Bow Before My Insignificance

Mental Lockout

2011-06-01T00:19:00.001-04:00

The phone rings. I answer it, cheerfully.

“I’m locked out of the system.”

Ok, let me unlock that account for you. Go ahead and try logging in again, if it doesn’t let you in, I’ll reset your password.

*Frantic typing*

“I’m locked out again.” *Continued frantic typing*

Ok, let me unlock your account and reset your password.

*Continued sounds of frantic typing on the other end of the line*

I’ve unlocked your account, let me reset your pa....

*Pause in frantic typing* “I’m locked out again.” *Frenzied typing resumes*

Ooook....let me reset your password, then unlock your account.......all right, your password has been reset and your account has been unlocked. Your password is qwerty.

*Continued frantic typing* “Is that with a capital Q?”

No, the password is all lower ca......

*Frantic typing pauses* “I’m locked out again.”

Why do I even try.

Random thoughts from my day.

2011-05-10T17:51:00.000-04:00

I see you there. I know you have important things to do. This does not change the fact that I am on a phone call. There are many other technicians sitting in this area with me. Stop looking at me with that "Please help me" look. You're making me feel guilty. That guy three feet to my left could help you out with your issue. Oh wait, hold on.......

".....Thanks for calling, and have a nice day!" *Click*

"Hi, how can I help you today!"

Splitting things up - Tech and Personal.

2011-05-10T17:40:00.000-04:00

This was never meant to be a tech blog. This was supposed to be the semi-incoherent ramblings of a technology obsessed madman. I have failed my audience, and for that, I sincerely apologize.

From this point on, my technology writing will be found at my new home, TheTechStewart.com. I'll share my thoughts on technology, pictures, videos, and perhaps even liveblogs from the conferences I do get to attend throughout the year. I hope to find some of you there.

I'm turning this back into my personal blog. There will still be some tech here, but no reviews, no formality, none of that silly nonsense. This will be the home of the dreaded user horror stories, tales and images of technology being misused, abused, and other random ramblings from yours truly. Perhaps I'll even open my heart sometime and share my true feelings.....nah.

Anyway, you've been warned. I hope that at least one of my locations becomes a regular stop as you travel the information superhighway.

Why I still buy in person.

2011-03-22T18:25:00.001-04:00

I've tried to embrace digital distribution. Steam gets a fair bit of cash from my gaming budget, on occasion. Every so often, however, I hit the local GameStop for my latest impulse purchase. Each time, it reminds me why I don't like digital distribution - I think I may start buying all my games from the box retailers once again, and here's why.

To my fellow geeks - don't decry the visit to your local gaming store. I view it as part of the experience now - chatting the latest games, getting advice from sales reps who know my game collection, and just generally getting to chat with folks who have the same passion that I do is part of what makes bringing the latest blockbuster game case home with me. Buying from an e-tailer doesn't have that same magic.

To the rep at the Exton Mall GameStop - Thanks for the chat and the game recs, and I'll be sure to fill you in on Bulletstorm. To GameStop - keep doing what you are doing, and hiring good people, and I'll keep coming back to satiate my gaming addiction.

Cr-48 update - fixed a problem that I didn't know I needed fixed.

2011-02-18T07:10:00.000-05:00

For the past few weeks, my Cr-48, which is running on the developer channel, ran into some issues with the webcam. No matter what site I tried, it simply wouldn't work. I hadn't really paid it much mind, simply because I don't do much related to videos. However, when I wanted to use it for Google video chat, and couldn't get it to work, I decided to take my little notebook to work and figure out the problem.

I didn't have to do much. The update that dropped yesterday (I believe) fixed the issue for me. I downloaded it when I got to the office, and discovered that my problem had disappeared.

For what it's worth, Google is doing a great job of keeping these units up to date for the testers, fixing bugs and taking care of issues in quick order.

Pinch Zoom functionality, and Cr-48 Pilots user map

2011-02-16T14:15:00.000-05:00

So, I think I should be reading new release info more often. I've just noticed, with the latest Dev channel update, that I can perform pinch zoom functions on my Cr-48. I'm not sure if this was added in the most recent update, or if it's been there for awhile. I guess I need to catch up on my reading.

Also, a few users from the Cr-48 Pilot user group on Facebook are attempting to get a map of us users together Tag yourselves at the link below. Particularly if you are from the Philadelphia area - I'd love to see just how many active folks got one of these sweet little netbooks out here.

http://sharedspaces.googlelabs.com/hJmrQcdpv3

Also, if you haven't joined the Facebook Cr-48 Pilot User Group, or the Cr-48 Philadelphia Area User Group, there's no better time than the present!

Thinkpad X201 Fingerprint Reader in Ubuntu

2011-02-16T03:53:00.003-05:00

My project for the evening - configure my X201's fingerprint reader for use in Ubuntu 10.10. Here's the process.

Source: https://launchpad.net/~fingerprint/+archive/fingerprint-gui

Open terminal, enter the following

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:fingerprint/fingerprint-gui
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install fingerprint-gui policykit-1-fingerprint-guid libbsapi

Close terminal, then reboot. Open System>Preferences>Fingerprint GUI. Select the upec Biometric Touchchip/Touchstrip Fingerprint Sensor, click next. The GUI will walk you through enrolling your fingerprints, and voila - logins, sudo, and keyring are all tied to your swiped fingerprint.

ThinkBeyond

2011-02-11T11:39:00.006-05:00

As some of you know, I just got back from the much anticipated HP WebOS developer event. The big news of the event was the trio of new devices from HP, running WebOS 2.0. Let's go over the list, shall we?

First up is this little guy, the HP Veer. At first glance, this looks like a smaller, chunky Pre. It features a 2.6 inch multitouch 320x400 screen, nearly identical to the Pixi that accompanied me to the event. Unlike my Pixi, this mini-smartphone sports a powerful 5MP camera, an 800mhz Qualcomm processor, and a slide out keyboard. HP seems to be targeting the dumb-phone market with this diminutive device, and I think this is a perfect stepping stone for folks looking to enter into the smartphone world. That being said, it is not as feature rich as the two real show stoppers from HP. This little guy will be available by spring.

The successor to the Pre and Pre2, came in the form of the Pre³. Sporting a 3.58 inch multitouch screen, running at 480x800, a super slim form factor that is nearly as pocketable as my Pixi, built in GPS, 5MP camera, and a screaming fast 1.4ghz Qualcomm CPU, this phone is built for the WebOS power user. The jump in screen resolution is a nice change from the Pre and Pre2. WebOS 2.0 looks sharp and crisp on the larger display, and the boosted processor makes multitasking a blast, even moreso than on the original flock of WebOS devices. The extra power is felt when using the new stackable card view, and with the available memory, the dreaded "too many cards" error may be gone for good. Although there has been no pricing announced for this phone, it will release in the summer.

Of course, most folks showing up at the event weren't looking for the phones. Everyone was aware of the elephant in the room - several of them were present at the event, in fact. The iPad, super device of this generation, needs a competitor.

Meet the real star of the show - the HP Touchpad. It sports a 9.7 inch 1024x768 tablet with a dual core Qualcomm APQ8060 processor, clocked at a whopping 1.2ghz. Additional features include a 1.3 megapixel front facing webcam, 16 or 32gb of available internal storage, internal stereo speakers with HP's Beats Audio, and a special touchstone dock. I can't say this enough - this thing looks better in person than in pictures. It is unbelievably thin and very light, coming in at roughly 1.6 pounds for the whole package.

One of the most impressive demos at the show involved the way this new tablet works with the Pre³ seamlessly. Our demo rep pulled up a popular recipe website on the Touchpad, selecting a recipe for dinner that night. Touching a paired Pre³to the home button of the Touchpad created a slick ripple effect across the screen. The web browser of the Pre³ opened and began loading the page on the Touchpad's screen, all via a single touch. The representative also demonstrated that text messages and phone calls coming in from that paired device would also show on the Touchpad screen. Responding to a text message no longer needs to be done on the tiny phone keyboard, but can be done from the TouchPad itself.

The notifications system has changed somewhat for the Touchpad - instead of the familiar bottom notifications that could be swiped away with the handheld WebOS devices, the Touchpad features a notification that scrolls across the top bar of the screen, and then tucks itself away in a notification icon that can be tapped to display all pending notifications. It is a VERY slick interface, even though it does move away from the WebOS notification model we've all come to love. The Touchpad is also not sporting a gesture area. At first, that decision puzzled me, but after seeing it in action, our swipe gestures - which make so much sense on the handhelds - wouldn't work quite as well on the much larger Touchpad.

Overall, this is a very slick looking team of devices coming out of HP.

Well, this is interesting.

2011-02-09T20:06:00.000-05:00

I wonder, is there some kind of event going on here. Seems like something I might be interested in. I've been meandering around San Francisco all day now, taking pictures and enjoying the sights, but I think this is something I'm really interested in.........

0:55 minutes to go.

Holed up at a Starbucks.

2011-02-09T17:55:00.000-05:00

Trying to recover from lunch (McDonalds, totally local San Francisco cuisine) before I hike back up the hill toward Fort Mason. I ordered something.....I thought they sold coffee here. This has ice in it and no sugar. The only sugar I could find in the entire store doesn't dissolve - sugar in the raw is delicious, but I'm chewing my not-hot coffee drink I can't pronounce or identify. Crunchy.

Anyway, Photo dump time.

MOUNTAINS! CLOUDS! AIRPLANE WING! SMOKE?

Final decent into SFO.

I like these trees for some reason.

That's a street? My god.

And a thousand parking brakes cried out.

Is that what I think it is?

YES! Take that, Wawa.

Over a decade of avoiding planes.....

2011-02-09T06:55:00.000-05:00

Beautiful sunrise.

Almost time to board.

San Francisco, here I come.

2011-02-08T22:09:00.000-05:00

I'm headed to San Francisco to check out some interesting WebOS news coming from HP/Palm. Stay tuned here for updates. Here's hoping the warmer weather won't convince me to stay.

Google Priority Inbox Tip

2011-01-28T06:20:00.001-05:00

I've been playing with priority inbox for the past few days, seeing if it fits into my email life. I've always liked Gmail's spam filtering, but I still end up sorting the good email from the chaff - unimportant things that I still want in my inbox to refer back to later. When I first set up Priority Inbox, true to the system's purpose, it began to categorize things that were important to me. The one problem? One of the ways Gmail determines what goes in the priority box is by looking at what/who you regularly respond to. My inbox was just as flooded, with my various forum response alerts, Facebook alerts, and Google Group emails!

I decided to tackle this today, and clean up my email once and for all. Lo and behold, it was easier than I thought.

If you haven't played around with Gmail's filters, it's well worth looking into. My forum, groups, and alerts that regularly come in are now nicely sorted - and I was able to specify that none of them were to be flagged into my priority inbox! Gmail makes it very easy to manage these unweildy email problems, and after a few minutes of fiddling with filters for my various categories, I have a nice, clean priority inbox that actually WORKS!

If your priority inbox doesn't seem to have your priorities in mind, try working a bit with your rules. A few minutes spent perfecting a rule list can clean up your new, shiny priority inbox, and make sure that Gmail prioritizes the way that you do.

Cr-48 - First full battery test

2011-01-04T06:09:00.000-05:00

I finally got around to giving my Cr-48 a decent battery test tonight. I arrived at work tonight at 11:00pm and set up the netbook to handle my web and music streaming duties, opting not to plug it in. My battery turned red, alerting me that I had just under 60 minutes of charge remaining at 6am. That's 7+ hours on a single charge - and before I showed up here, it had already seen some moderate use at home. Google has under-promised and over-delivered with this little unit. I never feel that impending fear of running out of juice these days.

School and the Cr-48

2011-01-02T21:00:00.000-05:00

As some of you well know, I am a student at a local university. As most college students well know, classes are beginning to ramp up after the holiday break. With my laptop confined to a docking station at home, with a dead battery and no true mobile life left in it, and a replacement still three weeks away, the Cr-48 will face its biggest task yet - being my primary school laptop for an online psychology course. Will it rise to the occasion, and perform in my web-based classroom? Or will I spend many a sleepless day catching up on schoolwork in my home office after a long commute home. Only time will tell.

Also, in a completely unrelated twist, I've discovered that the Palm Pixi gets QUITE HOT when running the mobile hotspot app. Taking the "hot" portion of that app name a little bit too seriously, aren't we Palm?

Cr-48 Touchpad - Growing on me?

2010-12-30T07:26:00.001-05:00

I keep trying to use other laptop touchpads the way I use my Cr-48's touchpad when repairing laptops here at the office. I found myself doing the same thing with my mother's touchpad the other day. I think this thing is growing on me, now that I have the sensitivity and other settings configured just right.

I'm not switching from my Trackpoint anytime soon - I still miss it for my day to day usage on occasion. But, for what it's worth, the touchpad on this thing is beginning to agree with me.

Cr-48 - Companion on a wintry day

2010-12-29T00:03:00.000-05:00

The weather has taken a dramatic turn for the worse around these parts. Unfortunately for me, I had to get to work. On Monday. In the snow. On public transit. Needless to say, I wasn't looking forward to my day. Local public transit has a website that updates travelers on the status of any delays or reroutes, weather or otherwise related. Attempting to access the Septa website from my beloved Palm Pre presented me with a bit of a problem.

Without the ability to scroll through the list in the alerts frame, finding out whether any of my buses are delayed is a bit of a problem. ChromeOS to the rescue.

Thanks to my Cr-48, I was able to find out where my buses were detoured, and what time I should be expecting them, saving me from being stranded far from home in the cold. Sure, any old laptop could do this, but the convenience of using my ChromeOS notebook - as my keyboard collected a fine layer of snow - was a welcome help.

An update on the 3g usage - I'm down to about 10mb now, after roughly 8 days of usage. I'll probably be buying into the $20 for 1gb pay as you go plan from Verizon, at least for the next month or two. I'm still getting a good deal of usefulness out of the unit, even playing some really intense games on the go.

All right, so its not Call Of Duty or anything fancy like that. Still, catching up on my favorite MUD (and earning my in-game rent) during my commute has been fun, and kept my bandwidth down. While connected to an SSH session, I use about 2mb/hr, which isn't quite as terrible as the normal forum browsing that has occupied my days up until this point.

ChromeOS as an advertising model.

2010-12-27T00:37:00.004-05:00

I see this argument cropping up a lot around the internet. Will Google use the degree of control over the ChromeOS notebook to show you more ads? Has this been the secret all along? Will this model drive the price of the device into a range that people will put up with ad intrusions into their experience?

I felt that it was time to chime in on this argument. I've been using my Cr-48 as my primary machine for nearly a week now. In this time, I have not seen a single ad, aside from the general context ads that Google places within Gmail and their search engine. These just don't bother me that much. For the rest of the internet, as you will note if you look at some of my screenshots, I have a plugin called AdBlock (http://chromeadblock.com) that keeps me from seeing unwanted ads. Google has subsidized some very impressive services with very unobtrusive ads. Don't believe me? Lets travel back in time a little bit.

The year is 1997....roughly. Your reviewer, a young technology nerd, has just had his AOL service shut off. Seeking his internet fix, an unlikely answer comes in the form of a Juno Online disk. Free internet access? I can live with this! Or so I thought. After installing the software and connecting, my 640x480 screen on my Packard Bell was reduced by nearly a third by a massive screen border, filled to the brim with ads. There was no option to rid ones self of this ad menace, and loading the perpetually changing ads led to a horrifyingly bad web experience on a 14.4bps modem. I was glad to get back to AOL a few weeks later.

Ads are part of life nowadays - highways have massive billboards, television often has more ads than content, and the information superhighway has become an enormous advertising medium. Google's context ads are usually on point, filtered to be relevant to something I might care about, and occasionally point me in the right direction for something that I happen to need at the time. If Google's current ad model can sustain some subsidization of services provided, and allow them to create impressive opensource innovations, then I'm not going to complain. To those of you who do, would you mind installing Juno for a day or two? Tell me what you think of Google's ads after just an hour. I bet you'll change your tune.

This rant brought to you by not enough sleep.

Cr-48 Day 6 - Cloud Printing, Part III

2010-12-26T03:16:00.003-05:00

So, it does work.

ChromeOS's CTRL+P Menu

As it so happens, walking through the cloud print functions on my geriatric print server (Its a Pentium II, running XP) wasn't doing the trick. I added cloud print capabilities to my primary desktop, and it was able to see the printer - which I connect to over the network, via the same XP box. I printed out a seemingly appropriate test page to confirm that it does function.

Google Cloud Print Web Interface (Desktop Browser)

This web interface, viewable from anywhere, shows the status of current print jobs and connected printers. It is a very slick interface. There were no extra options to configure in Windows 7, just turn on cloud printing and forget about it.

Cr-48 Day 4 - General Musings

2010-12-24T03:38:00.004-05:00

A lot of folks on the internet are speculating about the reasons behind Google's push of the "Browser as an OS" idea. Especially now that a more sizeable userbase is actually experiencing ChromeOS for themselves, questions have certainly begun to fly. Many question whether the concept is only for the lowest subset of user, and of no use to the power user. As I happily continue with my Cr-48 on day four, I'd like to address these concerns.

My new tab screen, displaying apps "Installed."

I have used netbooks before. I have been the unsatisfied user of an Asus EeePC, an HP MiniNote, and a Dell Mini 10v for moderately extended periods. In each case, within hours I went running back to my full laptop. I have not yet wished that I'd brought along another notebook, or thought that I should only use ChromeOS as a supplement to my main machine. In fact, excluding my work computer, I have not used a full PC for any extended period of time since Monday.

A notebook running a standard operating system, by default, punishes you for using it on the go. Microsoft Windows has been designed for a workstation, a system that is dedicated to tasks that take time. While one can make it mobile, at least in my experience, suffering awaits every step of the way. Sleep mode and hibernation go a long way, but they simply aren't good enough. My commute to work is approximately 2.5 hours each way. There are several connections, bus switches, layovers, etc, that I experience during these trips. With a Windows laptop, boot-up times ate away at my usable time period, and I spent most of my time checking the clock to make sure I started a shutdown or suspend operation in time to catch my next connection. The classic netbook suffers from the same issues, but in many cases the issues are magnified by the hardware that the machine runs. Bringing up my former EeePC, for example, took a good 5 minutes - from sleep mode. Suspending was often flaky as well, with random apps preventing the system from correctly completing the operation, leaving me with a very warm portable, and a very dead battery upon later retrieval. This type of punishment has left folks like myself to rely on a smartphone, or other ultra mobile, quick resuming device, to fill the void during long commutes, for fear of damaging valuable PC equipment or data by powering it on or off incorrectly.

EA's Lord Of Ultima - Web based MMORTS.

The Cr-48 removes these concerns from the user's path. Open the lid, and it knows what it's doing. Before I even finish typing my password, it's checked for my memorized WiFi connections. If it has not found one, it logs me on to Verizon's 3g service. My screen is exactly as I left it - games and chat clients running in the browser, and even my SSH sessions via the terminal resume without a hitch. Closing the lid immediately suspends the unit, with no local running applications to hang up the system. The experience doesn't punish me for being mobile, in fact, it encourages me to use it on the go. It's almost like my smartphone, except I can actually use it to get something done.

The standard netbook experience takes the laptop experience and makes it worse. Having a full OS will encourage a power user to use it like a full OS - what begins as simply logging on to check email can quickly turn to frustration as a power user like myself attempts to run some software that the system simply isn't built for. The ChromeOS model takes away that temptation, instead providing you with a perfect experience for the web. While the experience could live in a netbook form factor, I think that placing the entire experience in a platform the size of an ultralight notebook gives it a degree of usability that no other competing platform can boast - tablets and netbooks simply can't do mobile, the way I want to be mobile, as well as ChromeOS.

Cr-48, Day Three - Cloud Printing, Part II, and a 3G update.

2010-12-23T09:05:00.004-05:00

Cloud printing is a bust for me. At least from my home PC, its shot. I know, I know, I shouldn't expect the old beigeness (HP Laserjet 5MP) to work with the new shiny......well, the new matte, if we're being literal. I did manage to get the testing build of the Chrome browser to stop dying a horrible death every time I fired it up, but cloud printing is still a bust. I will be sure to test with a more modern printer in the near future and report back - or as Google continues to bring more print drivers under its cloud umbrella, perhaps my humble HP will return to usability.

I did want to address the cloud print concept - and I'll address this to Google, in a sense. This machine is for those who are ultra mobile, and need stuff on the go. Imagine, if you will, cloud print services that operate within your local print shop - like the spots where you could have a fax sent back when people still used fax machines. Wait.....people still use fax machines? What is wrong with the world. Anyway, imagine printing your document to a subscribed cloud service of some kind, and then being able to pick it up from your local printing shop. Many big box business stores already cater to similar services, and Google should get in on this.

Now speaking of cool services that Google has provided - 3G is awesome. No doubt about it, this laptop shows its strength. Back when I had 3G service for my Thinkpad, via a Sprint adapter, I used about 150-180mb in an average 2 hour session. I kind of expected to blow through the Google provided 100mb fairly quickly. In the interest of testing, I've used it for the past two days as I would under normal circumstances - running an instant messenger (IMO - Available via the Chrome App Store) and my standard websites. I'm avoiding running any YouTube videos or anything of the sort, but I have not turned off flash ads or image loading. As of this writing, in 2 days and roughly 5 hours on 3G, I've still got 66mb. Its not great, mind you, considering this is day three, but for casual hops between WiFi, it should be more than enough. Power users can opt to turn off more services to save bandwidth or use a web based filter like Skweezer (www.skweezer.com) to decrease bandwidth usage. I do think that the Chrome laptop has an edge over standard netbooks and laptops when it comes to this 3g dilemma. Forgetting to disable a service or program such as a bittorrent client, or having a Windows Update kick off could gobble up 100mb in no time, but with ChromeOS only running what's in the browser, bandwidth usage is vastly decreased

If anyone has any suggestions or requests on things for me to test, please, feel free to drop me a line. I'm always up for trying out a good suggestion - but save anything that has to do with rooting the unit for a bit down the road. Once I sort out my real laptop situation and acquire a fully functional replacement for my aging X41, I'll jailbreak this little box and see what real potential I can unlock. I'll be using it for a month as a normal laptop - and even doing the first two weeks worth of my Psychology homework via the unit when classes restart in the new year. I'll keep reporting regularly during this process - I'll try to keep up daily updates, at least until school gets in the way, so please keep visiting!

Cr-48 Day Two - Playing with printing, Part 1.

2010-12-22T22:21:00.003-05:00

Day 2 - Cloud Printing

For day two's test project, I decided to set up cloud printing. I didn't have time to play with settings before I left the house, so I started a bit blind.

Pressing Ctrl+P on the Cr-48 brings up a popup that explains Cloud printing, and provides you with www.google.com/cloudprint as a link to get started. Needing to configure this on the PC that has a connection to the printer was going to be an issue, or so I thought. Knowing that I don't have my VPN available on this unit, I decided to try my old fallback method, Logmein. The interface works splendidly on the Chrome notebook, and I was connected to my print server at home (an ancient Windows XP box) within moments. I fired up the link from the popup, only to be prompted to download chrome to my print server. The version of Chrome provided by the link is a early testing build, and the installer warns of this. Once I fired it up, I navigated to the options page, and at the bottom of the "Under the hood" page, found the Cloud Print options I was looking for.

After enabling this option, Chrome promptly crashed. Subsequent attempts to reenable it were met with the same result. As I was running out of waking time, I shuttered it for the time being,but I'll pick up on it over the next few hours and see how far along I can get.

ChromeOS Notebook - Do I need more than just a browser?

2010-12-21T01:42:00.002-05:00

I came downstairs this morning, headed out the door to work, only to find a box waiting downstairs with my name on it. I knew for a fact that I hadn't ordered anything recently, with the exception of a power cable for my mother's Dell laptop - and that had arrived already. Running late, I hurredly sliced open the packing box to reveal schematics for a rodent powered rocket scrawled hastily on the side of a box. Wanting to play with my new rocket propelled rodent toy, I tucked the box under my arm as I dashed out to catch the bus. Imagine my shock and disappointment when I opened the box on the bus, only to find some kind of silly laptop device....OH WAIT! SWEET

I never get picked for anything, so this came as a complete shock. The Cr-48, Google's unstable isotope, in my hands. And after all the unkind things I've said about Google in the past.....

Being that I was on a septa bus, when the laptop's glowing screen asked me for a wireless access point to associate with, I was unable to do so. Once I arrived at King Of Prussia mall, my midpoint 1 hour layover in my nightly commute, I fired up the little unit and after a few quick steps, was logged in and browsing.

This little unit really shines in this kind of a mobile environment. Unlike with my trusty Thinkpad, which has to wake from hibernation, resume my virtual machines, and finally chug to life, the Cr-48 powers on seemingly by thought. No, really, I still haven't used the power button on the unit. The attractive interface immediately loads a browser, which I felt would limit the experience greatly. In the few hours I've had with the unit, I have "Installed" a half dozen apps from the ChromeOS App Store which, aside from a few very specific power user type functions, have made this quite a functional unit. I am resisting the urge to play with the device in developer mode yet, but the shell may yet draw me to flip that Dev mode switch.

As of right now, I do have a few gripes. The touchpad is horrible. I think that all mobile mousing devices aside from the venerable Thinkpad Trackpoint are horrible, though, so this is hardly a valid concern. I have also seen some instability when dealing with Pandora, my workplace lifeline. I need my music, and occasionally, due to flash's nature within Linux, Pandora will freeze, become choppy, etc. This has happened twice in the 2 hours I've been using the unit, and a refresh takes care of it and gets the tunes flowing again so I'm not too bent out of shape on this point either. Finally, just for the sake of convenience, the lack of a network jack bugs me a little bit. A very, very little bit. Less now that I've found sufficient wifi.

The form factor of the unit is perfect. Unlike with the HP Mini and the original eeePC, the system does not feel cramped or compromised. The screen is similar in size to my X41's 12 inch 4x3 screen, and matte, which improves usability greatly. The resolution is far better than my aging IBM, with a 1280x800 resolution. Text is crisp and readable, far moreso than on most larger screened laptops sporting a similar resolution, in my opinion. Pages respond quickly, and without the overhead of running apps on the local machine, the responsiveness is never dulled by a memory hogging application running in the background. The keyboard takes some adjusting to, coming from the best mobile keyboard in the business on my Thinkpads, but still outclasses the keyboards on most consumer grade systems. There are no F keys at the top of the board, Google has instead opted for a slew of function keys. (These keys can be made to operate as F keys if the user so wishes when in Developer mode, from what I understand.) The "Caps Lock" key, hated by your reviewer, has been replaced with a search function key, which I found odd at first. I've found more function in this key as time goes on, so I do approve of this switch in the end. Caps lock functionality can be turned back on.......but why? There's a perfectly good shift key just south. But I digress.

There are still many functions that this system will not be able to accomplish. A netbook, regardless of how limited it is, always leaves me with the temptation to try to perform such tasks, with dismal results. ChromeOS leaves no question about what it is there to do - it provides functionality, without unnecessary overhead. Google's push for innovation behind this unit has resulted in some very slick offerings in the app store - which isn't really a store in my mind, seeing as all of the useful applications I've come across thus far have been free. The fact that Google is throwing in 100mb of free 3g web access per month with the unit for the first two years of ownership (A function I have not activated yet, but expect to make great use of during my commute) is a very, very nice perk. None of these functions will deter me from purchasing an actual laptop computer, as I do have needs that can only be met by that type of hardware. However, its a 90/10% split in usefulness. I am not in power user mode 100% of the time. 90% of the time, I guarantee, the ChromeOS notebook will fit my needs without question.

When I return home, my X41 will go into its docking station. It will remain there until I find some sufficiently compelling reason to return it to my bag. I'm willing to bet that the need will arise later, rather than sooner.

Living an internet-less life.

2010-10-06T12:43:00.000-04:00

Well, not really. I've never been completely unable to find internet in my entire life. However, for the next two weeks, at best, I'm looking at no home connection. Sprint 3G service is off too - all part of a money crunch savings plan til my big paycheck for the month comes around. I'm 3 days in - and its not so bad. It helps to have a decent backlog of projects, MS cert books, home network reconfig, and tinkering piled up for times like this.

One gripe I do have, StarCraft2 won't authenticate on my home network. Guess Blizzard didn't sort the offline singleplayer campaign issues yet. Meh.

Backups - more important than you think

2010-09-22T10:49:00.000-04:00

Users do not back up their data. Users will tell you that they have backed up their data. Users will then blame you when you reinstall their system, at their request, and they find that they do not have their data.

I don't care what the story is - I hold to a personal policy of backing up before a re-image. Even when the user has declined. Better safe than sorry.