The Garmin eTrex 20 sounded quite appealing when it came out.  It uses GPS plus the Russian GLONASS satellite system.  The eTrex 20 can also accept GPX files straight from the computer.  Just copy and paste.  No need to use software to convert tracks, waypoints, and geocaches like with the DeLorme.  The eTrex also uses a standard mini USB cable.  I can easily transfer data at home or at work.  I don’t have to carry the proprietary DeLorme cable around.  The Garmin can also display custom maps, created by registering a raster graphic in Google Earth and copying the exported KMZ file right to the GPS receiver.  Garmin also has a good reputation for firmware updates and making improvements to their devices.  Since Garmins are widely used, there is also more development for them.  I was able to find free topographic maps and OpenStreetMap datasets for Garmins.

I think I had been geocaching less because it wasn’t fun or easy to geocache with the PN-30, or at least not as fun and easy as it was with my old Magellan eXplorist 400.  I decided to use a couple of Cabela’s gift cards I have been sitting on for over two years to buy the Garmin eTrex 20.  Cabela’s had a sale where you would get a $20 discount if you spent over a certain amount, and I had $45 on the gift cards.  I ended up getting a good deal on the eTrex and was finally able to use up those gift cards.

The eTrex 20 has a microSD card slot, so I picked up an 8GB microSD card from Newegg.  It was $10 on sale, and there was a $5 rebate on top of that.  I got an 8GB Class 10 microSD card for $5.  Pretty darned good.  I was fairly sure the maps I wanted would fit in 8GB, but I wasn’t sure how much free space would be left.  Well, I downloaded OpenStreetMap data from garmin.openstreetmap.nl for the area between Des Moines and Indianapolis, and north to Madison.  I also got topo maps from GPSFileDepot for all of Illinois.  Once I installed the maps to the microSD card, they only took up a little more than 200MB.  The detail of the free maps was impressive, especially the OSM map.  To the left is a sample zoomed in on the grounds of a school and park.  I actually digitized the sports fields and trails shown on this screenshot from my GPSr.  It was so cool to see map data I created being shown on my GPS receiver’s map.  My position cursor followed the trail I digitized.  It looks like just about everything in OSM is shown on the map.

The DeLorme came with maps, which was a selling point for me.  I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to get good maps for the Garmin, and that I might have to shell out some cash.  These free maps are better than the DeLorme maps, and I will be able to update them for free whenever they get updated.  I could probably download more maps, but I am afraid a large map may result in poor performance on the GPSr.  I can turn individual map sets on and off, so perhaps I could put a bunch of maps on the memory card and only have one turned on.  Actually, I only have the OSM map turned on because it is prettier than the topo maps.  Since Illinois is pretty flat, I have rarely found a topo map useful while out in the field.

There are different profiles on the eTrex 20, like recreation, geocaching, fitness, and automobile.  I customized the recreation profile a bit and created a new geocaching profile based on the recreation profile.  I took a look at the stock geocaching profile, and it really didn’t seem to do anything special or geocaching-related.  Maybe I didn’t dive in deep enough.  No big deal.  I have the unit’s interface set up the way I want now.

This is the smallest handheld GPS receiver I have owned.  I like that it doesn’t take much room in my fanny pack and it is light.  I did find buttons a little hard to use with gloves on.  But I also had a heck of a time hitting the wrong buttons on the DeLorme while conducting a test with gloves on.

Now for the field testing.  As stated earlier, the eTrex 20 can utilize the GPS and GLONASS systems.  One supposed benefit of this setup is a faster time for achieving a position fix.  I have to say, the eTrex 20 does achieve a position fix quite quickly.  It’s pretty cool to see a lock on 23 satellites on the satellite page.  I noticed that the DeLorme PN-30 reported a smaller position error, usually hanging around 6ft.  The eTrex 20 would be around 10ft.  From what I have read online and seen in-person, the DeLormes always report a small position error.  Is it really that low?  I don’t know.  Each manufacturer has its own way of calculating the estimated position error.  You can’t really take it as gospel.  If it’s a high number, you should take it as a sign of poor reception or poor satellite geometry at that particular moment.

Looking at the early part of one of my tracklogs, the DeLorme’s accuracy was not as good as the Garmin.  It took about three minutes for the DeLorme’s track to settle down and not be so different from the Garmin’s.  Overall, it looks like the Garmin did a better job of tracking where I really was, but the DeLorme wasn’t bad either.  They both were usually within 15ft of where I really was, and both were able to show when I changed lanes while driving.  When I walked toward a building, both tracklogs went crazy when the horizon was blocked to my south and east.  The Garmin’s tracklog was slightly closer to reality in that situation, but still off by about 30 feet.

For the record, I made sure to have the two GPS receivers use the same track recording options.  I used a variety of distance- and time-based track intervals to see which would give me the best track.

I did notice one big difference between the two tracklogs.  The Garmin seems to have static navigation active.  What this does is it prevents movement from being registered if the GPS receiver is moved only a short distance or at a slow speed.  This is intended to keep the track from showing a bunch of wandering when the GPS receiver is actually being kept still.  If you look at the two tracks in this Google Earth screenshot, you will see the DeLorme (green) has some wandering in its tracklog whereas the Garmin (orange) did not.  This was at a stoplight.  The DeLorme recorded some fluctuations in position while the Garmin knew it was stopped and did not record any changes.  This static navigation function being enabled can be a good thing, but it can also be a bad thing.

Having static navigation enabled is bad when you are traveling by foot.  Sometimes walking isn’t fast enough for the GPS receiver to know it is moving, so the indicated position can get stuck.  The GPSr thinks this movement is just some wandering and the static navigation cancels it out.  When geocaching, you are moving at low speed, and sometimes you will stop to check out the different hiding places.  You want the GPS receiver calculating your position and updating the distance and direction to the geocache at all times.  If the static navigation function is active, it ends up causing the compass screen and its readouts to stick.  This has been discussed on the Groundspeak geocaching forum.  It would be nice if a user could enable or disable static navigation.

This static navigation issue combined with an obscured horizon and fuzzy cache coordinates to drive me nuts at one cache.  Check out the tracklog to the right.  When I was looking for this cache, the compass page kept telling me I was 60-80ft away from the cache, and the arrow would rarely change direction.  I’d walk 60ft and the distance and direction to the cache wouldn’t change.  Sometimes the arrow would change direction and the distance readout would change, but they wouldn’t constantly update as I walked along.  I made two large loops around the cache and one smaller loop.  At that point, I had given up on the compass page and just tried to walk toward the geocache symbol on the map.  On top of the GPSr not updating correctly, the coordinates turned out to be off by about 30 feet.  It was so frustrating to be walking all over the hillside while my GPSr screen showed no change in my position or the distance to the cache.  Having the distance readout stuck at 60ft sounds like no big deal, but it is a real problem if you don’t know which way to go.  Plus the search area is equal to pi * 360 square feet.  Good luck searching 1,131 square feet in the woods while you have no idea if your search is centered on the right spot.

The terrain here was steep.  The horizon to the south was blocked by the hillside.  You can see this in the Google Earth screenshot to the left.  Even though the signal may have been blocked by the hillside and the trees, the GPSr should have been able to guide me to the cache coordinates and zero out.  The eTrex’s navigation was being sticky.  Once I found the cache on my own, the distance readout did start to come down.  The sticky navigation/static navigation problem gave me trouble at another cache.  I abandoned that search quickly because it wasn’t fun to be wandering around with a GPSr with a stuck or erratic compass page.

I became discouraged when I failed to find some other geocaches.  I found one cache where the coordinates were off by about 30 feet.  The cache was at the base of a tree, and the coordinates I recorded for the cache matched the tree exactly in Google Earth.  So I am fairly confident of the eTrex’s ability to accurately calculate a position.  I wonder if the fact my eTrex uses GPS plus GLONASS to determine its position is resulting in me having more accurate coordinates than the cache hiders, who were only using GPS.  I remember in the early days of geocaching how some caches were recorded without WAAS corrections, so coordinates could be off a little for people using WAAS-capable receivers.  Will the GPS+GLONASS receivers show coordinates that differ from those recorded by GPS receivers that were only using the GPS system?  Will the difference be enough to matter in geocaching?

I did one test that can be viewed as somewhat scientific.  I visited an adjusted National Geodetic Survey benchmark to see how accurate my DeLorme PN-30 and Garmin eTrex 20 were.  I entered the benchmark’s coordinates into both receivers and navigated to the benchmark.  Both GPS receivers actually zeroed out!  They showed zero in the distance field for a while.  I then moved away from the benchmark and walked back.  The distance would decrease, but not zero out.  I moved around some more and was able to get each receiver to zero out, but not at the same time.

I spent a few minutes taking photos and staring at the GPSr screens.  I then decided to do my final test.  I wanted to use each receiver to record coordinates for the benchmark.  Simultaneously, I used each receiver to average 100 measurements as I held them above the benchmark.  To the right, you can see the map showing the official location of the benchmark and the location of the benchmark as calculated by the DeLorme and Garmin.

The Garmin’s coordinates were closest to the benchmark’s actual coordinates.  It was off by only 0.001 minutes of longitude, reporting a position that was 4.54ft west of the benchmark.  The DeLorme’s coordinates were off by 9.24ft to the northwest.  Advertised accuracy for a consumer-grade recreational handheld GPSr is usually 3 meters or 10 feet in perfect conditions.  Both units were well within this range.

I have yet to test the eTrex while bicycling because the weather has not been warm enough.  I did purchase a RAM mount for the eTrex and have installed it on my bike.  It uses RAM’s diamond-shaped connector, so I was able to use the existing hardware that went with the DeLorme RAM mount on my bike.  I just swapped out the actual cradle.  I also purchased a screen protector after putting a tiny little scratch on the screen after I dropped the GPSr while geocaching.

I don’t have a good way to test battery life, but the eTrex has done quite well.  I have had it on for about four hours while geocaching, maybe two hours recording tracks in the car, and maybe another hour messing with the menus.  The battery meter has not dropped below full yet.  The eTrex 20 has an advertised battery life of 25 hours.

A lanyard did not come with the eTrex.  That was disappointing.  The DeLorme came with one.  I ended up purchasing a lanyard for the eTrex separately.  I guess Garmin figured it was a way to save a bit of money on each unit.

I think I need to read the Garmin’s instruction manual again.  The only way I can find to cycle through the various screens is to hit the back button.  I want to find out if I can cycle forward by hitting another button.

So far, the Garmin eTrex 20 seems more capable and nicer to use than my DeLorme Earthmate PN-30.  All Garmin needs to do is sort out that static navigation problem to make the unit more usable while geocaching.

January

I wrote one of my most-viewed blog posts ever.  It was about the new enforcement of the Illinois Use Tax.  Freaky to think people thought to visit my blog, thinking some guy named “geognerd” would have good information about filing tax returns.  I look forward to getting all my documentation together to file my taxes for 2011.  Seriously, I enjoy going through my finances.  I might do it this weekend.

I also made a big work-related mistake.  I accepted a side job writing quizzes for an urban geography textbook.  I had never written test questions before, and there were all kinds of rules and requirements governing the type of questions I could write.  It was real tedious.  I had to read the whole textbook and write the questions in only a few weeks.  On top of that, I blew the first deadline.  I missed an e-mail telling me where to get the book and quiz materials, so I was thoroughly confused when the client asked how I was doing because I thought I hadn’t received any materials yet.  I ended up having to do three chapters’ worth of quizzes in a week.  I almost subcontracted the work to someone to get it done in time.  I learned my lesson.  Find out exactly what is expected of me and get examples of the work I will be doing, before agreeing to a contract.  The money was decent, though.

February

I went to the Chicago Auto Show again.  Took lots of photos, but didn’t win a free gas card like I did the year before.  Some of the photos were pretty good, and I spent more time sitting in and checking out the cars.

There was the big blizzard, the one where people got stranded on Lake Shore Drive.  My drive home was long, but not much worse than a usual drive in the snow.  I got home just before the big snow hit.  I remember looking outside that night and seeing a snowdrift against a neighbor’s garage that was taller than the garage.  Their front door was also blocked by a drift.

I bought a hard drive to make another portable hard drive for backup purposes.  That was good timing.  In September or October, there was some really bad flooding in Thailand, which shut down production of hard drives.  Drive prices more than doubled.

My job has deviated away from GIS during the past few years.  It’s disappointing and kind of depressing.  I really enjoy geography and doing research, but I don’t have time to do it anymore.  When I come home, I’m worn out and don’t want to work.  Geographic research on my own time has become rare.  The only time I can do any geographic research is on my own time, so I am not very prolific anymore.  I did manage to put out an interesting look at the location of Illinois vehicle emissions testing facilities.

Another one of my passions is photography.  I did a geeky comparison of cameras – a BlackBerry, an iPod, and a compact digital camera.  Check out the pics on Flickr.  The Droid Pro I got from work later in the year has a pretty decent camera, but I still don’t think a cellphone camera can replace a real camera.

March

I temporarily ruined the PocketPC I use for wardriving.  The Bluetooth stopped working on it.  But sometime in the fall it started working again.  Yay.

I got pissed off about an article that basically said a lot of the tech products I use are junk.  I rebutted the article thoroughly here.  Just because something is old tech doesn’t mean it stinks.  I don’t pay any monthly fees on my VCR.  Can TiVo boast the same?

April

My birthday is in April.  I don’t think I’ve ever acknowledged that here.  As usual, it was nothing special.  I always say that I don’t want anything special for my birthday, but honestly, I’d love it if somebody made me a really fancy cake.  More about that in a later post, if I remember to write it.

I got to finally ride on the Stearns Road area bike trails and the Fox River Trail in South Elgin.  I have gone down there for a couple of rides since then.

There was one technology upgrade made.  I bought a new monitor, a 21.5″ Asus LCD flat panel monitor.  I was getting fed up with the 17″ NEC CRT monitor I had been using for several years.  It just too small to run the resolution I needed to run for work and play.  Flight Simulator X looks better, and it’s easier for me to do work with spreadsheets and ArcGIS.  This is one of my better tech purchases.  The monitor is working great.  Its capabilities match my computer.  I built a powerful state-of-the-art computer in 2010, but I had it lashed to a monitor that was hot stuff 10 years ago.  I won’t be upgrading my monitor anytime soon.  I’m not sure what else I could possibly want from a monitor.

May

I went off on some hipster taco place near where I work.  I’ve never eaten there, but I have no problem ripping on it.  I think it’s stupid that people spend $30 on tacos and wait hours to get them.  The restaurant was covered again on TV later in the year.  I still see people waiting in line for the place to open, even in the dead of winter.

There was my trip to the Indianapolis 500.  It was my fourth consecutive 500.  I had a good time and took a lot of good photos.  I think my photos of the people were better than my photos of the cars.  Dan Wheldon won.  None of us knew it would be his last victory.

June

I bought a bunch of flashlights.  I ended up giving one away.  I still have that box full of flashlights.  Someone gave me another flashlight as a Christmas gift.  I have so many that I will never be in the dark.

June is when I usually take time off from work.  I hoard my vacation time, then blow it all just before it expires.  I used to take the final couple weeks of June off.  But now we’re understaffed and all I can do now is take long weekends.  I also have to coordinate my schedule with someone else.  It sucks not being able to take a whole week off.  Anyway, I bought a Groupon for the Volo Auto Museum.  I wanted to do something fun that was basically a day trip, something that would fit with my measly time off from work.  This trip to the museum worked out well.  I spent most of a day there.  There were some interesting cars, but it’ll be a while before I go back again.

I had a health problem toward the end of June.  There was a possibility I would lose my job.  I work in government, and Illinois’ budget is a mess.  Funding was uncertain for my office.  Because of all this stress, I had abdominal pains.  My doctor thought I ate something bad.  The pains went away but came back in July.  I went to the doctor again.  This time he concluded I had bowel spasms.  I knew that was my problem all along.  I’ve had bowel spasms before.  I was given medication, and it actually worked.  I didn’t know there was medication for that.  It really sucks when stress results in a health problem.

July

Went on a long bike ride, 28 miles through McHenry County.  Got to see a new park in a reclaimed quarry.

I went to two car shows in July.  The first was the Country Car Show in Elburn.  It’s one of my favorite car shows in the Chicago area.  They charged $5 admission this year, but the show is well worth it.  As usual, I saw some cool cars, took some great photos, and learned some stuff.  Here’s my blog entry about the show.

The other car show I went to was the Sycamore car show.  It was so damned hot that day.  There were so many cars.  My Camelbak ran out of water toward the end of my stay.  The cars were alright.  With a show that big, you’re sure to see something good.  But now I know, I should only stop to check out the absolute coolest cars, otherwise it’ll take me forever to get through the whole show.  Here are the pics from the show, and here is the blog entry I wrote.  I plan on going back to the show in 2012.

I read a book for fun for the first time in a really long time.  I read Jaycee Dugard’s A Stolen Life.  It wasn’t exactly a fun type of book, but it was very interesting and written in a way that made it easy to read.  I think this was around the time her interview was on TV.  She seemed so normal despite her captivity, so I decided to read her account of what happened.

I had the battery in my car replaced after it started acting weird and throwing up error messages.  Only a few months later, Optima came out with a replacement 12V battery for the Prius.  It’s probably better than the Toyota battery I ended up buying.  I don’t know why it took so many years for another company to make a replacement battery.

August

The Geneva Concours d’Elegance is in August.  I have gone to it since 2007, I believe.  As usual, I took hundreds of photos.  The show maintained its tradition of having unique, rare, expensive, antique, and exotic cars.  Got to see a guy creating a painting of one of the cars.

It was a crazy time at work.  Super busy.  This unusual busyness would continue through November.  Normally things would only be crazy during August and early September.  It’s not fun when you have no idea why you are so busy and have no relief in sight.

September

I started eating Italian Beef more often.  I have been a fan of them for a few years, but I would rarely get one for lunch.  Then a new beef place opened a few minutes away from work.  A co-worker gave it a thumbs-up, so I checked it out.  I got hooked.  I’ve been going there every one to two weeks for lunch, even though it is a bit pricey.  I like to get a cheezy beef with sweet peppers.

I caught a cold in September.  For the first time at my job, I had to go home.  I’ve been working there for almost eight years.  I felt so awful.  So much mucus, coughing, a bit of a sore throat.  It took two weeks for me to get over that cold.  I had never hacked up and blown out so much mucus in my life.

Despite being so sick I had to stay in bed, I managed to go to the Downtown Elgin car show.  The snot stopped running long enough that I was able to wander the show without blowing my nose or hacking up a lung.  It was nice to get outside, and I really didn’t want to miss the car show after going to it so many years in a row.  The attendance was pretty low, so I don’t know if the show will be back next year.  I took a few dozen photos.

No blog posts were written in September, because I was sick, busy, or overstressed.

October

I went geocaching for the first time in a while.  Somebody placed a ton of geocaches near my house, so I felt obligated to go find some.  It was fun.  It felt so great to stand in the middle of a field, taking in nature, watching the airplanes, taking photographs, and finding a geocache.  It was like all the things I like were in one place and I was experiencing all of them at once.  It happened at the spot in the photo to the left.  I felt alive and happy.  Such a contrast to being sick and so stressed during the previous month.

About a week later, I went for a bike ride on one of my favorite trails in the Chicago area – the Gilman Trail through Aurora.  It is a wonderful ride in the fall, when the trees are so colorful.  Here are some photos I took from that ride.

A co-worker told me about a disc golf course that opened near our office.  I took up disc golf in 2010, so I was really excited about the prospect of lunchtime disc golf.  I ended up playing almost every day.

Then at the end of the month, I overdid it.  I played 72 holes of disc golf over two days, 54 of which were on one day.  I sprained something in my back.  I had some pretty awful pain.  It was hard to stand up, sit down, and bend over.  It took a couple of weeks for the pain to get better.  I would slightly re-injure myself a couple of times.  Picking up a case of bottled water set me back a couple of weeks.  Here I am in January 2012, two months later and still having some minor pain.  I’m almost back to normal, but I do get back pain if I sit too long.

Dan Wheldon died in what is one of the worst auto racing crashes I have seen in my 28 years of watching auto racing.  So much fire, cars going airborne, and bits of race car all over the track.  His death hit the racing community hard.  It’s kind of hard to think about the hours after the crash, when the race was halted and we were all waiting for updates on the injured drivers.  I hope I never have to experience a race like that again.  I wrote a post sharing my memories of Dan Wheldon.

I found a purpose for my old computer, after it sat unused for over a year.  It is now used in my living room for streaming videos and TV shows from the internet.  That computer is almost eight years old and still chugs along.

Between March and October, I lost 20 pounds.  People actually noticed it and said I looked thinner.  My pants were looser around my waist and would fall down a bit.  It’ll be a challenge to keep the weight off during the winter.  I can’t go for my walks, play disc golf, or ride my bike in the winter.

November

I did some geocaching again, this time in the vicinity of Lords Park.  After barely doing any geocaching the last couple of years, there are finally some unfound caches nearby.  I was such a prolific geocacher that I cleaned out the area.  I spent some time watching the bison at the Lords Park Zoo.  I felt sorry for it.  I don’t know if bison are meant to be solitary animals or not, but I felt like I should keep it company.  I took some photos.

I went on a bike ride from Wood Dale to Westchester on the Salt Creek Trail.  It was a long bike ride, at 31.41 miles.  It was my longest bike ride of 2011, and my longest since August 2010.  I failed to account for the shorter daylight hours and had to hustle back to my car before it got towed or locked in a forest preserve.  I foolishly rode too far.  I rode back to my car at an average speed of 15mph, unheard of for me.  I succeeded in getting to my car right at sunset.  Along the way, I found out the park closed an hour after sunset.  Still, I was cutting it really close.  I was lucky I had enough energy to ride 50% faster than my usual pace.

Another stupid article was written about gadgets that wouldn’t be around in 2020, so I had to offer my opinion.  Some of my friends say I dislike modern popular gadgets just for the sake of being different.  I suppose they are somewhat correct.  But newer isn’t always better.

December

I got a new cellphone at work, a Droid Pro.  It was my first experience with Android in about three years, and I discovered that it compares quite well with iOS.  I don’t wish I had an iPhone instead.

I also received a hand-me-down iPad at work.  I wrote a hit piece about it.  After sitting in my desk drawer for three weeks, I brought the iPad home with me for the New Year’s Day weekend.  I used it for a few minutes this morning and was quickly frustrated by the iPad’s weight and its pixelated screen.

Conclusion

So there were some nice things that happened this year.  I liked standing in that forest preserve in October.  I got to ride on one of my favorite bike paths in the fall.  I went to plenty of car shows.  Going through my photos reminded me of how good of a photographer I can be.

For the new year, I hope to have fewer health concerns.  I would also like to get a pay raise this year, since I have increased responsibility and a greater workload.  I definitely don’t want to have my job threatened by politicians again this summer.  I bought a new handheld GPS receiver, so I may do more geocaching than I have the last few years.  What I want most is a happy year.  Unlike 2011, I want to be able to look back at 2012 and say it was a good year.

I bought a variety of products online recently.  None were gifts, so delivery speed was not important to me.  However, I noticed something interesting about a GPS mount and a phone charger I ordered.  The GPS mount came from a GPS retailer in Las Vegas and the phone charger was from an eBay phone accessory seller in New Jersey.  Both items were shipped the same day.  As New Jersey is closer to Chicago than Las Vegas, I expected to get the phone charger first.  The USPS tracking told an interesting story.  The phone charger left NJ on December 20, arrived in the Chicago area on the 22nd, then made it to my post office for delivery on the 23rd.  The GPS mount spent December 20 in processing in Las Vegas, left the 21st, then arrived at my post office for delivery on the 22nd.  The mount traveled about 1,700 miles in one day, while it took the phone charger two days to travel 800 miles.

The phone charger was disappointing.  All of my eBay purchases have gone well, except for the noisy TiVo I bought last year.  The seller lived up to their end of the deal; the thing worked, but they didn’t mention how loud the TiVo’s hard drive was.  For the first time ever, I didn’t leave positive feedback for a seller.  I decided to buy an extra charger for the Motorola Droid Pro I got from work.  I wanted to be able to charge it at home and at work.  I could use my Samsung flip phone’s charger, but its output wasn’t as high as the Motorola charger (550 mA vs 850 mA).  I assumed a smartphone had a higher requirement than a flip phone.  I found out which charger Motorola recommended for the Droid Pro and hit eBay.  I wanted to make sure to get a charger with adequate current output.  I found a seller with the right charger model and they had a good reputation.  I made my purchase.  The charger cost like $8.  When the charger arrived in the mail, I checked it out.  The output was the same as my flip phone’s charger, and the Motorola model number was different.  I was disappointed.  The charger worked with the Droid Pro, but I was hoping to get another 850 mA charger.  Curiously, Motorola did not list the output for the charger they recommended, so it may have also been 550 mA.

eBay and the retailer said to initiate a dialog to see if they can satisfy me, instead of leaving negative feedback.  I thought about contacting the seller, but it wasn’t worth it.  They could have argued with me and said the charger they sent me had the same specs as the one they advertised.  Who am I to know the difference?  They could have also offered to exchange the incorrect charger for the right one, but I would have had to send the incorrect one back on my own dime.  For $8, I decided it wasn’t worth the effort.  The charger works, but I couldn’t give the store positive feedback.  After all, they did not send me what was advertised nor did they send me what I payed for.  They haven’t gotten around to replying to my feedback, or giving me feedback as a buyer.  Of course, I won’t be buying from this eBay seller again.  It could have been an honest mistake, but I think they were just being dishonest, hoping buyers wouldn’t bother comparing the charger model number on the eBay listing with the model number on the charger.

I bought some computer and audio cables from Monoprice.  As an IT guy and all-around nerd, I cannot have enough cables.  Monoprice is inexpensive, has fast economical shipping, has excellent customer service, and sells quality cables.  They have become my go-to provider for cables.  I ordered the cables on the 22nd, a Thursday, and received them on the Saturday before Christmas.  It was just USPS Priority Mail service, the cheapest option they had for the size/weight of the cables I ordered.  Monoprice is in the Los Angeles area.  Apparently mail moves quickly from the Southwest to Chicago.  My package left LA the night of the 23rd and arrived at my Chicago area post office the following morning.  It must have hitched a ride on an airplane.

It’s not just the shipping that is going quickly.  The processing by the retailers is fast.  I had several purchases ship the same day I placed my order.  I guess I should get used to same day shipping if I order stuff in the morning.

I find myself shopping online more.  The selection and convenience can’t be beat, and the pricing is usually the best you will find.  I keep a bookmark list of my preferred vendors and compare prices among them.  I also use Fat Wallet to look for coupons and discounts for online retailers.  If you go to Fat Wallet and click through from there to the retailer, Fat Wallet will pay you a rebate of a few percent.  I’ve received rebates of 1-4%.  Recently, I have been checking out Shop Discover.  It is a section of Discover Card’s website.  If you click through from Shop Discover, and you pay with your Discover Card, you get a minimum of a 5% cashback reward from Discover.  Some stores pay a larger reward, and sometimes the reward is increased as a promotion (Fat Wallet does this too).

BestBuy.com had a special 10% cashback reward through Shop Discover.  I wanted an item from Best Buy, but it was only available in stores and couldn’t be shipped.  I got creative and was still able to get the 10% reward.  I clicked through from Discover and ordered the item online from Best Buy.  I specified in-store pickup, but I was still technically ordering online through Discover and BestBuy.com.  I received an e-mail today confirming I was awarded the 10% cashback.  So my little trick worked.  It’s good to know that I can order online, specify in-store pickup, and still get the special online reward.  Normally I don’t buy from Best Buy, but they have become more competitive with their pricing lately.  The 10% off was a bonus, because Best Buy somehow managed to beat Amazon’s pricing for the item I wanted.  Plus I was able to pick up the item right away instead of waiting for shipping.  I should mention that I was in and out of the store in about 90 seconds.  I was impressed by how quick the in-store pickup was.  I probably got lucky.

Here is another shopping story.  I bought a cellphone case for my office Droid Pro on December 22.  The office got me a Verizon belt clip holster thing, but I couldn’t use it because I wear my flip phone on my belt.  Putting two phones on my belt would be bulky and would look stupid.  I took to carrying the phone and holster in my pocket like I did with the much less bulky BlackBerry and its little case.  I didn’t care for the extra bulk of the belt clip I wasn’t using, so I gave the case to another co-worker who was part of our test group that got this phone.  He wasn’t given a case, for some reason.  I took to using an old Toshiba PDA case to carry the phone.  It was much less bulky.  Anyway, the only eBay seller with a plain sleeve for the Droid Pro was in Hong Kong.  I payed about $4 with accelerated shipping, otherwise it would have been about $2.  The case shipped on the 22nd from Hong Kong and is at a Chicago area mail processing facility today, the 29th.  It might be delivered today.  Not bad, seven days from Hong Kong.  That makes the four days the phone charger took to come from NJ look pathetic.  I don’t see how a highly-rated eBay seller can get a phone case from Hong Kong to Chicago for $2 (free slow shipping), or even the $4 (accelerated shipping) I payed.  The case must cost only a few pennies, but you’d think the shipping would be more than $2.

I take pride in sniffing out good deals.  It feels good to save a buck.  The deals.woot website has become a hangout for me.  I check it daily to see what good deals are out there, and I occasionally contribute deals I find.  It has payed off.  I have gotten a few coupons to use at Woot’s other websites (Wine, Kids, Sellout, Shirt, Home).  The comments on the deals can also be informative and humorous.  I have an awesome coupon to use, but the various Woot sites haven’t posted anything I want.  The coupon expires at the end of the month, so I may just buy something for the sake of getting it cheap, even if it only has marginal utility to me.  That sort of breaks one of my shopping rules (only buy what you need or can use), but I’d feel kind of stupid for letting the coupon expire.

That reminds me, I have some Kohl’s cash to spend too.  I only shop at Kohl’s once a year, always before Christmas.  I always find crazy deals on clothes.  I was able to buy a bunch of polo shirts for $6 each for myself and as gifts.  I’ll probably give the $10 Kohl’s cash to a friend or relative.

Basically, an iPad doesn’t work for me.  It doesn’t fit with how I do my computing.  I had only about an hour of iPad experience when I wrote my critical post about the iPad.  I have spent a few more hours with the iPad.  I found the Twitter iPad app to be pretty nifty, and the iPad is pretty good for reading e-mail.  It is also better than I expected at tabbed web browsing.  I still don’t find it useful, though.  I got my iPad as a hand-me-down at work, so I don’t have as much of an incentive to make it work for me as someone who spent $500 on theirs.  For the way I compute, it is not worth $500.  I prefer to have a larger screen and a keyboard, so a desktop or laptop work better for me.

For a lightweight device to check e-mail and social networks, I prefer something smaller than an iPad.  The iPad is pretty heavy.  I really like my iPod touch.  It fits in my pocket and does everything the iPad does.  It’s easy to take from one spot to another.  The iPad is heavy and clunky.  I have not used a Kindle Fire, but it sounds more like my kind of device.  It is smaller, lighter, and way cheaper ($199).  Another thing that annoyed me about the iPad was its screen.  I think I am in a very small minority here.  The size of the pixels annoyed me.  The pixels look very large to me, so all the graphics and text look jagged to me.  A co-worker who bought an iPad couldn’t see what I was talking about.  Maybe I am spoiled by my iPod’s Retina Display and my computer monitors.  After some more hands-on time with the iPad this weekend, I powered it off and put it back in my desk drawer at work.  Wish there was someone else at work I could give it to who would make better use of the thing.

Now let’s talk about a piece of tech I am really excited about.  I was chosen to be the guinea pig in my office for the Motorola Droid Pro smartphone.  We have BlackBerry Curve 8530s that are starting to fail.  They’re actually failing prematurely, in my opinion.  The phones are only about a year old.  Ringers not working, speakers not working unless you press on part of the phone, Bluetooth not working.  Then there was BlackBerry’s network/server problem that caused data services not to work for a day or two.  We will be switching to the Droid Pro if it works well.

I really like this phone.  I was pleased that we decided to go with a phone with a keyboard.  That was the one thing I liked about the BlackBerry.  It had a great keyboard that was easy to type on.  I find touchscreens rather difficult to type on.  The BlackBerry was otherwise pretty mediocre.  It was a basic smartphone that was crippled by its aged OS, lack of apps, and slow processor.

The Droid Pro’s keyboard isn’t as good as the BlackBerry’s, but it’s not bad and definitely better than a touchscreen.  The spacebar on the Droid could have been isolated a little more.  It is flush with the other keys, and sort of hard to hit quickly.  Maybe if there was more of a gap between the spacebar and the keys to its left and right so I know for sure I’m on the spacebar.  The Droid Pro offers the best of both worlds – a keyboard plus a touchscreen.  You have your keyboard for typing out e-mails, text messages, and social network updates, but you also have the touchscreen for interacting with the operating system and apps.  The touchscreen is very sensitive, and also has haptic feedback.  I am a big fan of haptic feedback because it confirms your tap on the touchscreen actually registered.  As an Android OS phone, the Droid Pro can access the Android Market, which has lots of apps.  Apps tend to be developed for both iOS and Android.  Sometimes they’ll be developed for BlackBerry, but I am starting to see more apps that lack a BlackBerry version.  There are multiple customizable homescreens on the Droid Pro where you can add widgets and shortcuts to your apps.

The Android OS has built-in Google Maps navigation, so there is no paying the cellular carrier for navigation.  I would only use Google Maps navigation in a pinch, though.  The routes it offered were not as good as those offered online or on my GPS receiver.  Other OS apps can make use of the phone’s GPS receiver, like the Wigle wardriving app I use to collect WiFi access point and cellular tower location data.  The iTunes App Store doesn’t offer this app.  The Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and MyFitnessPal Android apps work as well as or better than the iOS apps.  It could be hardware differences, but I want to make the point that you don’t need to go with an iPhone to have a good experience with apps.  Apps on Android work just as well as those on iOS.

The Droid Pro isn’t perfect.  The one I got supposedly had an Android OS update from Motorola that messed up how the phone connects to a computer via USB.  I wasted some time troubleshooting that before finding the solution.  I had to resort to using the Dropbox app to get files off my phone while I was working out the USB mass storage connection problem.  I also dislike the time choices for when the phone will turn off the display and lock itself.  It jumps from 2 minutes to 10 minutes.  Two minutes is usually enough for me, but I’d much prefer 5 minutes.  Ten minutes is too long.  I wasn’t able to get the 3G Mobile Hotspot app working.  The other wireless device I had on hand saw my phone as a hotspot and connected, but it couldn’t actually go online via my phone.  I also have some concerns about how usable the phone is for older people.  Two co-workers in their 50s got a Droid Pro after I got mine up and running.  One guy isn’t technologically inclined and he struggles a bit with touchscreen icons.  One lady was used to the BlackBerry just working, and she now has to get used to the new OS.

I think the Droid Pro is a very good smartphone.  I actually think I am happier with it than I would be with an iPhone.  I would spend my own money on the Droid Pro.  It does more than the iPhone, and is free with a two-year contract.  The iPhone 4S is $200.

I knew the Android OS would be better than the BlackBerry OS, but I wasn’t sure how it would stack up against iOS.  To my surprise, it’s every bit as good as iOS and the phones cost less.  Good OS, good processing power, passable keyboard.  The Droid Pro seems to have just about everything I am looking for in a smartphone.  Too bad the cellular carrier my family uses doesn’t offer an Android phone with a non-slide-out keyboard, and too bad I can’t afford a data plan.

I have written numerous posts about netbooks over the years.  I actually write many of my posts on my netbook.  I was an early adopter of netbooks, purchasing a black Asus Eee 701 the day it came out.  This little 7″ netbook was the first one on the market.  Technically the white Eee was the first, but either way, the Eee 701 was the first netbook model to be widely sold.

All my life, I had been a desktop user.  Laptops were a poor value, underpowered and overpriced.  Plus I never needed a computer while I was on the go.  I went to college at a time when everyone took notes with pen and paper.  Laptops were not carried around by every student like they are now.  Anyway, this little Asus was around $400 and was super portable.  Finally, a cheap little laptop.  I bought it.  I spent money adding RAM and an SD card for storage.  I bought a copy of Windows XP on eBay to replace the Eee’s Linux OS and make it usable.  Lots of folks bought up these cheap little laptops.

I quickly realized the Eee wasn’t particularly usable.  The dinky keyboard was barely big enough for touch typing.  The 630MHz was overwhelmed at times.  The biggest problem was the screen’s resolution, like 800×480.  I didn’t mind the 7″ screen, it just didn’t pack enough pixels for me to be able to see much of a program or a webpage.  Some dialog boxes had their OK buttons shown off the screen, meaning there was no way for me to use the program.

A year later I moved up to the Samsung NC10 shown above.  It cost about the same as the Eee, but was so much more useful.  It packed a 1.6GHz processor, a 160GB hard drive (versus 4GB SSD on the Eee), a bigger keyboard, and a higher resolution (1024×600) 10.1″ screen.  Now this was a real computer.  It was able to do everything my primary desktop could do, except read optical discs.  I was able to work on documents for a textbook.  I ran ArcGIS on it during some meetings I had for work.

Netbook manufacturers quickly realized the little Eee wasn’t big enough or powerful enough, so they started making bigger more powerful 10″ netbooks.  Just about everyone produced the same netbook – Atom 1.6GHz CPU, 160GB hard drive, 512MB or 1GB of RAM, 10.1″ screen.  The only differences were the styling and build quality.  My Samsung NC10 is the best netbook ever made, in my opinion.  Reviews gave it high marks, and there was even a Facebook group for those who felt their NC10 was better than all other netbooks.

My NC10 has served me faithfully for three years now.  I upgraded it to 2GB of RAM for about $20 a few months after I bought it.  I couldn’t resist such a cheap upgrade.  The thing still looks brand-new.  A testament to Samsung’s build quality.  Everything works and looks and feels great.  Why do I want to move up to a more capable laptop?  Sort of the same reasons I upgraded from the Asus Eee.  I want something that is faster and has a higher-resolution screen.  Once again, software and websites are starting to outpace my netbook.  I think it’ll be fine for the next year or two.

But let’s get back to what I really wanted to discuss tonight.  A lot of people got burned on their netbook purchases.  They bought these cheap $400 laptops instead of the $1000 desktops and laptops they used to buy.  They expected better build quality and performance than a $400 laptop could deliver.  Some people outgrew or broke their netbooks quickly.  Fanboys ripped on netbooks for being slow.  I thought they were pretty zippy at the time.

The problem was that people were trying to make netbooks do stuff they weren’t designed to do.  They weren’t intended to be a person’s only computer.  They were for web surfing, word processing, and other light tasks you would do while at a cafe or a meeting.  They weren’t for games or editing photos.  Luddites buy new computers and expect them to be leaps and bounds better than their old computer.  Well, those people bought netbooks because they were cheap but didn’t check the specs.  They just assumed they would be higher-spec than their old computer, when in reality netbooks were only on-par with a four-year-old computer.  My NC10 performed as well as my then four-year-old Pentium 4 desktop.

Everyone who wanted a netbook has bought one by now.  Some were pleased, more were disappointed.  I know people who had netbooks and eventually quit using them.  Sales went down.  People eventually figured out they would be better-served buying a real computer, like a 14″ or 15″ laptop.  More power, but still portable, and prices have come down to $600 for a decent laptop.  Sadly, new netbooks don’t perform much better than the NC10 I bought in 2008.  I don’t see many netbooks taking advantage of the dual-core Atom processors that came out.

People ran into the limits of netbooks, because they didn’t realize what they were for, and stopped buying them.  Some stopped using the ones they bought.  Others, like myself, understand their limitations and keep using them.

It looks like Samsung, of all companies, is giving up on netbooks.

So let’s talk iPad.  I have an iPod touch 4 and love it.   It works well for reading e-mails, light web surfing, and using social networking apps.  Take it out of your pocket, mess with it for a few minutes, then put it away.  It’s not for content creation.

People I know with iPads went through several cases trying to find one that provides the proper screen angle for setting it on a desk.  Then some people found typing on an iPad to be difficult, so they bought the Apple Bluetooth keyboard.  That reduced the portability.  One high-profile iPad user is Diane Sawyer on ABC World News.  She has her iPad placed prominently on her desk.  One day I noticed that she had resorted to using the Bluetooth keyboard, like one of my colleagues at work.  I wonder how many other people have had to shell out for a keyboard so they could type decently on the iPad.  But are you supposed to be doing any typing on the iPad?  The device has an on-screen keyboard, but I think the iPad was intended more for tapping out a short two-line e-mail, typing in a Google search, tweeting, or updating your status on Facebook.

Harry McCracken, a tech journalist, recently lamented the lack of a good word processing app for the iPad.  But is an iPad really the right tool for the job?  I certainly wouldn’t want to work on a document on an iPad.   Rumors have come out about Microsoft Office becoming available for the iPad.  But again, I ask, should the iPad be running a word processor?  I’ve also heard people complain about the difficulties of blogging from an iPad.  I cannot imagine putting this post together on an iPad with the WordPress app.  This would have taken hours to type.  I tried tapping out a Google+ status update on my iPod touch, and that took way longer than it should have.  I cannot type on a flat piece of glass.  The keyboard on the iPad is of a decent size, but as I found out while trying that Asus Ultrabook, I definitely need a good keyboard with good tactile feedback.

What is happening is people found they didn’t need their desktops of full-size laptops to check e-mail and monitor their social networking accounts.  They increasingly relied on their iPads.  It’s easy to carry around the living room or use in the bedroom.  People have gotten used to using just one computing device – their iPad.  But now they’re starting to run into its limitations.  You can’t easily access saved data on an iPad and you can’t really transfer documents to and from it.  You can’t really create content on it.  Now people are trying to force the iPad to do things it wasn’t designed to do.  The iPad is a consumption device.  It is not for content creation.  Also, it is for someone who only does one thing at a time.  You can switch between apps and use multiple browser tabs on an iPad, but it isn’t as seamless as on a computer.

When I was given the iPad, I was told that I’d like it eventually.  I don’t think I will.  I am a tab junkie.  My browser always has at least two tabs open, and I toggle between them often.  Twitter in one tab, other stuff in another tab.  If I’m reading news, I’ll have a news site’s main page in one tab, and I’ll have the individual articles I want to read open in other tabs.  I may have 15 tabs open at once.  When I surf, I’ll see stuff that looks interesting and I’ll kick it out to another tab for reading later.  It’s a cinch to websurf on a computer, just center-click a link and it opens in a new tab.  I use a Firefox add-on where I can highlight text, then right-click it to do a variety of searches based on that text.  Makes it easy to quickly look up something in Wikipedia, Google News, Google, or Amazon.  You can’t websurf like this in Safari on an iPad.  I also comment on a lot of blogs, news articles, and photos on Flickr.  All that typing would be a nightmare on an iPad.  I am a power user, and I am a content creator.  An iPad just isn’t going to cut it for me when it comes to how I do my computing.  I don’t read a lot of books, and I don’t watch many YouTube videos.  I imagine an iPad is good for those activities, but I don’t engage in those activities.

I think more people are going to realize their iPad isn’t “all that,” and will go back to their laptops.  I think iPads are expensive toys.  Few people have figured out how to use them effectively, and even fewer businesses have figured out how to use them as more than expensive executive toys.  The value isn’t there.  You’re paying $500 for 3/4 of a computer when you can buy 100% of a computer for the same amount of money.  There are some pretty darned good computers that only weigh a couple of pounds and cost the same as an iPad.  I know what my netbook is good for and I use it accordingly.  That’s why I haven’t pitched my netbook yet.  I think people are trying to do too much with their iPads, and will eventually figure out they aren’t a particularly good purchase.

I was a commuter student throughout college.  No crazy dorm or apartment parties for me.  I was a hermit, so no late-night makeout sessions either.  I started staying up a bit later, typically calling it a day when the 10PM news came on.  I still had my 5:45AM wake-up time.  I’d leave for school at 7:30AM, regardless of when my first class was.  I would work or study when I got to school.  It kind of stunk not to be physically able to stay up late.  I had a really hard time staying up past 10PM, so I never could stay up late to cram for an exam.  I’d have to make sure to schedule studying time during the day.  There were a few times when I stayed up late to study, maybe until midnight.  But those were always unproductive study sessions, because I would be so tired while trying to study.

Once I graduated and got a full-time job, my sleep pattern didn’t change for years.  During the past three years or so, I have been staying up until midnight just about every night.  I would watch the 10PM news, then Nightline, then whatever captured my interest at 11PM.  I would stay up until midnight to see the new deals posted by woot.com.  Their family of websites posts a new deal once a day, at midnight.  I buy stuff from Woot about twice a year.  Their deals almost always make it through the morning, so I don’t know why I stay up until midnight to see their deals freshly-posted.  Having Three’s Company on AntennaTV four nights a week at 11PM is also an incentive to stay up late.

I used to go to bed and turn out the light just after the Woot deals were posted at midnight.  Then I started to play games on my iPod touch or read books and magazines until 12:30AM.  I started doing that a year ago.  Since this past summer, I have been staying up even later.  Several times a week, I will stay up until 1:30AM.  I’ll read, play games on my iPod, or listen to music.  I recently started to websurf while laying in bed after midnight, either on my iPod or my netbook.

This habit is starting to make mornings tough for me during the week.  It’s crazy how I used to go to bed at 9PM and had a hard time staying up past 10PM.  Now I’m up until 1:30AM a lot.  I think I have a problem of some sort.  I have no problem falling asleep, so it’s not an insomnia thing.  As soon as I turn off the light, I fall asleep.  When I noticed how few people stay up until 1:30AM, and how many people talk about 1:30AM as being really late, I realized I had a really bad habit.  It’s 1:01AM as I write this.  But it’s the weekend, so it’s kind of OK because I can sleep late.  (Note: I went to sleep at 2AM and slept until 10:50AM.)

It’s really easy for me to tell if I got enough sleep.  If I had a dream, I had enough sleep.  If I wake up and can’t remember any dreams, I didn’t sleep enough.  It’s tough when I wake up late during the week and I realize I was just at the beginning of a dream.  I guess it’s good that I got enough sleep, barely.  About five hours is when I apparently start having dreams that I remember when I wake up.  It also seems to be the amount of sleep that makes me feel rested and in a good mood.

How long do I remember dreams?  It depends.  Sometimes I’ll forget them as soon as I reach my bedroom door.  Others are crystal clear, lengthy, and detailed.  I’ll remember those when I get into the shower.  The shower is only about 10 steps away from my bed.  If the dream stays in my mind for those few seconds it takes me to get to the shower, I’ll remember it.  It’s interesting that if a dream stays in my mind for more than about 10 seconds after I wake up, it will stick with me.  I actually consciously try to remember the dream.  As I shower, I’ll go through the details, put them together, and try to replay the dream.  The stories are usually incomplete.  I don’t know how I get into or out of them.

Here’s an example, my dream from Friday night:

I found myself at some sort of Italian beef emporium.  The restaurant served nothing but Italian beef sandwiches and fresh cut french fries.  (In real life for the past few Mondays, I have been having an Italian beef and fries for lunch.)  I was there with a group of friends and colleagues.  (But they weren’t friends or colleagues from real life.)  The restaurant had booths and they had that tacky brass tubing at the top of the seatbacks that held cloth partitions.  I remember red, either the booth seats were red or the carpeting was red.  I don’t know what happened, but I got ditched.  When I walked up to the ordering station, I was by myself.  I ordered two of my favorite foods – cheezy beef with sweet peppers and an order of fries.  I got my receipt. 

Cheezy beef with sweet peppers & fries, from a restaurant I frequent

I then got lost or confused.  I wasn’t sure where to go or what to do next.  I waited and waited and waited, and nobody told me where to go.  There were no signs either.  I couldn’t find my friends and colleagues.  I saw a lot of other people enjoying their Italian beefs, so there was food coming from somewhere.  (I remember now, the carpet was red.)  I noticed there was a nerdy guy wandering around with me.  He had placed an order for his food too, and was also confused about where to go and what to do.  We wandered around lost through this two-story behemoth of a restaurant.  I started to become really sad.  I was alone, lost, and I didn’t have my food.  It was supposed to be the best Italian beef in the world.  I was also upset that I paid a lot of money for my food, and I never got it.  I got ripped off.

Eventually I saw this big black guy sitting by himself in a booth.  He had two Italian beefs on a tray in front of him.  One was partially-eaten, the other was intact.  Both were cheezy beefs with sweet peppers, like I had ordered.  Bawling, I explained my plight and the fellow gave me his extra Italian beef.  I thanked him, took the beef, and started eating it as I walked.  (I have no idea how one eats an Italian beef while walking.  Dreams aren’t always realistic.)

Me and the nerdy guy wandered around some more.  I felt guilty about finally getting a sandwich, while he had nothing, but there was no way I was sharing my food.  I finally spotted a cute blond wearing a red polo shirt who was a restaurant employee.  I guess she was a hostess.  I asked her where I was supposed to get my food, and angrily shook my receipt and pointed at it, saying I had paid for my food but never got it.  I explained that the beef I had came from the generosity of a stranger.  The hostess guided us to the counter where we were supposed to pick up our food.  We got our food.  The nerdy guy went somewhere.  Don’t know where.  The hostess then took me to a booth.  I noticed the table had Italian beef juice on it.  I was going to ask the hostess to clean the table, but she was already walking away.  I was really disappointed with the restaurant, and made a mental note to write a one-star Yelp review.

And that’s when I woke up.  I don’t remember any details about how the Italian beef tasted.  It must not have been bad, otherwise I would have remembered that detail.  But it must not have been the best in the world either.  I think I was wandering around for at least an hour trying to get my food.  Who knows how long that part of the dream lasted in real time as I slept.

This dream is sort of weird and disturbing.  I wonder what it means.  I kind of don’t want to know.  Being hungry and lost in a dream cannot be indicative of anything good.  If you want to offer your interpretation in the comments, go ahead.  I guess if this dream is indicative of a problem I am having, I should find out about it.

Like most Apples, the MacBook Air (MBA) costs more than other similar products.  I discovered that firsthand yesterday during a trip to Best Buy.  I wanted to get some hands-on interaction with a MacBook Air and the Asus Zenbook UX series Ultrabook.  The Asus is the Windows/Intel world’s attempt to create their own version of the wildly successful MBA.  The Asus comes in 11″ and 13″ versions, just like the MBA and undercuts it in price.  On paper, it sounded like a worthy competitor.  Thus my trip to Best Buy, the only retailer near me that even carries the MBA.  The fact they had the Asus was a bonus.

I was surprised by Best Buy’s Apple product display.  It had tables and shelving different from the rest of the store.  Very Apple Store-like.  I’ve never been in an Apple Store, just going from what I’ve seen in pictures.  There were a few blue shirts (Best Buy employees) wandering around, plus a couple of guys who appeared to be working there, but were dressed more formally and had an Apple logo on their shirt.  A blue shirt asked how I was doing; I said I was doing fine and was just looking.  And I was left alone after that!  I really hate being pestered by store staff wherever I shop, so this was refreshing.

I have to wonder if Apple made Best Buy run this section of the store differently, ie the fixtures and the conduct of the staff.  Apple Stores are supposedly designed to let the customers interact with the product with minimal staff intrusion.  I think the guys wearing the more formal Apple garb were not Best Buy employees, but Apple employees.  I eavesdropped on a conversation one had with a blue shirt while I played with the MBA.  They were talking about hard drives, and the Apple guy mentioned how he was shopping for one at Newegg and TigerDirect.  He said the prices had gone up and some drives were limited to one per customer.  (Severe flooding in Thailand has reduced hard drive production.)  The Best Buy guy said the store could probably match the online stores’ pricing, but probably wouldn’t be lower.  I thought this shop talk was cool, how the Best Buy guy pretty much admitted he couldn’t beat the online stores.  He seemed knowledgeable and didn’t fit the stereotype most of us geeks have about the blue shirts.

MacBook Air

The first thing I did was pick up the 11″ MacBook Air.  I wanted to see how light it was.  It was a touch over two pounds.  It felt so light for its size.  I’m leaning toward the 11″ MBA because of its more portable size and lower cost.  I am comfortable with the 10.1″ screen on my Samsung NC10 netbook, so I had no problem with the 11.6″ MBA screen.  The picture quality was fine.

The next thing I was worried about was the keyboard.  I had never used a chiclet keyboard before.  I’m not too keen on them.  I’ve been using normal keyboards with the keys adjacent to each other my whole life.  The gap between keys on a chiclet keyboard makes no sense to me.  I do a lot of typing, and I type over 70 words per minute, so keyboard comfort is important to me.  To my surprise, the MBA’s keyboard worked well.  I felt comfortable hitting the keys and made no more typos than usual.  Key travel was sufficient, though softer than I am used to.  But I found a problem I didn’t expect.

There wasn’t much room for my palms at the bottom of the keyboard.  I had no accidental contact with the touchpad, but I found the bottom edge of the laptop digging into my the heels of my palms.  On the MBA, this edge is kind of sharp.  I was eager to see if I had this problem on my even smaller Samsung.  Well, the wrist pad area is smaller than on the MBA.  However, the edge of my NC10 is ever so slightly more beveled than the MBA.  My wrists rest on the edge of my NC10 but feel fine as I type this.  This was a big enough problem on the MBA that I moved over to the 13″ to try it out.  Typing was much more comfortable for my wrists on the 13″.  Sold new, the 13″ MBA costs $100 more than the 11″ I was looking at.  Not bad, but that puts the MBA even farther out of my reach and reduces portability.  The MBA was already pretty far out of reach for me.

Why am I looking at an Apple?  I want something different.  I have been using generic DOS and Windows computers my whole life.  I want to use a different operating system on a flashy computer.  Supposedly Mac OS doesn’t get as gunked up as Windows as time goes by.  I’d like to have a laptop that feels as good as new when it is three years old.

I’d also like to say that new netbooks are pathetic.  The CPU benchmarks on them are only 10% higher than the benchmark for the CPU in my three-year-old Samsung.  We have some newer Samsung netbooks at work running Windows 7 Starter, and they feel so sluggish compared with my XP-loaded Samsung.  Except for size, it makes no sense to buy a netbook anymore.  You’re better off spending an extra few hundred on something that is 10 times more powerful.

My last test of the MBA was free disk space.  The 11″ 64GB model on display only had 16GB of free disk space.  That was ridiculous.  The 13″ 128GB model had 60GB free, which wasn’t great, but was acceptable.

My plan all along has been to buy a 2011 model MBA as a refurb from Apple’s online store.  Apple’s refurbs of iPods and computers are a good deal.  They look good as new physically, and have been checked out by technicians.  They carry the same warranty as a brand new product, but typically cost 10-15% less.  The 2011 MBAs have been appearing sporadically in the Apple refurb store, but only the 13″ models.

Even as refurbs, these 2011 MBAs are expensive.  I don’t know if I’ll be able to afford one unless the prices really drop when the next generation comes out.

Asus Zenbook UX31E-DH52 Ultrabook

Image taken from Amazon product page

Certainly looks like the MacBook Air, doesn’t it?  The Asus appealed to me because of its lower price, yet it offers things the MBA doesn’t.  Like USB 3.0, VGA adapter, and ethernet adapter.  Plus bags for the computer and adapters.  My desktop supports USB 3.0 and I have a couple of USB 3.0 portable hard drives, so it would be nice to be able to use them at full speed on a laptop.  Speaking of speed, the Asus’ SSD was supposedly faster than the one used in the MBA.

I had read several reviews on Amazon saying the Asus had touchpad problems and the keyboard took some getting used to.  As soon as I tried to use the Asus, I found these reviews had credibility.  The touchpad was too sensitive, was hard to make gestures on, and it was hard to use accurately.  I also found it hard to keep my palms off it while typing because of its size and position.  The touchpad issues have supposedly been mitigated by driver updates.  But I had a real problem with the keyboard.  That Asus has one of the worst keyboards I have ever used.  The keys had very little travel, so sometimes it felt like the key hadn’t gone down at all.  I found that I had to hit the keys firmly and straight-on for keystrokes to register properly.  It made typing less comfortable and slower.  I also found that I kept missing keys and ended up typing on the empty space between the chiclet keys.  No driver update is going to fix that.  I was so disgusted by the faulty touchpad and keyboard that I left the Asus after only a couple of minutes.  I looked at some other laptops before returning to the MacBooks.

The Asus was so disappointing.  The Asus Eee 701 I bought three years ago was built quite well.  I mentioned this in a blog post not long ago.  I think Asus rushed the release of this Ultrabook.  Acer, HP, Lenovo, and others either have an Ultrabook out or will have one out soon.  An Ultrabook is a laptop that conforms to size and performance requirements established by Intel.  Asus wanted to get into the Ultrabook game early.  It’s a shame.  They should have spent a few more months perfecting the product.  Unbelievable that a lousy touchpad and keyboard, two basic things, ruin an otherwise pretty and capable laptop.

Other observations

I took a look at a 13″ MacBook Pro.  Its pricing can be better than MBA pricing.  I went to lift up the MBP and the thing felt like it was made of lead.  It felt heavy for its size.  As soon as I felt the heft, I knew the MBP would be a no-go for me.

A 27″ Apple Thunderbolt display was…on display.  That monitor looked great.  I felt like I was going to fall into it, it was so big and the picture looked so real.  It was hooked up to a dinky Mac Mini, which was kind of funny.  A huge touchpad thing was connected to the Mini.  This Magic Touchpad was awesome.  It was so big, and it was easy to make gestures on it.

Conclusion

I used to rip on Macs.  I was a hardcore Microsoft guy.  Now I’m starting to see Macs as viable computers that are good enough for most people to use day-to-day.  I don’t use as many weird Windows-only programs as I used to, so now I think I am looking at computers more like a regular consumer does.

I admittedly am discouraged by the MBA pricing.  I found a much more inexpensive Samsung laptop that gets some very good reviews.  It is the Samsung Series 3 12.5″ model.  It is pretty thin and light, only slightly chunkier than the MBA.  Its processor outperforms the MBA’s by about 33%.  However, the Series 3 has a standard hard drive instead of a solid state drive.  That’ll reduce performance a bit.  The Series 3 is $700 at Amazon, versus $1300 for a new MBA 13″.  The Series 3 is appealing, providing good performance and portability for its price.  But it runs Windows 7.  I wouldn’t be getting a new computing experience like I would with the MBA.

I guess I’ll keep waiting until the MBA reaches a decent refurb price.

1. Standalone GPS Systems.  I’ll focus on portable automotive GPS receivers.  You can move them from car to car and they are relatively inexpensive.  You can get a Garmin with lifetime map updates and traffic service for less than $150 now.  Map updates are critical, and the lifetime map updates are available quarterly.  Supposedly, people are moving to navigation systems on their smartphones.  But here’s the thing.  You’re looking at spending up to $200 for the smartphone.  Then there’s the $70/month service plan.  The smartphone screen might be 3.5″ in diameter.  My Garmin has a 5″ screen, and has a one-time cost of $150.  The larger screen makes it easier to enter info and easier to see the maps.  Yes, it is an extra device to carry, but I firmly believe in using the best tool for a job.  What about built-in navigation systems?  Car dealers often screw you for map updates that usually come on DVDs.  The map updates on my Garmin don’t cost me anything.  I should mention that other manufacturers offer lifetime maps.  But I hate TomToms.  They are harder to use.  Another reason why a cellphone navigation system stinks is the draw on the battery, and the potential for phone calls and text messages interrupting the navigation.  Also, cellphones only cache maps immediately around you.  If you go out of cellular data range, you don’t have maps.  I understand that some navigation apps are now caching maps for an entire route, in case you do end up losing data service.  But I don’t trust the mapping app.  On a standalone GPS receiver, I know I have the whole country or the whole continent already loaded on the device.  I don’t see standalone GPS receivers disappearing in nine years, especially not handheld outdoor units.  Not all of us can afford smartphones.  Also, you look like a moron using a smartphone to navigate while geocaching in the woods.  I’d like to see a smartphone survive a drop onto a rocky creek bed followed by water immersion.
2. E-Readers.  OK, I won’t mind if e-readers disappear in a few years.  I think they are dumb.  Yes, it is cool that you can carry hundreds of books and magazines on one device.  That is convenient.  But e-books aren’t much cheaper than printed books.  Also, sharing is still being figured out.  I can literally hand a book to a friend.  Can’t be much easier than that.  No DRM to deal with, no synching.  My local library now has e-books available for checkout.  That does make e-readers more appealing.  But it is so easy to check out any printed book in the library’s collection.  The e-book collection is surely much smaller than the printed book collection.  I can toss a book on the table or a sofa without it breaking.  I wouldn’t take that risk with an e-reader.  Liquids can make a printed book messy, but otherwise still legible.  Liquids could ruin an e-book.  And if I manage to lose or ruin a printed book, I’m out $10-20 in most cases.  If I lose or ruin an e-reader, I’m out at least $100.  E-readers also don’t provide me the sense of satisfaction I get when I see a thin group of pages remaining in a book.  When the back of the book is thinner than the front, I know I have made good progress reading.  A progress bar or page counter on an e-reader wouldn’t be as satisfying.  Also, printed books don’t need to be charged and can be read forever.  Who knows if your Nook or Kindle will be running 50 years from now, and who knows if those e-book file formats will be readable on the devices of the future.  To me, e-readers are a solution to a problem that never existed for me.  I don’t need to carry hundreds of books and magazines with me at one time.  It’s pretty easy to fit a couple of books and a half-dozen magazines into a bag.
3. Feature phones.  I carry a Samsung Stride flip phone.  Free with a two-year contract.  I average about 5 minutes of phone calls a month and don’t send or receive text messages.  Sometimes I will go a month without using any minutes.  I don’t make a lot of money.  I have no problem dropping $200 on a cellphone.  What would kill me is the $70 for the monthly service plan.  I have better things to do with my money than spend over $840 a year on a phone.  With the economy in the crapper, there are other people who can’t afford a smartphone and data plan either.  I don’t need a smartphone.  I don’t need unlimited texting or 200 texts or any texts.  I don’t need to be able to go online while at the grocery store.  For a lot of people, a dumbphone is all we need.  Unless smartphones and their plans become more affordable (ha!), all we will be able to afford are dumbphones.  There will always be basic phones for people who can’t afford fancy phones or don’t want the complexity of smartphones.  Unless the greedy cellular companies decide to squeeze us poor people, eliminating cheap flip phones and basic plans and forcing us into more expensive plans and smartphones.  I do have a work-issued BlackBerry.  While convenient, I would never buy one for myself.  Not worth the $800-something a year.
4. Low-end digital cameras.  OK, I will kind of agree with this.  We’re already seeing these cameras diminish in popularity.  Cellphone cameras are still pretty crappy, but they are getting better.  Meanwhile, compact point-and-shoot cameras like the Canon PowerShot A-series have plateaued.  You can only add so many features and megapixels.  As someone who takes photos as a hobby, I care more about image quality, manual controls, macro capability, and zooming than most.  But for a lot of people, a cellphone camera may be just as good as a compact Canon, Nikon, or Kodak.  Why spend $125 on a compact camera that isn’t much better than the best cellphone cameras?  It’s just an extra thing to carry.  Optical zoom is something that cameras can rub in the face of cellphone cameras.  Digital zooming results in crappy images on cellphones and cameras.  But a point-and-shoot can get you 3-4X optical zoom.  Is it worth carrying an extra device?  I do carry a little Canon PowerShot SD1100 with me everywhere because I can’t afford a phone with a good camera, and I know that I have to use a real camera if I want to get a quality image.  I anticipate the $100 compact point-and-shoots becoming harder to find.  DSLRs will be around for a long time, because of the premium capabilities.  I also expect superzoom point-and-shoot cameras to be around, like my trusty old Canon PowerShot S5.  Superzoom cameras give people 10-20X zoom capability without spending over $1,000 on a camera body and lenses.  But they do cost well more than the basic point-and-shoots.  The middle range of the digital camera market will go away.  You’ll have real basic cheapo digital cameras, then cellphone cameras in the mid-range, then superzooms and DSLRs at the higher end for people who are more serious photographers.
5. DVD players.  I just bought a DVD player two weeks ago.  I checked out a DVD from the library and my PlayStation 2 couldn’t play the scratched disc without skipping and freezing.  I had a $25 cheapo DVD player about two years ago, but it was recalled because of a supposed fire risk.  I took it to the store and got my money back.  I didn’t get a replacement until I bought the Sony pictured above.  Shows how often I watch DVDs.  My PlayStation is real picky about DVD quality, and I found that only a standalone DVD player is capable of reading the library’s scratched discs.  Blu-ray players may end up replacing regular DVD players, but for those of us without HDTVs, there is no reason to spend the extra cash on a Blu-ray player.  The cheapest Blu-ray players at Walmart are about $70.  My Sony cost $34.  An acquaintance suggested I replace my PS2 with an Xbox 360.  I explained that I don’t have an HDTV, and I don’t play games very often, so the cost of an Xbox 360 wasn’t justifiable.  One guy in the article I am rebutting says digital delivery should replace DVDs.  Sorry bub.  Not gonna happen until every household in the country has access to at least 3Mb internet service.  Some places don’t have such bandwidth, and where it is available, we all can’t afford it.  I pay $28/month to AT&T for 1.5Mb DSL.  That’s the fastest they offer in my neighborhood.  I could pay Comcast $48/month for 12Mb service, but I would be nearly doubling my Internet expenses.  That’s an extra $240 a year.  That’s nearly five months’ worth of gas for my car.
6. Recordable CDs and DVDs.  Flash drives are often on sale for $1/GB.  There’s no excuse for someone not to have a flash drive for toting data between computers.  However, I don’t think flash drives are cheap enough yet to just give away to a room full of people.  Suppose you have to provide data and documents to a seminar you are teaching.  The stuff takes up 330MB of space.  It fits on a CD easily, and the CD only costs a few cents.  If you were to use a flash drive, good luck finding a 1GB flash drive these days.  The smallest I see are 2GB or 4GB now.  And they cost more than a few cents, usually around $6.  Nobody is going to spend $6/head to give out some course materials.  Cheaper to burn CDs.  Or you could post your data and documents online or on a network drive for people to download to their own flash drive.  DVDs hold 4.7GB of data.  Again, a DVD costs less than $6.  Flash drives won’t replace DVDs for content distribution quite yet.  CDs and DVDs are a cheap and easy way to distribute content to a lot of people.  They are also a little more secure than a flash drive.  I don’t think anyone will accidentally re-write a DVD, but it is quite easy to accidentally delete or write over data on a flash drive.  Until everyone has networked storage or a web server for hosting files, we’ll still need CDs, DVDs, and flash drives.
7. Video game consoles.  I’m not sure about this.  I hardly play games on my PlayStation 2 anymore.  It’s not because it isn’t a capable machine or lacks good games.  Its graphics look good and there are plenty of good games.  I simply don’t have time for games anymore and would rather do other things.  I’d rather browse the internet, read, or watch TV.  I do play games periodically on my desktop computer.  It’s pretty powerful; I built it to handle the most demanding productivity software and some moderate gaming for years to come.  I like to play SimCity 4 and Microsoft Flight Simulator X.  The game controller for consoles is a two-edged sword.  It makes it easy to interact with the game, but it also limits the way you can interact.  A computer offers a mouse and keyboard to make it easier to do stuff.  But unless you have a joystick, it’s hard to maneuver your race car, airplane, or military commando.  I think game consoles will stick around for at least one more generation of console.  The PlayStation 3 is halfway through its life cycle.  I read that consoles usually have a 10-year life cycle, so I expect consoles to be common for another 15 years.  People want to have a big screen to play their games on.  It’s easy to hook up an Xbox or PlayStation to a big screen TV.  While a person could connect a computer to a big TV for gaming, most people don’t.  I have a 21.5″ monitor.  That’s plenty big for me.  But I suspect a serious gamer would rather play on their 40″ TV.

So these are my thoughts about seven gadgets that supposedly will be gone by 2020.  I am thriftier than most people, and I make less money than most people, so keep that in mind.  I am more likely to cling to technologies that work and don’t cost much.  I did buy an expensive SSD drive and 12GB of fast RAM for my computer, but this is a computer I plan on using for at least five years.  It is a justifiable expense.  Buying a Blu-ray player or smartphone would be a waste of my money because I have no need for either technology.

Tech writers need to keep in mind that not everyone can afford the latest in technology, nor do we need the latest in technology.  Also, older proven technologies shouldn’t be pronounced dead or ridiculed just because they aren’t the latest and greatest.  The folks who live on the the bleeding edge of technology are often the most vocal and influential people in media.  But for every one of those people, there are 90 others who do just fine with the old tech they have been using for years.

So let’s move on to what brings me to WordPress today.  Back in the day (like two years ago), companies would pay rebates with checks.  Sometimes they’d come in envelopes like a letter, sometimes they’d come as post cards.  People would complain about the post cards, saying they looked like junk mail and they’d throw out the check.  But seriously, who is that stupid?  I look over every piece of mail for that very reason.  I want to make sure I don’t miss anything or throw out something important.  Another problem people had with the checks was cashing or depositing them.  Some people rarely go to banks anymore.  I hate going to my bank.  The line takes forever and the tellers always try to up-sell me on the bank’s services.  I never really minded the rebate checks, though.

Recently, companies have shifted to sending pre-loaded rebate cards from Visa and American Express.  The cards are loaded with the amount the rebate is for.  They can be used like credit cards.  The instructions say to choose “Credit” and not “Debit” when you are at a point-of-sale terminal.  There are also notes about using the cards when shopping online.  I remember one card saying not to use it online, because there may be a conflict between the address associated with the card and your shipping address.

I’m not a fan of these cards.  I don’t do much shopping.  When I do shop, I either spend $5, or I spend $50+.  So I can keep pecking at the rebate amount with small purchases until it’s gone, or I can try to split payment between the rebate card and cash or my own credit card.  Some stores aren’t too keen on accepting multiple payment methods.  You also have the problem of running a card down to just a few dollars.  I have a card with a little over $4 on it.  What can I buy for $4?  A cashier or store may get annoyed about taking multiple cards with $3-4 to cover a bill.

I’ve also had a problem with these cards not behaving correctly with the POS terminal.  One kept thinking the card was a debit card, and would ask for a PIN.  After a couple of failed attempts, I gave up and payed with cash.  I was at a self-checkout area, and I didn’t want the attendant to get suspicious.  It probably looked like I was trying to use a stolen card.

I have two of these preloaded rebate cards that I need to use over the next few months before they expire.  Because of how bothersome they are for me to use, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do.  I even thought skipping any rebates that are payed on these cards.

Then I read a comment on an article where one guy explained what he does with these rebate cards.  He buys Amazon gift certificates with them.  That way, he gets every cent out of his rebate card, and he doesn’t have to worry about expiration or conditions.  A brilliant idea.  I buy stuff from Amazon all the time.

I used a $10Visa rebate card to buy myself a $10 Amazon gift certificate.  The process was seamless.  In a matter of seconds, I received an e-mailed receipt for my gift certificate purchase, as well as an e-mail with the Amazon gift certificate code.

These rebate cards are more of a pain than the old rebate checks, but at least I finally found a way to use them.

On the other hand, I am using my iPod touch 4 more than ever before.  I finally turned on the WiFi on my router, so now I can use my iPod to hop online whenever.  I get so much more utility out of my iPod touch than I do from the Eee.  The touch turns on and off instantly.  Actually, it just goes into standby or sleep.  You know what I mean.  The iPod has a higher-resolution screen, believe it or not.  It has a 3.5″ screen that runs at 960 x 640.  Apple’s Retina display is awesome.  The Eee has a 7″ screen running at 800 x 480.  The iPod’s A4 processor also has a faster clock speed than the Eee’s Celeron M.  The A4 is a 1GHz processor that is underclocked to 800MHz, while the Eee’s Celeron M is a 900MHz processor underclocked to 630MHz.  Granted, CPU clock speed isn’t a fair head-to-head comparison.  The iPod’s processor works great for iOS and its apps.  The 630MHz Celeron M can make the Eee sluggish sometimes.  Both are built well, though the iPod is more of a work of art (thanks Steve Jobs and Jony Ive).  I’m messing with the Eee right now, and it is running a tad hot.  The iPod touch doesn’t generate any noticeable heat.  Lastly, the iPod fits in my pocket.  The only areas where the Eee seems to be more usable than the iPod touch are the Eee’s physical keyboard, a modest amount of storage (4GB SSD drive and SDHC slot), a real operating system, and its USB ports.  But the small screen and slow processor make it hard to take advantage of those things.

The oh-so-slim iPod touch

I’m trying to update the antivirus on the Eee, and it says I need Service Pack 3 for Windows XP.  Yeah, that’s how long it’s been since I used the Eee.  I only have 1.22GB of space left on the Eee’s little 4GB SSD.  I don’t know if I can even get SP3 to install there.  This Eee may be put out to pasture soon – a local electronics recycling operation.  If I can’t keep the security software up-to-date, it can’t really be used.  Besides, I have my lovely Samsung NC10 netbook to use.  It does everything better than the Eee.  Though it’s feeling slow and I’m thinking of replacing it with a refurb MacBook Air.  But Airs are kinda expensive even as refurbs.

Samsung NC10 and Asus Eee PC 701 4G

So, yeah.  My iPod touch is proving more usable than my Asus Eee.  The Eee is in no man’s land.  It is too big to be pocketable, but not big enough to be easily used.  The iPod touch fits in my pocket, and its apps and web browser allow me to get things done when I’m laying in bed or hanging out in my living room and need to hop online real quick.

My friend said the Eee was nasty, but I don’t think it is.  It’s a well-made computer that just doesn’t quite do the job anymore, and was only able to do its job for a few months before being surpassed by better netbooks.

One thing I have noticed since becoming a netbook owner is that laptop hardware is so constraining.  You can’t add in a more powerful graphics card.  You are limited in the amount of RAM you can add, or can’t even add RAM.  You can’t add a second or third hard drive.  Laptop processors aren’t as zippy to start with, so a laptop will feel sluggish sooner.  My desktop from 2004 is still hanging on as a poor man’s home theater PC.  Slow to boot up, but plenty zippy once it’s running.  As I said earlier, my 2008 Samsung NC10 netbook sometimes feels slow, and I already maxed-out its RAM.  Its Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz processor benchmarks just a tiny bit slower than the Pentium 4 2.4GHz processor in my old desktop PC.  Also, its 1024 x 600 resolution screen is starting to lack the vertical resolution needed to use some websites and programs properly.  I think you really need at least 768 or 800 vertical pixels these days.

I’m tempted to get a MacBook Air because Macs seem to age more gracefully, though Apple seems more willing to throw users of older Mac OS installations under the bus and end support.  I’m used to my desktops lasting a really long time, and I have a hard time with laptops/netbooks showing their age after only three years.  People rip on netbooks and say they will eventually go away, supplanted by tablets.  I say no.  I’m a power user who uses powerful desktops for most of my computing.  But I also need a portable computer for when I’m away from my desktops.  I don’t really need a big pimping 15″ laptop.  I just want something small and really portable that has a full keyboard, fully-featured operating system, and USB ports for connecting peripherals.  A tablet has none of those things.  I’ve noticed the number of netbooks offered has shrunk, as have their sales.  People who only have one computer will get a normal-sized, moderately-powerful laptop.  As they should.  I’d go nuts if I had to use a netbook for everything.  Also, the new generation of netbooks running Windows 7 Starter really stink.  I’ve used some at work, and Win7 Starter is stripped of a lot of features.  Netbooks also seem to run Windows XP a lot better than they do Windows 7.  Anyway, I think netbooks are great for people like myself who have really good desktops but need something small, cheap, and just enough power for when we are on-the-go.

I’m waiting for Windows XP SP3 to download on my Eee.  Shoot, that slow little computer is taking its sweet time just to start the download.  I might have to come up with a retirement plan for the thing.  I spent nearly $500 on that netbook, including the copy of Windows XP and the 1GB of RAM I added.  I wonder if I even got 100 hours of use out of the thing.  Now you see why that Asus Eee is on my list of worst tech purchases.  My iPod touch 4 cost me $190 and I use it every day.  A much better deal.