Pem’s Tech Blog

I got a survey from AT&T about the iPad.  Here’s my some of the responses I gave.

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How satisfied? 9/10 because…  I think it’s clearly the best out there, but that’s really only because it was first to market, for this type of oversized tablet device.

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What do you like the most about the iPad?

It’s useful for reading, writing, internet access, video.  The screen size and the thinness is great size for reading web pages, magazines, comics, pdf / doc files, emails, video, etc.  Unlike a netbook, I can leave it on all day, without significant problems with stability or heat.  It’s great to hold and use in hands, or read while laying down, or put on a stand and type with the Apple wireless keyboard.  Having 802.11 a/n and the awesome no contract $15/mo AT&T wireless plan (that you can upgrade to $30/mo only when you need it) is a real game changer.

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What do you dislike the most about the iPad?

1st, I really think there should be a central file system.  It’s fine to give each app its own private file area too.  But there’s a lot of files I want to have in central location, and open with different apps.  For example, I’d like to sync my entire set of DropBox files to one folder (on iPad and iPod).  And I’d like to sync a folder from my Windows computer to one folder (on iPad and iPod).  Then I should be able to open particular files, from the central file system, from each app.  If I want to open the same file from two different apps, I shouldn’t have (and manage) two copies of the file!  The user has to jump through so many hoops with this "think different" lack of a central file system.  It can be really annoying.

2nd, There are two things which make it difficult to suggest for children and people in my family who use computers more casually.  One, even $500 each is expensive, at least if you buy 4 or 5 or 6 of them.  Two, I’m not confident that a person can really use it without sync’ing to a real computer.  If someone, such as a parent with multiple children, has to decide between a laptop or an iPad, it’s probably going to be the laptop first, since the iPad kind of needs a computer (using iTunes).

3rd, Would be nice if the already awesome AT&T no contract data plan included WiFi on planes.

4th, It’s not often, but sometimes an app, or even the OS, will crash or freeze.  I’ve even had the Mail app freeze while I was writing an email, and it didn’t save a draft, so I had to retype the email.  This happens less on other devices…  But since iPad doesn’t multi-task, and doesn’t let me install OS level stuff (like a clipboard manager with clipboard history), it can be more damaging when something does crash.

My 1st and 2nd dislikes are the biggest.

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Did you comparison shop for other devices?  No to iPhone and other smart phones.  Yes to netbook, notebook/laptop, e-reader, other (tablets such as Android).

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I am on the internet more than 6 hours a day.  Duh

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iPad kind of replaces my laptop – but I think that’s only temporary.  I have both a (normal more powerful desktop) and a (mac mini for travel between two residences).  However, as laptops improve in terms of weight, battery life, always-on-capabilities, power…  I am likely to someday carry both a laptop and iPad.  Of course it would help if both the iPad and laptops reduce their weight a little more.

What I’d really like to do is carry one ARM iPad, one keyboard-less x86 laptop tablet, and one keyboard that can easily fast-switch which of the two it controls (and also turn on/off faster, maybe using a switch or a toggle button – instead of having to hold down a button for 3 seconds).  I want to carry one keyboard, not two.  The same bluetooth keyboard should let me fast-switch between iPad and x86 tablet, and to even a 3rd device too, such as my mac mini.  There are some bluetooth headsets that let you pair to more than one device.

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I didn’t say this in the survey…  But it more replaces a netbook or an e-reader than a laptop.  I bolded the text about having a bluetooth keyboard that lets you store multiple profiles (such as 3) and fast-change between them, to switch which bluetooth device you are connected to.  That is really a huge deal.

Overall, I think most people would pick between (a desktop vs. a laptop), rather than (a laptop vs. an iPad).  Though I am looking forward to (more powerful, lighter weight, lower heat, longer battery life) keyboard-less multi-touch x86 Windows 7 tablets (or Mac OS X) (especially with better mobile GPU’s, such as AMD/ATI Fusion products).

Pem (Admin) :: 2010/05/29 (Saturday, May 29, 2010) :: Mobility :: No Comments »

I faced an annoying problem with my Windows account in a corporate network (at my day job).  IT security makes our passwords expires after 90 days, so you have to change your Windows account password.  I change the password.  Then it locks me out.  I ask IT to reset the password, and it works.  Then shortly thereafter, it locks me out again.  It kept locking me out.

IT thought this might just be an issue of waiting for the password to sync.  But I had another idea.  My local Windows 7 machine is not on the domain, and it still had the old password cached, such as for credentials as seen in (Control Panel\User Accounts and Family Safety\Credential Manager).  You can also get there from Run -> control userpasswords2 -> Advanced -> Manage Password.

Unfortunately, as far as I could tell, you can only delete them one at a time, and it’s really slow…  It takes 3 clicks per removal, plus each time you remove one it scrolls you back up to the top of the window.

So many things are wrong with this entire situation.  Everything involved is Microsoft Windows technology, yet it manages to horribly break itself.  The error shouldn’t happen in the first place.  But the bad UI makes it so much more painful.

Here’s one post that at least attempts to help troubleshoot the issue:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/w7itprosecurity/thread/0f88e0b6-7aa0-4917-bd06-68f77f14493e

-> http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc773155%28WS.10%29.aspx

Pem (Admin) :: 2010/05/27 (Thursday, May 27, 2010) :: Windows OS :: No Comments »

In my previous post, I mentioned how the WordPress “Customizable Permalinks” plugin prevents me from using WordPress for iPad (iPod touch, etc), by breaking the XML RPC.

wp-admin –> Settings –> Permalinks linked to more info here ( http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks ).  Default uses “?p=N” (post number), while pretty permalinks let you specify other formats, such as “yyyy/mm/dd/post-name”.

For yahoo web hosting, this didn’t work, and I think it has something to do with the .htaccess file, or yahoo’s particular web server.  The Yahoo “Customizable Permalinks” plugin makes the permalinks work, but it causes the XML RPC to break.

In any event, I ended up going to “wp-admin/options-permalink.php”, and changing it to Custom Structure “/index.php/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/”.

This allowed me to have the prettier custom url structure permalinks, yet still have XML RPC work.  There may be a way to take out the “index.php”, even with Yahoo web hosting, but I didn’t look very hard yet…  So maybe someone else knows the answer?

Pem (Admin) :: 2010/05/21 (Friday, May 21, 2010) :: Blogging :: No Comments »

I’m writing this using WordPress for iPad.

Overall, it’s very good news just that it works. Although, it didn’t work instantly, since when I tried to connect to my wordpress blog, it gave me an error relating to the xml rpc xml protocol. This had happened when I first tried WordPress for iPhone, so I knew to try disabling plugins, which fixed the problem. The offending plugin was "Customizable Permalinks".

Unfortunately, the app is pretty bare bones, such as compared to Windows Live Writer (a Windows desktop app).

Sadly, it’s frozen and crashed, and even had the save button disappear while editing a post… All within 5 minutes of using it. Since you can save drafts, it’s not the end of the world, but kind of annoying.

For editing an existing post, it’s only edit mode shows the HTML – no WYSIWYG.

Overall, it’s awesome that there is a WordPress app for iPad, and it at least has the basic functionality working. The functionality is not particularly amazing, but it has some reasonable basic functionality and a nice iPad UI.

If you type "http:", a popup box asks if you want to make a link.

To publish, you tap "Status" and change from "Local Draft" to "Published". You can also choose "Draft", which is awesome, since that syncs to my WordPress blog, which allows me to continue to edit the post from somewhere else (before I publish), such as Windows Live Writer (on Windows 7 desktop OS).

It lets you attach photos, which is great.  Although what I did for this post was attach the photos, then copy/paste them using the Windows Live Writer plugin “Clipboard Image” (Clipboard Capture).  This is so I can more easily use (or tweak) a standard size for (the thumb image and the larger image).

The ability to moderate posts (ie, mark as “Approve” or as “Spam”) is also very useful / convenient.

Finally, the bad news is that disabling the WordPress Customizable Permalinks plugin caused my page’s post links to no longer work… So until I fix that issue, it’s not very convenient to blog from the WordPress iPad app.

Pem (Admin) :: 2010/05/20 (Thursday, May 20, 2010) :: Blogging, Mobility :: 2 Comments »