Blog of a Long Distance Worker Tech

The blog about mobile tech

Category Archives: Notebook Computing

Travel Tablets

image

Like many of you I acquired an iPad just after it launched last year and added it to my arsenal of lightweight information processing equipment. However I struggled to make it work in my setup primarily because I make use of an ultralight laptop. It ended up being yet another similar sized device that was used but was annoyingly bulky compared to my main machine. That identifies the problem, it never replaced the laptop despite being useful for reading watching video podcasts, documents and magazines. 10 inches is simply too big.

So I acquired an Android 7inch device in the guise of the HTC Flyer (although I also looked at the now out of manufacture Dell Streak but I dropped that one as the resolution of the screen was lower at 800×480). It is not ideal as it still runs Android 2.3 but the 3.2 Honeycomb upgrade is imminent.

After the last few weeks using it, it has proven much more versatile as I can have it with me much more often and does not feel bulky compared to my ultralight. The battery life is good (as I can get through a business day) and it serves the functionality I need in terms of video podcast watching, light web browsing, document and magazine reading as well as being a much more effective email processor than a smartphone when you are not running around.

Now all it needs to do is make that upgrade to Honeycomb (hurry up HTC!) to remove some of the rough edges and make it equal to the iPad but exceed its usefulness in being the right size for my jacket pocket.

Steve Jobs… You are so wrong about the 7 inch tablet.

Personal WiFi for the Traveller

I have always found it useful to have a way of getting online when overseas. Sometimes it is painful (like my recent trip to France) and sometimes it is painless (like on my trips to the less sunny Dublin). Whichever location you go to though you can be sure that you can get a local Prepay/PAYG data SIM card that just needs to be put into the right device to give you a data connection. I have been favouring an unlocked MiFi device but in my recent troubles I needed to do more debugging that what was possible on the MiFi. I made use of an unlocked Android phone and it provided the best service it could considering the lousy service I was on (Orange FR was appalling).

The key is getting one that is unlocked or is easy to unlock, and I made use of the very unlockable Orange San Francisco (ZTE Blade). At least I could once I also put Android 2.2 on the device. It was a very effective Personal WiFi device over there and I am now definitely looking to replace my older MiFi device with the Android, most obviously because it also offers access to the voice services necessary in many locations to update the credit as well as the use of a local voice number if I so required (my current tariff with O2 makes that very optional).

For those of you who are not into unlocking (and a bit of rooting!) then I do suggest digging through the phones on display to find an Android 2.2 or above device and getting it unlocked. I do recommend checking out Carphone Warehouse for Prepay deals as their phones do tend to be unlocked to allow them to sell on any network but make sure that the phone is an Android 2.2 or above to get the built-in WiFi Tethering. The latest deals for the Sony Experia X10 Mini look interesting but you will have to look at some of the third party mechanisms for WiFi Tethering if you do purchase that one as it is 2.1 or even earlier by default.

Making sure you get connected

After the experience of the last few days whilst in France, this article really brings home the need to have a number of options available to you for getting your data connectivity that you need to do your job when travelling.

Starbucks is a digital oasis for me.I usually pop in, fire up the Starbucks mobile card app, order a beverage, have my iPhone scanned to pay for it and then sit down to use the Starbucks WiFi access point (provided by AT&T) on a smartphone, iPad or notebook (or netbook). This plan usually works just fine. And, I’ve executed this plan more times that I would care to admit.

via 0.12Mbps on Starbucks WiFi? Have a Backup Data Access Plan! – SocialTimes.com.

I had options that I could use despite my connectivity problems – the options I had left cost too much ‘just’ for connectivity whilst on vacation so I did not use them and waited until I could get the most cost effective solution working.

My options in order of priority are:

  1. Local SIM with MiFi/3G Router
  2. Local SIM with Android Phone
  3. Low cost WiFi in nearby establishments
  4. Low cost Roaming SIM with Android Phone/Mifi/3G Router
  5. Roaming Data
Make sure when you travel that you have more than one available to you. I finally managed by getting (2) to work with a bit of (3) and (5).

Full Featured Laptops or Cloudbook

There are a lot of different and new machines out there for the Chromebook to compete with in the portable/ultralight arena. Considering the high price of these machines though, they are certainly priced out of the market in which they would be ideal – the below £200 market. In the £350 to £400 market, they are too limited and extremely expensive, particularly with the lack of ubiquitous network connectivity that will never exist sufficiently unless they can change ChromeOS to work more effectively off-line. The had so much promise. However if you are in the market for a new machine, then take a look at TechRadar’s look at £350 laptops. Considering I have just purchased No.1, the HP Pavilion dm1, on the list as my new primary Ultralight you should certainly find something useful in this article.

 

While Samsungs Google Chromebook is an interesting piece of tech, its not for everyone.

via 10 laptops you can buy for the price of a Chromebook | News | TechRadar UK.

 

 

Incidence of Gadgets

Travelling as much as I do, I have noticed quite a big change over the last decade in the range of gadgets carried by travellers. It used to be the case that you saw most business travellers with their Nokia 6210 mobile phones and some actually had laptops ranging from the hulking huge to the micro, but the ordinary ‘civilan’ at best would have a mobile and possibly a portable cd player or tape player.

Today, pretty much 90% of travellers (including holiday makers) take at least one laptop with them, ranging from the hip Apple to the much more regular netbooks. I also have to say it to the ‘netbooks are dead’ fraternity, the MAJORITY of computers I see particularly amongst the holiday maker is the Netbook – an Acer or an Asus. Everyone has a mobile, and certainly near 50% have a smartphone of some sort (although including any Nokia in this classification is almost heresy). Most smartphones are of the Blackberry variety (the business man) but with a rapidly growing number of Apple iPhone and Android devices.

Over the last six months though I have seen a change, in that I am regularly seeing the incidence of tablets and eReaders, with tablets occuring more regularly than the latter. As a rule the eReader of choice is definitely the Amazon Kindle, with a few Sony eReaders occurring. Today I have seen 3 Kindles amongst those waiting for my flight.

Now with the tablets however, I see the iPad primarily, but this week I have seen Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 inch devices and (a new one for me) the Blackberry Playbook. Today I saw 4 iPads, 1 Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 inch, and 1 Playbook amongst my fellow travellers. The occurence of music players is now almost nil, apart from Apple iPod Touches, with almost everyone you see going through their smartphones. Goodbye MP3 player, we knew you for such a short time.

I wonder what the future brings?

Powered Flight…

… or in other words, having a good charging solution for your charge hungry smartphone, MiFi and tablet. This is where the A-solar Power Bank Pro comes in.a-solar-power-bank-pro

I have always prided myself on always having the best tech, particularly when it comes to smartphones, Wi-Fi gadgets and tablets. However one of the banes of my life is the poor battery life that much of this kit comes with, particularly with the smartphones. One solution I have had is to always make use of the latent charging capabilities of my netbook/notebook, by ensuring that I can charge everything over standard USB leads. This has worked well but it has not been always the most ergonomic solution, with cables appearing out of bags and always having to ensure that I am charging on shutdown to ensure that the port power is not shutdown when I go into suspend mode (I know some laptops do have an always on port).

So I cast around and found the A-solar Power Bank Pro, which gives me 5000mAh of charging goodness. This can be fed to your USB based devices either via a standard USB output with 500mA capability, or via the very iPad and MiFi friendly 1000mA USB output. The key and very important feature here is that they can be both used at the same time to charge two devices, even a combination of iPhone and iPad. I have now been using this for a good three months during which I have kept myself running during long travel days into and out of London, as well as the much more demanding weekend in Amsterdam, whilst I was running around Koninginnedag. The London travel days stressed my Smartphone battery through running it fully active (browsing and tweeting) for the full 4 hours of travel time each day, plus all the normal usage going from meeting to meeting, including heavy GPS usage from the Walking Directions features of Google Navigation. A much more demanding test of its capability was the Koninginnedag weekend, during which I double handed an iPhone and an Android phone, taking video and photographs and posting to Facebook and Twitter throughout the day via an unlocked MiFi. It kept me going so I never lost connectivity and never lost a photo opportunity. It even charges overnight from a standard USB port, so it really cuts out the need to have an additional power block, and it fits well within an inside or outside suit pocket, or cargo trousers/shorts.

This is an excellent device to extend your smartphone, iPad, iPhone or MiFi life on even the heaviest data usage days, and can really recommend you get one, and at between €39 and €49 it is a snip. I got mine whilst passing through Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam, for the lower price Smile

Most Useless 25GB Online Storage Gets Useful

Cloud is the key word on the Internet these days. Everyone gets excited about Google, Amazon and Apple for what they give you for quite small amounts of money. However there is something smaller – free. Who gives Cloud for free? Well Microsoft does, as they offer 25GB of storage with SkyDrive. So why are we not raving about it? Well because it is stuck behind the most appalling UI you have ever seen and only has limited integration with Live Mesh to allow only up to 5GB to be used by that service, leavin 20GB completely unused.

However news come about an update…

Microsoft tells me that the June 2011 update for SkyDrive will go live on Monday, June 20, so it should be available by the time you read this or soon will be. Reviewers were not given early access to the service, so I was only able to watch a live remote demo at the time of this writing. But as one of the few people who actually uses SkyDrive pretty extensively, Im excited by what Ive seen and by whats been implied for future improvements. SkyDrive has always been more promise than reality, but this update is going to go a long ways towards fixing that. I cant wait to see whats next.

via SkyDrive June 2011 Update.

This update seems to be giving us a way better UI, that looks like it will make it useful to actually sign up for the service. So remember one thing… you can use any email address as a Passport (such an old word) for accessing SkyDrive. Whatever you do, I do not recommend that Cross scripting hack hell that is Hotmail particularly as a logon for SkyDrive.

Can’t wait to try the new SkyDrive Out.

Apple Netbook

Rumours abound on the Internet over the weekend about Apple testing an Arm A5 based variant of the MacBook Air. That is an interesting proposition with the same limits as recent discussions about the Windows 8 variant for Arm – it leaves behind legacy completely. However this could just so easily be called the Apple Netbook, as one of the big reasons to use the Arm would be to seriously extend the battery life of the device and also to lower the price for the hardware, although as always Apple would still likely charge a premium – say £500/$600 for it.

On the very first episode of TiPb TV we joked about the 11 inch MacBook Air being more like an iPad pro, but deep inside Apple’s secret labs they might be working on making it exactly that according to Japanese blog Macotakara

via Apple secretly working on a MacBook Air with an iPad A5 chipset? | TiPb.

What do you think? Would you even buy it?