The Dawning Of A New Tablet Age

Is it really happening? Are we facing a wave of Android Tablets. Proper tablets. Not the under powered, out of date units currently available but real, proper tablets - like the iPad only better.

Why has it taken so long? Heaven only knows. Is it all true? Only time will tell. The IFA Trade Show should reveal some if not all. OK, lets not get ahead of the game, it'll reveal some. But when the show is over how much will be hot air? How much pure vapour? At least we have the big players finally starting show signs of life - LG, Samsung, Acer, Asus - and then of course, there's the mavericks - Notion Ink, Viewsonic. There's almost going to be too much choice, right? Who am I kidding?

I have to say my current favourite is the Notion Ink Adam with its pixelQ screen - but then am I really going to be wandering the streets with it - probably not. Mind you, might be nice to use out on the patio with a mug of black coffee watching the clouds roll away...

Do I need a more powerful Tegra 2 based device or do I stick with the lesser Arm. What do I want to use it for? Is it an all singing netbook replacement? Will it mainly be browsing and reading? Will I watch much video? Flash? But of course - else I'd already be using the iPad. Before I commit the cash I need to sort out what I want it for.

Right now Archos' new 101, a ten incher - ooh er misses - looks nice. I could browse and read with that and only splash $300 (that's £235 in proper money). A nice proposition.

For now I guess it's a game of wait and see, read the reviews when these devices finally do hit the street - and here in blighty that'll no doubt be the late Spring with its new increased VAT rate.

Me? I'm counting the days (and hoping it's not years)...

If Flash Is So Rubbish

Why do so many websites use it?

Sure, everyone is saying HTML5 this, HTML5 that, HTML5 it's the future but at the end of the day Flash is out there now, running on millions of sites. Mr Jobs says Flash is buggy, subject to attack and going to be replaced by HTML5 so there's no point in putting it on the iPad, iPhone or iPod. That maybe so but that isn't going to happen in a one or two year period so why spoil the web experience on the iPad now. I'm sure over time HTML5 will replace Flash on many sites but Flash is still going to be with us for many years to come. Giving users both Flash ans HTML5 allows developers the time and choice to use which is best for there particular application. No, for me, the only reason to not provide Flash support - and Adobe have even got it ready to rumble on the iPad - is that Apple would lose revenue. I've no problem with the iPad not supporting Flash and limiting the device - it puts it off the menu for me personally, but that's my choice - but I'd like to see the honesty from Apple to come out and give the real reason, 'We don't support Flash so you have to buy the Apps from us'.

Is Google Really A Friend Of The People?

We all think of Google as the Anti-Microsoft - or is that just me?. They're a friend of the people aren't they? Giving us all loads of useful stuff for free. But really, are they worthy? Are we right to trust them without question? I sort of think they are - but cracks are beginning to form in my opinion of them. Are they becoming too big? Too powerful? At some point in the future are we going to be in for a shock? Once everyone on the planet has a GMail account are we going to be held to ransom? A scary thought.

So why am I starting to doubt the sanctity of the holy Google? Well, it has to do with Android and the fact that they won't license the Google Apps - including the App Market - for use on tablets. They only license to devices with a Sim. Why is that? What's wrong with tablets? OK, some of their proprietary apps aren't suited to a non-mobile device, ie Navigator, but some, including the App Market, certainly are. When so much is open source why the lock down? I'm far from an expert, more an interested user but I find it odd and slightly concerning. I want a Tablet with Apps - and I don't want to have to jumps through the hoops to manually download, transfer and install when it could all be so easy. Google, why make it so difficult?

It almost pushes me to the iPad - after-all, it's available now AND has downloadable Apps from its store - but that would really go against the grain...

Why can't someone make an Android tablet?

Why is it that no one saw the iPad coming? It wasn't exactly the worlds best kept secret - there were rumours for six months or more before it finally launched. Why is it then, that as of yet no one has got to market with a decent Android tablet to take it on? Yes, there are a few crappy, low powered ones running Cupcake (1.5) or maybe Donut (1.6) - Eclair (2.1) is the minimum. Who the hell would waste their time (and money) on those? Certainly not anyone outside of the asylum.

Ok, so we saw a few at CES and various other shows but as yet nothing has launched - unless you count the Dell Streak but then again, what the hell is that all about? First off why the hell launch with Donut? - that's just plain nobber. Secondly the Streak just seems to be a comedy sized mobile phone. Too big for your pocket - I suppose those with a man bag.... Too small to be a tablet. Utterly pointless. I'll stick with my Desire thank you - for now at least, but I really want a decent tablet.

The Notion Ink Adam - stupid name - looks good on paper... and in the video - but why's it going to take so long to market? November? I'll wager it'll be next year before it sees the light of day - if ever.

The WePad? Again, looks good but why not use Android? And anyway, will it launch this year? Probably not.

What of the big players? Acer, Asus, MSI, HP - ok, we'll forget HP and the money they wasted on WebOS - what the hell was that all about? Why can't they get to market? It's not like tech hardware isn't there - think Tegra.

I want to be able to browse and tinker in comfort on a multi-touch tablet. I want Android with Eclair as a minimum with a quoted upgrade path to Froyo (2.2) and beyond. Donut simply is not acceptable.

Now the iPad - and I've never been a fan of Rip-off Apple - does look bloody nice. They've got themselves a tasty bit of kit and I'm mighty tempted. It's got what I want - well hold it right there, not quite. Only the lack of Flash prevents me breaking my sacred bond to never buy Apple.

I guess I'll be waiting till 2011...

More on Lucid

Well I've been running Ubuntu 10.4 - aka Lucid - for a number of weeks now. I've upgrade a few times and I'm now up to beta 2. First, I have to say that it continues to impress. Booting quickly but perhaps lacking the 'clean lines' I'm expecting with all the talk of the Plymouth Brethren and it's graphical boot. Still, it does boot quick so I'm not overly bothered.

Everything still seems to be working well. I've moved across to the Google Chrome variant of the browser from Chromium on account of it including Adobe's Flash built in and a later version (10.1) than that which comes with Lucid.

Surfing - my primary use for the netbook - is sharp. Quick to load pages and video is continuing to be lag free - well, most of the time, and certainly more lag free than any of the rest of the OSes I've run on the Acer One. I should say I haven't actually run XP on this thing but can't see it being quicker.

Signing off, and continuing to be suitably impressed with Ubuntu Lucid. Keep up the good work...

Lucky Lucid and the Browser Of Bliss

After a short foray into the world of ChromeOs in the form of Hexxeh's Flow I have moved back to Ubuntu. After a brief flirt with the latest Beta of EasyPeasy I have settled back down with Ubuntu 10.04 alpha 3 and too be honest it's not a lot different from EasyPeasy (which is also based on Lucid Alpha).

First off, I have to say I found EasyPeasy quick. If anything it performed quicker than ChromeOS. Which isn't that surprising really I guess, considering the pre-release, pre-alpha nature of ChromeOS. Fair play to Hexxeh though, he has put together a fair decent OS which boots quicker than anything that's gone before.

After finding a few missing packages in Easy, namely VPN based stuff, I quickly reverted to Ubuntu Netbook version, installing from a USB Sticked ISO. It installed in a jiffy and after an initial hiccup on bringing up X - it seemed to hang but after a quick flip to the text login, it flicked into life. Subsequent boots have been without incident. A word on the boot front. It is quick - not the quickest I've seen - that honour goes to ChromeOS Flow - but still 18 seconds is quick in my book.

First off, I installed Chromium Browser and VPN bits I couldn't get from Easy Peasy, namely openvpn and pptp and Flash - can't live without a bit of flshing - so it'll never be an apple a day for me sadly because I really liked the look the iPad - oh well, maybe next year...

In use the browsing is quick and for the first time on my lowly Acer Aspire One, video plays without much judder - result. Generally I'm finding far less pauses and short hangs while surfing. I've had a few app crashes - which is to be expected on an Alpha but so far - and we're only talking four hours in - I'm finding Lucid Netbook to be a very able and rapid system. I think I'll stick with this for a while...

Chrome OS Quickie

I thought I'd wade into the Chrome OS debate with a very quick review of build by Hexxeh (visit his site, http://chromeos.hexxeh.net for details of how to download and create a bootable usb disk).  At the time of this post, January 11th 2010 his 'ChromeOS Zero' is the latest build.

Amongst the things said to be improved from his end of year build is more support for a greater range of wifi, oh yeah, and speed. Not sure about things on the wifi front but I can attest to it being much sharper in use on my Acer Aspire One. It boots in about 6s from the USB stick and closes down almost instantly - nice work.

There are details on the wiki (http://chromeos.hexxeh.net/wiki) amongst other things, as to how to install to your harddisk should you wish to - I tried that on an older machine with the year end build and it worked as detailed. Running from the harddisk did improve the speed of things - as to be expected.

The first item on my agenda was to get the British keyboard layout selected. A quick 'CTRL+ALT+T' to bring up the terminal. Followed by 'setxkbmap gb' from the prompt to set the layout to British and then 'exit' - good to go.

For the record the version of Chomium it runs is 4.0.289.0 which is good news if you want to run extensions. All my usual suspects seemed to work, Adthwart, Flashblock etc.

Summing up. I am very impressed, even at this early stage, as to the future prospects of Chrome OS. It boots quicker than anything I've ever used, beating Moblin v2.1 (my prefered netbook OS of choice - at the moment) by miles- not surprising really, considering it's basically just a browser. As you would expect - and pretty much required since it's all it does - Web browsing is as quick as it gets - and Flash works (most of the time).

Now it's true the screen update does lag from time to time, which I guess is understandable because I'm guessing the hardware drivers aren't bang on the money at this early stage and it doesn't come with any bells or whistles. There's no office here but as long as all you want to do is access your online life quick and easy, it appears to fit the bill.

I'm not sure if it will replace my netbook OS anytime soon - there are still a few too many custom apps I use that don't have suitable online equivalents - but in a year or two I reckon the gap will have narrowed and then the decision won't be so clear cut.

A very promising start...

Kublax Online Money Manager...

It sure is slooowwwwwwww.

My initial evaluation was, hey, great service. It takes all the hassle out of budgeting. Simply set up your budget. Change the designation of any transactions it does automatically set correctly and hey presto your financial budgeting is laid out in front of you to analyse.

On using the service my opinion has changed. It's slow. Dreadfully slow.

At it's heart the service seems excellent and does work - just very slowly - did I mention that? To change a budget you click edit and sometimes it just hangs, a refresh four or five times and you may get to edit the budget. Then edit another one - same thing, wait... wait... refresh... wait... refresh... wait... got bored logged out.

I have now decided to delete off all my accounts and clear the data. I shall leave what areas of the budget I managed to get setup and take a look back at Kublax later in the year.

It does look useful but - and it's a big but - not with it being so unreliable to navigate and use. It's a shame because it truly does look promising...

Cosmic Koala

I just installed Kubuntu Karmic Koala on my PC. On the face of it, it doesn't seem to really add much. It really doesn't look much different to Jaunty but somehow it does seem to run smoother. Is it blind optimism? I don't know but it does feel a tad more responsive.

On the ubuntu front, my server based ubuntu system definitely seems to be running smoother with less cpu load after the upgrade.

I know it hasn't been long but at this early stage I give both Ubuntu and Kubuntu 9.10 the thumbs up.

It's not all sweet smelling roses though, the kubuntu upgrade of my old Acer 1360 laptop did not go so well. The Acer has a crappy INP2220 WiFi card which is totally non-linux and never will be. Under Jaunty I was able to use NDISWrapper to run the Windows [issues sign of the crucifix] but under Karmic it won't assign an IP address. The NDISWrapper stuff appears to work. The module loads up and gives me the interface (wlan0 via ifconfig) but it just won't go the last mile and IP up. Oh well, trouble in paradise...

Easy Peasy Does It

I just installed Easy Peasy Ubuntu - a version of ubuntu tailored towards netbooks - and boy does it rock. I've previously been running Ubuntu Jaunty but it really wasn't great. To be honest it wasn't even very good. It worked and I got by with it but it was quite laggy. In use it would stall for ten to twenty seconds at a time - and that was annoying - big time. This new Easy Peasy - based on the same Ubuntu Jaunty - doesn't seem to lag up at all. I mainly use my netbook for internet surfing and Easy Peasy does the trick. It loads quick. All my hardware - an Acer AspireOne - is detected - WiFi, Audio, Webcam and the browser loads quickly and works without lag - perfik.

I just hope they upgrade from jaunty to karmic when it comes out - back of the net.

T-Mobile G2 Touch (aka HTC Hero)

Seduced by the upgrade offer at the end of my current T-Mobile contract, I succumbed...

I haven't had a new gadget for a while and have been thinking of a new phone. Having read about Acer's foray into the land of Android I have to admit to being tempted but at a list price in excess of £350 (UK) I couldn't justify it. And then what happens? My current contract ends and I get the offer of a G2 Touch that I couldn't refuse.

My previous phone, the Nokia N95, has been a faithful servant. Allowing me to sync the phones calendar through to my Google Calendar via GooSync and use Google's GMail app for email. It all worked pretty well but without much panache. Cue Android.

Although it looks good I have to admit I was thinking it was going to be a poor relation of the iPhone but boy was I wrong. It's the best gadget I've ever had. It just works. My calendar is there without any hassle. My email is there in a similarly easy fashion. I've read reports of lag and various keyboard problems but to me it all seems fine. Emailing from my phone has never been easier.

I've downloaded a few apps from the Apps Market and so far it all works swimmingly. The best app I've downloaded so far is Locale which allows me to turn off WiFi when I'm not at home or in the office to save a bit of battery - which, if the phone has a weakness, is it's short battery life - it is definitely a charge overnight phone, that's for sure. If you've not heard of Locale, go search it on google, it's a great app.

Anyway, if I had to give the T-Mobile G2 Touch a score from 1 to 5 it would get a 4.5 on account of the fact it's a damn great phone but the battery just lets it down so I can't give it a 5.

XP Net Slow Down

My XP machine has decided to slow down on all SMB related activities - bummer.

At first I laid the problem squarely at the feet of my humble Atom based Linux server and spent endless hours tinkering to try and get transfers going at any speed above a crawl - but to no avail. Then I stupidly tried connecting to said machine via another PC and it fair hammered along - all the time I wasted and there was nothing wrong with the server and Linux - double bummer.

I then tried cleaning, uninstalling, re-installing various software on my XP machine - again all for no gain. I even tried setting up NFS on the server and using MS's Unix tools - again I drew a blank and the speed of transfers was dismal. I was beginning to fear a total rebuild of poor old XP was in order but I really can't face that but then again I really need to keep my XP backed to my server for remote access to my files. I guess the old leave it on all night for a few megabytes of transfer was just going to have to do - do, that is, until I decided to set up WebDav on Apache2.2.

After a few hours tinkering - and a bit of bodging - I've managed to get WebDav to my home directory and low and behold the speed of the backup - using AllwaySync in WebDav mode - is twenty times as quick as poor old SMB on my XP machine. I haven't fixed XP but for now I will get by on a bodge and a prayer...

Print-tastic from Linux with VirtualBox

I bought myself a Lexmark X3580 on a whim because I saw it on offer - BIG MISTAKE. It's compatibility with various operating systems is brilliant - brilliant if you use Windows but f#@king rubbish if you dare to use anything else (in truth I don't have a Mac so I don't know if it works on that front). By all reports Lexmark don't even acknowledge the existence of Linux let alone write a driver for it. I only hope that one day this omission comes back to bite their ass. Linux is growing and I don't think it's going to stop growing so they're alienating an ever growing market but that's their choice. Suffice to say I'm not ever going to buy one of their crappy printers.

Anyway, the reason for the post is to highlight my way round the incompatibility - which although far from ideal - allows me to run Linux without needing to switch back to Windows to print. I'm not going to list all the steps but just give a brief outline of the method I used.

Simply put, I run Sun's VirtualBox on a Linux host with a Windows guest. Credit where credit is due, I have nothing but praise for VirtualBox. It keeps on improving month by month and without it I would be consigned to Windows only printing. I just pray they don't start charging for it.

Anyway, I set up VB with USB without USB2 and EHCI - so you'll have to use the non-open version - and installed a Windows XP guest. Regarding the USB2/EHCI thing, I think it's important, someone on 'tinternet said so and since I can print I can't be bothered to investigate whether it's required on not. Then with the Lexy plugged in I set up a USB filter to auto capture it.

Next up was to fire up the virtual XP guest and when the USB Lexmark X3580 scanner/printer was detected I went through to the driver folder on the Lexmark CD and installed the drivers directly - as opposed to running the Lexmark installer program which installs a load of crap software which isn't required for printing. Once the two drivers for scanner and printer were installed (a couple of other drivers will also be installed but they're built in with Windows so no extra drivers are required) you are good to go since you've now got yourself a defined printer.

Finally I shared the printer on the network and Bob's your uncle, you have yourself a network Lexmark that you can print to from other Windows 'puters (once you've installed the drivers and added yourself a network printer of course - my system found the printer network share I'd just set up on the VB guest using the search network option when installing the printer).

The downside - and it is quite a big downside - is that to print from Linux you have to print to PDF and then use the guest to print the PDF file so you'll need to set up a shared directory of some sort - that's either network share or the VirtualBox shared folder - I use the network share way.

The upside is that at least I don't have to reboot back into Windows every time I want to print something. I just wish Lexmark would pull their finger out of their ass as write a Linux driver - I mean, how hard can it be?

Is it me or is this not rocket science?

So I hear that Windows 7 will be available in only three versions. Yes, just three as opposed to Vista's nineteen, nu nu nu nu nineteen. Well, then of course there is the Basic and Starter editions - but they're only available in the third world so they, like the entire third world in the eyes of the developed world, don't count.

Well, here's the rocket science bit - why not just sell a product called Windows 7 that exists as, well, just Windows 7 the operating system. Now, I'm not a proponent of Apple, in fact I distinctly dislike their protectionist stance on only providing an operating system for their 'special', twice the price hardware, but when it comes to the operating system they get it right. It's OS-X and that's what you buy. There are no basic, advanced, super-dooper, ultimate-fantastic editions. No, with Apple you just get the operating system and that's that.

So come on Billy boy. Why not just produce Windows 7? Pure and simple, Windows 7, with all the bits thrown in. No special. No Ultimate. No Super-Dooper. Just Windows 7. Set a fair price and then you'll sell billions. As it is, I'll be sticking with XP and Linux. XP works acceptably and so does Linux for that matter. And while we're at it, come on Apple, free up your OS for use on standard PC hardware and I'd be handing over my cash in a snap.