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This is an about face for me. As an appreciator of the latest technology I always want to have the latest technology but I can’t always justify the cost. As a result of this appreciation of technology so I have gone through a number of devices. As a child losing devices is a good excuse to buy a new one. As a grown up though desire is enough. I really like the n97 and what it could be but it didn’t live up to my expectations. I spend a lot of time participating in social media, whether blogging, commenting, seesmicing or tweeting. Data plans are cheaper. Apple has demonstrated that people want applications on their mobile device. This has led the mobile landscape to move away from simple telephony. As a result the devices have had to evolve. Bigger screens are needed, batteries with more capacity are needed too. As a result of this new market segment you have many operating systems and more and more choice. That choice does come at a cost. When using both the e51 and the n97 in paralel, one for work and the other for pleasure I found that I was using the e51, a mid range device rather than the n97 because it was easier to use, and more reliable. That changed my focus. Having the latest alternative was fun, but it wasn’t reliable. It’s only after a few weeks of not being able to stop the alarm and a few missed calls, because the device froze that I wanted to change to the next latest thing. I was thinking of the n900 that uses maemo as my next device. Two things stopped me. Firstly reliability, what’s the point of buying a device that costs a lot but may not perform as you want it to perform. The second is the maturity of the third party applications. If you get maemo how hard will it be to install new applications and more importantly how much choice is there? Is it worth waiting another three or four months to get that device only to find that it doesn’t work? That’s why I’ve gone to the Iphone 3G S. It’s the more mature phone. It is well settled into the market, most people find it easy to use an best of all it has a great diversity of applications. It is also reliable. In a year or two we’ll see which devices are out, as well as which are the most reliable. At that point I may switch to another OS. I’d rather wait for Maemo and S60v5 to become more reliable before spending yet more money.

kcarruthers - 7th of Dec, 2009

One benefit of a netbook you might not have discovered is that it fits really easily into a woman’s handbag - very convenient ;)

kcarruthers - 7th of Dec, 2009

One benefit of a netbook that you might not have discovered is that it fits neatly into a woman’s handbag - very convenient ;)

I like smaller and smaller machines. I’m now enjoying the use of an eeepc, the 1000hg. It has inbuilt 3g modem and a 4.5hr battery life. It’s a nice change to use a small laptop because it does the basic things. It allows me to tweet, read e-mail and fail at Nanowrimo. The keyboard is fast for typing. I was able to type over 20,000 words without finding the keyboard to be a hindrance. It’s not the smallest of keyboards, nor the biggest, but it does fit my fingers perfectly. The screen is fine most of the time. It is slightly too small for a few web apps and programs. A few times I’ve gone to a page or used a program which could not cope with the vertical resolution of such a screen. As a result I do need to think about which applications and websites I visit. I also tested seesmic for windows on this machine and that worked well. No crashes, no slowing down the system. I had it running for over 24hrs in between sleep modes and such without the hint of a problem. So far I like the small laptop. It hasn’t fallen into a corner like the 900. This one has actually been used. We’ll see when I feel the need for a larger machine once more. For now though this is fine.

I haven’t blogged in a few months but I have been tweeting, and working full time, and I’m attempting Nanowrimo once again this year. Last year the process was easier as I had a lot of free time. This year I need to make time. I did get to over 20,000 words but inspiration is slower to come. The meetups are still going on. We’ve had two in Lausanne already, one in Zurich, one in Bern and the next will be in Basel. I think I’ll skip Basel as I have some more urgent projects to finish first. Did I mention over 1.3 billion words have been logged for Nanowrimo? That’s after 18 days of writing.

No doubt you remember that my laptop motherboard died. The effects are still being felt today. When you have applications, and when you have several computers you authorise them in order to have access to the same applications and music on more than one machine. This works fine most of the time. You can easily authorise and de-authorise a machine depending on necessity. The problem is when you have hardware failure though. As hardware fails so the device number changes. Itunes thinks it’s on a new machine and all the permissions are gone. That’s the problem I’m having. Over 129 applications have just been removed from the ipod touch as a result of having five machines authorised with my itunes account. There’s not much I can do to change this situation. What I love about this situation is that it’s another reason not to use an iphone. Why would I buy a device which relies on another device in order to function. If the N97 crashes I don’t need to rely on this computer to sync things, if my n95 crashes same lack of concern. Same with the e51 and other devices. With anything apple though as soon as five machines are authorised if you have a hardware failure you’re stuck. Apple have to resolve this issue because everyone has access to more than five apple computers, either through friends or through machines of their own. If I need to use a wifi connection to sync my ipod then I might as well have any generic device. I am one step closer to going back to using Linux for personal computing, windows for work and apple for nothing but editing.

One of the great things about devices failing is when you’ve got other devices you depend on to keep everything synced up. In particular today I’m seeing another reason never to get an Iphone. If your computer goes down for any reason syncing between the phone and the computer is screwed up. You could, if you’re not careful lose all the apps you paid for, all the music you paid for and all other data you have on the iphone/ipod touch or other device. Do you really want a device that depends on another device, especially when either one could fail? I don’t. Happy not to be an iphone user :-)

There is a known issue with the Nvidia 8600 video card. That issue is that the card fails faster than average. There are two common problems with this video card. The first is that the screen is just messed up. That’s not the issue I have. The issue I am having with the macbook pro is that the screen just goes dead. The failure rate is around once per year. It failed a year ago. It’s failed again just 6 days ago and it’s going to fail again in a year’s time around this time. At that point it will no longer be under guarantee. I know that hardware fails I’ve had twenty or more electronic devices fail over the years. I don’t mind because most of the time the devices are cheap and replacing is not an issue. With the macbook pro it’s different. This is a professional machine. It costs 2000CHF and more per machine. When this machine fails you have a serious investment to think about. Are you going to spend another 2-4000 CHF on another machine? Yes, if the after sale service is good. No if it’s not. When the first video card failed it took over a month to get the machine fixed. No replacement machine was provided. As a result for over a month I relied on other technology. Now imagine if I had needed my machine for video projects during that period. Now we get to this year. My machine failed six days ago and I have still not had an opportunity to get it fixed. I went to the apple store this morning to see whether they could take it in and get it repaired and I was told that I have to go to the website. I know this but the website showed that option as grayed out. I was told that there was no possibility to see them until Monday. I don’t have time to go there on Monday because their bureaucracy does not adapt to my needs. The question is how many more weeks will I be without that laptop. The result of this experience is a simple one. Whilst I love spending money on hardware nothing that I have seen encourages me to buy another piece of Apple hardware. Why should I spend 4000CHF for a professional machine that could take up to a month to replace. If my primary activity was as a freelance editor then I would have no choice. As things stand I am working full time for a good company and having an Apple computer is a luxury rather than a necessity. This means I will never again buy an apple laptop again. They need to learn something about customer care before I come back.

If I had a perfect laptop it would be shaped just like the N97 but larger. I’m saying this because of how much I love having a keyboard and a touchscreen in such a small package. Now imagine if laptops did away with all that wasted space at the bottom, where the trackpad goes. Back to the matter at hand. The N97 is a great little device that can survive about a day with my use before needing a charge. What I like is the duality of control between a keyboard when you slide it from under the display, and the touch interface for those that like that. What makes this touch interface particularly interesting is that it’s designed for mobile phone users with a lot of experience with text messaging. It’s the standard number and key configuration that we’ve grown accustomed to over the past decade. There were some issues with stability, crashes display not working all the time and memory issues but those have been patched.

For the second time in a little over a year the video card on my macbook pro has failed and I am left with the black screen of death. As a result of this I will have to send the machine off for repair for a second time. Luckily the machine is still under warranty so the only challenge is finding a day off and bringing it for maintenance. It had to fail this weekend, on Saturday afternoon only once all the shops had closed. It means that getting the machine maintained will be a little more of a challenge. The second challenge of course is that I’m meant to do two days of editing on Tuesday and Wednesday and I may not have a computer. You’ve got to love trade unionists for making sure shops are closed on a Sunday. Now the question is what to do next. Do I buy a new macbook pro as the new version of finalcut pro came out or do I invest in a far cheaper computer running linux. In fact do I forget about PC and Apple and go Linux all the way. It could be quite fun, once winter comes back to build a linux based video editing system where I understand the hardware. You know I’m not going to get far with that project. On the positive end of the spectrum I’m in full time employment with three different types of work I’m asked to do so buying a new machine is no problem. It’s just a matter of whether I have the necessity right now.

Working at the Global Humanitarian Forum today, providing the live streams, was fun as some interesting conversations took place. Among the people present we had Micheline Calmy Rey, Kofi Annan, the writer of the wikonomics book (which I have as an audio book and haven’t finished yet), Nik Gowing, and a few more interesting people. Whilst I was working I didn’t have time to listen to the discussions that were taking place but they ranged from new media and communication to providing funds for organisations and the aspects to be taken into account, managing displacement, demographic dynamics and many more topics. We’ll be streaming quite a few more lives during the course of tomorrow so if you’re interested in humanitarian subjects visit Global Humanitarian Forum for more information. The live streams can be found by following the Launch Live video link provided on the site.