Thanks to Mahalo Daily, here is the 2008 Macworld Keynote in 60 seconds.
You might have to watch it two or three times, but all of the details are there. You just don’t get the cool demonstrations and the nervous CEOs of other companies trying to act cool next to Steve Jobs.
Via: Macworld 2008: 90 minutes of Steve in 60 seconds — but zero “booms”
I’ve been a fan of tiny full sized computers for a long time, and I’ve had one of just about every generation of hand held computing device that has ever come along. I bought all those devices because I’d hoped that one of them would actually be useful. There’s always a show-stopping problem: The handwriting recognition can’t be relied upon and there is no keyboard, or the computer is too large, or the keyboard is external and a hassle to carry along and hook up. Also, battery life is never sufficient to spend a day on the road.
It only takes one of these problems to make a small form factor computer useless. Unless it reaches the reliability of a cell phone, I can’t risk not having access to my e-mail, calendar, and tasks.
PDAs have never really worked for me because they can’t carry all the information I need, and nobody has ever really truly solved the syncing problem. PDAs don’t have “lite” version of Visio to jot down a quick network diagram, for example. Furthermore, no PIM on the planet comes close to Microsoft Outlook in organizational functionality. My entire “Getting Things Done” methodology is based on customizations I’ve made to Outlook, and in my old age I insist that computers do what they’re for: Make my life, the way I want to live it, easier.
So when I needed a new PC to run my “Getting Things Done” methodology that I’ve implemented with customizations to Microsoft Outlook, I knew that neither a PDA nor Apple’s forthcoming iPhone would actually work for me—I’ve already attempted to get my system working on both Apple’s set of applications and the major open source apps because I don’t like having a PC just for Outlook. Syncing just doesn’t move all the information I use, and terminaling into a desktop PC from the road is too much hassle. I just want to run outlook on a computer that I can break out in a meeting to record my commitments on.
So I’ve had my eye on the Sony UX 390 for a while. I didn’t buy earlier because I couldn’t swallow the enormous price tag and I was worried about hard disk reliability in a unit I was all but certain to drop. But recent experiences have shown me that it costs more to be without my data than a one time $2500 price tag, so I took the plunge—warily, and at Fry’s where I knew I could return it within 15 days if it wasn’t going to do the job.
Out Of the Box Experience - OOBE
Microsoft has defined an “Out Of the Box Experience” manager for Vista that is supposed to make you feel a rush of serotonin and cause you to pair bond to the computer like a duckling to its mother. The initiative is lovingly referred to as “OOBE”. So, since it apparently matters enough to have an initiative and an acronym, I’ll talk about the OOBE for the UX 390.
Firstly, the initial boot and setup on the device takes about 30 minutes. Once completely installed, you are greeted with the Vista OOBE manager, whose job it is to help you get connected to the Internet and then present the wide array of crapware that comes pre-installed on the computer. There are about fifteen overlapping dialog boxes vying for your initial attention, and six or seven notification area cartoon dialogs.
The amount of crapware in the OOBE manager made me suspicious. I checked the size of the C: drive, and astonishingly, 75% (not exaggerating) of the C: drive was full. Furthermore, the C: drive was only 23GB in size, not the 32GB of precious flash memory I was sure I’d paid for. A visit to the logical disk manager confirmed my suspicion: All that pre-installed crapware required a hefty 8GB restore partition.
Normally, you’d just leave a recovery partition in place. What’s 8GB on a 200GB disk anyway, right? Oh, wait. This is a 32GB disk. And it’s a solid-state disk that I paid $600 extra for. The customer literally must take that partition off because there’s really no room for Vista, Sony’s requisite management apps, Office 2007, and anything of yours if you don’t. Leaving it in place isn’t an option irrespective of the cost or waste.
Sony placed that recovery partition there so that they wouldn’t have to spend $1 to include recovery discs. If you do the math, presuming that the Flash disk costs $600 (the price difference between this computer and its HDD based sibling), that’s $160 of your money so that Sony doesn’t have to spend $1. Thanks, Sony!
In sum, it took me 4 hours to burn my own recovery DVDs, remove the recovery partition (1.5GB of it was mandatory, and remains there still), and restore from DVD You can’t de-select any of the crapware during installation either, so you’ll waste time both re-installing it and subsequently removing it.
The initial boot and gauntlet of EULAs, web page redirections to partner sites, etc. takes an hour to slog through, then it took another 3 hours to remove all the crapware, and another 3 hours to patch it up to date an apply the Sony patches for the crap I hadn’t removed. All told, it took me a solid 12 hours before I could do anything with the device.
So on a scale of 1 to 10, the OOBE on this device is about a -5, all thanks to crapware. The only way it could have been worse would be if the device had actually been broken.
If the recovery partition were a reasonable 1.5GB in the first place, I wouldn’t have bothered with any of this. Compare that to the 30 minutes it took from first boot until my MacBook Pro had copied over all my data and applications from my old PowerBook and was up and useful. Its no wonder Apple is schooling Microsoft and Sony.
Beyond the OOBE
So the day after you buy it is when the fun begins. The first cool thing you’ll do is enroll your fingerprints in the fingerprint security manager for logging in. There’s two types of biometric fingerprint security: Actually secure, and Kid Sister secure. Actually secure fingerprint sensors do live finger detection that can’t be fooled by a Jello mold of your finger (this does) and stores your prints in the device firmware, exchanging only salted hashes with the operating system rather than storing the hash of your fingerprints on the hard disk where they can be compromised. Unfortunately, the sensor on the UX 390 doesn’t do that second part. So what this means is that it’ll keep thieves and relatives out of your data, but not the government.
Irrespective, it’s way easier than typing a password for logging on and just as secure, so it’s a big plus on a computer where you want to minimize use of the keyboard. Enrolling fingerprints is easy and smooth. It’s a slick feature, especially for a computer whose keyboard is painfully small by necessity and which won’t always be exposed to accept passwords.
The device has Bluetooth, WiFi, and Cingular EDGE network built in. EDGE is sort of “2.5G” in terms of network speed: Faster than 2G, but nowhere near the speed of the 3G Verizon or Spring EvDO networks. In my tests, the device does between 144 and 200kbps, which is basically 1/3 the speed of my EvDO card. You can call Sony tech support and get them to unlock the device for you so you can put a T-Mobile SmartCard in it to get on their much less expensive EDGE network, which I strongly recommend if you live in an area with good T-Mobile coverage because it’s much cheaper for unlimited data. EDGE seems to do much better with connections while moving than EvDO, however—at full freeway speed it kept up without disconnecting all over Metro San Diego.
Another unfortunate problem is Cingular’s crappy software. While it works just fine, the “Power Manager” provided by Cingular sucks up 15% of the devices CPU power whether the radio is in use or not, keeping the fan running constantly (which I’m sure obviates any benefit derived by the process’s name). Killing the process will let the computer idle down so the fan can stop running. I used Windows Defender to prevent Sony’s garbage from running and just wrote some batch scripts I keep in the start menu to enable the WWAN radio when I need it.
The screen is beautiful, but the resolution of the screen is so high and size so small that people whose presbyopia has set in should not even consider this computer. I love the resolution, but my older friends are unable to see anything on it without reading glasses.
The touch screen is very accurate, and quite useful. Unfortunately, Microsoft hasn’t released the Vista version of Tablet PC, so you have to dig through some configuration panels to enable little niceties like tap-and-hold being used for right-click. Why this feature isn’t built into all versions of Windows is beyond me. Otherwise, the computer works just fine as a pure tablet, and the handwriting recognition is the best I’ve ever seen, interpreting my chicken scratches correctly about 90% of the time (not quite enough, but still the best ever).
Most importantly, the screen slides up to reveal the world’s first entire PC keyboard implemented as a thumb board. It works amazingly well, but you will get hand cramps trying to write the great American Novel on it. It’s for URLs and email replies, which it works perfectly well for that, and the blue backlight makes it useful at night.
The computer’s 1.5GHz Core-Mono CPU isn’t enough power to run Vista in its default configuration. You’ll notice near continuous disk access when you boot, and booting is slow. Disabling Vista’s desktop search service and file transfer compression service eliminates these problems, dramatically increasing the overall speed of the computer. I also disabled Windows Restore to improve performance and free up disk space. Properly tuned, the computer runs Vista just fine.
Docking the UX-390 turns it into a first-class desktop computer. You will want to disable the small screen so you have a bigger desktop (The Intel video adapter is weak, and won’t let you increase the resolution when driving both screens simultaneously). Additional docks are available of the shelf at the Sony store—I put one at the office and at home so I can just carry the computer between locations. The other accessory you’ll want to buy is the six-hour extended battery. With it, you can work all day without worrying about battery life. Without it, the computer will give up on you about mid-afternoon.
Once you’ve slogged through the OOBE, the Sony UX-390 is far and away the best PDA ever built. It’s small enough to wear on your belt if you don’t mind looking geeky. It’s even a reasonable desktop computer when you dock it. It’s expensive, but a worthwhile investment for people who need a real computer with them on the go.
The FCC has approved the use of cell phones and high-speed Internet on airplanes.
FCC approval and actual ability are two different things, however:
The FCC already had approved a high-speed Internet service provided by Boeing Co. Called “Connexion” which uses satellites to get air passengers online. The service is offered by some international carriers, including some flights to and from the United States.
But airline industry officials say cash-strapped domestic carriers haven’t bought into the service largely because of the cost — an estimated $500,000 per jet to install the needed equipment.
The FCC on Wednesday voted to allow airlines to offer high-speed Internet connections through the frequencies used by seatback phones. It would cost roughly $100,000 to outfit a plane with the necessary equipment.
In the end, we will be the ones to pay the $100K investment. Is it really worth ten or fifteen dollars a flight to access the Internet? Depends on how long the flight is. For me, I won’t even pay the cost to access the Internet at the airport. I get online with my Treo and by-pass their overpriced wi-fi access. I’ll probably just play with my Nintendo DS for a couple of hours on the plane instead of trying to get airline Internet access to work.
What I really wish the FCC would do is finally admit that electronic devices don’t really affect the airplane and quit making me turn off my devices when we are taking off and landing.
As Ponzi points out in her excellent entry, there is one true design flaw of ALL laptop computers: the power cord.
What kind of power cord user are you? Ponzi says there are three types:
There are ‘The people in denial’. - They get rid of it all together and act like it’s not a problem - until they have to deal with it. They put it out of mind and out of sight - pack it in the suitcase. As svelte and cordfree as these people are in the airport secretly they are the ones who frantically throw everything out of their suitcases looking for it when they have a black out in the taxi on the way to the hotel.
The people who don’t care. - This group just stuffs that whole cord into the backpack or bag and say that’s part of carrying the laptop, deal with it. Then all their crap comes pouring out when its time to use it.
There are the ones who try to act like they have some control. - This would be my crowd - for the moment (I tend to bounce between all three). They roll up the cord and use the piece of velcro if they have it (IBM tried to give us a solution) which usually doesn’t fit the whole cord.
I’m one of the “pretend I have some control” people. I found these Velcro One-Wrap Cableties at Home Depot several years ago (pictured in the top photo). They come in an 8 inch size that wraps around my power brick AND the cord to create one easy package to stuff into the laptop bag. As Ponzi points out, however, it’s still a BIG thing to cart around. It takes up as much space as my Nintendo DS. If my bag were any smaller, I would have to choose between the power cord and my personal entertainment device.
Zip-Linq has created the ZIP-LINQ Retractable Notebook Power Cord, which is a pretty good deal, but it doesn’t replace your power brick. I could use it to replace half of my cord, but I would still have to wrap the cord to the power brick. If I have to be wrapping cords anyway, I might as well do both. It’s an inexpensive replacement that is pretty tempting, but it doesn’t solve the whole problem.
Another option is the Smarthome Small Cable Manager, but it will only help you if your brick isn’t in the middle of the cord. Otherwise, you’ll use one cable manager for the cord from the laptop to the brick and another for the cord from the brick to the wall. Wrapping cords twice isn’t very efficient, so the Velcro Cableties seem like a better option.
Apple has done the best job of making their power cords useable. The power plug unfolds to plug into the wall and folds up for travel. They have the brick plug directly into the wall and have an attached wire wrap on the brick. It’s still a big thing to keep in your laptop bag, but it’s VERY easy to wrap up.
Sadly, the only other option is to include the power brick in the laptop itself, which would make my tiny laptop MUCH bigger. It’s the whole reason they put the power brick on the cord in the first place. Just think about how much bigger your very portable laptop would be if you had to include that power brick in the case.
In the end, my laptop battery only lasts a couple of hours and I have come to accept the fact that I need to cart around the power cord with it. There are some design frontiers that are waiting to be discovered, but until then, I have become a good friend of Velcro Cableties. Of course, there’s always the “Living In Denial” option.
This video, entitled, “Really Expensive Cat Toy,” is a perfect example of the fun you can have with a Macintosh laptop, its remote control and Front Row.
I wonder if a scratched screen is covered under the warranty…
Sony has just unveiled the N Series of laptops that are supposed be for the more fashion conscious. Sorry, Sony. The fashionistas are buying Apples. Didn’t you get the message?
They are throwing around words like “culturally creative” and “organic lifestyle” without explaining how a brown computer actually achieves that organic lifestyle. Aren’t all computers silicon-based life forms?
I want to take Sony by the hand and gently urge them to quit trying to compete with Apple. They are so much better than white laptops and worthless exercise MP3 players. They were the original portable music company. They shouldn’t be trying to ride Apple’s coattails. They should just be doing their own thing.
They have been great in the past. Why are they wallowing in Apple’s design catalog?
Sony, I owned one of your VAIO laptops and I loved it. It lasted me six long years before I finally had to retire it. When I tried to buy a new one, however, I got a surprise. To replace my VAIO with a similar model was going to cost me $3000. I opted for the Acer instead because it was the same thing at $1200. I would have loved to stay faithful, but I’m not going to pay a $1800 premium to do it. That’s your problem, not the color of your laptop line.
Quit trying to pursue the “culturally creative.” We’re busying finding creative ways not to spend money on your overpriced laptops.
We looked at the PCMCIA card at the Sprint Store. I asked Mike,
“If we had that, we could be online everywhere?”
“Yep, but you have to pay 60 bucks a month for it and we’d only use it about once a month when we’re out of town.”
“Could we use it at home instead of the cable modem?”
“No. You’re not supposed to hook it up to a router like that. Plus, the cable modem is faster.”
Well, Sprint not only announced that it will be acceptable to hook your card up to a wireless router, they’ll gladly sell you one that is guaranteed to work.
You put your PCMCIA card into the router (see at the top) and then you have a wireless local network that you can connect to with you home PC or laptop. Say goodbye to DSL. Say goodbye to dialup. Say goodbye to the cable company. All we need is Sprint.
Now, we just need to know whether it’s REALLY broadband speeds or if that’s just marketing hype. This could simplify our lives even more (as long as it really works).
Via: Sprint announces EV-DO router and USB dongle - Engadget
Considering a new notebook computer and confused by the choices? In this six-part series, we looked at just about everything you might want to consider when choosing a notebook. Here are links to the detailed articles:
If you think this all looks confusing, you’re right. It’s no wonder computer stores use cute catchphrases like “affordable mobile multimedia” to promote machines, and manufacturers themselves use novelty features like webcams and anti-spyware software to appear to leap ahead of their competition.
The good news: If you throw $500-$1000 at a salesman in frustration, whatever he chooses for you will probably be a much better machine than you could have found two years ago. Nonetheless, I think it’s worth the trouble to choose a machine you’ll be happy with.
Any questions on these articles? More notebook features that confuse you? Feel free to leave a comment.
Almost done! To wrap up our series on Choosing a notebook PC, here’s a quick look at a few more features you might want to consider: CD and DVD drives, PC Card slots, and other media/peripheral slots.
One big difference between notebooks is the included CD or DVD drives. Most notebooks have a built-in drive, but the smallest models may have a separate USB drive. Most manufacturers offer one or more of the following choices, with the price going up as you go down the list:
If you need a DVD writer, there are two things to look out for. First, there are two different writable DVD standards, DVD-R and DVD+R. Some drives only support one or the other—look for one that supports both if possible. Also, the newest drives are “Double Layer,” meaning they can write to full-size 8.5 GB DVDs. If it isn’t labelled “Double” or “Dual,” it is probably limited to the single-layer 4 GB variety.
It’s possible, but not simple, to upgrade the CD/DVD drive after purchase, so you’re better off choosing the one you need now. Keep in mind that even if you don’t plan on making your own music CDs or video DVDs, CD writers and DVD writers are still very handy for backing up data.
If you want to add a network adapter, broadband wireless card, high-end sound card, or other peripheral, you’ll want a notebook with an expansion slot. Most notebooks include a PC Card (the new name for PCMCIA) slot for this purpose. Look for a Type II slot for the best peripheral support—most of today’s notebooks have this.
Some machines, such as Apple iBooks and some of the smallest PC notebooks, lack a PC card slot. Unless you have a specific peripheral you need to use, this isn’t a big disadvantage, since you can use USB or Firewire to attach just about everything.
The newest notebooks include slots for the new ExpressCard standard, sometimes in place of a PC Card slot. ExpressCards come in two sizes: ExpressCard/54 is the same width as a normal PC Card slot, 54mm, although the cards are L-shaped. ExpressCard/34 is a narrower 34mm card that uses the same connector.
This new standard will probably replace PC Card slots—Apple’s new MacBook Pro, for example, includes an ExpressCard/34 slot instead of a PC Card slot. For now, there aren’t many peripherals made for these slots, but there will undoubtedly be more in the future.
Last but not least, some laptops include slots for small memory cards like those used with digital cameras, such as SD (Secure Digital) cards or Memory Sticks. If the notebook is made by Sony, it probably supports their Memory Stick format and nothing else. Other brands often include a “5-in-1″ card reader that supports multiple types of cards.
While this is mainly a novelty feature—you can get a card reader for cheap—it’s still nice to have a built-in slot if you do lots of work with a digital camera.
This concludes our 6-part series on choosing a notebook computer. I’ll post a wrap-up tomorrow that summarizes the whole thing.
Previously:
One of the hardest things about buying a new computer is reconciling the manufacturer’s long list of “key features” with what you actually need. Continuing our series on Choosing a notebook PC, today I’ll take a look at the different networking and connectivity options available in today’s notebooks.
WiFi (Wireless networking, also known as 802.11a/b/g) is included in virtually all of the current notebooks. While you can add wireless networking to any notebook with a PC Card slot, it’s nice to have it built in. If you travel in urban areas frequently, this is a must—you can get online at a surprising number of hotels, and in the cheaper hotels it’s often free. There’s not much to choose here, since most of the notebooks out there support all of the wireless standards.
Bluetooth is a short-distance wireless protocol that is ideally suited for notebook peripherals—for example, a wireless mouse or a headset for Internet telephony. You may also be able to use it to get online by connecting with your mobile phone (a process called Bluetooth DUN, or Dial-up Networking).
My personal experience with Bluetooth in Windows–especially with DUN—has been less than stellar, but I’m sure there are people out there who have it working correctly. I’ve had better luck with my Apple iBook.
Surprisingly, most notebooks don’t include Bluetooth. Some of the higher-end ones do, and it’s available as a low-priced add-on for most of the customizable notebooks. If you plan on using Bluetooth peripherals or a Bluetooth-compatible mobile phone, look for this feature—but don’t make it a deal-breaker, since you can buy a USB Bluetooth interface to add to any machine for about $30.
A few higher-end notebooks have built-in support for wireless broadband connections. This is basically a built-in mobile phone connection that gets online with the new high-speed offerings—Verizon or Sprint’s EVDO, or Cingular’s EDGE. If you travel to places without WiFi often, this might get you a fast connection, but you’ll pay for it. Sprint’s data service, for example is $59 a month.
Even if you need wireless broadband, I don’t recommend buying a notebook with it built-in for two reasons. First of all, it’s expensive and unnecessary—you can add a PC Card to connect to the same network on any notebook for $99. Second, it’s carrier-specific. Change mobile providers and your notebook’s built-in broadband is probably useless. You’re better off with a separate card you can replace.
USB is a mature standard for connecting peripherals, and every notebook today includes it. Although you don’t have to worry about that, you might want to check the specifics:
Firewire, also known as IEEE 1394 or i.Link, is another type of peripheral connection included in many laptops. Although its maximum speed is 400 Mbit/s, it’s generally considered to be faster than USB 2.0 in practice.
Some manufacturers include Firewire ports in all of their notebooks, others may not. You’ll need it if you have a peripheral that supports it, like a digital camcorder. In that case, be sure to make sure it’s included, as Firewire isn’t the easiest thing to add to a notebook.
It’s almost time to wrap this series. In the next installment I’ll take a look at CD/DVD drives and other media supported by notebooks.
Previously:
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