RIP: Old Ironsides. (My personal laptop is done)

I knew there was an issue when my now six year old laptop opened up and showed a black screen.  No back-screen of Vegas that I had loaded, no whirring of the hard drive, just black with a white arrow for the mouse pointer that moved when I touched the track pad, but which had nothing to click on.

This was the last of my "big laptop" computers that I purchased back in the day with heavy word processing and spreadsheet use in mind. Back when I was crunching numbers and words for political writing.  It also wasn't cheap, just North of $1,300 when purchased.

It finally did boot up which allowed me to image the hard drive to my back-up drive but as a functional piece of electronics it's all but dead.

Time to move to something new, and something much smaller and much, much more portable.

I'm thinking about this. The HP 15t Touch

First, it's much smaller and much, much lighter than my old system. It's got a 1T hard drive which is important because I plan to download movies onto it for flights, and it's gotten good reviews from all but the Mac-Centric sites out there (for whom I ignore anyway when it comes to PC's) and it's economic to boot. ($349 on sale right now at various outlets)

The downside?

Sounds as if the display is not that great, nor is the touchscreen, two things that are pretty low on my 'must have' list. (although a good display is pretty high up on my "nice to have" list).  And, as with any HP, it comes LOADED with bloat-wear out of the box which is going to mean the initial set-up could take a day or more as I strip the thing bare.

All-in-all however I think this might be a short decision making process for me.  My computing needs have changed over the years from working in rather large external files to mostly online. I'm not a PC gamer (or any kind of gamer for that matter) so I can't justify spending a LOT of extra money for something that's going to make Link look just a little better and less twitchy.  And these days computer tech is moving so rapidly that making a huge investment for something that's going to be obsolete in two years max just seems like so much wasted money.

I'm willing to listen if someone thinks up a better option for around the same amount of cash but, for now, I'm heavily leaning toward the HP.  The wife's computer is an HP running Windows 10 and it's working pretty good for her.

Thoughts are welcome.

This Blog Post will be of no importance to you.

Some blogging is informational in nature and some blogging is simply cathartic.  Spleen-venting if you will.  This is definitely the latter.

My laptop is toast. Sacrificed to the Starbuck's Gods in a spectacularly clumsy manner by yours truly.  Protip: an entire Venti Skinny Peppermint Mocha and a computer do not make good dance partners.  After moving (in my wife's words) "faster than I've seen you move in years" I was able to get the computer inverted on top of paper towels fairly quickly, but not quick enough.

It will start-up, slowly, with an odd clicking sound that I assume is something fighting through the sugary, sticky goo that's probably enveloped most of my mother board and every other critical component, but the keyboard is only partially functional, and the parts that are not working are (of course) the parts that contain most of the keys I need for my password.

My plan is to take it to a PC repair shop and see if they can take it apart and get it functional again.  I'm sure they see this all the time right? And, if not, at least they can extract the files from my hard drive. Fortunately I've already uploaded all of my travel pictures to my Flickr account, but I do have notes on the C drive for some articles I have coming due fairly soon.

Then there's what to do if it can't be resuscitated?  Do I bit the bullet and buy a new computer?  Or do I obtain a new cover for my iPad with a blue-tooth keyboard and utilize that?  I'm a fan of the iPad as a toy, but I can't see it doubling as an everyday work horse computer.  Plus, I'd be losing MS Office tools that I really like using due to their power and flexibility. I'm sure iApple's productivity tools are fine, and I hear they can even be saved in an MS Office usable form, but are they as powerful as Excel and Word?  Is Open Office compatible with iApple?  I'm going to have to look that up.

There was a (print only) story by Loren Steffy in a recent issue of the Houston Chronicle (it recently went on-line here) where Mr. Steffy talked about the struggles Dell and HP are having staying a-float in the new mobile computing world.  While I disagree with Steffy on many macro-economic issues, his piece here was spot on.  Even though I still think the iPad is a toy it's a useful toy that, along with my Android phone, has replaced my need for a netbook when traveling.  That I'm even considering trying to make it my go-to computing device speaks volumes about how marginalized the PC has become.

That said, there's still something to be said for the power of a home PC and the need to have a machine that can do the heavy lifting.  So, despite my thoughts to the contrary I'm probably going to bite the bullet and buy another laptop should this one prove to be totally dead.  I'm going to look at one of those ToughBooks though, there's no cure for clumsy that I'm aware of.

When Customer service isn't.

Spent part of my Sunday (the part during the second half of the Texans game thankfully) store hopping up in the Woodlands. Popped into Barnes & Noble to have a look at their Nook reader. I'm in the market for either that or a Kindle from Amazon, haven't decided which one yet.

One tablet that I'm definitely not interested in is a Nook "color". Not only is it $100 more than the regular Nook reader, ($249 vs. $149) but it doesn't have the e-ink technology which makes reading doable on a standard black & white reader. And that's primarily what I want this for: To read e-books. Despite my many attempts to convey this to the sales clerk at the kiosk, my appraisal of the black & white Nook was continually interrupted by a sales pitch for the Nook Color.

I now know that the Nook Color can stream movies (not what I'm looking for), it can connect to the NY Times (for a fee, as can the Nook B&W) or a host of other magazines and dailies, and it has the memory to download more books than I'll probably read in my lifetime. It's also not available right now. It's recommended that you reserve one on the release day just in case you MIGHT think you want one. Whether or not you actually buy one, just reserve one, you know, just in case.

Get the picture? (I'm sure we'll all be shocked, SHOCKED! when B&N announces supply shortages of the Nook Color right before Christmas won't we?)

I came in to look at a e-reader in which I was interested, only to be told by the staff supposedly selling said reader that it wasn't that great, they had a better (more expensive) option that I couldn't even GET right then, having instead to wait until December something-or-other, and that didn't really even do what I wanted it to do.


All things being equal I'm now leaning toward the Kindle. Which I will purchase on-line from the comfort of my own home. Oh yeah, it's $10 cheaper than the Nook B&W as well....Probably because Amazon isn't paying someone to talk me out of buying what I came in for in the first place.

By Your Command

I, for one, welcome our new Cylon overlords.....

HTC Evo vs. iPhone

*WARNING: SERIOUSLY foul language on this one but it sure is funny. You have been warned.*


iPhone 4 Vs HTC Evo - Watch more Funny Videos


I want an EVO 4G in the worst way.

Dear AT&T

I realize that right now you're pre-occupied by this... (Apple Computer and Apple Phone courtesy of flickr user yum9me and used via a creative commons license.)

But could you please stop obsessing over Steve Jobs and think about offering more devices like this?


(HTC Evo 4G and II by Flickr user louisvolant. Used via a creative commons license.)


Hell....I'd even settle for more devices like this.


Thanks for your time.

Tech, in one sentence.

This about sums it up:

(13 Glaring iPad Shortcomings, Ker Than & Robert Roy Britt, LiveScience.com via Yahoo! News, 04/05/10)

The iPad shows great promise. It's thin and sleek and not like any other gadget out there. It was also more hyped than any new device in recent memory. But is it worth buying?


Given the cost, and a slew of drawbacks, the answer boils down to how much you're willing to pay for a toy.

Unless you're working, either at home or in the office, all tech is pretty much nothing more than fancy toys for those with disposable income. My work PC is a tool, my laptop is a tool for my freelance writing but, when I'm blogging, playing on-line poker, searching the web etc. It becomes a shiny toy. My mobile device (toy) mp3 player (toy), video-cameras (toys) and a host of other devices don't do much to improve work productivity, but they're fun to play with.

Which brings us back to Apple products. Except for a few certain fields of work, Apple's entire product line qualifies as toys for most users. Not that there's anything wrong with buying an accessory for style, fun, etc...but let's call it what it is.

Over the weekend I got to play with a friend's iPad for around one hour. At the end of the hour I realized that it was fun but (for me) had no practical application. It was neither as powerful as my home laptop nor as easy to use as a netbook, as a matter of fact, when I finished I returned home and completed my income taxes, on my laptop.

In other words, playing on the iPad was fun, for a while but, when I needed to get something done, I dropped the glitz and the glamour and returned to my good ol' non-sexy productivity tool.


And I saved $500 to boot.


Bottom line: If you're comfortable buying a toy, albeit one with a very slick interface & beautiful design, for a minimum of $500 then go right ahead. But don't try and lord it over the rest of us that you're on the cutting edge of technology. That bird only flies with the fanbois. For the rest of us.....well...we've got work to do.

iThought

Sounds like the Big New Apple iPad is a big iPhone* that doesn't make calls and is going to function much like an Apple Netbook.

How much you wanna bet those that dislike netbooks declare it the "next big tech thing?"








*Apple's smart because they understand that their products are more accessories than actual productivity enhancers. Style crack for the young and easily impressed if you will. Because of this the iPad won't be a loss leader, will sell well, but probably won't have the impact (outside of the fanboi community that is) that the 'experts' are predicting. That said I don't think it will lose money for them either.

iThud?

After all of the hoopla and hubub surrounding the GRAND BIG ANNOUNCEMENT of the (get this) iPad *snicker* I was ready for emergence of a Tech messiah to lead us to the promised land of true, mobile computing bliss.

Uh...no.

What we ended up with was a super-sized version of the iPod Touch with some limited connectivity options on the high-end. Call it an iTouch on steroids (sans camera) or a big-assed iPhone with no calling plan or whatever you want. What we're looking at here is iFlop....or iThud....or *shudder* Newton.

Despite being generally panned, I'm thinking the HP Slate running Windows 7 @ a rumored price point of under $400 peaks my interest more than this.