wrightin.gs

HP 2710 Tablet for Sale

I have recently moved to a MacBook and I am putting my tablet up for sale. I am putting it here on my blog first and then if I don't have enough interest, I am putting it up on eBay.

I have recorded a video so you can see what it looks like:

The specs are the following:

Core 2 Duo 1.33
4G Ram
64G SSD drive
Built in Sprint EVDO
Keyboard light
Slice Battery
Docking Station with DVD burner
1 standard powerpack
1 travel powerpack with airplane adapters
Waterfield custom bag with shoulder strap
Windows Vista 32 bit

It has been very well taken care of and I will miss it. The reason I am selling it is because I am giving up on Windows and only using Windows when I need to.

This has been my exclusive development machine for the past couple months or so, so it is very capable.

I am asking $1900 and you can use PayPal (i.e. Debit or Credit Card for payment).

You can email me at jwright AT wrightin DOT gs or jamie AT brilliantfantastic DOT com for questions or your interest.

Day in the Gadget Life

As others have done before such as James Kendrick and the guys at Gotta Be Mobile, I am going to document a typical mobile day for me.  I will include the software and the gadgets I use throughout the day in order to get me through the day.

For those of you that don't know, I am an independent software development consultant and I am currently working with several clients.  The following chronicals my day as it was on this past Monday.

My iPhone went off at 7 am as I use that as my alarm clock.  I grab it and check my email and calander for the day.  It helps me get organized for the day and jog my memory for what I need to do.  I then check my SMS Twitter messages to see what else is going on in my virtual world.  On Tuesdays, I also check the new music that arrives in iTunes.  If anything that interests me is released that day, I usually download it from the iTunes WiFi store so I have something new to listen to that day.

It is now time to stop playing, so I hop in the shower and get dressed.  I have a meeting at a client site and so I need to get properly dressed and not just throw on my usual jeans and t-shirt mode when working at home.  I go down to my office where my Lenovo Thinkpad X60 tablet is sitting in it's dock from the previous night.  I put it in hibernate mode (something that takes several minutes in Vista) and load it into my Tom Bihn Ego bag.  While I am doing this, I  place my iPhone into it's dock and it syncs with my desktop PC in order to grab any new podcasts that may have come down the previous night.  I then make my way upstairs to wkae up my daughter and get her ready for day care.  I grab my Tom Bihn bag and my iPhone and I am out the door to drop my daughter off and proceed to my meeting.

After I drop my daughter off, I turn on my Garmin Nuvi 350 GPS unit and head towards my client's office.  Although I have been to the client's site many times, using my GPS allows me to get around any traffic jams that may occur on my way.  Waiting for the GPS to boot up when stuck in traffic may make me miss some opportunites to redirect my route so I keep it on just in case.  My client's office is about an hour away so to keep entertained, I often listen to my podcasts that I just synced from my desktop PC.  In order to listen to these, I use the b which I do not like as a solution.  The FM transmitter makes me have to turn off the radios on my iPhone in order to not allow for any interference.  This means that all calls are routed directly to voicemail and I have to pause my podcasts from time to time on the trip to make sure I didn't miss an important phone call.  I am looking for a new solution such as a car stereo with a jack or an integrated iPod control but I have not done that yet.

Once I get to the client site, I grab my tablet and get it set up before the client gets to the meeting room.  During the meeting, I need to show the current software features that I have completed in between the last meeting and the current one.  I also need to get feedback on the current software and plan what will be done between now and the next meeting.  In order to do this I often need to flip in between tablet and laptop mode.  In notebook mode, I use the keyboard and mouse to enter data and show the application.  I show the client the software over a projector and so I put the tablet in presentation mode through the Lenovo tools.  Once that is complete, I unplug the projector and flip the tablet into tablet mode.  I bring up the meeting within Outlook and click on the Meeting Notes toolbar item in order to enter my notes within OneNote and keep a reference back to the meeting within OneNote.  I absolutely love this integration bewteen Outlook and OneNote.  During the meeting, I often have to refer back to a live web site that we use to keep the client's project in order.  To accomplish this I plug in my Merlin S720 Sprint EVDO PCMCIA card.  This allows me to access the internet without requiring me to get access to the client's internal network.  I love that fact and my client appreciates it as well.

The meeting is over at 11 am and it is now time to head back home.  I plug in the iTrip and start my podcasts listening.  I use my GPS unit to get back home as well.  When I am about 15 minutes from home, I feel the urge for Chineese for lunch.  There is a great Chinees resturaunt near my home but I forgot the number.  I grab my iPhone and use Google maps to quickly find the number and call them.  I place my order and pick it up on my way home.  I get home and dock both my iPhone and tablet.  While eating my lunch, I pull up some recorded shows from the previous night on my DVR.  I finish my leasure time and it's time to get back to work.

I go back downstairs to my office and take a look at my notes I took in OneNote.  I enter any tasks that came out of the meeting into FogBugz and Morale.  I am using Morale side-by-side as a test case before I release it.  I also enter any requirement changes into our wiki we are using to track user requirements.

I stay in my cave and slang code for several hours on my desktop computer.  I use Visual Studio to develop as well a lot of tools that augment the development.  I listen to my music and watch video podcats on iTunes.  I am often on Microsoft Messenger IM'ing people.  I use Twadget to Twitter throughout the day.

It is now 4 pm and I have another meeting with a new client.  I enter the address into my Garmin GPS, through my Lenovo tablet in hibernate mode and into my Waterfield SleeveCase bag.  I do not anticipate this to be a long meeting so I can just take my tablet and no extra power supplies or batteries.  I arrive at the meeting a little early so I through in the Sprint EVDO card and read a couple of my RSS feeds using Newsgator Online.  My client arrives to the meeting and so I again use the Outlook and OneNote integration.  I take notes in OneNote and flag any action items with an Outlook task flag which creates my tasks in Outlook.  Those tasks are then synced automatically with the Plaxo toolbar.  I can use my iPhone to check those tasks on Plaxo mobile which syncs back to Outlook.  It was a productive meeting and my (hopefully future) client is impressed with my tablet so I do a little evangeslism before I take off.

Back at home, I play with my daughters and have dinner with my wife.  Once the kids are asleep, I grab the tablet in order to do some light work upstairs where I can talk with my wife and we can watch tv on our high def 50" LG plasma.  I use my tablet in notebook mode and track my time for my various clients using Quickbooks Online.  I now have to create an estimate for a client on yet another project.  I use Mindjet Mindmanager to map out the tasks I need to complete for them.  I use this in tablet mode and it simply rocks and it is very productive.  Once I work on that a little, it is time to wind down and read some feeds.  The best use case for a tablet is the ability to lie down on a couch and read my feeds in tablet mode using Newsgator Online.

I get through my feeds and it is still early (by my standards), so I flip back to notebook mode and slang some code for my Morale project.

It was a very productive day and my gadgets and software help me get through the day.

Triple Headed Monster

So I ordered and recieved a new Dell 30" monitor and completed my triple headed monster as seen here.  I am really excited about having this much screen real estate.  I have been working with 2 monitors for quite some time and I have been wanting this set-up for a while.  Since I am now a lot less mobile, I thought that now would be a great time to do this now.  It will allow me to be a lot more productive.

The problem was trying to find a video card that supported a dual link DVI cable and resolution that the Dell monitor required.  My motherboard only had one PCI-Express card slot and my current video card that I was using was a Radeon X700.  I found a video card that supported Radeon X1550 technology and supported Vista.  This worked well because I was able to just plug in the card and the Radeon drivers that I already installed for my PCI-Express card worked.  I have to go and watch my porn write code in all it's glory.

I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired with Windows

First and foremost, I have lived and breathed daily in all the versions of Microsoft Windows since Windows 3.1.  Secondly, I am a developer that loves and uses Microsoft technologies to pay my mortgage every month.  I develop in Windows and for Windows and make a pretty decent living doing so.

That being said, Microsoft has got to get it's act together and get it together quickly.  I am soooo fed up with Microsoft Windows Vista.  I am fed up with it's stability, it's "features", and it's "user interface".

I bought a MacBook for my wife about a year and a half ago.  I bought it for her because they have a reputation of being a lot more user friendly than a PC and she is not the most computer literate.  Her experience with the Mac has been less than stellar mostly due to the incompatabilities with other equipment such as printers, etc and the Office for Mac (another Microsoft program) suite.  I on the other hand have grown to love the little things.  I am going to contrast the little things that the Mac does well below with my issues on the "revolutionary" Vista PC.

I am sick and tired of...

• Waiting for the damn PC to sleep.  I click on sleep and wait, and wait, and wait and finally after 30 seconds, the damn PC is sleeping and using less battery.  On the Mac, just close the lid and right away you are saving battery
• Waiting for the damn PC to wake up.  Same deal as sleep.  It takes a minute for all the drivers to get themselves back to a good state (if that happens at all).  On a Mac, it just works right when you open the lid
• Docking/Undocking.  In Windows, this has always been a toss up.  Will my display work?  Will my network connections work?  You have to wait and see.  Kinda fun except when you get to the meeting and have to reboot because undocking/docking must be a problem that Microsoft just can't figure out.  Maybe Microsoft Research should stop playing with coffee tables and work on this issue.  Macs do not have docking stations so maybe they can't figure it out either.
• Drivers. I know that this is not a Microsoft issue, accourding to them but dammit, I disagree.  It is part of the Windows experience and it reflects badly on them.  Drivers need to be more stable and they need to work really, really well all the time.  They should help OEMs make these and test these.  Macs definately are ahead here because they control the hardware and the software.  Looking back, not such a bad idea Bill?
• Deleting a damn file.  WTF takes so long?  Mark the file as deleted in Windows, flip a bit for f*** sakes.  In Mac world, Move to Trash takes 1 second and you no longer see the file and hear the little wringled paper sound no matter how many files/folders you move there.
• Folders.  I love the fact that my default documents folder is in C:\XXXX\XXXX\XXXXXX\XXXX\XXXXX.  This makes my mom, sister, next door neighbor, and babysitter all call me and go where the hell is my file.  On a Mac, there is a Documents folder and an Applications.  Simple.

I am sick of these little things bug me on a daily basis.  It cuts into my productivity more often than not.  This would be a simple fix for me if I did not love the tablet form factor. 

I could just get my own MacBook and use Parallels and Boot Camp for my developing within the Microsoft stack.  The problem is that I would loose the tablet form factor and I am not willing to give that up yet.  The tablet allows me to do a lot of different things than just using the keyboard.  Ink allows me to think in a different way, take electronic notes for clients, etc.

So my hope is that the ModBook is not yet vaporware.  This things needs to come out soon so that I can have a MacBook that is a tablet.  It is supposed to be released in the 4th quarter of this year.  The problem is that it has been pushed back 3 times now.  Will this thing ever be released?  I am praying and checking the site everyday and I have one on pre-order.  Will this solve my issues or create more?  I will have to get one before I can answer that.  There are a million questions I have for this device.  I will surely blog about them if I can ever get my hands on one.

Reward Thyself

I have been wanting to get an OQO model 2 since they have come out.  I have finally convinced myself that I could really use one to be more productive while on the go.  Instead of just ordering one on a whim (which I often do), I have decided to get one once I finish work on Morale as a reward for myself.  That will get me to work on it harder and faster so that I can allow myself to buy a really cool gadget without any guilt.  Has anyone else tried this in the past?

What did I use my tablet for today? - Searching for a new home

I mentioned before that I was selling my house.  The good news is that the first person that came through gave us an offer.  That has prompted us to start looking for houses and we went Saturday to go looking.  In order to help us on finding homes, I purchased a Garmin Nuvi 350 GPS unit.  I have been wanting one of these for a while and I finally bit the bullet and bought one because I knew it would help us find houses that we wanted to look at.

I took the new GPS unit, my tablet, and my Sprint EVDO connection card.  While we were driving, I was on my tablet using realtor.com searching for houses that we wanted to look at and then entering the addresses into the GPS unit.  This was easier with the tablet in slate mode because I was using two devices.  It worked out very well.  I think doing this task with the ASUS RH2 which has integrated GPS would of worked out to be a better solution.  My connectivity with Sprint would of had to use the USB EVDO modem with the ASUS since it does not have a PC card slot.

TEO / ClearContext Fix

I asked before what happened to the support of TEO.  I was having an issue with TEO and I did not hear back from Josh Einstien on the issue.  I reported that he got back to me soon after that.  We did some debugging and found that the issue was related to having ClearContext installed as well.  It turns out that it was a ClearContext issue and they have released a fix for it.  Thanks Josh and Brad from Clear Context on working that out.  Very much appreciated!

What Happened to TEO?

I love TEO but it has not been working for like 2 months.  I paid for a full license for TEO 2.0 but it has not been working since Outlook 2007.  I have contacted Josh a couple times and I have even volunteered my time to help him debug the problem since it it written in .NET.  He returned a couple of my emails but I have not heard anything since.  Is this product dead?  The support sure seems to be.  It kind of sucks because I really, really like the product.

I have boiled the problem down to the ClearContext Add-In causes TEO to crash when you start a new ink item.  I am running this on Outlook 2007 and Vista, although I have seen the same problem with XP.  Has anyone else seen this problem?  I have looked in the EinsteinTech forums but no responses from Josh.

UPDATE:  I have heard back from both Brad from ClearContext and Josh from EinsteinTech.  They are both working on the problem.  They are both examples of great customer service.  They both really caree about their respective products.  Josh has even said that he plans on giving his users a long awaited update.  I can't live without these two Outlook Add-Ins.  Give them a try if you haven't already.

More Lenovo X60 Vista Drivers Available Today

Lenovo has posted more drivers for Windows Vista and the X60 tablet on their web site today.  They include drivers for the monitor, trackpoint, and power management amoung other things.  I am in the process of installing them now.  One step closer to selling my old tablet.  You can get them here.

What did I use my tablet for today? - Whiteboarding using OneNote

OneNote 2007 has a cool new feature where you can share your notebook with others in a live setting.  They call it a Live Share Session.  To host a live sharing session, you select the section you want to share (you can't just share one page), and go to the Share menu item.

This will open a Start Live Session toolbar on the side.  You can then optionally enter a password which will be required by users after they go to a session.  You then select Start Live Session.

Once that is complete, the Current Live Session toolbar is shown where you can invite participants via email.

When you click on the Invite Participants link, a new email message will open with an attachment of the shared one note file.

When the invited participant recieves the email, they will be entered into the Live Sharing Session and their email will show in anActive Participants window.  You can allow editing by the participants if you are hosting the session.  I found that this is a little obtrusive though and really only allows for one person at a time to edit.

This is a really good way to share white boards virtually.  You can find out more information here: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/onenote/HA100907501033.aspx#2.