First gen iPad probably should be skiped, but it does look good

Today the iPad has gone on sale for pre-orders. I know a BGR’er who is definitely tempted, and I hope I can dissuade him a little.. at least long enough to wait for the second gen version to come out.

Tablet computing is an interesting area that has not yet had its day. Its been on the side lines for a long time and never cracked the main stream. Largely due to the technical challenges with making this type of hardware, but also due to the total lack of vision in the field. If anyone can break that its Apple, and from what we have all seen the iPad will be a great success. But I think there are going to be much better platforms that will leave the iPad standing.

Apple and the iPad

Lets cut to the chase on the iPad. Its a large size iPod touch / iPhone. Is there anything wrong with that? Not at all… expect a tablet computer needs to be much more then just a glorified PDA.

What we want in a tablet is a powerful computer (that is much easier than it has ever been) combined with touch and gesture based interfaces making the thing a joy to use, but still giving you enough grunt to do something good.

When the iPad was revealed I was a little underwhelmed. Sure its good enough, but that is where it stops..good enough. An affordable tablet represents a new age in computing, a fundamental shift in how we use computers and “good enough” probably won’t cut it.

Absolute app store power corrupts

The real problem with the iPad is Apple itself. Their insistence on taking the app store concept to a tablet is a bad one. While you can get away with very limited choices on a phone where Apple wield all the power is “OK”; a tablet is your computer.. you want to do what YOU want, not what they tell you.

The whole point of any computer is for you to customise it into what you want, and a tablet is even more personal then the average computer. Apple is coming under criticism of their ethics and standards for what they say is an isn’t allowed in THEIR devices.

Gizmodo this week had a great article on censorship on the iPad, and what it means to all is us, and the freedom of the press.

Imagine iPad get their way and start selling news papers through the iPad, how long before that is a major money earner? Not long! Now imagine that paper wants to write a bad article on Apple? Could they pull the paper for sale through the app store? yes they could! Should they have that power?

Never touch the first gen

Rule one with new tech: Never buy the first gen hardware. Rule two: NEVER BUY FIRST GEN HARDWARE! You will be screwed over badly, just suck it up and wait. With rumours of the 4G iPhone on the horizon, and its ability to finally run more than one app at a time will come to the iPad 2G in no time at all.. wait for it.

Gizmodo also had a great article on iPad pricing if you are mad enough to get one.

What are the other options?

There is one that I really want: The Microsoft Courier

What I like:

• Multiple screens
• Finger and pen input
• The notebook style. Means it can be kept closed and the screen are protected.

What I don’t want: Being restricted to an app store! I know the idea is great for a lot of people, just not for me. I would like to see them go more with the Android style where Google have their own app store, but other people can run their own as well. An open market is the only way you will have competitive and interesting applications.

Will this device ever actually exist? It’s hard to say. Microsoft might be able to pull it off, but it would be hard. But I think this is definitely the future for this platform.

Anything else

This year there are a lot of tablets coming:

Android
As I just mentioned the Android platform is already establishing itself on mobile phones. It was designed to work on these light weight machines and a tablet would be easy for it to be implemented on with an established set of applications.

There are already manufactures working on getting Android into the market, its won’t be long.

Joo Joo
There is another kid on the block that is gearing up to ship. “Joo Joo” has been in development for a long time under the more well known name of “Crunchpad”.

It already had a troubled past when a few months ago the it seems the teams working on the pad split and caused the name change. There is still a good chance this will never actually make it onto the market because the intellectual property on this device is still being worked out. But if it does get sorted then this might be a good one to look at.

Others
These are the ones I am hearing most about, I am sure there are plenty of others being developed. This is going to be a big growth area for the next few years, and will probably take the place of Netbooks as the current darling of the computer world.

But all is not as it appears, this is not about giving there customers a new way to interact with the player. This is about making a grab for the after sales headphone market. I think Apple are setting a dangerous precedent, and should not be allowed to muscle in on a market where there obvious intention is to drive up prices and exclude competitors they don’t happen to like.

How it works

The first part of the scam is to remove all the controls from the device. So now you have a player that you can’t do anything with unless you plug in the supplied headphones. On the cable is the controller to let you skip and play your songs. Now this is not a new idea, most music player have these, making it nice and easy for you to control your music. But most suppliers allow you to plug your headphones into the controller so you can choose if you want to use their supplied head phones, or your own (which are probably much more expensive).

This is where Apple have seen their market. They know most people buy a nice pair of headphones and they want a slice of that cake as well. But the only way they can do that is by making sure you have to use their headphones with the device. Creating a huge demand for new head phones that have this new controller piece attached.

But what is to stop who ever making that controller and sticking it onto their line of head phones? Apple have included a chip into the design of the controller that while at the moment does very little, it can be used to legally attack any company that tries to produce their over version of the controller. Reverse engineering the chip is a breach of the DMCA and means Apple can sue (at least in the US). So companies have to play nice and pay Apple a licence fee to be able to make their head phones compatible.

Because Apple are now in control of this relationship I think its unlikely you will see a generic controller appear. One that plugs in and allows you to plug in your own headphones. This would cut into the sales of the other headphones and reduce profitability so Apple will simply not let it be done.

I won’t be surprised if you now start to see this controller appear on the other apple products as they spread the base of devices that need it until they cover the who range.

Dangerous Precedent

This sets a dangerous precedent for Apple. They are in a monopoly situation with the iPod and they are now starting to leaver that position into other, mostly unrelated areas of manufacture.

It is something they have done many times, and always seem to aim for with their computers. Trying to lock you into to only using their equipment. But never quiet so blatant as selling you a product that just won’t work without their help.

I can only hope this is a fad that does not catch on.

No one likes the idiot who runs around SHOUTING at everyone, or someone who won’t shut up when you are trying to play Quake. Most of the time the rules are obvious, as long as you are not being annoying or upsetting someone then its OK.

But sometimes a new technology comes along that is a little different. Something that looks a feels like it is something you know, but there is something else to it that does not make immediate sense.

Feeling Twitter

This is how I feel about Twitter. I thoroughly enjoy using it, it is sitting right there in my browser now.. just waiting for someone I know (or don’t know) to pop up and say something. I have it on my phone, in my web browser, where ever I am I need my feed.

I was sitting on a cold train station last week, and beside the usual thoughts of “damn trains” and “bloody hell its cold” was “I know I’ll twitter this” so I did, and I was rewarded with a voice of the friend coming back at me (actually telling me how he won’t takes trains any more.. thanks Sideswipe).

For the first time I am some how at the front of this new technology, as it grows at its rapid pace I have already amassed a large number of posts, a few followers and some people I follow. This is something of a novelty for me. Most people would tell you I am not the most social person, not unpleasant, but I am just as content being on my own as I am with others. So feeling the need to blog the tiny details of my life is a little odd, but I am getting used to it.

The Rules

So this brings me to the question… what are the rules of twitter? What do I have to do in order be nice other people? At first it seems obvious, find people you like and follow them.  Simple! Well its not quiet like that.

What do you do if someone you don’t know starts following you? There are three types of people that will follow you:

1. Spam Mongers. Easy problem to fix, ignore them and report their name as spam to @Spam
2. Companies. Easy again, just let them follow you and ignore them. Twitter is for you to put stuff out, not to listen to their advertising.
3. Some one normal that is just listening to what you are saying. Now this is a problem.

The random follower

So now you have someone you don’t know following you. So what do you do? Should you follow them back out of politeness, even though doing that will cause all their posts to gum up your own posts. Should you ignore them, and will that make them upset?

I have resolved not to follow anyone I don’t know, or I am not interested in. So I will look through their posts and decide. But if I don’t think I will read it, I just won’t follow it. But I have no way of knowing if that is the right thing to do. The only guidance I have is other people I follow, seeing as most of them are my friends they don’t really count.

The other, more famous people I follow have caused me a problem. I followed them because I was interested what they were up to. But then they started following me. Now what do I do? Woo hoo! I have Stephen Fry following my twitter… oh crap, my life is mundane in comparison, why on earth would he want to read what I have to say?

So a simple rule of thumb, follow people you are interested in, don’t feel obliged to follow someone just because they are following you. But check up on them from time to time, you might find something you like.

I will follow you from now until the day I day

OK great. So now you have a load of followers, and you are feeling a ton of performance pressure (thanks Stephen, that’s all I need). But very quickly you forget who these people are (lets face it most are probably not listens to your ramblings) and you carry on.

But you find your twitter full of one of these peoples posts. You have decided they are actually quiet dull, so its time to dump them. But are you allowed to do that? There’s a dump button, but that does not mean you have to press it. What if they are following you?

Again a simple rule saves the day. Don’t follow someone you are not really interested in. If they stop following you then who really cares? There is a good chance they never even read a single post.

Fin

This was supposed to be a short post on what I think of twitter, and how I am enjoying using it. Seems to have turned into quiet a lengthy post on the rules I apply to twitter. I am going to be trying to write shorter, more frequent posts, this one seems to have gotten away from me.

The prettiest little laptop in town

I have finally managed to lay my grubby mitts on a netbook. I have been after one for some time, and now one is mine.

The Acer Aspire One is my machine of choice. A great combination of look, performance, and price. There are now a number of machines you could go for, all offering about the same features, all for around the same cost.

But I think the Aspire one stands out as the machine of choice (at least for the geeks out there). Not because it is the best, but because it is one of the cheapest, and one of the best performers.

The Samsung is also worth considering, but at almost twice the price it really is not in the running.

Starting at the bottom

I have gone for the very bottom of the range. 512mb RAM, with a 8gb Solid State Hard Disk. This version only comes with Linux installed. There is also version with 1gb RAM and a 120gb hard disk. With your choice of either Linux or Windows.

I went for the bottom of the range because I want to see just what is possible with one of the these machines. 512mb RAM and a 1.6 Intel Atom processor is by no means a slow coach in the mobile computer stakes (better than most of the machines I have ever had). But the machine can always be upgraded very easily to be much better than the alternatives for very little cost.

The only real draw back of the machine is the limited size of the hard disk. Of the 8gb on the disk, you only get half of that available to you after the OS has been installed and you have lost 1gb to the swap space. But this is not a machine for doing video editing or music production, so 4gb is plenty of room for a basic machine. There is one problem using the solid state disk, it is quiet slow. It seems the drive the Aspire uses is just not that good. You will often wait while data is read from the drive before the app will start. It’s something that is a little annoying, but can be lived with. But the upshot is there are virtually no moving parts in the machine, so even if you drop it you should be OK (Don’t hold me to that).

But the Aspire One does have a clever trick up its sleve. There are two card readers on the machine. One is a standard reader for using with lots of different types of media. The other is only for SD cards. When you put a card in, instead of appearing as another drive, it extends the hard disk space instead. So as 8gb SD cards become more reasonable in price you can easily extend the size of the machine.

The custom OS

The Aspire One's custom version of Linpus

The Aspire One ships with a custom version of Linpus. Which is already a branch of the Fedora Linux project. What you see is basically a shell sitting over the normal Gnome desktop. So if you are familiar with Ubuntu, as I am. You are already familiar with the workings of the machine.

The UI is actually pretty good. The display is split into four sections. Connect, Work, Fun, Files. Three apps are accessible from each section, or the section can be expanded out to show all the apps in that section.

The whole idea works well. But you soon come up against the limitations of this design. Because this is a shell over the normal Gnome desktop you can get to the more normal functions you would expect. But there are a number of things you have to do to make it work.

I quickly got tired of having to jump through hoops to be able to get to the apps I wanted to use. It also doesn’t come with the most up-to-date software. Firefox 2 is default web browser for example. You will also have to install the more common applications like GIMP, Skype, even Thunderbird. All very simple once you have pulled the tricks to let you get to the package manager.

Back to Ubuntu

Ubuntu's version for Netbooks

Thankfully, as always, the community are working to help us. Once you have installed the latest version of Ubuntu and tweaked it to work on the Aspire One you can put on the Netbook Remix. This is not without its problems, not all the features of the Aspire One work correctly with Ubuntu at the moment. But I am sure the community will solve these problems, especially for a machine this popular.

As of yet I have not tried it, but I will trying it out. Once I do, I will let you know what I think.

Using the netbook

The netbook raises an interesting problem. You don’t use the it like you would a normal laptop. It really is more for dipping into, doing what you need to quickly and coming back out again, than it is to use for a whole day. But this is perfect for the machine. It is so small (8.9 inch screen) you can put it in a pocket and carry it around with you. The battery life is not the best, but can still manage a reasonable 2.5 hours, which I don’t think is too bad (Considering my Vaio has only ever been able to manage 1 hour).

The keyboard is 83% of the normal size and is actually very very good (I’m using it right now to write this). It is responsive and good enough to really use. The screen is also excellent. Bright and clear. It folds down the back of the machine (Apple like). The only real disappointment is the the touch pad. The actual pad is OK, but to make the machine a little smaller the buttons have been placed either side of the touch pad. Your finger naturally wants to click the button under the pad, but it’s just not there. It takes a little getting used to, but you can always plug in a USB mouse if you really can’t use the the pad.

Something that would really benefit these devices would be a touch screen (something I think is coming soon).

Conclusion

The Aspire One is an excellent machine. Just what I was looking for in an ultra mobile computer. Powerful enough to work really well. But small enough to be portable and taken everywhere. While the battery life is not the most amazing, I think it is more than enough.

These ultra mobiles are never going to be replacements for your desktop machine, or your working laptop (I personally can not work on anything but a desktop machine). But if you want a machine for surfing the web, or just doing odd bits of work, this is the perfect device.

The machine I always wanted

Something I always wanted was a Psion Series 7. While I was at uni I had a Psion 3c, a great little computer for doing the most basic operations. Sideswipe totally upstaged me by getting the Psion Series 5, a much more powerful and definitely better machine. With a larger, touch sensitive screen. I finally bought one from eBay for £30 last year, but it just doesn’t cut the mustard any more. But the series 7 was the machine I craved, it had a large touch sensitive colour screen and good sized keyboard. But it was incredibly expensive, even now it still fetches over £100 on eBay.

But the Aspire One has replaced that need.

Update – 29/12/2008
I was having problems with my Aspire One. When ever the machine was turned off it would not turn back on straight away. The lights would come on but the screen stayed off and the BIOS did not appear to start. It would eventually fix itself and start.

I eventually found you can hold down the Fn+Esc keys when you start to force a BIOS reset. This would then make the machine boot again (seems a common command for Acer machines). I was thinking of taking it back but I figured it might just be a BIOS bug. Sure enough I eventually found a great site talking about the problem, and the fix is to just update to the latest BIOS. They even provided a guide to setting up the update (you have to install DOS onto a USB stick, or make a special USB config to get the BIOS to do it automatically).

Now I’m loving the Aspire One again