune’s. If Microsoft and its partners can offer a device that’s about the same height and width as my Omnia II, as thin as the Zune, that does everything the OII does but does it with a Zune-like interface (and Swype!) and gives me a battery that will go for a full day of constant use without recharging, they will have a big winner. Bring it on. Meanwhile, I think I’ll listen to a little music.
April 17 If you don’t believe in Magic, you don’t know JackLast month, in the March 29 issue of WXPnews, I wrote about our continuing adventures with VoIP. We’ve had Lingo for six years and up until a few months ago, were very happy with it. Then we started having problems with background noise, which started as a minor annoyance but got increasingly loud until the phones were basically unusable. I tried calling customer support but nothing seemed to help, so we started looking for a different solution. We gave Skype a try and it worked pretty well, but I didn’t like not being able to use my multi-handset cordless phone system that we’d invested quite a bit of money into, and although the sound quality over my computer was great on my end, some of the people I called said I “sounded funny” to them. After the WXPnews article came out, I received a lot of input from readers with suggestions to try various other VoIP services. One that kept coming up was Magic Jack, and I was certainly attracted by its low, low price ($20/year). We decided to give it a try, so Tom picked one up yesterday on a trip to Best Buy. I was a little surprised at the size of the thing. I guess I was expected a big box like the Lingo ATA, or at least something the size of a paperback book. Instead, it’s a tiny little thing, about 1 inch by 2 inches, with a USB plug on one end and an RJ-11 phone jack on the other.
It will be no trouble at all to slip it into a pocket or laptop case and take it with me when I travel, effectively taking my home phone along on trips. You plug it into a USB slot on a computer (preferably one that stays on all the time) and install the software. The instructions tell you that the software will start installing automatically, but if you don’t have autorun enabled, it won’t. You’ll need to open up Windows Explorer and there you’ll see two new drives, one of which is labeled “Don’t use this drive.” So I didn’t – I went to the other one and clicked autorun.exe there, which started the software installation. It only took a few moments, and when the interface opened, it prompted me to register. Clicking that link took me to a site where I filled out a very simple form and decided to order a “vanity” phone number so it would be easier to remember. That costs $10/year; since we’re lowering our phone bill so drastically, I figured we could afford to spring for it. You have to wait for a confirmation email (and mine got caught by our spam filter so we had to go digging through those files to get it). Once you click the link in the email, it verifies your account and you can use it. At first we had it set up on a system that had no sound card, and it wasn’t liking that. I moved it to another computer that has a sound card and microphone, and plugged the base station of our AT&T cordless system into it. After figuring out a few settings, it worked great. You can dial from the application on your computer, shown below, and use the speakers and mic (or a headset) to talk, or you can use the phones.
The advertising pane on the left may not be very pretty, but hey, for $1.66/month for phone service (compared to $31 for Lingo and $47 for our old AT&T landline), I’ll live with it. The blacked-out area to the right of “MagicJack” at the top of the interface displays your phone number, and I also blacked out the list of private phone numbers that I called, which show up in the right pane. What I like best is that the sound quality is nice and clear, both through the computer speakers and over the cordless phones. Also, as with Lingo, voicemail messages are delivered to my email Inbox as .wav files that I can play on my computer, or I can call in to retrieve my voice mail. It also includes the call waiting feature, which works the same as on a regular landline. There is even a number for making free conference calls, or you can do three-way calling simply by having both parties call you. Have a stalker making harassing phone calls? It’s even easy to change your phone number. You can do it online.And you can forward the calls to another number (for example, if your computer is going to be turned off). That’s one caveat: the computer has to be on (and connected to the Internet) for MagicJack to work (unlike with Lingo or Vonage, which have boxes that plug directly into your router). Otherwise, calls go to voicemail. For those of us who have servers that run 24/7 anyway, it’s no big deal, but it might be an issue for some folks who have a single computer and are used to shutting it down at night. There are, of course, a few other drawbacks. Unfortunately, you can’t yet port your existing phone number to MagicJack, although according to the MJ web site, they’re “working on it.” Since calls to the U.S., Canada, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are free, you don’t get any itemized record of those calls. And you can’t use Magic Jack on a Linux computer, just Windows or Mac (although there are plans to offer Linux support in the future). Be careful in selecting your phone number. You’ll probably want to get one with a local area code, since people who call you from conventional landlines with traditional billing plans (i.e., they have to pay extra for long distance) won’t be happy if they have to pay long distance charges every time they call you. Of course, more people now are using cell phones or some form of VoIP or have an unlimited domestic long distance plan with their regular phone company, so that is less important than it might once have been. The MagicJack is a great idea for frequent travelers. You can plug it into any computer with Internet connectivity, including your laptop. You’ll need to install the software the first time, but you don’t have to go through the registration process again, and MagicJack remembers your phone number. So you can take it with you on the road and get your “home” calls wherever you are; you can also make calls with it and avoid the ridiculous fees hotels charge for phone calls – without using your cell phone minutes. So, we’ve only had it for a day, but so far, I’m impressed. It’s certainly worth the money, even if you only want to use it as an extra line. We cancelled Lingo and are going to try it as our primary phone service (with cell phone backup). If I have any major problems, you can be sure I’ll be reporting on them here. You do need to understand that the “softphone” technology is a bit more fragile than a standalone hardware ATA box since it’s dependent on the reliability of your operating system as well as your computer’s hardware, so put it on your most rock solid machine. Meanwhile, thank you to all those WXPnews readers who recommended it. Once you get past the somewhat cheesy advertising (which was the main reason I’d never tried it before), it’s an amazing little product. April 08 On Facebook, Everybody Cares that you’re a DogRemember the famous cartoon by Peter Steiner that was published in The New Yorker way back in 1993, the caption of which said, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog”? The implication, of course, was that no one cares who – or what – you are; you’re represented solely by your words and not judged by your looks, gender, race, age or even species. The Internet has changed a lot since then. In those days, most Internet communications were text only (email, IRC) and even many web sites had few or no photos since picture files were large and took a long time to load on slow modem connections. Today, broadband is commonplace in most first-world countries (at least in urban and suburban areas) and multi-media is the name of the game. Some people still opt to remain faceless online, but more and more share their photos and videos with the public over the ‘Net with our friends. And even if they don’t explicit post photos of themselves, many will be “tagged” in photos posted by their friends or family members. And social networking has greatly expanded our circles of virtual friends, as we “meet” friends of friends or find them through groups, fan pages and mutual interest resources. Search engines can help you find not just personal information but also images of the people you know only through the Internet. We’re a lot less anonymous than we used to be, and that’s both a good and a bad thing. With all of this interaction and information out there, we get to know online acquaintances more quickly and perhaps to a greater degree than we did back then. But we also give up a certain amount of privacy. One thing is certain, though: in today’s social networking environment, folks are just as ready to befriend a dog as anyone else – maybe even more so. I recently did a little experiment: I created a Facebook page for my Japanese Chin puppy, Suki. Yes, I know technically it’s a violation of the terms of service, and I guess if they want to cancel my account (or at least her account), they can do so. But if they want to be consistent, they’re going to have to cancel quite a few other accounts, too. What actually inspired me to do it was a friend request that I received from another Japanese Chin. So I set up her page and sent friend requests to a dozen people (including the Chin who had friended me). Well, I wasn’t prepared for what happened next. Within two days, my dog had 76 friends. I know lots of people who have been on Facebook for a year and don’t have that many friends. And all but twelve of these friend requests were completely unsolicited. Wow. I have a popular puppy. Many of Suki’s new friends appear to be … other Japanese Chins, although there is also at least one poodle, along with many humans who own Chins (or, perhaps more accurately, are owned by them). Even as I write this, the requests are still coming in. It makes me wonder if maybe people feel more comfortable asking to befriend a dog than another person. Maybe there’s less perceived risk of rejection. Maybe there are a lot of folks out there who just like dogs better than people (there are days when I feel that way myself). It’s especially interesting to see what an eclectic group of people my pup has attracted. It’s different in many ways from my own group of friends, most of whom tend to fall into one of five categories: relatives, fellow writers, IT professionals with whom I’ve worked or whom I’ve met through the industry, cops/former cops I know from my own cop days or police-related groups to which I belong, and political people I’ve met through my involvement in municipal government and various political causes. On the other hand, there are some similarities. The first thing I had to do for Suki’s page was go through the feed and “hide” all the posts from apps – Mafia Wars, Farmville, etc. etc. It seems that many of her friends, like many of mine, play a lot of online games in which my doggie and I aren’t particularly interested. It’s fascinating to watch this as an “outsider,” seeing how something begun on a lark can grow so fast (and it’s a little scary, too). If this keeps up for long, my dog will have more friends than I do. I’m not sure how that makes me feel.
deb@shinder.net www.debshinder.com  Social Networking and the Nature of FriendshipPeople obviously use social networks for many different purposes. Some folks want to make business contacts, some want to keep in touch with family members, some want to get back in touch with people they knew long ago, some want a forum in which they can rant about politics, some want to “hook up” with a member of the opposite sex, some just want to build their “friend stats” as high as possible. As long as you and all your SN friends are basically on the same page, everything goes smoothly. The problems come when you start mixing all these different motivations together. But there’s an easy solution, one that many people don’t seem to be aware of. This morning, someone I recently added to my Facebook network in response to a friend request posted a mini-rant about how “it would be wonderful if anyone commented on anything other than how they felt when they woke up one morning, or how they felt about their bagel, or how happy they were that they heard an 80s tune on the way to work.” Of course, he (like the people about whom he’s complaining) has the right to post anything he wants on his status update – but I found this one annoying. And I also found it ironic, given that his immediately previous post had been a political rant calling someone a “dickhead.” I guess that’s his idea of enlightened discourse, but it’s not mine. Personally, I’d much prefer to read the “boring” posts about bagels and 80s tunes. But it got me thinking about how judgmental some folks are about things that really don’t call for it. If somebody is posting hateful, hurtful things or telling lies, then sure – it’s time to be judgmental. But getting critical about posts as innocuous as those mentioned above is a bit over the top. If you aren’t interested, ignore them and go on to the next. If you find that a particular person’s posts annoy you more than 50% of the time, click the wonderful little “Hide” button and you won’t have to see that person’s posts anymore. But for heaven’s sake, let your so-called friends have their mundane moments without getting slammed for it. Because, believe it or not, some people actually are interested in what their friends had for breakfast or the songs those friends are listening to. It’s a way of feeling connected to someone you may see rarely or never in person. It’s a way of sharing your daily lives – and for most people, daily lives are a bit mundane. Those lives are often made up of personal things like going to your kids’ plays or teaching your puppy a new trick or sitting down and having a nice, steaming cup of hot coca after a long day of work. If my friend’s bagel or an 80s tune makes him/her happy, I’m happy to hear that. If he/she woke up with a blinding headache, I can sympathize. Debates about the great issues of the day are all well and good, but they also tend to divide people. Discussions about work can be very useful and interesting, but talking about work all the time gets dull. It’s sharing those little, mundane bits of everyday life that bring people together. I post about a lot of different things. I post about the projects I’m working on, and pointers to good articles I’ve read. I post about my favorite books, movies, restaurants, TV shows. I post (occasionally, with great caution) about political issues. I post (what I consider to be) profound or informative quotes when I run across them. And yes, I post about “silly” little “unimportant” things like my pets and my children and the beautiful sunrise and how much I enjoyed a particularly great meal. All of those things are parts of my life and if you don’t want to see them, that’s fine – but don’t call yourself my “friend.” You obviously added me to your network for some other purpose. Oh, and before you write to tell me that by complaining about his post, I’m doing the same thing he did – yeah, I know. Isn’t freedom of speech a wonderful thing? The difference is that all those mundane posts do no harm to anyone. But the comment about them does. It basically tells people (whom you have either solicited or accepted to be your “friends”) that you don’t care about their lives and find those lives boring. Maybe that’s true, but why make a point of it?
April 07 Ebook Reader Software ComparisonIn this week’s Win7News, I wrote about my experiences with the three most popular ebook reading programs for the PC: Sony Reader Library, B&N Reader and Amazon Kindle for PC. Please check out that article over at www.win7news.net on Thursday, April 8th or thereafter, for the details on how I liked each. Since I can’t include screenshots in that article, I thought I would post those here to supplement it. Sony Reader Library
After you make a purchase or select to get a free book, click on your Cart and check out. Then it will appear in your Library:
To read it, just double click the book name and it opens in the Reader interface:
As you can see, the interface is pretty simple. In the left pane, there are file management options to let you navigate to and display files on the SD Card (if you have one) and on the hard drives of the computer:
The Help file is fairly comprehensive and contains troubleshooting information as well as basic instructions for setting up and using the Reader Library:
Barnes & Noble Reader The B&N Reader prominently features “The Daily,” which provides free articles from B&N blogs and notifications if there is a new issue available of one of your eNewspapers or eMagazines.
The library is divided into categories: All Items, eBooks, eMagazines, eNewspapers and My Stuff:
There is a section called “Now Reading” where you can find the publications you’re currently reading, with quick links to the last read page, table of contents, bookmarks, annotations and highlights.
I like the “Now Reading” section, which has links to the last read page and ToC as well as your bookmarks, annotations and highlights:
The B&N Reader is very configurable, letting you change not just the font size but colors, line spacing, margins and more:
Kindle for PC The Kindle software is the quickest to install, and provides for the simplest interface:
There are only a few configuration options offered in the Menu:
The “Settings” dialog box is pretty disappointing. There are no options to customize fonts and other aspects of the reading experience:
According to the “Future Improvements” page on the web site, there are plans to add some of the functionality that the other readers already have:
The “Help” link opens a web page in your browser. There is no traditional Help file installed with the program:
Be sure to check out the full review in the April 8 issue of Win7News!
deb@shinder.net www.debshinder.com March 22 Why the Cloud isn’t ready for prime timeOne of the sites I write for has a process like this: I contract to write a certain number of articles per month. To ensure that different authors don’t write on the same topics, we have to submit a proposal and have it approved prior to submitting an article. We have to do that via a web site. Once a topic is approved, it appears on another web page, where all the authors can see the title and brief abstract, so they’ll know not to submit a proposal that covers the same ground. Most of the time, it works fine. Except when it doesn’t. This morning, I was ready to start writing the article that had been approved a week or so ago. When I get ready to write, I go to the site and review my proposal and any comments. Except this time, I couldn’t get to the site. Instead, I get the good old “Cannot display the webpage – this problem can be caused by a variety of issues” message.
So … I didn’t save a copy of my original proposal because it’s always saved on the site. I vaguely remember what I said I would cover, but I’d prefer to have the exact wording. I can go ahead and write the article without this, but it’s a perfect illustration of the reason “the Cloud” is not ready for prime time and is certainly not reliable enough to depend on for time-sensitive or mission-critical work. Even if my entire Internet connection went down, I could still go ahead and write the article because I use Word, which runs on my local machine. What if all my apps were in the Cloud, too? What if the only word processing option I had was something like Google Apps? I guess I’d be out of luck if I were off line. The Cloud is a big convenience – when it’s working properly. When it’s not, it becomes a great big pain in the behind. The nature of the Internet being what it is, there is never a guarantee that it will always work properly. There are too many variables: servers, routers, DNS servers, all of which are subject to maintenance downtime, hack attacks, IT misconfigurations and more. That’s why the Cloud must always be a supplement to, and not a replacement for, traditional personal computing. There’s a reason we all moved from mainframe based systems to individual PCs in the first place. Now we seem to have forgotten those reasons. But the first time the Cloud goes down, after you’ve transitioned all your apps and data to it, you’ll remember. UPDATE: Just spent an hour paying bills online. Most of that time was taken with attempting to pay Time Warner Cable. I go to their bill pay site, which worked before – oh, but there’s a message that “Our site has been made even better.” That’s always a bad sign. I put in my usual username and password and click the Submit button – and get thrown right back to the same logon page with blank boxes. Okay, maybe I forgot the password … although I’m pretty sure I didn’t. I try the “Forgot your password” button. It takes me to a page where I have to fill in my (long, long) account number and billing zip code. Click Submit and – right back to the same page with blank boxes. Great. Okay, then I’ll create a new account. Oops. Can’t do that. My address already has an account. Yes, I know it does – but you won’t let me access it. Grrrr. Is this a diabolical plot by the bean counters at TW to cause people to pay their bills late so they can tack on a late fee? Or just an IT department that doesn’t know how to get the web site right? Or maybe a result of outsourcing the web work to someone half a world away who is only concerned with making the page pretty, rather than making it work? I love paying my bills in the Cloud – no checks to write, no stamps to buy, no trips to the Post Office … but I really hate it when it doesn’t work. I’ll try again later. Hopefully it’s a temporary glitch. Update to the Update: Finally, frustrated by my inability to pay my cable bill, I decided to try a different web browser. I downloaded the latest version of Firefox and lo and behold, the Time Warner bill payment site worked fine. Of course, it also worked fine on IE 8 last month. Is it the “new and improved” site that caused the change, or some update or another to IE? Whichever is the culprit, it’s just as annoying.
March 14 A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood – Except for the Cloud CoverI got quite a few comments on last week’s WXPnews article, Betting the Company on the Cloud: Sure Thing or Long Shot? (Go to Archives, March 9, 2010) and my blog post, Cloudy Days Ahead, so I’ve been doing more thinking about the “Cloud” and have some additional thoughts on the subject. I was recently elected president of our homeowners’ association. I volunteered to serve on the board of directors not because I wanted to exercise power over my neighbors, but because I want to keep ours from turning into one of those oppressive HOAs from Hell that I’ve heard so much about. And I’ve been thinking lately that the “cloud” is a little like an HOA. The premise of an HOA is that all those who live in a neighborhood pool resources, which can be more cost effective and provides more convenience for homeowners. Maybe every homeowner can’t afford to build and maintain a pool, so the HOA collects a little money from everybody and maintains a pool that everyone can use. Some HOAs (not ours) mow and weed and maintain all the front yards, paid for out of the homeowners’ dues, so residents don’t have to worry about lawn care. Others have elaborate clubhouses and exercise rooms for members’ use. Some put up electronic gates to keep non-residents out of the community. Of course, the more amenities, the more you pay. The Cloud is a little like that. Instead of each company maintaining its own IT department, the cloud provider collects money from all of them and all the companies get the use of the provider’s equipment and personnel. The provider does the maintenance so you don’t have to worry about it. The provider may also offer extra amenities; in addition to hosting your web server, they may design and update your web site for an extra fee. And the provider takes care of securing the “community” of servers that it hosts. The HOA is a wonderful idea in concept. In practice, sometimes not so much. Here are the problems I see with some HOAs, and which the cloud needs to guard against:
I’m lucky in that I happened into a neighborhood where the HOA is not like the ones I’ve been describing. Dues are low and have stayed stable, we’ve experienced no “special assessments,” fines are used for the proper purpose and the board is understanding of homeowners who have special circumstances and ready and willing to work with them. Our HOA doesn’t provide many amenities – a pool and maintenance and landscaping of that common area and the lovely entries into the neighborhood – and so it doesn’t need a lot of money. My goal is to keep it that way. So what does all this have to do with the cloud? You might scoff at the idea that it might someday be mandatory to get your applications over the Internet and store your data remotely, and I’m not suggesting that there will be laws prohibiting you from doing it all yourself – but if the market falls head over heels in love with the cloud and software vendors stop making operating systems that are designed for local computing and stop selling non-cloud applications and hardware vendors only offer low powered computers that are designed for accessing cloud-based resources and not for running local apps, there might as well be a law. If the market for full fledged systems and applications becomes small, those things will become much more costly (if they don’t disappear altogether), effectively forcing us all to the cloud. This isn’t going to happen next week or next year, but it could happen. Once the cloud is your only choice, look for cloud providers to raise their prices and become more controlling and less responsive to what the customers want. Don’t believe me? Just look at cable TV service during the recent period when that was the only way many people could get television programming. In the beginning, cable companies charged low rates and offered commercial-free programming. Once they had most people dependent on them, rates skyrocketed, cable channels started advertising just like OTA channels, and CATV companies became notorious for poor customer service. Even now, as we’re beginning to have more choices (Internet TV, fiber optic options like FiOS and U-verse), few cable companies have changed their attitudes. Once an industry becomes arrogant, it’s hard to break the habit. As more and more customers flock to the cloud, look for providers to start outsourcing some or all of their work, just as the HOAs contract with management companies. That will put another layer of “cloudiness” between you and your apps and data. Cloud providers, unlike HOAs and government agencies, are already in business to make money. When they have you “locked in,” expect them to start tacking on extra fees (think banks) in addition to the outright price increases, to bring in more money. Also look for them to become more and more controlling. After all, they have to “protect” you and your data from all the bad things that can happen, so of course they will need to set rules about how you use their services. EULAs are already masterpieces of contractual writing that give the companies the rights to everything except your first-born child (unless that’s buried somewhere in the print that’s so fine I’m unable to read it) and disclaiming all liability on their part for everything, any time, anywhere. Can they really get more heinous? I don’t know if I want to find out. The good news is that the cloud is in its infancy. There’s still time to do it right and avoid all these mistakes. In my opinion, the first and most important way to do that is for software vendors to see the cloud as a supplement to traditional personal computing, not a replacement for it. Don’t let the cloud become mandatory. That, alone, will nip most of the other problems in the bud. It’s good to have choices, and the cloud should be one of those choices – just not the only one.
March 12 Is the Web becoming too video-centric?I enjoy a good movie as much as the next guy, but does everything have to be a movie these days? I’m tired of clicking on a link to what I think is a news story or tech article and discovering that instead of the written word, it’s a video “feature” or a webinar. Those have their time and place, but most of the time when I see that it’s video (and usually that I’m going to have to sit through a commercial before I can even see it), I just click away from it and never watch it. This is especially true when I’m doing research for a paper or article or to troubleshoot a technical problem. Videos are good for demonstrating a long and involved “how to” process that might be hard to accurately describe without visuals, but they’re very, very bad for trying to find the answer to a quick question. You have to sit through the whole two minutes or ten minutes or thirty minutes to get the information, because if you try skipping through, you’ll probably miss it. You can’t easily “skim” as you can with the printed word. Don’t get me wrong; it’s not that I never watch video. Well done video can be far more informative than just words on a page. But in too many cases, the video element adds nothing – except extra time. I don’t need to see a talking head reading me what I could have read myself in half the time, or a series of PowerPoint slides consisting of the same words I could have read, much more quickly, in a text document. If you’re going to use video, use its advantages to give me something I can use. Demonstrate the product, show me the device in action, give me a live recording of the news incident taking place or at least its aftermath. If you don’t have that footage, forget the video and write an article instead. Ads on a printed page can be annoying, especially if they pop up in front of the text I want to read. But I can usually get rid of them in a second with a click, whereas the video commercials drag on for 15 or 30 seconds, sometimes even longer. Never mind; I can check out several print web sites in the time that takes. Some will say it’s the price you have to pay for free content, and I understand that. And if I wanted to watch the video content, I’d be willing to pay that price (and do). But when I don’t want my info in video anyway, I’m certainly not amenable to paying a higher price (in terms of my time, which is money) to get it that way. Maybe I’m just old fashioned. I grew up reading books, and it’s still one of my favorite pastimes. I always preferred newspapers to TV news. Maybe young people today, who grew up with TV and then the Internet as their primary information source, can’t or don’t want to read anything. Maybe they have to see it in living, moving color to understand it. The world, as Roland the Gunslinger once noted, moves on. But I do wish web sites would make a small concession to those of us who feel as I do: just give us a clue – an icon, a label – that a particular link leads to a video rather than a print article. Then I won’t have to waste my time clicking on it when I’m not in a “moving pictures” mood. Am I all alone in feeling this way? Do you love videos and look forward to the day when written language disappears entirely? Or are there others out there who think there’s too much video for the sake of video on the web today? March 07 Cloudy days ahead: Why Microsoft should find a new name for its online services
For the past several years, we’ve been hearing about “The Cloud.” Before that, the same concept was called “Software as a Service” or SaaS. Prior to that, it was called “Application Services Providers” or ASP. A rose by any other name smells just as good – or just as bad. Whatever it was called, the idea never really seemed to take off. Companies and individuals just kept resisting the urging of service providers to give up on-premise control of their data and applications, even if it did offer the potential to save money and headaches. Microsoft, Google, Amazon and a number of other major players in the IT industry are now bound and determined to make it happen. And with that kind of money and influence behind it, the trend toward putting data and apps in “the cloud” is finally beginning to gain some momentum. However, based on my informal discussions with IT pros outside those big companies, there is still a pretty large and adamant resistance movement. In the parlance well known to anyone who has visited the Twelve Colonies, their attitude is “Frak the Cloud.” The name might be a bit catchier than those that preceded it, but the image it conjures up for those IT professionals (and for many consumers, according to input from my newsletter readers) is not a friendly one. Rather, it’s the picture of a dark and ominous sky, filled with hidden tornados, ready to swoop down and wipe out everything they own. Am I over-dramatizing? Not really. Emotions about the cloud run strong. There are important trust issues at work. IT pros see it as a threat to their jobs, and home users see it as an attempt to wrestle away what control they have left over their data, their software and their computing experience. Here’s what Kelly H. had to say:
A name change isn’t going to fix all that, but it might help. Sure, it’s boring, but why not just refer to it as “online services?” Drop all references that make people think of big, scary storm clouds that obscure their views of their data and apps. “Online” is familiar, comfortable, a good thing. We all “go online” every day and we’re able to do enjoyable things there. “Going online” is a far happier idea for most people than “moving to the cloud.” Last week, Steve Ballmer said Microsoft is betting its future on the cloud. If they’re really serious about selling it to everybody else, I think they should abandon that name, maybe even stay away from “services,” too, since for most of us that sounds like something we’re going to have to pay – and pay, and pay, and pay – for. It makes you think of your water bill or your electric bill, costs that keep going up and up and make you feel frustrated and helpless when you try to deal with the disinterested bureaucrats who represent those services to the public. How about “the online software experience?” Or even use the “Live” moniker, which has nice connotations. Just quit talking about the cloud – and you’ll stop scaring away a good portion of your market. February 25 Has social networking killed the email discussion list?In the 90s and the first decade of the new millennium, email discussion lists were a big part of my online communications. I belonged to a mailing list for current and former police officers, several lists for writers, several lists for IT pros, and a couple of “sub lists” made up of select friends from one of the larger lists. I still belong to most of those lists, but the traffic on many of them has died down to almost nothing. That doesn’t mean I’ve lost touch with the other list members, though. In many cases, we’ve just moved our communications venue to a new place in cyberspace: the social networks. Prior to the SN phenomenon, I spent an extraordinary amount of time sorting and reading and answering email. I had Outlook set up to filter list mail into separate folders to keep my lists straight. Now I still get a lot of mail by most standards, but most of it is business email or messages from a few friends who don’t do social networking. The casual conversations, especially group conversations, now take place primarily on Facebook. I think one of the biggest appeals of social networking is convenience. Once upon a time, when something interesting or exciting happened in my life, I might write a long email message about it and then copy and paste and make minor changes to that message to send to several different lists. Now I tend to be more succinct – I summarize and post it once to my Facebook status update. There it’s available to all of my friends: my police friends, my writer friends, my IT pro friends, my family members, etc. Certainly the social networking sites create an environment that’s different from that of a list, particularly a small list that’s been around for a long time. A couple of my favorite mailing lists had been going strong since the mid-90s. With only 10-20 members, we’d gotten to know each other very well. The relationship between the members there was certainly more intimate than the one I have with my 200+ Facebook friends. But that level of intimacy wasn’t always a plus, either. Conflicts arise, resentments smolder, as in any close, long-term relationship. In fact, I left one of those lists because of an ongoing problem with one particular list member whose histrionics came to dominate every discussion. I had left the list before because of her, but had returned because I missed the other members. This time, almost all of those other members were my friends on Facebook, so I didn’t have to give them up in order to remove this negative influence from my life. I have a little more sadness, though, about another of my long-time lists. Several of its members have joined Facebook, too – but several others haven’t. We’re all “old folks” (at least according to the under-30 crowd) and some of them just don’t want to learn new tricks. Some are already overextended with jobs and family and existing forms of online interactions and don’t want to add another one. I’ve remained on that list, but the discussions there have dwindled over the last year. Those of us who are on Facebook keep up with each others’ lives there, and even though I try to post regularly to the mailing list, too, it’s often as an afterthought. Just as robbers go to banks because that’s where the money is, I go to Facebook first because that’s where so many of my friends are. But having so many of the people in my life all together in one virtual place can be a challenge, too. I have to think more carefully about what I post. Whereas I wouldn’t think twice about dashing off a gruesome joke on the small list of cops/ex-cops, I can’t tell that same joke on FB because there are people in my feed who wouldn’t understand it, who would be offended or grossed out by it. It can be interesting, crafting posts that will be equally acceptable to my colleagues in the IT world, my law enforcement contacts, my old school buddies, my cousins (including the “once removeds”) the aunt who helped raise me, my former inlaws, my own kids (and even some of their friends), the Mayor and other political figures in my city, the breeder from whom I got my puppy, and various and sundry readers of my writing and others I’ve met somewhere (in real life or online) along the way. Some folks think social networking is a waste of time. It can be – as can any enjoyable activity if you do too much of it. But it’s no more of a time waster than email lists (probably less so, since it’s more efficient) and it’s certainly less of a waste than watching a mindless situation comedy on TV. Tom used to say he saw no business value in social networking. Then he came back from this year’s MVP conference and said (as he is wont to do from time to time), “You were right.” He described how many of his colleagues there told him that they had enjoyed keeping up with what’s been going on in our lives, how they felt they knew him better, as a real person and not just as a “persona” with whom they do business. Networking is, after all, what social networking is all about. And our methods for networking have evolved and continue to do so. Years ago, business and personal relationships were often forged at conferences or parties or “get-togethers” at churches or clubs. As the online community came into being, we moved to chat rooms, IRC, and email discussion lists. Web boards offered another way to meet people and talk about common interests. Now social networking sites give us a richer experience, where we can interact with more people and also easily share photos and videos, join groups, and also send messages or chat one-on-one. As one type of activity becomes more popular, others tend to decline in popularity. There’s only so much time in the day, so we give up one thing to spend our time on another. Email is by no means dead, but the discussion list is slowly being abandoned in favor of more web-centric technologies like the SN sites. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Probably neither one. It just is. I only hope my holdout friends join Facebook (or the Next Big Thing) eventually, because I would hate to lose touch with them just because of a change in communications trends.
February 21 MVPs and Brand LoyaltyI know this post will probably hurt some feelings and make some people angry. So be it. It’s a subject that’s been brewing in the back of my mind for a couple of years now, and it’s time I got it off my chest. At the last MVP Summit I attended (2009), I couldn’t help noticing how many of my fellow MVPs were carrying iPhones. Not just carrying them, but showing them off - “pushing” them, more or less. Trying to make iPhone converts out of the rest of us. Sure, it’s pretty and it’s “cool” and as with all Apple products, having one makes you appear (to some people) to be one of the elite. Even some Microsoft employees had them. Anyone should be able to buy and use any (legal) product he/she wants, of course. But it bothered me a little. There we all were, being honored by Microsoft for our contributions in making Microsoft products better, making those products more accessible to the tech community. The company was spending a decent amount of money to put us up at nice hotels, feed us some great food, host dinners and parties and show us a good time. They opened up the doors to us at Redmond and gave us access to “insider” information that’s not available to the public. Seems like the least a person could do is leave the iPhone in the pocket or bag for the duration instead of trying to drum up business for the competition. Now I see MVPs writing articles and books and blog posts singing the praises of the iPhone, iPad, and other Apple “stuff.” And that bothers me, too. My reaction is similar, but not nearly as strong, regarding those MVPs who come out as public advocates of Linux. I guess that’s because, although many in the Linux community engage in anti-Windows rhetoric, there has been no concentrated, high priced, on-going formal advertising campaign spouting lies about Windows from that corner. Linux is a competitor, but Apple is the enemy – they themselves made it so by declaring war on national TV with a series of commercials that are, I fully admit, extremely clever – but also embody everything I hate about politics: half-truths and outright falsehoods that focus on making the opposition look bad instead of telling the public about your own strengths. Am I saying that, as MVPs, we should never be critical about Microsoft products and policies? Absolutely not. I have written things critical of Microsoft on many occasions – regarding Vista’s poor performance (pre-SP1) on laptops, the crippling of the GUI in favor of PowerHell in Exchange 2007, the bewildering omission of a utility to make Windows 7 Media Center .WTV files playable on Vista computers, the lack of a simple option to go back to the familiar menu system in Office 2007 without a third party add-on, and much more. But I try to keep my criticism constructive – and it’s paid off, I guess, because the company has, more than once, come back in the next version of a piece of software and made the changes that I (and others) suggested. Back to personal brand loyalty: the first time I saw an iPhone, I thought it looked amazing – although, when I tried it out and found out more about it, I discovered it was lacking many features that were deal breakers for me. But even if the next generation sports a micro SD slot and has a removable battery and runs on the Verizon network and has all the other things I want in a phone, I won’t use one as my everyday phone (I’ll test anything). Because I’m an MVP; I specialize in Microsoft technologies – and that means I need to use those technologies on a daily basis if I’m going to provide support and help to others who use them. I will even admit that I was mightily tempted by the Droid, and am even more so by the HTC Desire, both of which run Android 2.x. They’re very nice phones, and I love the GPS functionality. But I have stuck with Windows Mobile and I love my Omnia II. When the new Windows Phone 7 devices come out, I’ll be first in line to get one. Am I biased? Sure – we all are. Anybody who says otherwise is either consciously lying or deceiving him/herself. Our opinions are formed by both our knowledge and our experiences. Microsoft has been good to me and for me in many ways. It was their products that really drew me into personal computing in the first place, and although it usually takes them three tries to get something right, when they do, they usually get it really right. I built a livelihood as a writer that was based on using Microsoft products and then I started writing about those products and became more successful than I had ever dreamed I’d ever be. I was a Microsoft advocate long before the company ever knew I existed or made me an MVP. Over the last six years as an MVP, I’ve worked closely with Microsoft employees and many of them are my friends. And now we are truly part of the Microsoft family, since Tom became a full time employee in December. Maybe loyalty means more to me than it does to some people. It was always a big deal in my family. You stood up for those you believed in and you didn’t abandon them or stop believing in them when they made a mistake. You also didn’t pretend they could do no wrong; in fact, you did all you could to bring their mistakes to their attention and help them correct those mistakes. My dad worked for the city of Dallas for 32 years. There were times when he disagreed with management’s decisions, and he wasn’t shy about saying so, but he stuck with the job because, ultimately, he loved it. My dad also drove Fords. He had tried other automobile brands and found Fords to be more reliable and better suited to his needs. So he didn’t switch brands just because a pretty Chevy came along. Am I a lot like my dad? I hope so – that would be the highest compliment anyone could pay me. I realize, in the current economy, some folks have trouble finding work. If you need to write about or otherwise endorse iProducts and Linux to pay the bills, I understand that. If you find that you like those products better than Microsoft’s, hey, I understand that, too. Different people have different preferences and I’m glad we all have choices. But if you’re going to be a public advocate for the competition, then maybe – just maybe – you shouldn’t be an MVP. To me, it seems pretty close to a conflict of interest for folks to get on the “inside,” attend events where they get access to NDA information, and then go out and endorse the competing products. I expect an outcry. I expect to be called a Microsoft “shill” by those who didn’t understand a word I said above. I’ve been called that before; I’ve also been called a “Microsoft basher” on numerous occasions. As with the Democrats and Republicans, I figure if I can manage to make both sides mad, I must be doing something right. So … are there any other MVPs out there who agree with me? Or are you all full of righteous outrage at me for daring to suggest that you give up your iStuff if you’re going to call yourself a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional? I have on my flame-retardant suit, but I would really prefer reasoned arguments. Write to me at deb@shinder.net .
February 05 Beware of fake Firefox updatesIf your company’s users are using the Firefox web browser, be aware of a fake Firefox update that shows up when a web search is done for the latest updates. It is well done, closely resembling the real thing, but contains some misspelled words the wrong version number (it offers version 3.5 but the most recent FF update is 3.6). If a user mistakenly tries to apply the “update,” a toolbar ad will be installed that launches pop-ups. http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?RSS&NewsID=3212016 January 29 The new laptop: I went with my heart, not with my headOkay, I’ve been agonizing for a couple of months over what new laptop to get. My Sony TX has served me well, but it’s getting a little long in the tooth. It maxed out at one and half GB of RAM (which was a lot back when I bought it) and more annoying, it only has built-in 802.11b/g. Our wireless networks are 802.11n now, and I really like that extra speed, so I got a PCMCIA (PC card) n adapter but it sticks way out on the side, looks silly and ruins the compactness of the little laptop. So I decided for the new year, I’d get myself a new one. The problem: which one? The TX beside its predecessor, my Sony T that I bought about five years ago, and which still runs XP fine today, although it won’t handle Aero NETBOOK OR NOTEBOOK? First question I had to answer: did I want a netbook or a full fledged notebook? Price wasn’t a big concern, but size/weight was. I have been very happy with the Sony, which weighs 2.7 lbs. and has an 11 inch screen. My particular use for a laptop is usually at conferences, where I’m carrying it around from session to session all day, so I want as little weight and bulk as possible. Another top consideration is battery life. It needs to last all day at those conferences, without recharging. I could get close to 7 hours with the Sony TX, with a little tweaking of the power settings. Now, when it comes to my desktop system, I want the fastest computer possible. I don’t care if it’s three feet tall and weighs half a ton. My old XPS certainly seemed that size, but that was fine. The new desktop is a little more compact, but it’s a screaming Nehalem with 12 GB of RAM. They have Nehalem laptops on the market now, but the ones I checked out got about 2 hours of battery time on a good day. They’re big guys, too. Nope, that won’t work. And if I need something powerful on the road, I have a 17 inch Dell that I can set up in the hotel room. The Sony replacement is primarily for taking notes, checking email, surfing the web, writing and reading Word docs, maybe viewing some photos or watching a recorded TV program on the plane. Sounds like a netbook, doesn’t it? And with a good Atom processor, you can get some incredible battery run times. But I sort of kind of wanted a tablet. After all, Apple has everyone in a frenzy about tablets now. TABLET OR NOT? I had one of the early tablets, back in 2002 or 2003. I like the concept – especially for drawing diagrams or taking handwritten notes in an environment where you want to keep the computer low profile. In some meetings, it’s just too disruptive to sit there clacking at the keyboard, but a tablet is no more intrusive than a pen and legal pad. That first tablet of mine was expensive (all tablets were expensive back then), around $1800. It was also heavy by today’s standards, around 6 lbs. But they’ve come down in price and weight since then. I knew I didn’t want a slate; as I said in my blog post where I shared my first impressions of the iPad, I want and need the option to touch type on a physical keyboard. If I were to get a tablet, it would have to be a convertible. I looked at several of the new tablets. The HP and Dell models were nice but too big and heavy. The only currently available one that impressed me was the Touch Note, made by Gigabyte. The size is right – 10.1 inches. The specs are that of a netbook, but a higher end one: 1.66 GHz N280, 2 GB of RAM, 1366x768 touch screen, 250 GB hard drive. It runs Windows 7 Home Premium (not Starter) and has a 6 cell battery that will last around 6 hours on a charge. At $749, it costs far more than many of the netbooks on the market but far less than the Sony TX, for which I paid $2200. Another “would’ve been a contender” was the Lenovo Ideapad s-130t. I saw the pictures of it from CES, and it looked pretty nice. Unfortunately, it’s not available to buy yet. I also really liked the looks of the Acer 1420p. This was the tablet that Microsoft gave away to all the attendees at the 2009 PDC. I loved that it would support up to 8 GB of RAM and liked the 8 hour battery life, but to do all that, it had to be a bit heavier than I wanted – almost 4 lbs. Still, I would have strongly considered it except that like the Lenovo, it’s not available yet. I also have no idea what it’s going to cost. I could’ve just decided to wait and see what the market brings – but the market is always going to bring something better eventually so if you get stuck in that “wait ‘til something better and cheaper comes along” mentality, you’ll never buy. And I really was wanting to get a new device before the next conference I’m scheduled to attend: the MVP Summit in February. That limited my choices to those that are on sale now. SMITTEN BY ANOTHER PRETTY FACE As I looked at all of my options, I kept feeling myself drawn back to what seemed like the most impractical choice of all: the Sony X. It’s essentially a really expensive netbook – but oh, was it ever pretty. When it comes to portable computers, I am a sucker for slim. At one point, I even considered buying a Macbook Air and wiping out OS X and installing Windows 7 on it. That’s how smitten I am by a razor-thin computer. But the Air starts at $1499 and it only has one USB port and no flash memory card slot. And despite it’s thinness, it weighs 3 lbs., which is more than the TX. Oh, and if you want the model that has a 128 GB solid state drive, you pay $1800 (the $1500 model has a 120 GB SATA drive). The Sony X is even thinner than the Air (1/2 inch, the same as the new Apple iPad) and it weighs an incredible 1.6 lbs. with the standard battery. It’s made of carbon fiber, so that even though it looks fragile, it feels strong. It has two USB ports, an SD card slot and a memory stick slot, a standard VGA out port (you have to buy an adapter to connect the Air to a VGA monitor) and an Ethernet jack (the Air apparently relies on wireless; there is no mention of an Ethernet adapter on its tech specs web site). And you get the same 2 GB of RAM, a 128 GB SSD, GPS and built-in Verizon 3G card, all for hundreds of dollars less. Even better, I wouldn’t be giving my money to Apple.
Granted, the Air has a Core 2 Duo processor while the X has an Atom. But it’s a 2 GHz Atom, and when I tried the little machine out at the Sony Store, it was surprisingly responsive. And the downside of that Core 2 processor is that the Air, according to PC World, gets only about 2 and a half hours of battery life. That was a deal breaker, right there. The Sony X, on the other hand, comes with an extended battery that adds only a few ounces to its weight, bringing it up to 2.2 lbs. – still substantially lighter than Air and still lighter than my TX – and provides an amazing 12 hours of battery life. Wow. That energizer bunny just keeps on going. And then there is that gorgeous Sony display. DECISIONS, DECISIONS The practical side of me said to get the Touch Note. It cost hundreds less than the Sony and it’s a tablet. It has all the touch screen coolness. It isn’t as thin and light, but it’s certainly no heavyweight. It got outstanding reviews on Amazon. I was almost ready to order it. It made sense to save money and compromise a little on portability. But then I would think about the X, about how it felt in my hand. It was like holding a sheet of paper. It was so thin that turned sideways, it was barely there. It was so light that I felt as if I were carrying nothing at all. And it was so pretty. Prettier than the Air, in my opinion. Another plus was that I could try it out at the Sony Store, whereas the Touch Note wasn’t available locally, as far as I could find. I went to the Sony Store to try it out one more time. There was no denying it. I was in love. I had waited too long to get the blingy gold model (they’re all sold out, both at my local Sony Store and on the Sony web site), but the black one, with its carbon fiber finish and classy gold logo, has the look of a Stealth fighter. And if you face it edge-on, it almost disappears like a Stealth. It might not be practical, but I wanted it. Badly. And I got it. Someday, I want a tablet – but I’ll wait until they make a tablet that I can really love. A tablet that’s as light and thin as I want it to be. A tablet that will let me work all day and into the evening on a single battery charge. Maybe two years from now, when the Sony starts to get old, such a creature will exist. Maybe Sony will even make one themselves. Meanwhile, I’m pretty happy with what I got.
THE BOTTOM LINE I’ve been using Sony laptops for a long time now. They always cost more, but the quality has been superb. I went laptop shopping with my cousin’s daughter not long ago, and she was agonizing over whether to buy the one that seemed like the best deal on paper, or the one that captured her eye in the beginning and kept her coming back to it. In the end, she went with her heart instead of her head – and she says she’s glad she did. I’m glad I did, too.
In the next week or so, I’ll do a full review of it here. I’ve already upgraded the Windows 7 Home Premium OS that came with it to Ultimate, gotten rid of all the “crapware” (trial versions of Office 2007 and Quickbooks, Microsoft Works, Norton, etc.), customized my desktop and installed Office 2010. It’s running like a champ, and it’s the sexiest laptop on my block, by far.
January 27 iPad? iDon’tThinkSoI’ll give Apple credit for one thing: they do know how to market a product. The hype has been swirling for months around their new tablet, and they unveiled it today in San Francisco amidst much hoopla. It was almost impossible to watch the event live on the web due to bandwidth issues; I had to switch around from site to site. I wasn’t able to connect at all to Apple’s own live broadcast on their site. So it’s finally here and there was at least one surprise: it’s called the iPad instead of the iSlate. Well, that makes sense – sounds more like iPod, and as far as I can tell, that’s pretty much what it is, an iPod Touch on steroids. It doesn’t run OS X; instead it runs the iPhone OS, which has plenty of “apps” (many of which are completely useless) but isn’t exactly a powerful full featured operating system. I’m sure the faithful members of the Apple Fan Club will all run out and buy one, but as for the rest of us … maybe not so much. You all know that I’m not much of an Apple fan myself, although I do have a Mac Mini that lives over in the corner of my office, which I use when testing hybrid network configurations and doing OS comparisons. But in order to put my own personal feelings about the company itself aside, I looked at the iPad and asked myself: If this were made by Microsoft and ran some flavor of Windows Mobile 7 but had all the same features (or lack thereof), would I be likely to buy one? And the answer is still “no.” I’m not planning to purchase its (so far) most high profile competitor, HP’s Slate, either. There are quite a few problems, some of which apply to the whole slate-style tablet market in general and some that only apply to the iPad in particular. I had done a “quick and dirty” run-down of them here, but I’m removing that list and am going to do a more detailed and better structured writeup of it for TechRepublic, so look for my article, Ten Reasons I’ll be Passing on the iPad, at http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/10things/?p=1324&tag=content;leftCol Here’s the bottom line: I’m supposed to spend a minimum of $500 for a device that won’t fit in my pocket and won’t take the place of my laptop/netbook, with no way to expand the storage capacity, and I have to buy another data plan from AT&T in addition to my cell phone’s plan. That’s why I call it the iDon’tThinkSo. If you buy one, let me know how you like it. Meanwhile, I’d rather spend my money on something like the Gigabyte Touch Note, which also has a touch screen, and has a real keyboard, runs a real OS, supports both 802.11b/g/n wireless and wired Ethernet, has a 250 GB hard drive but also lets you expand that with USB ports and a 4-in-1 memory card reader. Oh, and you can get it with built-in 3G, too (actually 3.5G HSDPA) – not to mention a removable, user-replaceable battery. And you can multi-task to your heart’s delight. And all this costs less than the 32 GB 3G version of the iPad. The Touch Note is just one alternative; we can expect to see a large number of new tablets coming out in the next few months. I suspect most of them will have more to offer at a lower price than the iPad. UPDATE: At first glance, the iPad doesn’t have USB ports or a flash memory slot. Now I’ve been told that there will be a way to use USB and SD with the iPad – you just have to buy a bunch of extra dongles. Leave it to Apple to find a way to up their revenues even more by charging extra for all the things that come built into every cheap netbook. It reminds me of how annoyed I was when I discovered that I’d have to buy an adapter to connect my Mac mini to a standard VGA monitor. The Apple brand adapter was $30 – although I did find a third party version for $7. And then, after shelling out more money, you have to carry all these little gadgets around with you if you want to have a truly usable (well, at least slightly more usable) device when you’re on the go. iDon’tThinkSo. January 14 Ebook readers in violation of the ADA?I’m all for helping the disabled, but has the ADA gotten completely out of hand? According to this article, The Justice Department has pressured universities to stop testing ebook readers until they’re fully functional for blind students: Campuses ordered to stop using Kindle DX until functional for the blind. I’m sorry, but this makes no sense whatsoever. Ebooks obviously shouldn’t be the only format in which reading material is available, but they shouldn’t be banned because a small minority of students are unable to use them. That’s like saying that the universities cannot have stairs, because they aren’t functional for those in wheelchairs – instead of saying they need to have ramps/elevators in addition to stairs. Should they yank out all the phones because those who have hearing impairments can’t use them? Sure, it might be easy for the ebook vendors to add a hardware button to activate text-to-voice, and they should certainly offer readers with that feature. But if it adds to the cost, should everyone be forced to pay extra for something many won’t use? That’s like mandating that every two-story house must have an elevator. There has to be some limit to the growing interference of government in all our lives, even when it’s for a good cause.
December 31 Here’s why I ignored your Facebook friend requestIf you sent me a Facebook friend request and I never confirmed it, that doesn’t mean I don’t like you. I have at least a dozen requests still sitting there, waiting for a decision. I haven’t sent them away into “Ignore” land, but I also haven’t convinced myself to confirm them. Here’s why: Whomever you are, I’m flattered that you want to be my friend. However, unlike some social networkers, I’m not a “friend collector.” I don’t see it as a competition where the highest number wins. In general, I like people – especially those who like me. But in order to call you a “friend,” and allow you into my little cyber-circle where you can read about my daily activities and off-the-top-of-my-head thoughts and opinions, I need to know you, at least a little bit. Unfortunately, I get quite a few friend requests from people I don’t know at all. Maybe you know me; maybe you’ve read my books or my articles or my blogs or my newsletters and you know what brand of computer I prefer and what type of cell phone I carry and you’ve read things I’ve written about my husband and my kids and my pets and that’s why you want to be my friend. But if I’ve never heard from you before (or even if I have, if it was a one-time email or it happened years ago), I don’t know that. I don’t know you and I don’t know why you want to be my friend – unless you tell me. When I get a friend request that comes with a message saying “I’ve been reading your newsletters every week for the last five years” or “I loved your Scene of the Cybercrime book” or “I heard you speak at BlackHat back in 2002,” or something similar, that at least gives me a tiny glimpse into who’s asking to join my Facebook family. Even better are the ones that say “I used your study guides to prepare for my MCSE exams” or “I’m a former police officer like you,” or something else that tells me more about who you are. When I get a friend request out of the blue from someone whose name I don’t recognize, I first click over to that person’s Facebook page to see what I can find out. If I see that you and I have a lot in common – you like the same TV shows and movies and books that I love, you admire the same public figures, you have many of the same hobbies and interests, you’re in the same business – I’m more likely to click that “Confirm” button. If we have several mutual friends in common, especially if they’re people I’m close to and whose judgment I know and respect, I’ll probably confirm you as a friend just because of that. On the other hand, If your info page indicates that you have a strong political agenda and it’s the polar opposite of my political viewpoint, I’ll be a bit wary about adding you to my friends list, since I’ve had to “hide” a few folks like that in the past due to their constant postings of political diatribes against the principles that I believe in. Note that I’m not talking about a mere listing that you belong to a particular political party – I’m talking about those people who are obviously obsessed, whose politics permeate every category in their personal information sheets and who come across as extremists who won’t be amenable to reasoned, friendly debate from anyone who disagrees with them. I figure I’ll save both of us some grief if I just click the “Ignore” button on those requests. If you give me no clue about why you’re friending me and your info page indicates you’re a single male who’s looking for women, I probably won’t be clicking your button. I’m happily married and not interested in that type of socializing. If you’re one of those folks who hides all his/her personal information from those who aren’t already friends, I totally understand why you do it, but without any information about you, I probably won’t confirm your friend request. Sometimes I might try doing a web search on your name (especially if it sounds vaguely familiar but I just can’t place it) to see if I can find out that way who you are. See, I’m looking for reasons to welcome you into my circle of friends – not for reasons to exclude you. But if I find nothing, I’m just not comfortable “flying blind” and bringing in a complete stranger. I admit it: if I don’t have anything else to go on, I may base my gut feelings on some pretty arbitrary things, such as what part of the country (or what country) you live in. I’ve found people from some areas to be generally friendlier than others, or at least to have more in common with me. If you grew up in Texas, we have a common cultural heritage and I’ll be more inclined to take a chance on you – but I also have an instant soft spot for Australians and those from a couple of other countries. Of course, there are great people in every state and every nation, and I have friends all over the globe, so that becomes a consideration only when you give me absolutely no other information on which to make a decision. The bottom line: if you really want to be my friend, unless you’re a relative or “real world” friend or someone I correspond with on a regular basis or someone who’s so famous I’m sure to know who you are, send me a little note and tell me about yourself and why you picked me to be your friend. Or at least make it easy for me to find out about you on your Facebook page or personal web site. Because if you’re like 95% of the people I “meet” online – wonderful, friendly, positive, intelligent folks – I don’t want to miss out on the opportunity to be your friend.
December 29 Will Apple bring the Tablet back to Life?The rumor mill is abuzz with “news” of Apple’s tablet computer, which may or may not be called the iSlate and might or might not debut in late January. Proving once again that even those of us who don’t particularly like their products have to concede that they are masters of marketing, the company has scheduled an “event” for January 26 in San Francisco, and there is much speculation that at least one purpose is the debut of the new tablet. I hope it’s true. Not because I want an iSlate – I imagine I would find it just as annoying as I find the Mac and iPhone – but because I’m hoping that if Apple is able to make the form factor into a best seller, other companies will play follow the leader and bring us more and better (and lower cost) tablet PCs running Windows, just as the iPhone spurred innovation on the parts of other mobile phone makers. For years, I’ve longed for a small, light, reasonably powerful tablet that didn’t cost an arm and a leg. Heck, I’d be willing to pay a hand and foot to get the right configuration. My dream tablet is a convertible, about the same size and weight as my little Sony TX laptop but with the hinged screen. It would be able to max out at a minimum of 4 GB of RAM and have a decent processor (not an Atom). I don’t care about a built in optical drive but I do want an SD slot and at least two USB ports. Given its rumored name and all the mockups I’ve seen, the Apple tablet won’t have a physical keyboard. That will keep it thin, but it will take away much of the functionality for me. I want to be able to use the device to take notes in meetings and I type far faster than I handwrite. Swype (the amazing text entry technology that’s built into my Omnia II phone) might help, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to do 90 wpm with it so I want a real keyboard. But I want it thin – and the Macbook Air and the Sony X series have proven that’s doable. Some say the Apple tablet will have a 10 inch screen; others say 7 inches. It will be interesting to see how that shakes out. I want something that’s easy to carry, but the screen needs to be large enough to make it worthwhile to use it instead of your smart phone. I’m curious to see if Apple will, in this tablet, correct the major flaws in the iPhone – the lack of removable battery and the lack of a flash memory slot. Those were big deal breakers for me when I briefly considered an iPhone, and the ability to add extra storage, especially, is even more important with a tablet computer. Some will say you can just store all your data in the cloud, and someday that might be a viable option, but I don’t believe we’re there yet. Will the iSlate be more than just an overgrown, glorified iPod or will it be a crossover device that can be truly useful for business as well as an entertainment gadget? I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Whatever is revealed in January, I have no doubt there are vendors already plotting and planning on how to improve on the concept, and that’s where my interest really lies.
December 28 Omnia II, Part III’ve had my Omnia II for a few weeks now, and have had a chance to get thoroughly familiar with its many features. If it’s possible to be in love with an electronic device, I am smitten. Granted, I may be more easily impressed than the youngsters who grew up with amazing technologies and take them for granted. But I can also be pretty picky, and the Omnia II does almost everything I could ever want a phone to do, and more. I say “almost” because, right off the bat, the first thing on my Omnia III wish list is a full GPS application like the one on the Droid. I have Google Maps and Bing maps, but they don’t give you full fledged navigation, and Google Maps has some difficulty finding the satellites if you’re indoors, a problem I didn’t notice when I played with the Droid. Other than that, I’m pleased as punch, and there are navigation apps that you can buy and install, so I’ll probably go that route (no pun intended). Now for some of the things that I do like. First and foremost: Swype. It took me about 3 days to completely get used to it. Now I am “typing” (swyping) text in faster than I would ever have imagined being able to do on a phone, even with a physical keyboard, much less a virtual one. I continue to be amazed by its accuracy. At first, I thought I had to go slowly and be precise but I soon learned that you can veer all over the keyboard and as long as you’re reasonably close to hitting the right keys, this software will know what you’re trying to say. It makes writing a long email or blog post on the phone feasible and even fun. It’s inevitable that this feature will come to other phones soon – it’s so good that I think the folks who created it deserve to get very rich – but at least I can say I had it first. Voice recognition was another happy surprise. I tried it on my i730 and i760 and never had very good results. Maybe it was my Texas accent, but those phones just never seemed to “get” what I was saying. The Nuance voice rec on the Omnia II didn’t even require any training. It’s easy to use and makes it much easier to make a call to one of my frequently called numbers. Voice commands include not only calling, but also sending email messages or text messages, opening applications, etc. There were a few things that threw me at first because they work differently from the original Omnia. I was pulling my hair out, trying to figure out how to set the camera to default to still shots instead of movies. Then I RTFMed, and discovered the reason I was opening it in video mode all the time. With the first Omnia, you had to hold down the camera button to open the camera; with this one, a mere press on the button opens it – and holding the button down opens the video recorder. In addition, instead of using the large middle key on the front of the device to take a photo, you use the camera key itself. Makes more sense, but it took me a few minutes to figure out what I was doing wrong at first. The camera takes decent pictures for a phone cam. It’s never going to replace my Nikon D300, but then it’s not intended for that purpose. Here’s a picture of our cat, looking in the mirror:
It’s good to have a camera with you on those occasions when you otherwise wouldn’t. I had to do some playing with the settings to get the best photo quality, and it does have quite a few configurable settings. I like the macro setting, and there are also “scene” settings for special exposure situations. Here’s an example of a photo taken with the macro setting (the business card):
Okay, here’s one more small complaint: sending a photo via email is more difficult than it should be. You can select a picture in the “My Pictures” application and, from the menu, choose to send it via Messaging or Bluetooth. However, selecting Messaging just brings up an MMS message; there’s no option to send via email. Why?
I did figure out how to do it – you have to go back into the camera app, find the photo and send it from there. But I don’t understand why you can’t send it from the Pictures app. I rarely ever use the stylus because I have semi-long fingernails (which also make it much easier to use Swype), but it’s nice to have one when you need it. The original Omnia came with a stylus but you couldn’t store it in the phone. They corrected that with the II, so now you always have it handy if, for example, you want to reboot the phone. You might be surprised to discover that doing so requires you to take the back cover off the phone. At first I was a little annoyed by that, but the cover pops on and off so easily that it’s really not a big deal. There’s a pinhole under the cover where you insert the stylus tip to reboot. It would also be nice if you didn’t have to pop the cover to remove or insert a micro SD card; however, I do understand that design decision. I remember with the i760, I once popped the card out when I didn’t intend to and could have easily lost it if I hadn’t noticed. Unlike with the original Omnia, you don’t have to take out the battery to remove or insert the card. Some users have complained that the Omnia II isn’t “simple” enough. I guess I don’t mind that. I like having lots of options, and different ways to get to the same place. I have my three home screens set up so that the main one displays my “Today” widget (which has the date, time and my appointments), the Favorites (photos of my most frequently called people that I can touch to call, text or send a quick email, my Weather gadget to display the temperature and weather conditions, the Bing widget where I can type in a search term without having to go through the menu to open the browser, and a link to the Facebook app for quick access to my FB page.
The second page has my nine favorite applications, including the mobile Office apps, calculator, voice recorder, quick memo and file manager. The third page contains my world clock. I’ve also rearranged the main menu pages to put the apps I use more often on the first two pages, and removed the Verizon apps that cost extra (such as VZ Navigator, VCast and Verizon’s Mobile IM and Mobile Email services. The Cube, although it has a “cool” factor, is a pretty inefficient way to navigate so I don’t use it at all. I wish there were a way to change the right softkey on the home screen to something else. All in all, I’m even happier with the Omnia II now that I’ve had the opportunity to get to know it better.
December 20 ‘Tis the Season to Be on the Look Out for Email ScamsJust last week, I wrote an article for TechRepublic about some of the latest email scams that have been going around this holiday season. You can check it out at http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/10things/?p=1227&tag=content;leftCol Then just today, Tom got one I hadn’t seen before, that spans several categories. It uses the name of a federal government agency – the FBI, and specifically Director Robert S. Mueller III; it claims that you’ve won a “lottery, inheritance, government contract award,” and it even includes the Nigerian angle. Why do they do that? Maybe somebody, somewhere, would have believed this message if they’d stuck to the story about the $800,000 windfall being withheld by banks in the U.K. But is there anyone who doesn’t immediately dismiss it as a scam as soon as they see the word “Nigeria?” Here’s the full text of the message:
Do you see a few clues that this might not be completely legit (aside from the fact that the FBI would not be involved in tracking down foreign lottery winners or heirs, that is)? Isn’t it interesting that this message was sent to “undisclosed recipients?” I guess there are lots of folks in this situation. It’s awfully nice of Director Mueller’s secretary to handle them all personally. How about that phone number for the purported FBI contact: Why would it be in Spain? Isn’t the FBI a domestic agency? And don’t you love that email domain: fbi-agents.com (and of course, being such an informal agency, they would use their first names as their email account user names. Or is it his first name? Later on, the message calls him “Mr. Ferdinand”). I particularly love that last line: “We advise that you stop further communication with imposters and forward any correspondence to the FBI.” Sounds like an excellent idea – before you send “Agent” Ferdinand the $250. Happy holidays and keep those cards and (scam) letters coming!
December 09 Getting to Know the Samsung Omnia IIStaying with Verizon Wireless was an easy decision. I’ve heard too many complaints from friends with AT&T, Sprint or T-Mobile about the 3G coverage, and been on the other end of their dropped or garbled calls. I’ve been with Verizon since leaving Cingular (AT&T) in 2002 and have never been in a place where I couldn’t get a good signal (granted, I don’t trek off into the wilderness much, but I do travel to other cities/states on occasion). I’ve also been with Samsung for many years. My first real smart phone was the i730, then I upgraded to the i760 and then to the original Omnia. Each one was better than the last – but a lot has happened in the smart phone market since I got that Omnia. The iPhone had a lot to do with that, and even though I don’t like Apple (My dislike is more for the company’s attitude than for its actual products), I have to credit them with starting something good that has flowed over to other phone vendors.
I enjoyed my Omnia and I had been looking forward to the Omnia II for a while, but this time there was a lot of competition out there. Verizon and Motorola dropped the Droid on us over a month ago, amidst a super hyped up ad campaign (those commercials were excellent, BTW), and it was tempting – especially since, at that time, Verizon still had not committed to a release date for the Omnia II or even confirmed that it would be running Windows Mobile 6.5 instead of 6.1. I hadn’t been very impressed by the Android phones I’d seen previously, but Android 2.0 looked pretty sweet. I journeyed down to the Verizon Store to try it out for myself and I have to admit that I came close. The GPS with Google Navigation was the feature that almost won me over. I liked the idea of a slide-out physical keyboard, too. On the other hand, I guess looks do matter. I just didn’t like the squared-off form factor and the phone didn’t fit in my hand as comfortably as my Omnia. Performance seemed pretty good but the interface was nothing special. And I have a certain loyalty to WinMo, after all these years. I decided to wait. The Droid would still be there later if I didn’t like the Omnia II. In the meantime, I started hearing about the HTC HD2. Its screen is even bigger than that of the OII and the SenseUI looks great. And it’s a Windows Mobile 6.5 phone, so no loyalty conflicts there. The problem: it’s not slated to come to the U.S. until sometime in 2010, and it’s not been announced yet which carrier will get it. Did I want to wait a few more months, and then find out it was only available on T-Mobile (which has great prices and nice phones but absolutely lousy coverage/service in my home area)? Nice as the HD2 looks, I decided to take the plunge now and go for the Omnia II. After all, it’s not like I would be spending $600 for the phone (as I did for my i730). The Omnia II is priced at $299 with a $100 rebate and the “new every two” program gives you another $100 off, for a final price of just over a hundred bucks with tax. I pay twice that for the monthly cell phone bill. The Omnia II was released last Wednesday and on Saturday, I was back at the Verizon Store. I played with it, compared it to the Droid, and found that I really liked it. The touch response was great – orders of magnitude better than the first Omnia’s – and the new TouchWiz UI made it an experience similar to, but IMO better than, that of the iPhone. I was ready to buy. Unfortunately, they had none in stock. I had them call three other stores in neighboring cities, with the same result. I guess I should have gotten there on release day; either these were selling like hotcakes or they didn’t get many in inventory. I went ahead and ordered the phone online (there at the Verizon Store) and saved $20 by doing so, but in return I had to deal with my thwarted desire for instant gratification. I was assured that the phone would be delivered to my doorstep this Tuesday. Sure enough, Fex Ex showed up at the house bright and early yesterday, with a little black box for me. What else do you get with it? There’s a USB/miniUSB cable that plugs into a wall charger (you can also unplug it from the charger and use it to connect to your computer), an in-line mic adapter for 3.5 mm headset, and three CDs: The user manual, a “companion CD” that includes the Getting Started Guide and the software for ActiveSync 4.5 and Windows Mobile Device Center, and the software for V Cast and VZAccess, as well as a little “Tips, Hints and Shortcuts” booklet.
Other accessories, such as car charger and vehicle mount, are available from Verizon, from Samsung or from third party vendors. It took a while to charge up the first time, over an hour – but I’ve been using it extensively yesterday and today and still have over 60% battery left. You can greatly expand the available storage (there’s 8 GB built in) by adding a micro SD card. I got a 16 GB card from Amazon for under $50 and popped it in. Like with the original Omnia, you have to take the back cover off to insert the micro SD card. Unlike with its predecessor, you don’t have to take the battery out to put in the micro card. Before I put the card in, I copied some of my favorite songs onto it. Then when I put in the card and powered up, Media Player informed me that new media files were detected and asked if I wanted to update the library. Press a button, wait a minute or so, and all my new songs were available. One thing I really like is that the new Omnia has a standard 3.5 mm headset jack so I don’t have to keep up with an adapter to use my Shure earphones. The sound through them is great. It’s not bad using the phone’s speakers, either; this Omnia has stereo speakers instead of just the one. The Omnia II is a little bigger than the original Omnia – that was necessitated by the 3.7 inch screen. It doesn’t really feel bigger in my hand or in my pocket, though. It’s still sleek and comfortable to work with.
The most outstanding feature on the Omnia II is that screen – the gorgeous AMOLED display. Photos don’t do it justice. Watching a video on it is a fantastic experience. As you can see, I’ve already customized my home screen:
Another big advantage that the Omnia II has over the Omnia is its customization. For example, I liked the “widgets” bar on the left side of the screen, which introduced with the original Omnia, but I didn’t like being stuck with the widgets that came with it. With the Omnia II, you can get rid of widgets you don’t want and you can download more widgets – many of them free – from the Widget Store. My favorite widget (which has a permanent place on my main home page) are the Favorites widget that let you put the pictures of those people you most frequently contact on your home screen, where you can simply tap the photo to bring up links to call or send mail or a text message. I also like the “Smart Memo” widget. If I want to make a note of something, I can just tap it and open a new memo where I can handwrite or type my note. Microsoft OneNote (Mobile version) is also installed along with Mobile Word, Excel and PowerPoint, if you prefer to use it for notes. As I happily downloaded free widgets (calculator, unit converter, and so forth) and arranged them on my home screens (with the Omnia II, you have three home screens you can scroll between), for the first time I began to understand the appeal of the iPhone and its App Store. Of course, the Omnia II is first and foremost a phone, and that’s something that iPhone users say is not one of their device’s strong points. So I was eager to make a call and see if the voice quality was as good as with my original Omnia (which was always excellent). I could tell no difference with the Omnia II. The phone dialer keypad is bigger and more responsive, making it easier to dial numbers, and there’s a Favorites link on the dialer screen, too. Setting up my Exchange account took only a few minutes and email works great. It’s easier to read due to the bigger screen and bigger default font (you can change the font size if you think it’s too big). Since email is one of the primary uses for my phone (more so than making voice calls), I was happy to see that the interface is great and easy to use. Web browsing also works well with both Opera and IE Mobile. I’m one of the few people in the world who prefers IE over Opera, and I do wish I could figure out how to set IE to be the default browser. But both are quite usable, although that is one area where I’ll admit the iPhone excels. I haven’t had time to play with all of the applications that came with the phone – there are six pages of them – or install many of my own. I’ve worked some with Swype and found it surprisingly accurate, but I need to practice a little with it. I’m eager to try out speech recognition and download Google Maps to see how it works with the GPS; the Verizon Store rep told me he was “95% sure” that the GPS is unlocked and the specs say it has both assisted and standalone GPS so it should be. I’ll be checking out those features and more in the upcoming days, and I’ll blog about them in Part 2 of this post. Meanwhile, first impression is a good one. I think I’m going to enjoy this phone a lot.
November 24 Ding, Dong – the Dell is HereI was notified back in October that, as a Windows 7 Launch Party host, I had been automatically entered into a contest and had won a free Dell laptop. I was wary of the initial notification since I get scam email all the time, but after checking with my MVP lead and discovering that it was legit, I was curious to see what I’d won. Well, it was finally delivered yesterday and I’ve been playing with it this morning. It’s an Inspiron 1750 – a honkin’ big thing (much too big to sit on my lap) with a 17 inch monitor, but noticeably lighter than our 17 inch HP “tank.” I like the finish: a glossy piano black cover that’s very classy looking and a nice brushed gray with black keyboard that includes a number pad (as most of the 17 and 18 inchers do, but I’m used to small ultracompacts that don’t).
It has a 2.10 GHz T4300 dual core processor and 4 GB of RAM and came with 64 bit Windows Home Premium installed. It also came with the ugliest Dell wallpaper I’ve ever seen and a slew of software “extras” (i.e., crapware) that I didn’t want. The first thing I did after the setup was change that wallpaper; the second thing was to remove the McAfee Security Suite that started driving me nuts right from the beginning. Thank goodness there are better behaved AV solutions like VIPRE. I haven’t had a chance to run the battery down yet; according to Windows, it has 4 hours and 39 minutes remaining with a 95% charge. If that’s accurate, that’s pretty good battery life for a laptop its size.
It took way too long to get booted up at first, but that’s not because of Windows or the hardware; it’s all those “extras” Dell installed. I’ve been steadily removing them. One thing that I did keep was the one year subscription to LoJack, the anti-theft service. For now, I’ve kept the odd little Mac-like dock at the top of the screen, too. It actually sort of serves the purpose of a separate quick launch bar, something that you can’t do in Windows 7 (you can add the QL bar to the taskbar, but – as far as I’ve been able to tell – there’s no way to detach it and make it its own separate toolbar). You can add your own shortcuts to the dock, so I’ve customized it and I actually like it. Once you cut through the unwanted programs, free trials and so forth, performance is pretty good. Of course, I haven’t yet installed much software of my own, but I think it’s going to be a pretty useable computer. It’s way too big for me to serve as my only laptop. But I can see taking it on trips, along with a smaller machine. I prefer my tiny Sony for carrying around at conferences, in meetings, and so forth. But I often find myself coming back to the hotel at night and having to do more complex work that requires me to research the web while working on a Word document, for instance, and a large screen and better keyboard would definitely be welcome then. All in all, it’s a decent computer. It’s not the one I would have picked for myself, but for the price (which of course is not “nothing” since I’ll have to pay taxes on it, but will end up being about 33% of the retail price of $750, or less than $300), it’s a darn good deal. So – thank you, Microsoft and Dell. |
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