When I walked into the Toyota dealership’s waiting room this morning I took a quick lookie-loo at the dozen or so people sitting there trying not to make eye contact with one another. I’ve known for years that I’d be more or less lost without my iPad, but what I saw in that room legitimately surprised me. I counted two laptops, five iPads, one Kindle Fire, one Nook, one Android tablet of unspecified origin, one old guy reading an actual dead tree newspaper, and one lone soul actually watching whatever Saturday morning kid’s drivel they were showing on television. So out of a dozen people, eight were fully engaged with their tablets. Two years ago sitting in another Toyota dealership waiting for my truck my iPad was a curiosity and garnered plenty of questions. This morning, they were the rule rather than the exception. And that’s when I became well and truly convinced that the tablets aren’t going to be an electronic fad, but a legitimate way of the future.
Tag Archives: computer
What Annoys Jeff this Week?
1. North Korea. What on earth possesses us to go to the negotiating table with this backwards-assed country that’s more interested in lobbing missiles into the ocean that it is in feeding its own people or keeping its electricity flowing. If the Dear Leader wants to spend every spare dime he can scrape together on arms and armaments, it’s time we focus on nothing more than containing them north of the cease fire line. Eventually, the North Korean people are going to get tired of starving and essentially living in the 19th century. When they do, we should do everything possible to support them. In the meantime, we should stop throwing good money after bad.
2. Good ideas. I’m not opposed to having them, I just wish they would come along when I have time to do something with them rather than just scribbling them down and hoping to get back to them at some point.
3. People who can’t figure out the basics of using a toll booth. If you’re in the lane with the giant purple sign that says “EZPass Only”, there’s a pretty damned good bet that you’re going to need an EZPass to get through the gate. If you for some reason don’t have that wonderful little transponder, you’re going to be stuck in the lane waiting for someone to wander over from one of the booths that is designated for taking actual cash money. More importantly, the guy behind you in the big red truck is going to lose is bloody mind and have his blood pressure skyrocket into decidedly unsafe territory.
4. New computer day at the office. I’m totally excited to get a new PC for work. And then I realize it’s just as crippled by security software, blockers, scans, and bloatware as the computer I’m getting rid of. At least there are no scuffs on it and the battery seems to work. That’s something.
First impressions…
First impressions count for alot and I can say that right out of the box, the new iPad has made a good one. The new display is absolutely remarkable. Hands down the highest resolution screen I have in the house at the moment. It makes everything else look bad in comparison. It is slightly heavier and thicker than the iPad 2, but not so much that you’d notice unless you were holding them side by side. Changing apps is snappy and the processor seems to have more than enough horsepower for anything I’ve thrown at it yet. I’ll save you the laborious description of speed tests and just say that yes, it’s fast. Unfortunately, I still have to go to Baltimore before I can try it 
out using a LTE/4G signal (thanks, AT&T). From what I’ve seen so far, the place where the new iPad is really going to excel is in the screen. I mean it really is something to see.
As I’m restoring from my old iPad, one thing I do notice is that the 16GB size may not be sufficient if you’re someone with a ridiculously large music library or if you want to travel with more than one or two movies on your divice. With 1500 songs and 40 apps loaded, I’m down to just a touch over 6GB of memory left. If you’re going to stream video rather than store it on your iPad, 16BG appears to be sufficient, though. If you’re worried about memory, I’d say the extra $100 to bump to a 32GB unit is probably money well spent. For me, 16 should be more than enough as I’m making a concerted effort to do more and more OTA syncing with the cloud and storing fewer and fewer things myself.
As usual, build quality is solid and it feels natural in your hands. I don’t think anyone would expect anything less. Needless to say, I’m still playing. I think Apple has delivered a good solid upgrade to the iPad family. Is it a game changer? No. No it’s not. Is it still a damned impressive piece of electronic wizardry? Yes. Yes it is.
Recommendation: It’s probably not a “must have” upgrade from iPad 2, but the retina screen makes it a damned attractive machine for movies and reading. I heard one guy describing it as a “glowing piece of paper” and I guess that’s just about right. Even at close range, there is no pixillation. Nice job, Apple. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have more, uh, research to do.
Diagnosis…
Tech problems don’t usually sneak up on me. That’s one of the perks of keeping up an, uh, “aggressive” pace on upgrades. For the last three or four months I was completely perplexed by the cause of my laptop slowing to a crawl. I ran diagnostics on diagnostics and kept coming up with the general result that the system was clean. Unfortunately, I overlooked the most basic issue of all. It seems I have been asking my 2008 model laptop to run at 2012 efficiency with a scant 2GB of onboard RAM. Woops. That’s really something I should have caught as soon as things started bogging down on me. Total amateur mistake. Then again, it’s been a good long time since I’d kept a computer for four years that it wasn’t an issue I usually ran into.
The problem is solved and all is again right with the world. I can run Chrome, Word, and iTunes all at the same time without everything grinding to an agonizingly painful halt. There’s a sexy new piece of kit sitting on my desk serving up content to every other device jacked into my home network. It’s a happy thing. It was a purchase I wanted to make anyway, but the sorry state of affairs with my underpowered laptop gave me enough of a nudge to let me justify all out replacement (at least in my own slightly warped mind).
I haven’t quite decided what to do with the laptop yet. Picking up a RAM upgrade would probably run about $50 and would easily buy it another 2-3 years of life as a backup or secondary machine to use when I don’t need to be tethered to the desk. Then again, that’s mostly the role the iPad fills now. I guess the question I’m going to have to ask myself is if I even have a need for a laptop anymore or with almost everything headed for the cloud is it a form factor that has outlived its usefulness?
Molasses…
I don’t expect alot from my tech, but when I do tend to expect is that it runs quickly when I hit the on switch. Up until a few weeks ago, my laptop delivered as much zip and performance as it did the day I took it out of the box. Now it’s gotten so laggy that I can barely stand to use it. I’ve tinkered around with some of the settings, cleaned things up as best I can without making a major effort, and have pretty much been met with more chop and even less vim and vigor. I’ve got plenty of hard drive space left, sufficient RAM, and a machine that’s acting like it’s severely underpowered. Spending your off hours trying to diagnose a sick laptop isn’t the way you want to spend your time when you’re pretending to moonlight as a real life struggling writer. I need my laptop that just works, to just work and not give me a crap ton of problems right now. I’m going to try to nurse it through the next few days and the dedicate as much time as necessary this weekend to put right. Failing this weekend’s heroic efforts to make a repair, it might be time to bite the bullet and spend some of that tax refund on something shiny and new with some plussed up processing power.
With the impending launch of the 3rd gen iPad, it might be time to consider going back to an overpowered desktop for home using the iPad for all my mobile needs. Sure, it’s another one of those fancy first world problems, but it’s the one that’s in my face giving me fits right now, and that’s the one that always gets tackled first.
What Annoys Jeff this Week…
1. Waiting. Whoever said “patience is a virtue” was a tool who clearly didn’t have enough going on to keep him occupied. I don’t see the problem with wanting what I want, when I want it. We all know some things don’t happen overnight, but that isn’t any reason we have to pretend that we like it.
2. Cluelessness. When I’m focusing on my computer screen, the sandwich I brought for lunch, or something else on my desk, and don’t seem to be paying much attention to what you’re saying, it’s a fair assumption that I’m not looking for an in depth conversation. State your business and move on. Do not stop and tell me Parts 63-77 of your life story. Get a clue.
3. Opinions. Yep, they’re like assholes. We’ve all got at least one. Please do not assume yours are facts unless you have supporting evidence to substantiate your claim. In the absence of supporting evidence, I’m just going to think you’re a moron.
4. Aging. When I read that Steve Jobs was 56, my first thought was “Damn, he wasn’t even old.” That was the first time I really consciously recognized that I’m easing in the general direction of early middle age. Apparently in my mind people in their 50s have stopped being ancient. I’m not ok with the implication that has.
5. Helpdesks. Taking three weeks to get someone networked to a printer is not, by definition, “helpful.” Now if their name was Pain-in-the-Ass-desk, I’d let it slide. There should at least be a grain of truth in what we call things.
And that’s what annoys Jeff this week.
Type…
As a technology organization, there are a few things that should pretty much always work. I’m past belaboring the importance of keeping the network up and running, though. The things that you need to focus on are apparently more basic. Like a keyboard that doesn’t drop every fourth or fifth letter while you’re typing.
Without this pretty standard piece of kit, you end up with sentences like “Norma people souldn’t be expected to wrk under thse conditions.” Which is all well and good until you actually start working on something, you know, that needs to get done in a reasonable amount of time. So now instead of actually being productive, I get to put on the editor hat and spend the day correcting everything that I’ve written. I shudder to think what tidbits got past me before someone bothered to point out that I was writing like a small retarded child.
I don’t know why I still hold out hope that someday basic office equipment issued by my employer will actually works as specified. Personally, I’d rather pony up my own equipment and have something I knew would work than continue to bend my spear on the underpowered and ill-repaired hand-me-downs we subsist on. Honest to God, this isn’t work, it’s just the vague illusion of being busy.
Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.
Blockage…
I realize that I’m using a work computer on a work network and I’m completely cool with there being limits on how those things can be used. I just think there should be a little more transparency about what the rules are and how they are applied. No internet porn. Got it. I’ll try to remember that it’s whitehouse.gov next time. No harm, no foul. But how about the BLOCKED/Humor category. I can’t get to The Oatmeal or The Onion, but I can get to Dilbert.com. Irony much? Why is it I can’t check the winning Powerball numbers (that site is BLOCKED/Gambling), but the guy next to me can spend half the afternoon selling stuff on eBay? I mean we’re both just trying to strike it rich, right? He’s just willing to put in a little more effort than I am.
Look, I’m not saying there shouldn’t be standards… I’m just saying that once again, you guys down in the network ops bunker are doing it all wrong. At least you’re consistent.
Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.
Networking… or not…
The network is my single point of failure. When it goes down, basically I become an astronomically well paid paperweight. Sure, there is a way to do everything I do manually, but because I wasn’t raised in the horse and buggy era, I don’t know what that way is because it was never covered in training and I’m certainly not old enough to have ever had to do it that way myself. And since everyone around me is in the same boat when it happens, after the initial bout of consternation and annoyance, the whole place takes on a bit of a snow day atmosphere. Which is great… for a while.
As fun as officially sanctioned down time is, it does highlight an issue that I don’t think any of us have spent enough time thinking about: What, exactly, is an army of technology workers supposed to do in the event of something more than a temporary outage? If we can’t email, can’t access the cloud, and can’t call out over VOIP, we’re pretty much just a bunch of people hanging out. What if it lasts for a day? Or a week? What if a network outage became the new normal?
Ninety nine percent up time sounds great until you realize that means you’ll be down for at least 3 and a half days every year. That’s annoying if you’re a dedicated gamer. It’s potentially catastrophic if you’re managing the world’s financial markets, running a war, or trying to manage the nation’s air traffic. Our reliance on computers and networks isn’t going to decrease in the future, so if we’re going to be so dependent on the network, redundancy and failover should be the standard. If the powers that be can’t manage that, they should at least spring for a cell booster for the building so we can play Angry Birds while we’re just sitting around.
Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.
Lost in the machine…
I had a fairly hearty post written up for tonight, but at the moment it is lost somewhere in the machine. I swear this isn’t the blogger’s equivalent of “the dog ate my homework.” I really did have a post and now it’s really, really vanished somewhere between WordPress, my laptop, and the vastness of the world wide web. I’m sure it will turn up somewhere sooner or later. I’m going to do a restart and see of anything jars loose. Thinks have been ever so slightly buggy since I installed Lion, so I’m hoping a restart fixes whatever glitch I’m having.
In the meantime, here’s a great read from a Freshly Pressed blogger railing against “The Lack of Holidays in August.” Head over there and give him a like, ok?
JEFFREYTHARP.COM 