The iPad itself IS just a big iPhone, meaning it is a crippled, closed piece of hardware that doesn’t do everything it should be capable of.  It still holds a bit of intrigue, though that may just be the early adopter in me.  I’m not a fan of Apple or its products but once again they’ve come up with a device that I am seriously considering buying.  It has definite value as just a small slate that you can just keep on standby around the house and use it for quick internet searches or the more popular use, browsing the web or listening to music while on the toilet.  The 3G connection at a paltry $15 a month with AT&T is much cheaper than the standard contracts you get with most netbooks.  At that price, with the ability to get online anywhere I want to the device has a purpose.  The only problem is that you assume that AT&T’s saturated network will be able to handle the extra traffic iPads could generate.  In the end, I just might buy my first Apple product.  I’ll wait of course for Apple to drop the price after the fanboys buy it at full price and the casual user doesn’t buy an iPad. 

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If you’re a G1 user, you’ve probably experienced the memory crunch that occurs on the device.  You’ve installed all your favorite apps but now your phone runs slow, and apps crash or “Force Close” all the time.  If your phone gets as bad as mine did, you could reach the point where the home screen and dialer apps themselves crash, meaning you have to wait minutes at a time to use the phone, and even longer to make a phone call.  Fortunately there is a simple fix.

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This isn’t officially verified but it appears that Microsoft has fixed a glitch that has persisted for quite a while in Windows Media Center. 

UPDATE: This glitch hasn’t been fixed at all.  My system glitching made it seem as if it was fixed.  However, pressing the Windows key yields the desired result of being able to use your mouse cursor on another screen until you click on the Media Center again, at which point the cursor becomes trapped on that screen again.  Sorry for the misunderstanding.  I wish someone would get Microsoft to fix this annoyance.

I say not verified because for all I know my system is glitching which is temporarily fixing the glitch.  But back to the topic.  For a while now if you used Windows Media Center with a multiple monitor setup, if you maximized the application on one monitor, your cursor was stuck to that screen unless you Alt+Tab to an app on another monitor, or use the Windows key.  This is basically an annoyance, though a workaround was to resize the window to almost 100% of the screen.

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In the past, if you had a problem with Windows that prevented Windows from booting, you were limited to either downloading a third party system recovery disk like the “Ultimate Boot CD“, or booting from the Windows disc and working from the awkward command line to fix problems.  Windows 7 includes a utility to create a bootable disk to fix problems from a familiar graphical interface.  This tool could be a lifesaver if you perform such tasks as dual booting into Linux.  A common problem that occurs when doing that is that if you change your mind and decide to delete the Linux boot loader (normally grub), you end up with no way to boot into Windows.

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This problem is an annoyance that may randomly affect you if you’re using the beta or RC of Windows 7, and it’s a doozy.  Some random permissions problem occurs and none of your Programs show in the All Programs menu on your start menu.  This means you can’t start any program that isn’t pinned to the task bar without digging through explorer to find the start menu items.  I thought I’d write about this because apparently, not many people have written about it, so it’s best to get the fix onto search engines so the next person has an easier time fixing this problem.

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Linux as a Desktop has been a work in progress for years now.  After being flamed for complaining about it’s weaknesses, I decided to give it another chance to be fair.  Most of my complaints have been about not being able to work with multimedia well so I decided to try out the newly released Linux Mint 7.  That distribution is based on Ubuntu and comes with the more questionable media codecs and libraries pre installed.  I have always preferered Fedora because it is more cutting edge, but it requires research an trial and error just to get it to play a DVD.  Once Mint was installed, I popped in a DVD just to test it out and it started right up.  I wasn’t able to play around with any mp3s as I was unable to network with my Windows machine, but I’ll get back to that later.

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Once again Apple has released a new product with good marketing, but the product is underwhelming.  The new iPhone 3G is coming out and looking at the specs, again this next edition iPhone looks like the G1 we already have from T-Mobile since the cupcake update.  But don’t let my words try to convince you, lets compare the groundbreaking features.

Voice Control….A G1 feature
Video….A G1 feature
3 Mega-pixel camera with auto focus….An original G1 feature. (G2 rumored to have a 5 mega-pixel camera)
Compass….Early G1 feature.
Cut, Copy & Paste….G1 feature.
Landscape keyboard….G1 feature, including physical keyboard that makes texting easier.
MMS coming soon…..MMS from the start on the G1
Tethering…Advantage iPhone, but with an AT&T data plan, would you really?  (G1 can be tethered if you know how)

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Lets face it, if you use a beta OS on your main computer you are taking a risk with your computer and your data.  Not only is this so, but whenever you move to the next version of an OS you should do a fresh install.  Of course, in the real world, a lot of us recognize that Windows 7 beta is more like Windows 7 free trial.  The OS is suitable for daily use and any issues can generally be worked around.  The main exception is for web developers who insist on testing for certain versions of operating systems and browsers, those dirty guys (warn and allow it to work if it can, don’t block and complain).  If you’ve decided that its worth the risk to use the beta on your main PC, or all of your PCs for that matter, you probably also don’t mind taking  your chances with upgrade installs.  I hold this view, although Microsoft differs and many so called experts believe you should always back up your data and then do a fresh install.  Unfortunately, since Microsoft doesn’t support upgrading the Beta of Windows 7 to the Release Candidate, and probably from there to the final either, they cripple the install image by making it check the Windows version, then complain about not being able to upgrade pre-release software and forcing you to end the install.

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If you have a typical home network, you probably have a desktop PC and a laptop (maybe even a netbook).  The laptop probably connects wirelessly to your network and you may use it to access files on your desktop from time to time.  A scenario that you may run into is one where you either travel and have files you work on with the laptop that  you need to access from the desktop, or vice versa.  3rd party software, or a tool like Synctoy (from the MS powertoys), allow you to do so, but setup can be cumbersome, and then automating the process requires more work.  Windows XP contained a built in “Offline files utility” which was rough around the edges and required some setup.  Fortunately for Windows Vista/7 users, Offline file sync has been simplified.

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