Have we been here already?

Fear not... I will not bore you with another end-of-the-year story with a list of best/worst gadgets/events/you-name-it... I just wanted to tell you about the latest gadget I enjoy. After testing a dozen or so Bluetooth phone handsets it looks like the Retro, available from ThinkGeek.com delivers the best sound quality I have ever had. I can hear the conversation very clearly and the other parties always report very good quality of my voice. Plus it is very comfortable to handle, although a little bulky to carry around. I plan to use it in the office, so the bulk won't be a problem.

The funny thing is the 100-years old design is unbeatable. Large acoustic converter delivers really good sound, the handle is comfortable and the round end is very comfortable to hold at the ear. The microphone faces your mouth directly, so it captures what is needed. Oh and if I forgot to mention - it recharges via mini - USB port :)

Happy New Year!

Vista: Sleeping with the Enemy

So it has been nine days with Windows Vista so far... My general view has not been changed, in fact nothing spectacular has happened over the last week. I decided to give the upcoming Vista Service Pack 1 a chance. This means I will not upgrade to Windows XP until SP1 comes out and things do not improve. Several issues are still on the very top of my list of Vista shortcomings, but two are worth mentioning here.

First, the entire system freezes at least once a day. This is something I have not experienced since the Windows 98 days. Both Windows 2000 and Windows XP used to run extremely stable on my hardware. I kept on suspending / resuming machines for months, with just a small number of reboots a year, mainly when the Windows Update service forced me to do so... And having heard so much about how secure Vista is, I have never imagined it can crash on a daily basis. Of course this may relate to some non-Microsoft software, as the Lenovo X61 (my primary machine) came loaded with junk. I think I got rid of most of the junk, after devoting three days to clean the machine that arrived directly from the factory. But it still keeps on hanging. It happens gradually, first one of the applications freezes (does not accept any events), then a second one and so on, and finally even the task bar does not respond to clicking. Ctrl-Alt-Del does nothing.... so I am even not able to look up a process list... In the end the only thing alive is a mouse cursor on a black background. I would probably not complain on the very long startup of the OS, but when it hangs, it takes me some 15 to 30 minutes to recover... (forced reset, startup with disk check, restoring the applications...). Imagine this on batteries or discussing something with a customer... A pure disaster...

Second is the battery life. The CPU is never idle. I think I got rid of the most CPU consuming processes, but still the final result is the system in the energy conservation mode lasts 3,5 to 4 hours on a double capacity battery. It should last at least five hours. I just cannot imagine people ordering these laptops with single capacity batteries... What do they get? 90 minutes? On the other hand I must admit the L7500 processor that powers the X61 is fast. When Vista does not interfere, the applications are very snappy. This can be seen especially in the Firefox, when it renders complex Web pages. They appear lightning fast. But this just shows how much of a CPU is being eaten by the system, as the entire user experience cries "sloooow".

Having said that I am continuously looking for some positive features, some reasons to cope with all that Vista burden, some rewards... Have not found many so far, but here are a few little stars on the dark sky:

• Generally better structure of user's data - everything sits in C:\USERS\ - far simpler convention compared to the XP "Documents And Settings". And multimedia files (music, photos, videos) are not in the Documents folder, but just beside it.
• Bluetooth Stereo A2DP - not native, but better integrated - uses the standard Microsoft enumerator and "just" a Broadcom driver. But the user experience is still not here. While Vista allows different applications use different audio devices (like iTunes or Media Player to go via the bluetooth headphones, and other audio events through a standard speaker), there is no way to change this after the application is started. To switch YouTube session from a speaker to bluetooth, I have to shut down the browser, connect the headphones and start the browser again.
• Search integration - much better than before, to be honest I have not installed the Google Desktop, as so far Vista has done well in this field - finds both files and Outlook messages instantly.
• UAC or User Account Control - brings a feeling of improved security - when something is weird, like an executable downloaded from the Internet and just about to run, the system prompts for permission in a very clear manner.
• TPM or Trusted Platform Module. There is one in my X61, but I really have not realized yet how to use it. Probably the BitLocker full disk encryption would be the right way to go, but I have two probvlems with BitLocker: first, it is in the Vista Enterprise and Ultimate only, while I have just the Business edition and second, a quick browse through the Microsoft Knowledge Base looking for BitLocker fixes is really scary... There are a number of really serious KB issues / fixes related to the BitLocker... So at least for now it seems more likely I would lose my data due to a system bug than I would lose my laptop unencrypted... I will follow that development, as having secure data on a portable device is a very good idea. But it just has to work rock - steady and not slow down the system any more.

That is about it folks for a week's worth of Vista experience. If you have something positive to tell me (some things I am missing when complaining on Vista), just let me know. I still think the system will survive after the Sp1 is applied. Generally I am the "glass half full" type of a person and something mus really go wrong when I give up!

And as we approach Christmas, let me wish you a few days without the latest-and-greatest technology hassles :)

Vista Bloatware

My old and faithful ThinkPad T41 is dying... Must be some kind of mechanical fatigue, as it runs very well when sitting on my desk, but any attempt to move it results in a total blackout. Suddenly I have a fixed laptop... On the other hand this is the most graceful death of a computer I can imagine, since I can still access all the data and settings while preparing a new machine. Generally I have been very happy with IBM/Lenovo, so I decided to stick with the manufacturer. I have anticipated a lot of changes in notebooks over the three years I have been using the T41. But after a quick browse through what is available today, I found (to my surprise), the industry has barely moved an inch forward... At least judging by the specs. I decided to go for a convertible, notebook / tablet design, so the obvious choice has been the X61 from Lenovo. Quick look at the specs and I am surprised:

• CPU speed: 1,6GHz (my 3-years old T41 is 1,5GHz, but OK, the X61 has actually two cores...)
• Storage capacity: 160GB (same as the recently upgraded T41)
• Battery life: 5 hours with a large 8-cell battery (same as T41)

But the T41 has been really dying so I did not have too much time to look for the current holy grail of notebooks. The risk: preloaded Windows Vista. Trying to avoid Vista for some time now has probably been a sign of me getting older. A few years ago I would kill just to be able to play with the new shiny OS. But I have been talking to many people, asking what advantages Vista has had... and nobody could really tell... So after making sure I can upgrade to Windows XP in case Vista does not meet my expectations, I decided to order the machine. BTW my expectations are not very elevated these days. Two basic applications I run (Firefox and Microsoft Outlook) have to be running smoothly and I need storage for all the music and photos, 160GB will do for now, I will be upgrading the hard drive in a year or two, but hey, have done this with ThinkPad before :).

I turned the machine on as soon as it arrived on Friday. It kept spinning the drive for several hours setting things up just to announce in the afternoon it was ready. In the meantime it downloaded more than a gigabyte of patches and hot-fixes and rebooted itself a dozen times. On Saturday I found it still keeps spinning the hard drive (indexing files?) and the extended battery dries out much qucker than anticipated (definitely I was not going to achieve the 5 hours up time...). I startet getting rid of all the extra software supplied. More than twenty executables on the Windows autorun list. Half of them gone now. Norton Internet Security. Gone. Diskeeper. Gone. A number of funny Lenovo enhancements. Gone. The drive slowed down. But one of the CPU cores kept on ticking on a 25% load - a definite reason for the high battery drain. Downloaded the Sysinternals Process Explorer to find the WmiPrvSE.EXE - the Windows WMI handler being responsible for the high CPU usage and the subsequent trails led to the iPlusManager - a mobile connectivity application from my cellular data provider interfacing with the Option Globetrotter HSDPA modem (even when the modem is not present...). So that is gone from the Autostart list too, I will be launching the application when I really have to connect on the road.

Some twenty hours later I have the computer more or less usable, Firefox is running (no Outlook yet) and the memory usage settled on 1,1GB. Geeezzz... this used to take less than a quarter on T41/Windows XP... Setting up Firefox was not a piece of cake either. I had to start it several times "as an administrator" to let the plugins install... Then it took me two hours to install PDF Creator, the tool I use every day. First I run the installer just to see it fail and not being able to uninstall until I disabled the UAC (User Account Control) via MSCONFIG.EXE, rebooted, uninstalled the non working installation of PDF Creator, enabled the UAC and rebooted again. Finally I succeeded installing PDF Creator as a network printer using the PDFCreator-0_9_3_GPLGhostscript.exe server install run as administrator in Windows XP compatibility mode.

After years of laziness introduced by Windows 2000 and especially Windows XP I feel again like in the old DOS days - having to dig here and there and try various settings before the application successfully runs in the end. This may sound funny, but unfortunately Vista is the proof things are definitely not going in the right direction... I do not feel anything in Vista is substantrially better than it has been in XP. I would not install Vista, I have done that being somehow forced by the hardware vendor giving me no other choice. It is very likely Vista is the last incarnation of a client operating system, as we know. By the time Microsoft is ready with its successor (by 2012?) we will probably not have too many things to do offline and to store locally. In 2012 I will not care what OS runs my applications, as they all will run in the Internet cloud. And my portable device will be just a window to look at that cloud...

Still Waiting For The Apple Tablet

I have been in a waiting mode for couple of years now. Waiting for a Internet tablet I would use... My last one was Compaq TC1000, I liked it a lot... May be it was a bit slow with video content, may be its battery did not last long enough to forget the charger... May be its pen input system was not too precise and reliable... May be full Windows XP installed there was an overkill... But all in all it worked. When I sold it in 2005, I did not imagine at that time it would take two years (and counting) for the world to come up with a solution.

So in the meantime we have had:

• HTC Universal with VGA display and 3G/UMTS/WiFi - too slow
• Iliad e-reader and now the Kindle from Amazon - both just not designed for generic web access
• The iPhone - good design, but it is a phone, not a web browser
• Nokia N800 - not bad, but it crashes everytime I try to access my GMail on it
• Microsoft Origami - bad idea by design, trying to put the entire big OS on a tablet
• OQO - a good concept, but it has been painfully slow...
  

And what we need is a thin and light device, with a screen of at least 1024x768, visible outdoors. The device should have finger operated touch screen and an optional keyboard, mainly for entering the http:// web addresses and user names / passwords and for typing short messages. Battery life should be 6-10 hours minimum (that is enough for daily web activities, when you have an option to recharge overnight). Switching on and off should be instant. And the primary function should be Web access, without compromises - this means for example all the major AJAX web sites should run fast and wthout a glitch. Secondary functions could be music playback, GPS navigation and video conferencing.

Interestingly almost all of the above specs are met by the Nokias: the N800 and the upcoming N810 (with a slideout keyboard). Buth the Nokias are not speed demons, and - as I mentioned above - the stability of the OS still has not reached the satisfactory level, I do not use the N800 often, but I keep on rebooting it frquently, even afte the upgrade to the latest 4.0 OS.

For all that time my bet has been on Apple. They seem to be one of very few companies really focusing on user experience. All the others as focused on their business and that is why they consistently fail to deliver what users expect. I really hope the wait is near the end. BTW if Apple fails to deliver a killer web tablet soon, I seriously consider going back to the Compaq TC1000. They can be picked up for around $300 now on eBay plus $100 for a new battery...

Facebook

We live in a connected world. The number of connections we have is not just a number of phone calls. Email floods us. Most of us have a number RSS feeds delivering them various notifications. Or bookmarks within a Web browser that are clicked frequently. We participate in various forums, consuming the feeds. And then comes facebook. The phone calls are definitely a minority. The old world of synchronous call sessions is going away... Three weeks ago I posted some musings on the Telecom 2.0, mostly based on the fantastic speech by Lee S. Dryburgh.

Inspired, I decided to set up a facebook account for myself. After some two weeks I think I start to realize the potential the facebook brings us, especially how it is posed to change the way we communicate. The foundation of facebook (as is the case with other community sites) is the network of people - to - people connections, coupled with various ways to publish a personal live data stream. Seems quite simple, but I must say, being new to facebook, I am blown away of its impact. Suddenly, after joining, I am communicating with so many people effortlessly...

I have just 40+ friends registered to date... not very many... but the amazing thing is I know what they are up to and what they like. Having so little time to spare I have, I could not imagine myself having 40+ private phone conversations with them. But with facebook it is somehow natural and not very time consuming. Probably the keyword here is asynchronism. As the life goes on, people organize in groups, have their activities, you are free to follow them, to join them, organize your own... Facebook is the new email and SMS / text messaging. Email and SMS have always been asynchronous. But they have always been addressed TO somebody. With facebook you just reflect your life (or just the part of it you are willing to share) and the friends have a chance to follow you. This all happens with the aid of a galaxy of applications running on top of the facebook platform, they make broadcasting your personal metadata even easier. Your whereabouts, your moods, your current status...

Although I am very excited with what I get at facebook, it is quite clear this is just a beginning... especially when you imagine coupling you personal GPS receiver and a mobile phone with that platform....