I loved the Tablet PC concept from the very beginning, and I bought one of the first generation convertible tablets, a Toshiba running Windows XP Tablet Edition. Overall, it was a decent little computer but it had several drawbacks: it was too heavy and too thick to be used comfortably in that way, and the price was way too high. When I got a new portable, I opted for a regular laptop form factor – a Sony VAIO ultra compact – instead. When I replaced that one, it was with yet another Sony. I’ve often said that if only the VAIO’s screen would rotate and lie down, it would be the perfect portable computer.

Alas, Sony doesn’t seem interested in making that dream a reality. And in fact, they appear to have abandoned the TX model entirely. Now my choices are:

• The super tiny 8 inch P series – which I’m utterly attracted to but don’t think I would like much for getting real work done; the screen is just too small and although I’ve tried one out and found the small keyboard to be very good, I’m not sure I could ever grow to love that J mouse pointing device.
• The 10.1 inch W series, which has the right size and weight and a touchpad, as well as a good price, but unlike the TX doesn’t have a built in DVD drive, and worse, only has 1 GB of RAM.

A problem with both of these is that battery life is only 4 hours or so, not nearly enough to get me through a day at a conference. I really would prefer not to have to spend my lunch hour hunting down an outlet to recharge my battery.  If you want more powerful specs and better battery life from Sony, at a higher price, you have to go up to a 13.1” screen and 3.3 lbs. Granted, it’s only a bit bigger and heavier than my TX, but I really don’t WANT something a bit bigger.

That means that, for the first time in a long time, my next laptop probably won’t be a Sony. What will it be, then?  Once again, I’m taking a look at Tablet PCs. The whole touch screen idea has come a long way since I had my Tablet back in 2003. Multi-touch technology has increased the flexibility of Tablets. Handwriting recognition has improved significantly. More applications are now “pen-friendly.”  But most of the existing Tablets I see don’t impress me. They’re still too big, too heavy and/or too expensive.

Fujitsu makes an 8.9 inch Lifebook (the P1630) that intrigues me. At 2.2 lbs., it’s just about the size and weight I’d like, but costing $1899 with only 1 GB of RAM, a 1.2 GHz processor and an 80 GB 5400 hard drive, it’s way overpriced. Flybook makes an attractive 8.9 inch touchscreen Tablet with a dual core processor and 3 GB of RAM – but its wireless card doesn’t support 802.11N and at $2589, it makes the Fujitsu look inexpensive. Of course, HP and Dell offer Tablets, but none of those have that special something that makes me say “wow, I have to have that.”

There’s been plenty of hype recently about a Tablet from Apple. If it does in fact exist, I’m sure it will be very pretty, like other Apple products. I’m also sure I won’t want it, just as I don’t want a (very pretty) iPhone because of all the deal breakers like no SD card slot and no user removable battery and the prohibition on getting applications anywhere except from their own App Store.  But this week, I saw something that has all the “wow” factor of an Apple product and it’s from … Microsoft. The Courier is just a prototype at this point, but what a sweet one it is, at least at first glance. It opens like a book with facing multi-touch screens and appears to feature a very jazzed up variation on OneNote. Watch the video here and see if you’re as impressed as I was:
http://www.physorg.com/news172999824.html 

Much as I like what I see, I still have questions and concerns. The lack of a keyboard bothers me some; I like the idea of being able to make quick notes in handwriting but for longer blocks of text, I can type much faster than I can handwrite. I’m also wondering if that notebook interface is the whole thing. Will this thing run Windows as the underlying OS?  Can I install other applications, like Word and Outlook and my photo editing software?  It has wi-fi connectivity, but will it have a built in camera and microphone for video conferencing? Can I plug in a USB keyboard and external monitor? What are the tech specs? Will it be powerful enough to serve as my primary portable computer? I don’t want to have to carry around two different devices (three if you count my smart phone). And if not, is it going to be cheap enough to make it practical to buy both it and a full fledged notebook?

Lots of questions and no answers yet. But I’m still interested. According to all the reports, though, the Courier probably won’t be available for a while. In the meantime, would someone please make a nice, ultra compact, powerful convertible Tablet PC for under $2000? I just might buy it. Until that happens, I’ll stick with the VAIO TXN, which is now running Windows 7 and works pretty nicely.

deb@shinder.net   www.debshinder.com

The concept of thousands of private launch parties all over the world to kick off the Windows 7 release was a splendid idea. Techie folks who have been running the beta, RC, and RTM can invite their friends over to see the new OS in action. Microsoft supplies party favors and gives the party hosts a licensed copy of Win7 for their trouble. People get together and have fun and Microsoft gets some free publicity.

As with so many things, it’s in the execution that things get bogged down and the problem is … outsourcing. Instead of handling it themselves, Microsoft offloaded the launch party organization to House Party, Inc. I knew I was going to have issues with this site when I went to sign up and saw that they were asking for my full date of birth – on a site that did not use encryption. Hello, Identity Thieves!  I used a fake birth date but how many people just put their real info out there to be transmitted across a non-secure connection?

This morning, I got the email notifying me that I had been chosen as a “finalist” to be a party host. To be confirmed, I had to complete a list of things: Sign in to the HouseParty site and set up a party page, invite 9 guests, upload a headshot of myself and “at least 3 photos of your choice,” post a comment on the party blog and cast a vote in the first party poll. The problems started with item number one. The link to the HouseParty site just gave me an error message. I finally got onto the site the old fashioned way (through its front page) and after waiting minutes for it to load, was able to sign in. However, in the middle of completing the information form, the page timed out and I had to start all over again. Then I got the part where I could invite guests. I looked up and typed in all the email addresses, and when I hit the button, got another timeout message. Couldn’t go back to the previous page. Had to close the browser and once again, start over. I had similarly exasperating experiences when I tried to upload photos, with it taking several tries before it “took.”

Finally I have all the requirements completed (I think). I realize the site’s server was probably overloaded from all the Win7 Launch party hosts trying to get in and get everything done (because the notification tells you that in order to be approved, you must be “among the first finalists” to complete the tasks. But if this service isn’t able to handle the load, it should not have taken on the job. It took me more than an hour and a half of my time to do something that should have taken no more than ten or fifteen minutes.

Thank goodness I’m the one who is organizing the actual party – not House Party, Inc. Perhaps it will go a little more smoothly than the sign-up process did.

LATER: As if the above weren’t annoying enough, I now find that when a guest responds, the House Party site can’t be bothered to tell you in the email notification who it was or what the response was – you’re required to go back to the site to find out (see below):

Grrrr.

deb@shinder.net    www.debshinder.com

All of us who aren’t oblivious – or too young or old to care – have opinions about current events and the issues that are in the news every day. Most of us who belong to social networking groups have yielded, on occasion, to the temptation to post a link to a news story about a political issue or personality, to make a comment in a status message about our approval or disapproval of a proposed piece of legislation or a candidate for office, or at the very least, to click the “Like” button when someone else, braver (or more reckless) than we are, posts such a political statement. Some of us have gotten into political arguments with friends of friends, people we don’t know at all and would never have interacted with otherwise, through the magic of the friend feed.

And that’s okay. Politics is a part of our lives and for many, it’s an important part. Our beliefs are part of who we are – but (for all but the obsessed) it’s only a part. And it’s important to remember that, especially in an environment that’s as diverse, dynamic and potentially volatile as a social network.  This is a “place” where we often mix co-workers (and bosses), clients/customers, family members, old college buddies and miscellaneous people we know or who know us (or think they want to). My social network includes my most intimate and longstanding of relationships, such as my spouse and children and the aunt who remembers when I was in diapers, along with professional colleagues from both IT and law enforcement, and a healthy dose of fellow writers in all genres. It also includes some of my neighbors and local government representatives,a sprinkling of “fans” whom I don’t know but who faithfully follow my career and comprise the audience for the books, articles and blog posts I write, and a few folks who barely know me but whom I admire and am honored to have on my friends list.

Some of these relationships, such as those with the people I’ve worked with to try to make our city better, have politics as their very foundation (or at least started that way). Some, such as those with people I met on writing lists or photography forums or those I work with on tech projects, are based on mutual interests that have nothing to do with politics. There are folks I’ve known online for years and gotten along with famously, and then learned by happenstance that they absolutely loath anyone who would vote for the party I usually support (oops; I guess that’s me). There are others with whom I’ve tip-toed around all political issues, assuming for whatever reason that they belonged to the opposite camp, and then discovered to my delight that they had been doing the same with me and that our political beliefs were almost identical.

Politics doesn’t just make strange bedfellows; it also makes for strange behavior. They say politics and religion are two of the discussion topics that can destroy a friendship, and for some people, their political stance is their religion. I enjoy a good political debate now and then among friends – when I can be sure I’m with someone who won’t take it personally or make it personal. But occasionally I encounter someone who purports to be my friend but takes every opportunity to make disparaging comments about everything that I believe in, and every subtle or not-so-subtle attempt to respectfully disagree or even to change the subject fails to get the message across that I don’t appreciate having my opinions and beliefs trashed. I am not talking about the occasional exuberant post when your candidate wins or your bill passes. I’m not talking about honest explorations of hot-topic issues with the goal of understanding how those who are different from you formed their opinions. I’m talking about a constant barrage of negativity about the other side. I’m talking about when politics is all you can talk about. Hey, that gets old even when I agree with your politics. And I’m talking about taking your politics to a personal level.

You’re probably wondering what inspired this little tirade on this particular day, so I’ll tell you. And I’m sorry if I embarrass someone (though I’m not about to name names) but I consider the behavior completely unacceptable, especially in a semi-public “place” like my Facebook page. Last night my husband and son took me out for a delightful belated birthday dinner. We had a wonderful time. And I posted about it in my status update. This morning, I got up to find a comment from a “friend” – lecturing me about my choice of entree. Informing me that it “wasn’t a good choice if you care about the species” and including a link to some environmentalist propaganda to educate me about the error of my ways.

I don’t want to get into the whole eco thing with those reading this. Whether or not you believe in all the tenets of the conservationists (as for me, some I do and some I don’t) isn’t the point. The point is that this was posted on my status update, which is visible to everyone on my friends’ list. It’s like walking up to someone at a dinner party and, in front of everyone she knows, chiding her for what’s on her plate. It’s not the same as taking one aside and making your pitch on behalf of the poor fish in private (which can be done on Facebook via the private message function). It’s not the same as whether or not the bass are being overfished and whether legislation should be passed to protect them. It didn’t do a thing to save the fish I had already eaten.  It’s just rude.  It’s also counter-productive because it doesn’t win people over to your cause; it makes them resistant to it. Remember the old admonition: “It’s not what you say; it’s how you say it.”

I realize, though, that there’s another reason this particular comment rubbed me the wrong way. This is a “friend” who has never posted anything on my wall, since sending me a friend request some months ago. I have some other friends who occasionally lecture me on politics but I just shrug it off. Why? Because those people really are my friends. Those are people who wished me a happy birthday on Thursday, who sent me condolences a couple of weeks ago when I posted about two deaths in the family, who sent supportive messages when I posted about Tom’s plane being “lost in the ether,” who click the “like” button when I post photos of my cats or my latest remodeling project. They’re involved in my life, so they’ve earned the right to tell me when they don’t like something I said or did. They don’t stay silent for months and then pop up only to lecture me and try to make me feel bad about what I had for dinner and turn my happy, celebratory mood sour. Their politics may be different from mine, and they may sometimes let me know it, but they don’t throw it in my face.

So go ahead and post about politics if something comes up that’s so compelling you feel it’s important to let others know where you stand. I’m not asking you to do otherwise. Just realize that if you want to be someone’s friend, that involves a bit more than just swooping in to criticize when you see that person do something that isn’t politically correct.

deb@shinder.net    www.debshinder.com

So you installed the Windows 7 Release Candidate and you’ve been happily running it and have it configured exactly like you want it. You can keep using it until March 2010 (or June if you’re patient enough to put up with the shutdowns every two hours that will start in March), but sooner or later, you’ll have to give it up and go with the final code. You can, of course, just start over from scratch and rebuild your empire manually. There’s a certain satisfaction in doing that – but these days, many of us just don’t have a lot of extra time on our hands, and we would really like to have a way to preserve some or all of the configuration tweaking we’ve done.

There are two ways, one of which is officially supported by Microsoft and one of which isn’t. I’ve tried both, on two different Win7 RC machines. I described my experience with the Easy Transfer utility in an August post to the Amazon End User blog. This is the method that Microsoft recommends. You create a .MIG file that holds user data and information about your OS and application settings, do a clean install and then restore the information from the .MIG file. It’s pretty straightforward but it has some drawbacks. It takes quite a bit of time to run the Easy Transfer wizard on the old installation, install the new instance of the OS, install all your applications again and restore all the settings. I also ended up with a corrupted Outlook profile, which may or may not be attributable to the Easy Transfer process. Creating a new profile fixed the problem, but it was a bit of an annoyance.

So when I decided to take my Dell XPS from RC to RTM, I thought I’d try the unsupported method. Now, realize that if you go this route, you’re on your own when it comes to troubleshooting problems you have with your new Win7 installation. Since I’m not one who ever calls tech support anyway, that wasn’t an issue for me. I figured the worst that could happen was that it wouldn’t work, and then I’d just wipe it and do a clean install and start over. This method is a true upgrade, which not only preserves your data and settings (without having to take time to restore them) but also keeps your applications intact so you don’t have to reinstall them. If you have lots and lots of apps, or some for which you’ve lost the product keys, this method might be worth a try.

Because Microsoft doesn’t want you to upgrade the RC code, the Windows 7 installer detects when you’re running it and doesn’t give you the option to do an upgrade installation (you can do an upgrade if it detects that you’re running Vista SP1 or above). The trick is to fix that prohibition. To do that, you have to first extract the Windows 7 RTM ISO file to a folder. Then follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the sources folder.

2. Find the file called cversion.ini.

3. Open it in Notepad.

4. Under [HostBuild], change MinClient=7233 to MinClient=7000

5. Save the file.

6. Create an ISO file and run setup.exe

You will now have the option to do an upgrade installation. Select this option. I started the upgrade installation and then went off to do some chores. When I came back a couple of hours later, it was at the point where it asks for the product key. I entered the RTM key and it quickly proceeded through the final stage. I had a tiny scare when, at the end of the installation (after the “preparing your desktop” message), I got a black screen with the mouse pointer fully moveable, but no desktop. I rebooted, logged on, and my desktop loaded normally. My wallpaper, icons, gadgets, etc. were all in place. All of my applications worked flawlessly, including Outlook. I’ve been using it now for a couple of days and have encountered no problems.

I can’t promise that the RC to RTM upgrade will go this smoothly for everyone. Again, I stress that it’s a non-supported method. But it seems to have worked like a dream for me, and saved me a good bit of time. For step by step instructions and screenshots on using this method, see

http://www.intowindows.com/how-to-upgrade-windows-7-rc-to-rtm/