Flash backwards to the summer of 2009. There were some who were not enamored of the advance buzz they were hearing about the upgrade schema from Windows Vista/XP to Windows 7. I will not get into all the various ways to achieve an upgrade here. Mostly because there are so many that I would likely confuse myself. I have been able to do the upgrades with no problem, but articulating those methods to other people on how to do it makes me dizzy. Suffice it to say that there are two main ways to do it. One upgrades your system in place and so all of your icons and folder structures and so forth reappear in roughly the same place you left them. And, by and large, you supposedly do not need to worry about backing up all of your files. The second is destructive, completely (for the most part) overwriting everything on your Operating System Hard Drive and doing a complete write-in of the Windows 7 OS. This is what is called in tech circles a "fresh install". In some cases, this latter method is the only way to upgrade to Windows 7. When people heard this last year, there was a lot of moaning and groaning. Now, 3 months since its release to retail chains, the complaints are not so much.

There are a few reasons why. Mostly it is because Windows 7 works as advertised. And that is making most people happy. Or at least Windows XP happy, which is shinier than Windows Vista happy, which does not really exist. Secondly, it is because most of these complaints did not matter. They were things that should be done anyway.

In terms of the first method of upgrading, the upgrade in place. The one that supposedly leaves your files unmolested. Anyone who goes into this process without backing up their most critical files is rolling the dice. Who knows when your PC is going to get zapped by a power surge while you are doing your install, or any other calamity that might interrupt a very delicate process. Oh, by the way, these files should be backed up anyway. Ok. I will not be a hypocrite and say that I back...

Thanks CES. There have been more Tablet discussions than I can keep up with. And I mean generic Tablets...Tablets being rolled out by all of the manufacturers. No, the Apple Tablet is not the only Tablet being released on the planet. One of the more productive conversations I was involved in was over on Carrypad.com. Productive for me anyway, because in ruminating upon my response, I finally came full circle to defining my specific needs for a Tablet. And here they be:

"Of course no one asked me, but IMO: 7 inch display; should support both landscape and portrait VKBs (would be great if display tech would allow a light enough touch for you to tap-type with one hand while you held it with your other hand); desktop display should allow something like OS X’s Spaces but be “swipe-able” like WebOS; a little nub-arm prop like the ones that come with the iMo 7 inch; USB sub-monitors but that snaps into a recessed cavity on the back of the device would be great for watching video. Protecting the screen? A chemically-hardened screen like on the HP 2730p EliteBook? (but then maybe the display is not so bright-and-shiny; I could stomach that knowing that you could take a baton to my screen and it wouldn’t break, but the mainstream user wants a glossy screen).

It does not matter to me if this device comes from Apple or someone else. I just need a slate-style companion device that has a 7 inch; screen, has a decent VKB and allows a USB KB plug-in, allows me to view and edit any MS. Office docs, and lets me both consume media and create/produce content on the go. Not a tall order, is it.
– Zeux..>> (from my Palm Pre)"

In the recent days, I have added that this device MUST support inking. If I can't pick the thing up and scrawl a quick digital post-it, then I have no use for it. And the OS, whatever it is, must allow me to access and interact with iGoogle (Docs and Calendar specifically), Evernote, and allow me to create and post a blog article.

So my fear is that only Windows-based Tablets...

It appears that I am going to go through this about once every two or three weeks. That is the flitting back and forth across the line of whether I think the Google ChromeOS makes sense or not. And if it does make sense, where am I going to use it? I recently went back and looked at some of the articles on the OS, and some of the videos and commentary by other bloggers, in an attempt to reassess where I am on this thing. Right now, I am back on the side of it not making sense.

One of the videos I watched was this one over on YouTube, which made the rounds about a month ago. While I may not be entirely opposed to the concept of the browser-based OS, this video pushed me back onto the naysayer side of the fence because of some of the assumptions it makes about users. Of course, the main dichotomy is that the video is likely making assumptions based on the average user, and I am not sure that I fall into that category.

The first premise is that the OS will be a best fit for users that spend 90% of their time on the web. There are a few ways to interpret the assumption as it is stated. The speaker caveats the assumption with a "if you are like me". Just to be combative, I could assume that Google is trying to say that this is true of most users, but I'll take the angle just as it is put, that the fit applies if you are a user like the speaker. Which I am not. While connectivity is important to me (the two most important things about an apartment or house I am going to live in is the stability of its electrical power, and the stability of the internet pipes coming into the place), I have insisted on being able to function without it.

I do a lot of local archiving offline. I keep important things on a thumb-drive. Most things I need to function as far as data artifacts are maintained on my NAS. I have gradually shifted to some cloud-based tools, but this is predominantly because I am a multi-computer user. The only reason I have items based in the cloud now is so that when I start a project on...

What a week. I am safely at my girlfriend's flat after being stranded for 4 days due to the winter storm that blew through here last weekend. Somewhat ridic since the only real reason that I was stranded was because the subdivision area I live in and the local DoT, betwixt the two of them, could not figure out how to get the main drag plowed 4 days after the snowfall. So what's a geek to do? I packed several bags of gear for the stay, since I have no real idea when I will be back.

My largest science experiment was figuring out how to make the GearWERKZ audio studio suddenly portable. Most of this gear has basically gone unused for the two years since I bought it, and hence I do not have the schema in my head that I do for other equipment loadouts that allows me to make quick emergent pack-outs of gear. This was all new. I'll be addressing some of those issues in a later post.

What I was able to pack quickly was my camera kit for this off-site period.


The gear pictured is as follows: Dolica ST-300 Tripod, Sony DSC-S750 Point-and-Shoot Digital Camera, Bower SFD2965 Flash, Compact Flash Cards (32GB and 2GB), Minolta 50mm FFL Lens, +2 Macro Lens Filter, Sony Alpha a350 dSLR Camera w/75-300mm Telephoto Lens and orange Color Filter attached. Not pictured is my gearbag for this trip, a LowePro CompuDaypak.

Today was a day to wrap up Christmas shopping, so there was not much time for picture taking. I am still struggling with ideas for a good photo shoot, what with all the snow still piled on the side of the roads. Might be a good time to hit Flickr and try and get some ideas. I'll post something here if I figure out anything worthwhile. Until then, Happy Holidays!
- Vr/Zeux..>>

Finally. After being grounded behind my desk for I don't know how many months, I am finally back out on travel. Yeah, ok; I don't need to be out here 80% of the time like I was for a 2 year stretch. But some time in the saddle out on the open range is always healthy; at least for me.

If you track the Twitter feed, you'll have noticed the contents of my Pack-Up kit for this week. I brought a lot of gear. Some of it is working out great. Some of it, not so good. Out of necessity, I took along two laptops: the Gateway P6860FX for entertainment, and the HP EliteBook 2730p for work. The HP, as always, is working out fine, but I have not spent a ton of time on it, as my workday (training) activities are leaving me little time to dial back into the home office. The Gateway is working great now as an iTunes player and web-content creation workstation. I also got to watch The Talented Mr. Ripley on the big (17" screen, so that, in some way, justified me having lugged it along.

Zeux' Geek-Kit 120609



What the Gateway has not done well, or at least has not done well in conjunction with Windows 7, is play legacy PC games. I tried to get both Freedom Force and Darkstar One to run on the Gateway to no avail. Freedom Force ran, but had a sound glitch and a click-move glitch (when I would click on one spot on the map, the characters would run to a different spot, or the mouse indicator was always the attack symbol, so that whatever I clicked on the cahracters would attack instead of just move or talk-to). It [Freedom Force]lost its chance at survival on my hard drive when I was unable to reliably save content in-game, or load datafiles that I had saved from my campaign. Darkstar One I could not even get to launch.

And so I was off to work on developing more content for the site. Which requires web access in a lot of cases. Which brings me to my next hairball.

First of all, I think any hotel that does not provide free internet access is an atrocious business model. If a Best Western or Days Inn...

Thanks a lot Apple. With the announcement that Cupertino's holiday product line-up is set, the rest of the computing industry seems content to do the same. Sure; if I peeled the onion back from the consumer level view, I am sure there are dozens of neat things just preparing to hatch. But I am talking about actual new product launches between now and Saint Nick taking his annual ride. The only cool thing I see hitting the street that is not already on a shelf somewhere is the Barnes and Noble Nook. A product which I am already a supporter of before its impending launch.

If I were in my less mature and frivolous youth, I would have already purchased a Viliv something or other, and maybe another netbook. Maybe. I did just complete a major sell-off of all of the extra workstations in the 'WERKz because so many of them went unused. But the sheer lack of anything interesting and new on the market is making me downright antsy.

For those feeling the same way, and in better financial times than I am, some companies have the answer. That is to pick up something not new, but previously out of your price reach. Verizon is one such vendor. They are subsidizing the Sony Vaio P for a mere $199 with a 2 year contract.

The Vaio P is a respectable piece of kit. Over-priced, as is the case with the majority of Sony's product lines, the Vaio P is a hard sell at its normal price of $850 or more; $300 more than the most expensive NetBook, and more expensive than the new trend of razer-books. Being able to buy one at less than 50% of its stand-alone street price should be tickling more than one techno-nerd looking to score a piece of self-funded gadgetry before the holidays hit.

Having one of these to cart home would be an enjoyable capture. While it is true that you have to invest in a 2-year data plan with Verizon, that seems almost a commodity these days. A 2-year plan, at least in the US, is the norm, so it should not hit the average buyer as anything uncomfortable.

Truth be told that if I had not just...

I have been a proponent of the TabletPC platform since its inception. Maybe I am one of the few; the outlyers. To me, the platform and what it does just makes sense. And I do not qualify it with that questionable statement that it has a place in vertical markets or for niche uses. That is just crazy talk. How people can not see the common sense in simply writing, in working in the paradigm that has dominated human culture since the arrival of the written word, and creating that in a persistent digital environment, I just can not fathom. As it is, I frequently find myself alone in looking at a device and seeing the sense in it not having a keyboard.

What I have not done is presented a step-by-step guide to doing the initial configuration and then managing the life-cycle of a TabletPC and integrating it into your work and personal life. And I am not going to have time to that today either.

But one day a few months ago, 5 months into my Motion LE1600's tour of duty as my primary work laptop and the PIM Workstation in the 'WERKZ, it seemed like a good time to take this on as a writing project. Unfortunately, shortly after I startewd that article, I decided that the LE1600 was not cutting it and that I needed more oomph at work. So I upgraded to an HP 2730p Elitebook. The HP is serving with aplomb, and eventually, I will get back the original concept behind this post. We'll do a complete walk-through of how one should expect to employ a TabletPC in every-day life, we'll wrap up with a quick review of what is currently on the market, and some of the more prudent means of going about attaining one.

Until I get back to that original intent, I did want to post what I had written those months ago, as it may be of some use to someone in the market for a slate-style TabletPC:

"First, let's start off with a description of the capabilities and limitations of the LE1600 and why I specifically chose to go with this model over other choices. The LE1600 is a slate-style TabletPC released circa mid-year...

Laptop Magazine: I am all for as much CULV "my razer-book kicks your netbook's butt" love as can be spread around. In that vein is this review of the HP dm3, even more timely because I have a buddy in the market for a razer-book. If you are, too, peep this review. Oh, and remember to stay away from MSI. Their X-340 (which I owned) broke, they're customer service support was horrible. So bad that it was less stressful for me to simply throw the thing away. There are better razer-books on the market, as this shootout shows.

Liliputing: May as well keep going with the general theme, as Liliputing has posted a review of Asus's latest razer-book, the UL30A. So if you are really in the market for something in this stratum, which of these two do you pick?

Gizmodo: ...annnnddddd....this is why it's called the Trifecta. In another coincidental twist, Gizmodo just recently ran a shootout between the top razer-books on the market. So now you know the answer to my question above. At least according to Gizmodo. Peep the feed.

[url=http://www.laptopmag.com/review/laptop/hp-pavilion-dm3t.aspx[/url]Laptop Magazine:[/url] I am all for as much CULV "my razer-book kicks your netbook's butt" love as can be spread around. In that vein is this review of the HP dm3, even more timely because I have a buddy in the market for a razer-book. If you are, too, peep this review. Oh, and remember to stay away from MSI. Their X-340 (which I owned) broke, they're customer service support was horrible. So bad that it was less stressful for me to simply throw the thing away. There are better razer-books on the market, as this shootout shows.

Liliputing: May as well keep going with the general theme, as Liliputing has posted a review of Asus's latest razer-book, the UL30A. So if you are <b><i>really</i></b> in the market for something in this stratum, which of these two do you pick?

[url=http://gizmodo.com/5387914/win7-laptop-battlemodo-thin-and-lights-for-under-800]Gizmodo:[/a] ...annnnddddd....this is why it's called the Trifecta. In another coincidental twist, Gizmodo just recently ran a shootout between the top razer-books on the market. So now you know the answer to my question above. At least according to Gizmodo. Peep the feed.