An interesting take on the iPad Mon, 2010.02.22
Posted by tevirselrahc in apple, blog, hardware.Tags: apple, ipad, market, traceback
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Matt Gemmel has a very interesting blog entry on the iPad. He makes some good points about a lot of people missing the point of the device and helps clarify some of my questions in my previous post regarding what market Apple wants to define.
Good read!
Apple’s iPad Tue, 2010.02.09
Posted by tevirselrahc in apple, hardware.Tags: apple, ipad
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It’s been announced. The new revolutionary gizmo from Apple.
Yes, it looks good. Yes, Jobs did his usual spiel to present the new toy. And yes, when I saw the presentation I wanted one.
The good thing for me is that Apple is giving me some time to think. Had it been available at launch, it might have been a less rational, “want” reaction to buy. So I get to cool off a bit.
Now, my feeling is that it is trying to carve itself a niche market. Then again, Apple is typically good at carving niche and generating “want”. I am just not quite sure yet what that niche is… And I do not yet know whether I fit within that niche… There are certainly some very nice aspects to it: in-house portability (it may be easier to use on a couch to look up IMDB information about the movie I’m watching), functionality (all my iPhone apps and more), decorative (an expensive picture frame when not in use), readable (it’ll be easier to read my eBooks on this than on the iPhone), etc. But it will certainly not be a “real” computer replacement (I don’t see myself editing documents or pictures on it).
So does it fit my usage pattern? In some way, yes. But is it worth the price? That is still debatable. And Apple might lower the cost in the near future like it did for the iPhone. If I compare it to a dedicated eBook reader (e.g., Kindle), then this has much more capacity (and colour) for an incremental cost. One of the things I would have liked to see is some memory extensibility (e.g., an SDHC slot). Granted, Apple wants to seel the enhanced hardware, but even my MacBook Pro has an SDHC slot now – and this fits between the iPhone and the MacBook!
So will I buy it? If it were up to me, I would still think for a while. But SWMBO has already decided that this is the device for her, so we will be getting one when it becomes available…
Windows 7… Tue, 2010.02.09
Posted by tevirselrahc in apple, hardware, microsoft, software.comments closed
I had to install Windows 7 on one of the machines at home. Well, maybe I did not have to, but I still did. I guess I was hoping for something better than Vista. So I went ahead and got the upgrade and installed it.
After two weeks of running Windows 7, I got a black screen of death… Great start! Reboot, driver updates, restart – all seemed OK.
Last week, I finally got around to playing a bit more with it and looked that the performance index… I was a bit surprised to see go from 7.5 under Vista to 3.7 under Windows 7! And Windows 7 is supposed to have better performance than Visat?!? Not sure what happened, but I’m not overly happy. Now I’ll have to figure out why it now has such a bad rating with the same hardware.
Luckily, my main computer is a Mac…
Printer woes…and boat anchors! Tue, 2007.02.27
Posted by tevirselrahc in hardware, office, rant, tools.comments closed
I have this nice printer in my home office. It’s all black and dark greys and has this nice little red diamond in the logo. (Printer company name withheld to protect…well…someone!) And it’s one of the printers “recommended” by my company for use in a home office. The only problem is that it is about as useful in my office as a boat anchor…and actually less so since it weighs almost nothing.
Ever since I got this piece of home office equipment, I have had nothing but problems. Although being a colour ink jet printer, it will only print colour on the test pages. If I send a colour document to it, it will just ignore the colour. Perhaps I should just use coloured paper! And, by the way, I do use branded ink cartridge from the manufacturer in the printer, so there should be no question of compatibility.
But I think the worst problem (I don’t really need colour for business-related stuff…) is that it will not print if the monitoring application is not started! If, for some reason, I forget to start the “<insert brand name here> Solution Center”, then the print job will just sit in the queue, not printing, and not even being cancellable. It now has a hold on printing and there is nothing I can do but reboot!
I just wanted a quick one page printout to take with me to a partner meeting and now I have to reboot!?!
Even though this is one of the “recommended” printers and even though I can get the ink cartridge for it through work, I do not think it will last very long…
Anyone wants a cheap boat anchor?
