This Week at Mobile Tech Manor #52: A Great Headset, Gone

Mobile Tech Manor Large 2It’s that happy time of the week again, kids, where I share the happenings at Mobile Tech Manor (MTM) of the past week. It was a time of adjustment, as I settled back into a “normal” routine after my daughter and her family departed for their home up north. I tried to clean up MTM to remove some of the clutter, with little gain. I looked high and low for some great headphones to no avail. I came to realize my least favorite day, with good reason. I bought the best game for the iPhone, so far. Come on in and let’s shoot the breeze.

My daughter, son-in-law and two grand-kids headed out last weekend for their trip back to South Dakota. They drove back with few stops, just as they drove down here for the visit. It shows that it’s good to be young as each leg is 24 hours of driving but the two of them shared driving duties, and they went straight through. I had a wonderful time during their visit, and I certainly didn’t work as hard as usual while they were here. I don’t get to see them often enough so it’s worth it.

Are Netbooks Good Enough?

I got a chance to get my daughter’s reaction to different laptops in Mobile Tech Manor. She brought her own laptop to check work email but I had her use some of the netbooks lying around to see how she liked them. She is not into tech like me, and she wouldn’t know a netbook from a UMPC.

I started her off small with the Lenovo S10-2 with the 10-inch screen. It’s small and light and she was very impressed with it. She found it more than powerful enough to do what she needed and she liked the keyboard. I then graduated her to the HP Mini 5101 and she like it even better. The chiclet keys threw her off at first but she quickly determined that she really liked them. She had never seen a netbook before and she sure got a crash course in them at Mobile Tech Manor.

What impressed her most of all was the low prices of them. She kept asking why she spent so much on the 17-inch laptop she bought earlier this year, when these little netbooks did the job. She likes her big 17-inch screen but admitted the 10-inch screens were fine for what she does.

I let her use the HP Mini 1000 netbook and her impression of using it surprised me. She was amazed that the Mini 1000 was so much smaller than the other two netbooks, yet the keyboard and screen were the same size. She liked using the 1000 but at the end of the day she said she preferred the other two. Why? Because the small, plastic Mini 1000 made her feel like she’d break it. That’s the first time I’ve heard that from anyone.

The last netbook I had her use was the Lenovo S-12 with the big 12-inch screen. She only needed 5 minutes with the S-12 to decide that’s the one she’d use for the remainder of her visit. The bigger 12-inch screen, full-size keyboard and the higher screen resolution sold her. She was amazed that it was only slightly more expensive than the other netbooks.

Both of the Lenovo netbooks have the face recognition software (VeriFace) that uses the web cam to log the user into the laptop. I had both of them configured to recognize my face and my daughter found it totally cool and high tech that she had to hold them up in front of my face to log into the netbook. I offered to enroll her face but she thought it was funnier to watch it recognize my face. She was unaware that such security software existed outside of James Bond movies.

It was good to hear her thoughts on all of the netbooks. She ended her visit convinced that a $400 netbook is all she needs, and she’ll consider that next time she plans to purchase a laptop.

I Hate Patch Tuesday

Patch Tuesday is the day Microsoft releases patches for all versions of Windows. These usually deal with security issues to provide protection from new threats, along with system updates. Last Tuesday was Patch Tuesday and let me tell you, I hate that day.

I currently have 8 Windows laptops installed in Mobile Tech Manor, each of them in varying stages of evaluation. Patch Tuesday is thus a big chore for me, especially when Microsoft releases patches for all versions of Windows. These 8 notebooks are running Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7, and all of them had at least 11 patches to download and install. It only took about 20 minutes to do each system, but that was times 8. I had to watch them too as some of the updates required user intervention mid-process, so I couldn’t just fire them all up at once.

I understand the necessity to apply the updates; there are big, bad hacker people out there and this is the only way to keep them at bay. I just hate going through the process with so many notebooks. Not that I’m complaining I get to test so many notebooks, heaven forbid I give that impression. I love it.  I just hate Patch Tuesday.

The Best Headphones I Ever Lost

A year ago I bought the best headphones I’ve ever used with a phone. The Bang & Olufsen Earset 3 were expensive, but they were great for listening to music on the iPhone. They were also a great phone headset, and I attended many telephone conferences using them. They worked great with all of my phones, not just the iPhone. That is until they disappeared.

I am very careful with my gear. I do not abuse gear and I baby things to make them last forever. I am very good about keeping track of the gear, and I have never lost anything. This week I needed the B&O headset for a teleconference and was shocked to not find them where they normally live. I always put things back where they belong so they’ll be there the next time I need them, but they were not where they should have been.

I looked everywhere. I combed every gear bag on the bag tree, I emptied every drawer in the office and I tore the place apart. No dice, they were just missing.

I sat quietly in my chair and thought about the last time I had seen them. I figured that would tell me where to look. I thought about it for a long while and realized the last place I had seen them was in a hotel room in Carmel. Oops. I had taken them on my business trip a few weeks ago just in case I might need them. I remembered putting them in the desk drawer in my hotel room so they’d be there when I needed them. Unfortunately I never did, and I am certain I left them there.

I called the hotel to explain my situation, but of course they were never turned in. They are gone forever, and I can’t bring myself to spend big bucks to replace them.

Game of the Week

I bought Civilization Revolution for the iPhone this week and I’ve wasted far too much time playing it. It is the best game I’ve played yet on the iPhone, and it is completely true to the series. The game controls are very well done and game play is a lot of fun. I completely forget I’m on the small iPhone while playing the game, and that’s a great tribute to the developers. It was the best five bucks I’ve spent in a good while.

e-Books of the Week

I was very excited to see that James Patterson had released the latest Alex Cross book in e-book form. The Cross series is one of my favorite and Alex Cross is one of my favorite protagonists. The 14th book of the series, Cross Country, starts out in typical Patterson style with whole families being murdered by some really evil killers. Alex gets sucked into the investigation as one of the victims is an old girlfriend of his. Unfortunately, this book turned out to be my least favorite book in the Alex Cross series.

The story quickly moved to Nigeria, and unbelievably DC detective Cross heads to Africa to chase the killer. The story changes at this point to become a vehicle for Patterson to describe the plight of the people in this part of the world. I am sympathetic to this but this is a novel. I read novels to be entertained, not to have a cause thrust on me. The story got more and more unbelievable as a result, and by the end of the book I was thoroughly disappointed.

On a happier note, I am now entranced by another Darrell Bain novel, The Long Way Home. Bain tells stories that take place in the future involving regular people. I believe that’s why I like his books so much; it’s entertaining to read about real people having adventures in the future. I can tell this one will be finished all too quickly.

Wrap-up

That’s my week, I hope you enjoyed sharing it with me. I’ll be back next week, same time, same channel. Until then, take care.

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