March 2007 - Posts
Vikram Madan and is a Development Manager on the Microsoft team chartered with incubating the relatively-new Windows Ultra Mobile-PC category (aka UMPCs or Microsoft Origami UMPCs).
And here is a link to his blog:
http://blogs.msdn.com/VikramMadan/
We're in good company now!
Toshiba sites in Europe have drivers for Vista. These appear to have gone up around March 20, 2007.
Toshiba Vista Drivers - Toshiba Europe
(If you get an error page - big red letters - refresh the page and it might come up).
The sites are not displaying well for me, but I was able to get the links from the pages and I have posted those and some comments about using them in
Toshiba M200 Vista Installation Notes - MobilePCWiki
Yes, the Buzz is down. Spencer is working on it.
Josh Einstein has been busy and has just created his OneNote Calendar.
Josh describes it this way.
- It's an application that presents your OneNote pages in chronological order according to their last modified date on a calendar so that you can see your notes by when you wrote them, not where.
- You can preview the note pages in the app or double click a calendar item to open it in OneNote.
- Full screen mode will probably be pretty useful on origami devices.
- If the resolution gets too constrained it turns off the preview pane by default.
And when I asked about the price, it's totally free.
I've installed this on the Asus R2H and the interface works really well for touch. The controls are intuitive. Things are working just as you hope they will.
Nice work Josh!
http://www.josheinstein.com/download/onenotecal/publish.htm
In an article "The Worst PCs" 03.20.07
Buyer beware: You'll want to stay away from this batch of laptops and desktops.
PC Mag names the Samsung Q1 among their list of the worst PCs.
PC Mag just doesn't get it, and they seem to be going out of their way to prove it.
You can read the whole article starting here:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2105454,00.asp
The Q1 is on the second page:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2105455,00.asp
Quoting the PC Mag summary:
Product: Samsung Q1
Category: Laptops & Notebooks
Rating: 2.5
Reviewed: 5/1/06
What We Liked: Good speaker sound quality. Full-blown Windows XP operating system. Very portable. Resolution toggle button.
What We Didn't Like: No keyboard or optical drive included. Not very good for writing extensively. PDA-like stylus. Slow processor and nonupgradable RAM.
What You Should Know: Just another slate tablet that can't replace a true PC, but it makes for a nice portable media player that would be more attractive if it weren't so pricey.
Read the full review of the Samsung Q1.
But all this really tells me is that PC Magazine doesn't understand the platform. They don't understand that it is a separate platform.
Unfortunately this characterization of the machine is based on a model that has been updated twice since the initial review in May last year (and the information that places this machine in the Worst PC Category).
The specs for the version currently available (Q1P) are much better with a Pentium M 1.0 gHz and 1 gig of RAM standard.
http://www.samsung.com/Products/UltraMobilePC/UltraMobilePC/NP_Q1_V002SEA.asp?page=Specifications
The Q1 Ultra (announced last week) looks even better.
Discussion: MobilePCWorld
The Buzz is back and Spencer talks about what happened.
*Pulling hair out* Downtime from the last few days
and there are some hints about some changes coming.
In my previous post I alluded to a stand of weeds (controversy) that just needs no more water. So I'll just leave it.
Somebody hit the site again. It looks like a different exploit, but the site is defaced all the same.
At this moment, Spencer (who was studying for an exam) is restoring the site. I have already captured the day's posts and will try to get them reposted later tonight.
Edit
I can't imagine why The Buzz is a target. Can you?
This expression of personal disbelief and rhetorical question seem to have given rise to some speculation. It's pretty hard to recant on the web, but I'll do my best in my next post.
I'm sold, period, flat out, no questions asked, no looking back, every machine around me that will run it, is running Vista.
Why?
Most of my machines are Tablet PCs and the improvements in the user interface for a Tablet PC user make it well worth the time it takes to adapt to Vista. See:
Tablet PC Features in Vista I had quite a debate with someone who kept trying to shoehorn Vista into a box called 'trivial eye-candy user-interface upgrades'. And that's okay, because to him Vista means a change that will trigger replacing a couple hundred machines that he's been tasked with maintaining since 2001. No wonder he's resisting the change.
Every time I
- Click and KNOW that the machine 'got it',
- Make multiple selections with check boxes,
- See the Tablet Input Panel recognize a letter and offer to let autocomplete take over
- Realize that handwriting recognition has learned something as bizarre as an email address (after one correction)
- Marvel at how well the speech recognition works
- Use Search from the Start Button
- Use Search in a Windows Explorer window
I am glad I switched to Vista.
There are a few things that I found troublesome at first (like turning on file extensions so that I could more easily distinguish between five files with the same name), but the more I use Vista, the more I am convinced that it was better to switch than wait.
When I started installing betas and release candidates on older machines (going back some 18 months ago I guess) I was pleasantly surprised at how well things worked. I still am.
I have a Thinkpad A31p (circa 2002) that is as functional running Vista and Office 2007 as it ever was running Windows XP and Office 2000. I only mention this because that machine (that this month is probably five years old), did not require any upgrades (ok - I already had a gig of RAM in it). And as far as I can tell, I have not had to sacrifice anything for having made the change. I just mention this because at least for this venerable beast, Vista did not put it in it's grave, but renewed it's usefulness. When I gave this to a relative I had to transfer programs and data from an older machine. Using the new Vista utility to do this, the job was done in about an hour.
The interesting test was to watch as someone who 'just wants to use the computer to get things done' took to Vista very quickly. No support calls for me - thank goodness.
I think about the hesitation with which I have passed computers to older relatives. I know that I will have considerably less concern now as the next generation to move on will be loaded with Vista.
I made the switch and am delighted.
How about you?
Join me in the forums at MobilePCWorld and we'll talk.
The forums at The Buzz were defaced this morning. This time the site stayed up, but you could not read the thread titles. I repaired the titles for the most recent discussions so that people would not be interrupted in the exchange of help and advice.
Spencer was able to restore from the backups made at midnight last night and everything was back to normal by mid afternoon. It took a little longer but I was able to repost all the messages that had been posted between the backup and the restore operation.
He was also able to seal up the vulnerability that led to this morning's attack.
Spencer's post:
Hey everyone. This morning the site was defaced/hacked yet again. It looks like it was an SQL injection hack through a bad line of code in the Snitz forum software (it was accessing the database using an admin account instead of one setup for web). Backups performed flawlessly though, and I restored the site to 12:00AM this morning. WNewquay is working on restoring posts that were new since that time, so we should be back up to 100% before much longer. I've also patched up the hole in security, so a hack through the same vulnerability cannot take place again. Thank you for your patience!
link: http://www.tabletpcbuzz.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=34866
Terri Stratton (Microsoft MVP) swings open the doors of the latest forum for Mobile PCs.
Joining her as administrators are fellow Microsoft MVPs Chris Hassler and WNewquay.
Mobile PC Wiki is the repository for Frequently Asked Questions and durable information arising from forum threads.
Look forward to contributions in the wiki from Chris Hassler and Terri Stratton as we consolidate information about Mobile PCs from both of their sites.