Why the ThinkPad, you might properly ask? I had decided that I needed a bit more performance than a netbook would provide, and that’s why I originally went with the MacBook. I wanted to make sure that I have decent compute power with me, without sacrificing too much portability. The MacBook qualifies, all right, so I thought the matter was settled.

Then today I was looking around Mobile Tech Manor, and my eyes settled on the Lenovo ThinkPad T400s. That’s the newest member of the ThinkPad line and it’s a very thin and light notebook. I started thinking about bringing it along for the trip. It’s certainly powerful enough for anything I might need to do, with the Intel 2.4 GHz processor and 2 GB of memory. It was clear the T400s meets all the performance requirements for my trip.

I gazed at that 14.1-inch screen and I realized that it beat the MacBook in this area. The MacBook only has the 13.3-inch screen running at 1280×800. The ThinkPad runs at a big, vibrant 1440×900 so that coupled with the slightly bigger screen size clinched the deal.

So why didn’t I originally consider the ThinkPad in my “careful” thought process, you might be wondering? A totally silly reason. I did not think the T400s would fit in my Booq backpack. Seriously, that’s the reason. I have bigger backpacks but I don’t like traveling with anything bigger than the small Booq bag, and I had assumed the 14-inch ThinkPad wouldn’t fit in the laptop pocket. This morning I tried it and it just fit. Barely, but it does and that ended my debate. So tomorrow I hit the blue open skies with the ThinkPad T400s in tow. I’ll let you know how well it works for me.

In case you missed it, you can take a look at my video of the ThinkPad to appreciate how mobile yet capable it is.

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Aloqa has entered into beta and provides information about businesses and friends near Android phone users. The places of interest that Aloqa shows the user are based on restaurants, entertainment venues and social connections. The program is proactive, showing places of interest automatically without any user intervention. It can also show any Facebook friends that are in the immediate vicinity as determined by the user’s current location. The program can be downloaded from the Android Market.

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Think you own that digital content on your Amazon Kindle, or any other device, for that matter? Think again. Although it appears we follow a “buy to keep” business model, consumers ultimately license most digital content. Not too many years ago, this wasn’t much of a problem because most media was physical — CDs, DVDs, printed books, etc…

Today, it’s a digital world which presents unique problems. Problems like the one that David Pogue shares today at the New York Times:

“This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for—thought they owned.

But no, apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price.”

Although Amazon certainly did the right thing by crediting back the purchase price, what kind of precedent does this set for the future? Can you imagine if this same thing happened with digital files like your music, software, or videos? This situation also shines the ugly spotlight on DRM in general. Had the content not been locked into Amazon’s infrastructure, customers could have maintained control with a backup copy. In reality though, we’re just renting what digital content providers allow us to.

One of our readers tells me via email that his Kindle was hit with this content removal. I feel badly for him and for anyone else that lost their rights to the digital content. Ironically, the content in question was none other than “1984″ and “Animal Farm” from George Orwell. Talk about “big brother” — rather fitting in this case, no?

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I mentioned earlier this week that I’m interested in looking at the new ASUS Eee PC 1101HA when it launches locally. For now, I can get this first look that Johannes offers — he unboxes the new netbook over in Germany. Due to the slightly larger size when compared to a 10-inch device, the keyboard is less cramped. The netbook also gains some resolution, up to 1366×768, thanks to the 11.6-inch display.

With devices like this, the netbook is coming full circle back to notebooks. We started out with 7-inch netbooks, moved to 8.9 inches and then 10 inches. All that’s left between netbooks and traditional laptops starting at 13- inches is this 11-12-inch middle ground. Oh, wait a second. Isn’t that where the “ultra-thin” notebooks running Intel CULV chips are going to be? Sounds like a car crash that you know is coming — you hear the brakes squeal, turn your head, but still hear the collision.

The next 6-9 months in this space are worth watching. Will consumers stick with price as a primary constraint and opt for netbooks? Do $500-$800 ultra-thin notebooks with more capability start eating into netbook sales? And what happens to the traditional notebook market as the result? Intel seems to win in any of these cases. Its Atom powers netbooks, the CULV platform is in the next size up and the chipmaker powers most of the full-sized notebooks in the market, too.

One of our mantras here bears repeating — mobile technology is all about compromise. I look at it as a triangle, in which each point is a mobile device attribute: performance, price and power efficiency. As you move closer to one point, you move further away from one or two other points. Put another way: You can’t buy a portable device today for a few hundred dollars that offers desktop-replacement performance and all-day computing.

I believe there’s a market for all of these segments: netbooks, new ultra-thin notebooks and traditional notebooks. Each person has different requirements, and more importantly, each person chooses their own area(s) to compromise on. Although I love my MSI Wind netbook, I’ll admit that I’m intrigued by devices in the 11-inch range. My first Tablet PC, a Toshiba M205, was a 12.1-inch unit and I long felt that it was an excellent screen size for me. Now the question is: Do I want to buy a less expensive 11-inch netbook or a more powerful 11- or 12-inch ultra-thin notebook that costs more?

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Dear Verizon,

You are in this business to make money, I understand that. You are responsible to your shareholders to provide the best return possible, and you are obligated to find revenue streams toward that goal. I would like to exhort you to find streams that are in line with your core business, and not at the sole expense of your customers. Without your customers, you will fail. It makes no sense to take things from the customer that you have no business taking. I am referring to the GPS functionality of the smartphones that you sell.

Integrating GPS into smartphones makes sense on many levels. The ability for customers to have a full GPS unit contained in a smartphone is a big benefit to them. This benefit is the reason that handset makers are including GPS functionality in the phones in the first place. Smartphones are carried everywhere by your customers, and it makes perfect sense for them to leverage the functionality of the integrated GPS hardware. So please stop disabling this functionality.

Why do you release phones on your network that have sophisticated GPS hardware, yet you disable it so the customer cannot use it to its full potential? Sure, you always allow it to be used with your own navigation service, but other solutions are blocked from doing so. Even solutions that are included on the smartphones by the manufacturer, for example BlackBerry Maps by RIM, are routinely blocked by you so they cannot be used as intended. The only party hurt by this blockage is your own customer.

We can only make the assumption that you block the use of the GPS hardware by third-party providers in order to promote the use of your own subscription service. I understand your job is to derive as much revenue from subscribers as possible, but to do so by disabling functionality of the phones you sell is a big disadvantage to your customer. You are playing games with your customers, and this practice needs to stop.

The practice has been repeated with many smartphones released on the Verizon network, and it goes like this: A phone with integrated GPS hardware is released by Verizon. Customers buy it, only to discover that the GPS hardware cannot be used as expected. These customers sound off in user forums on the web, and Verizon’s reputation is harmed as a result. Months pass, and eventually Verizon makes an announcement that Smartphone X is now being opened to allow the GPS hardware to be used for solutions besides Verizon’s subscription service. Customers rejoice, but they remember how long they were denied the ability to use the handset as its maker intended. And they do remember, believe me.

This is not an isolated practice; it has happened over and over again, affecting numerous smartphones. The first smartphone affected was the BlackBerry 8830, and customers were so annoyed that a class action lawsuit was filed. Sure, the lawsuit was about the way the phone was pitched to prospective customers, but a suit filed by your own customers cannot ever be a good thing for your business.

As I’ve said, this ridiculous practice has been repeated too many times, the most recent being your announcement that you were going to allow your customers who bought the Samsung Omnia smartphone to fully use the hardware as intended by Samsung. If you believe that you come off as a good guy by once again removing the arbitrary restriction that you, and you alone, put in place, then I can tell you that is not the case. You come off looking as petty, and willing to gain at your customers’ expense. As I said before, customers remember. Make no mistake about that.

I fully understand that it is your network, and you have every right to disable hardware functionality on any phone. Your right to do so is not in question. The logic of doing so, however, is greatly in question. I am confident you would state that your constant disabling of GPS functionality (non-Verizon) is a matter of network security. That is usually your excuse for not allowing customers to do things they want to do. But in this instance I don’t buy into the security excuse. The programs and services you end up blocking are the same ones you eventually approve on every single device you restrict.

Thanks for hearing me out about this issue. Please stop disabling GPS in the smartphones you sell. We customers pay for the phone, we pay for the service, and we demand the ability to use them both to their full advantage.

Sincerely,

James Kendrick

jkontherun.com

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TOPICS:

Hello World! Palm releases the Mojo SDK.
How big a deal is it that the Pre no longer syncs with iTunes?
Google Voice goes native on Android and BlackBerry. What about the web?
Nokia continues to slide in market share. What’s the strategy?
BlackBerry Tour is selling like hotcakes.
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Are Netbooks Enough?

I have a business trip coming up on Sunday and I ruminated over what gear to take with me, a process I always go through. The main decision I was confronted with was whether to take a “full” laptop, or if it would be more convenient to bring a highly portable netbook along.

The common arguments about the benefits of netbooks invariably mention two factors: price and portability. There is a camp that believes the major draw to the netbook is the low price, that netbooks are less capable than “regular” notebooks but the cheap prices make it worthwhile to overlook the performance hit.

Another camp will argue that the best feature of the netbook is in the area of portability. Most netbooks are smaller and lighter than notebooks and thus are much easier to carry around. Since notebooks are portable by design this would imply that netbooks are the easy choice when it comes to traveling.

I have always said that I felt it was low price that drove the popularity of netbooks. I admit they are very portable but I never felt that was the main draw with consumers. I am more firmly convinced of that after trying to decide this week what to take on my own trip. I have two highly portable loaner netbooks but at the end of the day the more powerful notebook won the spot in my travel gear bag.

Admittedly, price wasn’t part of the equation in this instance as I already had the gear in hand to choose from. Perhaps one of the netbooks may have won the right to accompany me if I was confronted with a major purchase. The concern that I would sacrifice too much performance was very real and played a major role in my decision process.

This whole internal debate opened my eyes, and I realized that if ultra-portability wasn’t enough to convince me to take a netbook on a trip, then when are they better than notebooks? I realized that at the end of the day I find netbooks too constrained performance-wise to have along as my only computer, and that surprised me a great deal. I realized my main question is not which netbook is best for me, but rather, is a netbook acceptable to me at all?

Don’t get me wrong: I like netbooks and enjoy using them. I have used quite a few of them, as a matter of fact, and have gotten a lot of good use out of them. Notebooks are very personal tools and we all have our own particular needs, and that will be the determinant for each individual as to whether a netbook is the way to go or not. They are fine for many, and especially good for those on a limited budget. Netbooks also make good companion devices for just about anyone; we each just need to determine if a netbook is capable enough to be our only system for a given job. I wouldn’t have questioned the capability of netbooks before this week, so my decision to not take one on my trip surprised me — and not much about mobile gear surprises me anymore.

Heat Wave

We are used to summer heat in Houston; the Texas Gulf Coast is one of the hottest places you can be. This summer has been particularly brutal as we have been breaking heat records. This week saw us constantly reaching over 100 degrees and the high humidity has made it almost unbearable.

The heat wave has driven home the folly of leaving mobile gear in the car, even for short periods. The ambient temperature is bad enough but inside a parked car it can reach levels dangerous to gear. I strongly encourage anyone in this heat to take the gear bag with you, even for short stops. Don’t leave it in the car; it can damage the equipment. A lot of gear is made of plastic, and plastic doesn’t always handle heat well.

This week I found a great way to beat the heat. The Cirque du Soleil came to town with the Saltimbanco show, and I bundled up the whole family to go see it. What a wonderful show; the acrobats and gymnasts are downright amazing! I loved the way they blend a story, great music and a mesmerizing performance to create a show unlike any other. It was my first time to see the Cirque but it won’t be the last, I can tell you that with certainty.

Apple: No Pre for You!

The Palm Pre this week lost a function I was using a lot, the ability to sync with iTunes. Apple shut that ability down, as we suspected all along it would do, and it bites. I don’t see what Apple loses by letting iTunes sync with gadgets other than the iPhone/iPod, but apparently it sees a bigger picture than I do.

Perhaps the company believes that I will keep using an iPhone forever to protect my investment in my music library, but to tell you the truth I am fast reaching the point where I am ready to let my iTunes collection go, to throw away my entire library and start building a new music collection through Amazon MP3. I have learned my lesson about being tied down to one solution, and I won’t make that mistake again.

All Things Google

I love Gmail. I can handle my email wonderfully, both on the web and on my many cell phones. I can search thousands of emails in a few seconds, and Gmail never lets me down. Other Google Apps haven’t served me as well as Gmail, but they are getting better. Google Contacts is OK, but not as good as a full-fledged client app. The Palm Pre interacts with Google Contacts well so it’s a mixed bag.

I have always found Google Tasks to be sadly lacking, and I have almost stopped using task lists as a result. This is not good, as I’ve always worked off task lists, so I was happy to see Google added a feature to Tasks that has me jumping for joy. It’s a simple feature, too, but it has already made me get much better at using Tasks. The new feature is the ability to turn any email into a task in the list. This is done through the Gmail “More Actions” drop-down list while an email is open. It’s a great way to quickly create a task out of an email that must be dealt with by an action on my part. Now if Google Tasks would only get priorities.

A Novel Idea

This week I finally started writing my novel. I have been wanting to get into fiction writing for a good while, and I finally got off my butt and started it in earnest. It’s a thriller, and I set out from the beginning to make the killer in my novel a really nasty one. The entire time I have been kicking the story around in my head I kept telling myself the bad guy must be creepy. Not just creepy, but the creepiest killer ever.

I wanted to see if I was succeeding in making my killer creepy enough, so I uploaded the first chapter to my iPhone. I handed it to my wife without telling her anything other than it was a book I was reading, and I wanted to know what she thought about it. I watched her discretely as she read it through and her reaction when finished was music to my ears. She looked at me and said one word: “creepy.” I gave myself a high five.

I haven’t set a schedule for the novel-writing; I am approaching it on a very unstructured basis. I do think I’ll get it finished at some point, but if I start lagging I may have to define some goals. It feels good to tell a real story.

E-books of the Week

I picked up the latest book by James Patterson, written with Maxine Paetro. “Swimsuit” is the story of a creepy killer, although not as creepy as my own killer, and is written in typical Patterson style. The protagonist of the story is a former cop turned novelist turned crime reporter. He gets sent to cover the disappearance of a swimsuit model (thus the title), and ends up involved with the killer who forces him to write his life story. Talk about a novel concept.

I started reading “Praying for Sleep” by Jeffrey Deaver, one of my favorite authors. This book starts off with a crazy behemoth of a man escaping from a mental institution, always a great premise for a story. I’m only halfway through the novel and frankly it’s been a little slower than other Deaver stories. I’m pretty sure it will pick up, though; his novels always do.

That’s It

Now you have shared my week with me, I hope you found it entertaining. I will be heading out on my trip in a few days and I am sure I will have trip-related happenings to share with you next week. Until then, be safe and happy.

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