STFU && RTFM

Yesterday, Apple announced the long-anticipated, much hyped iPad. Looking like an overgrown iPhone, it sports a 9.7″ screen, with a resolution of 1024×768, multi-touch and your choice of WLAN (all models) 3G (some models) and 16, 32 or 64 GB memory.
 
A commenter at NRK Beta said it was disappointing that it didn’t have some sort of eInk technology. Now, while eInk is GREAT for reading comfort and battery time, it has a deadly flaw for a device like the iPad; it has a screen refresh rate on par with, well a book (never mind the fact that eInk is so far only available as black and wh … err … gray).
 
To me, the iPad is NOT ideal for reading, for the exact same reasons why a device with eInk is; backlight and screen refresh. The backlight and screen refresh makes your eyes go tired much quicker, and, eInk having neither, it is actually like reading off darkish paper.
 
The book function being less than interesting to me, my interest, which, I admit, is piqued, is fading. As a websurfing device, well, it just doesn’t fo it for me. If I want an instant-on, touch screen device, I’ll use my phone. If I want to seriously surf the web, I want a computer, complete with a mouse and a keyboard.
 
Playing music? Sure, I could, but why not use an iPod or a Creative Zen; they’re smaller and have better power usage times. As for reading and editing documents, I’d rather have a computer to edit and either paper or eInk to read, so that’s out. Photo viewing and editing? Again, I want a computer.
 

The iPad
 
The form factor looks good, but I am still critical of both the weight and how long the battery will last. I notice that, like the iPod and iPhone, the iPad does not look like you can exchange the battery yourself, which I find a curious choice. Sure, for a tiny unit like the shuffle, I can understand it, but for an everyday usage unit like the iPhone? I don’t get it.
 
Using iPhone OS is an obvious, albeit exciting choice. Apple are basically saying that the iPhone OS is mature enough and powerful enough to be used on this kind of device. Also, by all accounts, it does exactly what an OS for a device like this should do; IT JUST WORKS.
 
While the tech geek in me goes “OOOH! SHINY!”, the sensible guy sitting somewhere deep down, right next door to the justification department, is going “Meh. Yet another device I have no use for.” And that, really, is what it all boils down to, isn’t it? The answer to the question “Do I have any real use for this?”
 
When all’s told, my interest is piqued, but I am not convinced, and I doubt that I will shell out the $499-$699 for one of these units. There are three main reasons for this:
 

1. Lock-In
   • To a certain degree, Apple=Lock-in. Now, if they’d announced an Android version in addition to the iPhone OS version, I might be more interested. Now, Apple is obviously never going to do that, which is fine, but it is, to me, an argument in the “Cons” column. I also keep in mind the problems with applications in the App Store, and I assume that Apple will, in practice, have total control over the iPad, and what’s on it.
2. Not enough connection options
   • Once more, I’m annoyed at Apple’s insistence on using their own proprietary solutions for connection and charging, as well as the fact that they have not included what I would have thought was an obvious feature for a device such as this; a memory card reader. The counter argument, I suppose, is what memory card format to choose, which I would counter by telling them to give us an SD(HC) reader, which is likely to cover the needs of most users.
3. Size
   • To me, the iPad would be too big and heavy to use as any kind of music device, while it’s too small for a lot of other tasks, such as photo viewing and (especially) editing, document editing and web browsing.

 
In the end, to me it comes down to this: If I have a small-ish laptop (say 13.3″) and my ebook, I am covered, and with better battery capacity than I would have with the iPad. Sure, I’d lug around more weight, but I don’t always have my laptop with me. I almost always have my ebook with me.

For the last month or so, I’ve been playing around with Google newest online toy; Google Wave. Billed as a “personal communication and collaboration tool”, it is designed to combine email, IM, wikis and social networking. Written in Java, using OpenJDK, Google has announced plans to release most of the source code as Open Source.
 
As a communications platform, it is fun, and I like the way it combines instant messaging with logs, meaning that you can see how a conversation has taken place. The playback function is simple to use, and allows you to see context in a nifty way. It also means that you can use Wave as a presentation tool, should you so wish.
 
As for using it for project planning and communication, which I think is likely to be one of its most used applications, it looks pretty good. Indenting messages could, and should be simpler – they now get automatically indented if inserted between two other messages, but otherwise they are not indented. That’s definitely a function I’d like to see.
 
Another feature I’d like to see, is an option to share a wave publicly, giving you a URL to post to a tweet, a blogpost or the like, so that people who don’t have a Wave account can see the discussion. I hope this is something that will be coming, and I think it’s likely that we’re going to see it, keeping in mind that this is a feature that the guys at Google are more than somewhat familiar with, as we can find it in Google Calendar as well as Google Docs.
 
The last thing that kinda irks me, is that there is no print-function. While I’m all for a Wave being a digital entity, it would be good, I think to have the option to print a wave. I’ve already had one situation where I wanted to do so, but ended up having to copy all the text over to a document, which somewhat makes the point of the wave go away.
 
All in all, I’m pretty impressed by Google Wave. I see a lot of potential in it, and I’m definitely going to keep playing around with it. I’m already using it to plan one project all by my lonesome, as well as communicating with a mate about the translation of his role playing game to English.

Web search and advertising giant Google has gone against what seemed to be a foregone conclusion by not only not buying the norwegian web browser development firm Opera software, but also publishing their own web browser, called Chrome. They’ve built it on Web Kit, the same rendering engine used by Apple’s Safari, and added their own JVM (Java Virtual Machine).
 

 
The first thing I noticed when I’d installed Chrome was how shiny it was, how eyecandy-y it was. The second thing I noticed was its lack of a “stop” button. That was it though. I didn’t notice any obvious usability flaws. There were no illogical keyboard shortcuts.
 
Even so, it does seem somewhat underdeveloped. Chrome is a very early Beta considering other Beta projects of Google’s. To me, it immediately felt a bit like Windows XP’s default skin, that is to say, I think it looks a bit like they’ve teamed up with Fisher Price to create My First Browser.
 
Like my conclusions on Apple’s Safari and Opera, I like it, but I can’t really see it substituting my current default, Mozilla Firefox.

So, I finally bought a new computer. It’s a pretty smooth bit of kit if I might say so. It’s a HTPC, with a 3GHz CPU and 4GB RAM. It also runs Windows Vista Ultimate, and is my first real day-to-day encounter with said OS.
 
The computer arrived at my place a little more than a week ago. Setup was quick (quicker than the setup of a preinstalled Windows XP machine) and simple (simpler than the setup of a preinstalled Windows XP machine). It boots quickly (well, it’d better with the amount of CPU and RAM I got for it), and seems stable.
 
I went for Vista Ultimate, because I wanted all the bells an whistles of Vista, and so it seems I have got. First off, is visually very appealing. Windows Vista is pure eyecandy, no doubt about it. When that’s said, most of the tips, tricks and hotkeys I know for Windows XP Professional, seems to work in Vista as well.
 
Vista has a handfull of new features, compared to Windows XP. Though I haven’t tried them all out, I have found the following particularly useful:
 

• Windows Flip 3D
• Search pane in the start menu
• Windows Media Center
• User Account Control
• Breadcrumb view in the Explorer Address bar

 
At first glance, Windows Vista could easily be mistaken Windows XP with a facelift and some eyecandy. Having used the computer for a week seems to indicate there is more to this than meets the eye though. What, exactly, this more is, remains to be seen. I can say that I like what I have seen so far.

On June 18th, 2008, some eight and a half million people downloaded the latest version of Mozilla Firefox. A powerful browser, built on the Gecko engine its greatest advantage is the fact that it is so easily expandable and customizable through powerful add-ons.
 
There are a few new features that are most decidedly practical. One of them is a “Verified by” function, which simply means that when you are visiting say, a Microsoft site, the addressbar shines up like this:

 
Another nifty function is the “Most Visited” button, which lists your ten most visited websites:

 
The password-saving feature is still there, but comes up as a noticebar, instead of a dialog box:

 
Designwise, the changes are minor, but noticeable. There are new buttons, like so:

 
All in all, Firefox 3 seems to be a decent browser, and it simply works, which is always nice. By the by, everyone who downloaded Firefox 3 in the first 24 hours were part of a world record setting event, and got to download a Download Day certificate like this:
 

I’d been wanting to get a new mouse for my portable computer for a long time when I actually did. Up until last week, I’ve been using your regular two-buttons-and-a-scroll-wheel kind of mouse, and I wanted a little more functionality when on the road. I’m used to using one of Logitechs larger mouse with my desktop computer, and wanted something like that, only smaller.
 
I remembered a product test I did a while back, of Logitechs newest portable cordless, with their smallest receiver yet, called Logitech VX Nano Cordless Laser Mouse for Notebooks. I also remembered liking it, so I decided to go for it.
 
Functionwise, it’s great. The scroll-whell has two modes, (almost) friction-less and regular. It has backward and forward buttons, sideward scroll, and a total of five programmable buttons. Comfort is also excellent. It lies very well in the hand, and the gripping pads on the side makes it very comfortable to use.
 
The greates feature is the receiver though. It is small enough to fit in the back of my laptop, even when it is docked. It is to me the epitome of plug-in-and-forget.
 
The conclusion is simple; though not cheap, this is an excellent little bit of kit, which works beautifully. It is definitely the best mouse in this size I’ve ever tried, and I am very content.

A friend of mine whose tech savvy is usually worth listening to waxed religious about Opera the other night. When he does, there’s usually a good reason, so I decided to check it out.
 
Setting it up
Setting up a webbrowser shouldn’t be a complicated process, and Opera is as simple to install as most other browsers. When you open it, you get what Opera has decided to call “Speed Dial”, basically a page with nine “buttons”, previews of nine websites, to be defined by the user. Here’s what it looks like:

 
Using it
I’ve used earlier incarnations of Opera, but it’s been a while, and they’ve gotten very far since then. Opera has a decent ease of use, but utilizes different hotkeys than comparable browsers Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, which makes crossing over a bit difficult. Nevertheless it presents itself as an intuitive and simple webbrowser.
 
One of the major features of Opera has since its inception back in 2000 been tabbed browsing. As an extension of this, Opera now features a preview-function of open tabs, which is activated by simply hovering the mouse pointer over the tab you wish to see as shown below:

 
All in all, Opera, like Safari presents itself as an impressive, intuitive and helpful addition to the family of webbrowsers. I’d like to have seen a higher degree of standardization when it comes to hotkeys, but mostly it’s a good browser, even though I doubt it will replace Firefox as my standard browser

I like trying out new pieces of software, and when Apple released Safari for Windows I had no choice but to try it out. First impression is that it is most definitely an Apple product, and bears great resemblance to e.g. iTunes. It is a sleek piece of software, and it seems to be sturdy enough.
 
Having used Firefox for years, it is great seeing that they’ve implemented the same keyboard shortcuts that seem to have become more or less the norm for such functions as opening tabs, closing tabs etc.
 
The way it renders websites is another point I like; it seems to render much like Firefox, and more to the point, not like Internet Explorer. This is especially noticeable with sites that run a wiki, like my website. For example, in Safari and Firefox the bottom bar is rendered across the browser, unlike in Internet Explorer where it is cropped to “fit” on the right of the sidebar.
 

 
All in all, it strikes me as a decent webbrowser, although I am unsure if I will allow it to replace Firefox. Even so, at times it is good to have a second third-party browser installed, like when I was reinstalling Firefox…