Blog:: Craig Pringle

I’ve heard it said that mobile phones ac fashion accessories. I’ve even heard Some phones called “sexy”.  But I’ve never seen a mobile phone wearing a red leather G-string before… Until now.

 

That’s right. For just US$20 you to can fit your phone out in a revealing leather thong.

 

 

Also available in black and black studded.   For my money I’ll wait for a little cellular gimp suit…

 

(via jk)

Merlin Mann has written an excellent article about something we could all do a bit better, getting the “cringe tasks” off our To-Do lists. You know the ones –those tasks that you keep putting off because every time you see it you cringe, if only just a little.

 

Merlin’s basic methodology is:

1.       Print out your To-do list

2.       Work through your list and for each task that makes you cringe, cross it out and replace it with a task that will make the original taskless forbidding.

3.       Then do the cringe reducing task.

 

 

There’s more to it then my brief summary, so go read Merlin’s full article for more information on this topic.

IE7 is going to include tabbed browsing – yay! For more information on what is being done behind the scenes to make this happen head on over to Tony Schreiner’s post on the IE team’s blog.

 

(source: Rob Bushway)

Nokia have released a Linux-based tablet - their first device without a phone built in.

It his been decided. the first meeting of the TabletPC User Group (TUG) will be on Tuesday July 12th, 2005. Come one, come all.

More details will be available at the next WMUG meeting on June 9th. If you can't make that then watch this space.

Brendon pointed out that when I posted about taking better notes and referred to this article I neglected to mention that there is plenty of other content on the site that is pure gold. It is well worth checking out Working Smart.

I had a discussion with a colleague at work today – he said something interesting – he agreed that OneNote was a great note taking application, but put forward that it is of limited use if you are not a good note taker yourself. So how does one take better notes in OneNote?

Mauricio blogged today that Telecom NZ are allowing free MSN Messenger access via Telecom Wireless Hotspots. Full access is still restricted to paying Xtra customs but kudos to telecom for providing this service.

 

More information on Mauricio’s blog or on Telecom’s website.

When I read on Geekzone that Samsung have developed a NAND based solid state disk (SSD) I had to wonder if this is the technology that will make the auxiliary display touted at WinHEC recently a reality. If there is a small portion of disk that consumes a very small amount of power it is feasible that the OS could use this portion of disk to cache the info required by the aux. display.

 

At the very least if they can make a 16 GB drive today that consumes 5% of the power and is 150% as fast as a hard disk of similar capacity it is only a matter of time before NAND drives of greater capacity are available. It is not hard to see that this is a technology that can potentially change the boundaries of mobility as we know them today.

A great tip via Brendon Steer. Get rid of "Those damn tabs in MSN messenger" by going to Tools|Options|Security and check "This is a shared computer so don't display my tabs".

Excellent-gone now!

Brenda recently posted a comment on one of my previous posts where she noted:

 

“it seems to me that your 3 points advocating a tablet PC could just as easily apply to a PDA.

I take notes in meetings, draw diagram, and have years worth of documents and emails in my pocket wherever i go.

 

One you add in instant on and quick use (on bus, waiting in queue for crepes etc) seems a $800 pda is more usable.

 

It all ends up at my desktop pc after syncing - and i'm less concerned about breaking or losing my desktop. My data is safe.

 

hope you have a reply - love discussing this stuff “

 

I’m always happy to participate in a healthy discussion – but let me start by saying this. I’ve been a PDA user for years and I still am currently I have an Hp hx4700.

 

I don’t disagree with Brenda that PDAs are powerful devices. There are certainly cases where a PDA will make sense and a tablet won’t. The critical factors are the who, what, when, where and how of information.

 

If you are trying to select the right mobile device for a user or a job role you need to consider:

1.       who are the uses? In particular how IT literate are they?

2.       What information do they need to access? Is it textual or graphical? This will help you understand what screen-size will be appropriate.

3.       When is the information needed – And how current does it need to be?

4.       where will the useful se when they need to access the information? This has implications for both form factor and device ruggedness.

5.       How is the user interacting with the info? Do they just need to read it? Are the creating new content? Are they manipulating it in some way?

 

There are also many other options that can seriously complicate the device selection process. Consider the PadLE below. This device runs CE.net (similar to Windows Mobile) and has a 8.5 inch screen. For comparison my PDA has a 4” screen and my Tablet has a 12.1” screen.

 

 

All of that said there are a couple of points from Brenda’s comment I wart to address directly.

1.       Instant on – I have my tablet configured to hibernate and resume when I hit the power button – takes about 30 seconds to resume. Much faster than powering up.

2.       Sync with desktop. My tablet is My desktop, so take the price of your desktop into consideration if comparing PDAs and tablets. Everything of import is in “My Documents” or my e-mail. Both sync with a server on each connect – including VPN connections and is therefore backed up.

 

So when is a Tablet preferable to a PDA or a PadLE? There are plenty of factors to consider but some good indicators a tablet is going to add Value are:

·         Manipulating data in office apps. Pocket Word and Pocket Excel are pretty cut down so if you need to use tables, track changes or add comments then you need the full versions. Note Windows Mobile 5 (just released) improves this somewhat

·         Video output – without 3^rd party add-ons you can’t plug a PDA into a projector.

·         Need to access unsupported web content. Active-x controls, flash and some java can’t be displayed in Pocket IE. Some sites that we pure HTML just don’t display well.

·         Peripherals – it is somewhat easier to attach an optical drive to a tablet than a PDA…

Some interesting tidbits I picked up about the new LE 1600 when chatting to Pete Lewis from Motion.

·         In order to include the SD slot, DVI and IR port and still keep size and weight down Motion opted to drop the onboard modem. They feel – and I agree – that Consumers are tending to use other connectivity technologies.

·         Accessories have been redesigned – the bump case offers better access to the various slots and correctors. (Including the stylus)

·         The stylus is thicker and more comfortable, includes an eraser and slots into a spring loaded slot in the tablet.

·         The replacement for the hardtop keyboard is actually a mini-dock. It includes powered USB ports, and charges the tables while docked.

·         The extended battery has been designed such that when it is in place the back of the tablet remains flat and the additional weight is evenly distributed. This also allows the unit to be docked with the extended battery in place.

 

All told the LE 1600 sounds to be one well thought out machine. Want to play with one very much!

I read with interest Warner Crocker’s post where he asks

 

“ ... are we creating a situation where only those who have blogs and make noise about dissatisfacton receive appropriate attention?  Does it take this kind of attention to attend to something so basic as customer service?”

 

Point taken Warner and I for one would like to relate a positive interaction I had today.

 

A couple of weeks ago I flicked an email to Motion asking if they had a distributor here in NZ. Unfortunately by last night I still had not received a reply from Motion so I sent of a follow up email. In the follow up mail I mentioned that I had emailed previously and had not had a response.

 

At 8:30 AM this morning I got a phone call from a Pete Lewis, Director of International Business Development for Motion. First and foremost he apologised that I had not received a response to my earlier email. It got lost – that happens. We had a good chat about Motion’s distribution network in our part of the world. We also had excellent discussion about the new LE 1600 and I am looking forward to getting my hot little hands on one even more now! We talked for about 25 minutes about the lessons they learned from the 1400 and some of the design decisions they made along the way.

 

Just after the call finished Pete sent though the details of an Australian distributor that covers New Zealand.

 

Opportunities to provide excellent service arise from things that go wrong. In this case Pete and Motion thoroughly exceeded my expectations. I was already a fan of Motion’s technology and now I have reason to advocate the company as well.

 

I agree with Warner that companies should not wait for a bad post to provide good service. Motion got it right-keep it up. I also believe that we as bloggers need to ensure we share the good as well as the bad.

I spent much of today at GOVIS -a conference tailored to GOVernmert Information Systems professionals. I had several very interesting conversations and met some very interesting people. And there are 2 more days yet to come! More on this later this week.

One of the critical factors in the overall performance of any PC is the performance of its hard drive(s). Barry J. Doyle has posted an excellent piece on TabletPC Review Spot that delves into the performance and battery life trade-offs presented by 4200 and 5400 RPM hard drives. This is a very well written piece and I highly recommend it.

Rob Bushway is speculating that the new Motion LE1600 tablet might mount a serious challenge to the HP TC1100 , which has been considered by many (myself included) to be one of the best designs on the tablet market to date.

Rob’s comparison is interesting but I for one think that they are dickering enough that each will develop a strong following in their own right.

At the end of the day mobility is in the eye of the beholder. The device that seems ideal to me may be too big and heavy for some and will not have the integrated features that others would insist upon. The new Motion device has a nice 12 inch screen, which I think is great, but would probably not sway James “Mr. Mobility” Kendrick from the more portable TC1100 he has recently been bogging about.

In short I think that the new Motion will be on excellent tablet, but it will not meet everyone’s needs – because no one tablet can. Device selection is and will continue to be a series of trade-offs.

One feature that Motion tends to include that I would like to see more of is the finger print reader. Logging on to a tablet in slate mode is vulnerable to shoulder-surfers and the bio-metric scanner mitigates this to a degree – well done Motion.

What is it with Geeks and coffee?  Jk posted a great link to a collection of “Coffee Hacks” – tips and tricks to improve your caffeinated life. Most amusing.

It looks like Motion will soon be releasing a successor to the m1400. information appeared in a recent Magazine sidebar and was subsequently posted upon TabletPC Buzz. I spotted a reference on Warner Crocker’s blog.

I’m current reviewing a 1400, which is a solid offering – so I am looking forward to seeing the LE1600!

I spotted an excellent post by Grayham Chastney (via jkOnTheRun) in which he contrasts buyer and marketing attitudes to the sale of Laptops and Cars. Grayham Makes on excellent point about how – increasingly –computer manufacturers are advertising on soft factors , such as being lightweight, rather than the hard factors such as the specs of the machine. A very well written post and an interesting read.

I’ve been trying out Maxthon on the tablet platform. For those that don’t already know Maxthon is an alterative browser that uses the IE engine, but replaces the UI. This gives you tabbed browsing without giving up support for Active-x controls. But the thing I find really great with Marathon of a tablet is the support for gestures.

To use gestures in Maxthon you simply hold down the right click button on the stylus and then draw the gesture. You can use gestures to add a new blank tab, navigate back & forward, scroll up & down the pay and navigate between tabs. In addition you can assign you own actions to the gestures if you prefer.

 

I’ve been provided with a Motion M 1400 Tablet PC to review by i-toyz. So far I have seen quite impressed with the unit, though it is missing a couple of features that would be on my “nice to have” list, such as an SD slot. More on this and a full review to come. Thanks i-toyz!

I just read an interesting post by Kelly Holdstock entitled Make Mine Lite - which I first spotted on Rob Bushway's blog.  In it he relates his experiences with two machines - a Dell Latitude D800 laptop and a HP TC1100 Tablet.  In it he states that he prefers trading a bit of performance for a lighter, more mobile device. 

Last week I wrote an article about selecting the right tablet to cure your ills.  I’d like to explore the trade-offs involved in device selection further.  Some of the other trade-offs involved when selecting a device including, off the top of my head:

·      Portability vs. Large Screen

·       Large Screen vs. Power consumption

·       Battery life vs. Weight

·       Integrated peripherals vs. Weight and portability

·       Outdoor viewable screen vs. Price

·       Processor speed vs. heat and power consumption

In looking at the list above it occurs to me that this can be generalised into three broad categories; features, portability and price.

Until someone produces a device that has a massive screen, excellent performance, is light and highly portable but still is affordable then device selection will continue to be a series of choices.  I’m sure there are many others – If anyone has any more to contribute I’d be keen to hear it, so please add a comment.

An interesting post from Wilson Ng about analysing ROI and using this to make strategic decisions.  I don't want to start a ROI debate, but have a read and draw your own conclusions.

Via Robert Scoble

Nick Bradbuy has written about visiting his doctor's offices and finding they use TabletPCs.  An excellent example of a practical application of TabletPC technologies and a good read.

Via jkOnTheRun

I’ve written a couple of posts lately about understanding the business value of TabletPCs and selecting the right tablet for you. In this post I’ll explore an example of how a TabletPC could help to improve productivity, reduce business risk and improve quality of output for a real business. This example is based on a conversation I had with a guy at a dinner party.

Telecom NZ have finally released a CDMA phone with bluetooth.  IMHO this is long over due and I am pleased to see that they have seen the light.  You can get more info about the Nokia 6255 on Telecom's web site.

Update:  I saw the ad for this phone on TV tonight and they did not even mention that it has bluetooth.  Alas - it seems clear that Telecom have not actually figured out that this is a useful feature :)

If you had a headache you could walk down to your local pharmacy and swallow any of the vast array of pills that they stocked. If you did this however it is highly likey that it would not help your headache at all. In fact some of these pills may make your headache worse or cause new ailments. Others may fix your headache but with nasty sideeffects such as sprouting a breast from the middle of your forehead or growing massive amounts of body hair. It is possible even that the wrong pill could kill you. With this in mind I would recommend that if you have a headache and you’re not sure what to take, you should talk to a medical professional with appropriate expertise. TabletPCs, like the pharmicutical variety, now come in a huge range of styles, specifications and form factors. If you are looking at introducing TabletPCs into your business environment then it is important to understand the nature of the business pains you are trying to cure and, more importantly, you need to understand how your users work, what information they need and how they interact with it as this will help you avoid introducing negative sideeffects.

Yes it is true – I am in the process of setting up a Wellington TabletPC User Group, as reported on Geekzone.  Right now I’m still in early planning but if there is anyone out there that would like to offer assistance, support, goodies or advice I’d be keen to hear from you.

My wife purchased this T-Shirt for our little girl Sylvie.  It will be a little while before she will be big enough to fit it, but I can wait.  :)

Spotted on James Kendrick's blog - info about a 3G EVDO modem.  I'd love to see this here in NZ - but Telecom don't use SIM cards, so I'm not holding my breath.

Brendon Steer put me onto Bloglines and has subsequently written up this review on his blog.  I'm now hooked and I would recommend you read Brendon's post and check out Bloglines.

People often tell me that, yes - TabletPCs are cool and yes - pen input and digial ink add features and flexibility that a notebook just can't match.  They will even go so far as to say these features would save them time.  And yet these same people tell me that they won't buy a tablet at this time for the following two reasons:

1. Tablets are more expensive than an equivilant laptop
2. Tablets are underpowered.

Last week I posted a hypothetical example that demonstrated that, over the life of a mobile computer, the marginal cost of a tablet over a laptop was minimal.

This week I'm taking it a step further.  I've identified a Toshiba Tecra M2 PM725 laptop and a HP TC1100 tablet that are similar.  Both have 512MB RAM running on a 333MHz FSB and and a 5400 RPM hard drive.  The laptop has a bigger screen (14.1" vs. 10.4") and a faster CPU (1.6GHz instead of 1.2GHz) and the tablet is lighter, more flexible and has a bigger hard drive (60GB instead of 40GB) and is more portable.  But really performance will be about the same (so that takes care of point 2).

Now I'm going to address point 1.  To do this we will work under the following assumptions:

• All prices are in New Zealand dollars.
• I've used RRP including GST.
• To the price of the tablet I add the cost of a docking station and a leather portfolio - not required for the laptop.
• I have not added in the keyboard, mouse or monitor, these are assumed to be the same for both solutions and therefore make no difference to the marginal cost.
• The laptop includes a DVD drive.  I could not bring myself to pay the price HP ask for a modular DVD writer that slots into the docking station.  I added in DVD writer in a USB 2.0 enclosure - getting a better drive and saving $200 (just because I'm buying a tablet doesn't mean I'm a sucker)
• I've assumed approx 260 working days per year.  This allows for three weeks off as leave, some public holidays and time off sick. Update:  It has been pointed out that this number is too high and does not actually allow any time for sick leave or annual leave.  I've reworked using 220 though this may still be too high depending on your contractual terms and the number of statutory holidays where you live.  Thanks to Will Williams for pointing this out in his comment below.
• I've assumed a 3 year hardware refresh.
• Given the two points above the working life of the mobile device is 780 days.  Update: 660 days

So how much does more does the tablet cost?

The laptop comes in at $3,566.25 (RRP).  The RRP of the tablet (plus the accessories mentioned above) costs $846.88 more at $4,413.13.  Therefore the marginal cost of tablet over the laptop is just $846.88 total or $1.08 per working day over the expected life of the device.  Using 660 days the marginal cost is $1.28

So how do you work out if it is worth it?  Well, it depends on what you do.  You need to work out if the extra functionality and flexibility of the tablet platform is going to add at least that much value.  Basically there are three ways in which a tablet can add value. 

Firstly it can improve your productivity - thus fitting more tasks into a day.  An example of this is cutting out double entry of notes taken in a meeting to produce minutes.

The second way in which the TabletPC platform can add value is to improve the quality of the output you produce.  For example adding diagrams and sketches to a mind map can better capture your meaning than a typed map.

Lastly a tablet can add value by reducing business risk.  This one is harder to quantify - but have you ever been unable to find a note you wrote down or forgotten an action item that was assigned to you in a meeting?

So will a TabletPC be a better option for you?  I can't answer that - but for me it would only take a productivity improvment of less than 30 seconds a day to make it worth while - to say nothing of improving quality or lowering risk.  What I can say is you should do the numbers before you rule out a tablet on price.

Christopher Coulter posted his top list of the 10 applications to show off the TabletPC platform in a comment on this article – which I referred to in an earlier post.

 

In his intro Christopher also implies that the “killer app” for the tablet depends on who is holding it.  Couldn’t agree more.  The list is reproduced below – some applications I know and some I’ll have to check out on it.

 

1. ArtRage (Has no equal in Wow! factor) / Experience Pack goes here now.

2. Alias SketchBook Pro (Close second)

3. FranklinCovey TabletPlanner 3 (Heavens to Betsy!)

4. MindManager X5 Pro (for some an easy #1, near killer-app if one use/gets the concept, if not, then skip.)

5. OneNote/Journal (Practical and impressive. Easily understood)

6. Corel Grafigo 2 / xThink Calculator (also MathPratice) (Keep on Shape Reco'ing me...)

7. MS Reader and Zinio Reader (eBooking still not yet a force, but still has some Wow! power)

8. The New York Times Crossword Puzzle / Music Composition Tool / Dots / Pool / Tic Tac Toe (Nifty, if just fun gimmicks)

9. TabletUML (for those on planet UML that is, if not never mind...)

10. ActiveDocs, OrderPad and form-filling software (could be #1 dependent upon audience, harder to grasp for most, they think just part of the system)

 

Honorable mentions: MSN Messenger 6.1+, PenOffice, Agilix GoBinder, Opera Web Browser, The Brain.