It is the end of the week and that can only mean it is time to share the past week with you, my friends. The days flew by as I was extremely busy, yet I had time to create a genuine disaster at Mobile Tech Manor. I had the opportunity to prove something to myself that I had long suspected. I saw a friend use mobile technology the way it is intended to be used, for maximum effectiveness. I had the unexpected pleasure of having a minor relationship with a new Nobel Prize. Come on in and I’ll share everything with you.
The spill
Last weekend I took it upon myself to prove something that had been haunting me for almost a year. I am referring to the inability to run my MacBook with 4 GB of memory, due to consistent problems every time I tried. I bought the MacBook last year with 2 GB of memory, with the intention of bumping up to 4 GB when time permitted. That failed attempt was well documented, and I gave up feeling that the only reason I couldn’t run more than 3 GB of memory in the MacBook was due to some weird problem with OS X.
Apple never acknowledged an official problem with the extra memory, so I was left running 3 GB for months. Kevin convinced me to try the 4 GB again since I had installed Snow Leopard recently. It made sense to at least try it, although I admit I didn’t hold out much hope it would work. Wrong. The 4 GB has now been running in the MacBook for a week, with nary an incident like before. It leads me to believe that Leopard was not truly handling 64-bit addressing consistently. The 3 GB was handled properly, which is maybe due to 32-bit addressing, and since the 4 GB is now working perhaps it is a 64-bit issue. Bear in mind that this is the same 4 GB memory sticks that were failing consistently before. The only difference between then and now is Snow Leopard.
While this experiment had a (so far) happy ending, it didn’t start off very well. I had just unplugged the MacBook from all the peripherals and the power plug, and was just getting ready to open it up for the memory swap when the unthinkable happened. I knocked a full cup of coffee over on the desk. Coffee went everywhere, covering everything in sight and even dripping down onto the floor.
You wouldn’t believe how fast I moved, I didn’t believe it myself and I was there. I moved everything I could out of the way and started cleaning up immediately to minimize the damage. It was such a mess that it took me over 30 minutes just to clean up the spill. I had to move everything off the desk, including the 24-inch display, and carefully dry and clean it all. The incident gave me the best reason ever for using the Lapworks stand with the MacBook. It kept the computer high and dry and totally unaffected.
It took a good while to get all the cables dry but I carefully cleaned them up and then let them dry before plugging anything back in. Happily, nothing exhibited any ill effects from the dunking. I dodged a big bullet, that is without question. I have to admit I felt sick all day after this, just thinking what might have been. Liquids and gear have no place near each other, that’s for darn sure.
A good case for integrated 3G
I have been consistent with my outlook on integrated 3G. I swap devices so often that it doesn’t make sense for me to get it on my notebooks. An external solution such as a USB model or better the MiFi makes more sense given my situation. I do believe that getting a notebook/ netbook with integrated 3G is a good fit for some folks, if their needs are better met with it.
A friend of mine is an occupational therapist (OT) who works in 5 – 6 homes making house calls with patients each day. OTs are practitioners who work with folks needing either physical therapy, or more intense therapy such as recovering stroke victims. Stroke or serious accident victims often have to be retrained to do things such as walk, or feed themselves, just to name a couple of activities. OTs are the ones who teach them how to do those things again. It’s important work and requires very careful assessment of the patient, determining a treatment plan and then tracking the treatment as it unfolds.
My friend takes the organization and reporting requirements of this treatment very seriously, as she must. She has always used technology to aid in this task, and until recently that consisted of a Windows Mobile smartphone. She would see a patient, and then tap in her session notes on the phone. At the end of the day she would spend one to two additional hours collating these impromptu notes into the formal reports she must submit for the patient’s insurance provider, and to track the progress for each patient.
She came to me a week ago and explained all this to me and expressed the belief that there must be a better way to collect this information and file these reports. Her work days were long enough with adding the report time at the end of each one.
I listened to her problem and a simple solution hit me. What she needed was a netbook with integrated 3G. Such a setup would provide her with enough battery life for the entire day, accounting for the fact that she would only need to use it after each patient session, not during. With a connected netbook she could enter her session notes straight into the report forms, and then send them in to the appropriate office(s). Do the task once, and then she would be done.
She took on the task of equipping herself prior to approaching me about the problem. She bought an EEE PC at Best Buy but it wasn’t working too well. She had correctly determined that portability was an important criteria for her work, and she had picked up the 8.9-inch netbook. She was having a lot of trouble using it partially due to the keyboard, which was too small for comfortable typing. Bear in mind she had to enter her session report on the run, often in her SUV, and the little netbook was just too small to allow her to quickly do her thing and move on to the next patient. She was still spending a lot of time at the end of each day, finalizing the reports she rushed through due to circumstances, and then sending them in to the proper authority.
She came by and asked for any recommendation I could make to help her out. I realized that what she needed was a highly portable notebook, with 3G connectivity. She needed the smallest netbook she could find that still provided a good typing experience, first, and with good wireless broadband secondly. Those were her two big requirements.
I sat her down with my HP Mini 1000 netbook, and we quickly determined that it was exactly what she needed. The Mini 1000 is the smallest netbook on the market with a 10-inch screen and a near full keyboard. She took to the Mini like a duck to water, and she got excited thinking about how it could impact her work. She asked me where she could get one right away to get working the best way possible.
I sent her to the local Verizon store, and she bought a Mini 1151 on a subsidy for signing up for the 3G data plan. I had cautioned her to get the 5 GB plan, as it was a legitimate business expense for her and she didn’t need the exposure to potential overage charges. She got a good deal for the Mini with the subsidy, and the Verizon rep had her set up and working properly before leaving the store.
She has been using the Mini almost all week, and she is ecstatic over the difference it has made on her work day. She sees the patient, types in the final report in her car, files it over the 3G connection and then moves on to the next patient. When she does this for the final patient each day, her work is done. She can’t say enough about how great this mobile technology has improved her work, and thus her life.
Rating the phones
I am constantly asked how I rate the various smartphones I own and use. It’s a natural question to ask someone in my position, but an incredibly difficult one to answer properly. How good a given phone is totally depends on the needs of the user. We’re all different, and our needs vary tremendously. That said, here is a “one line” rating of the phones I use regularly.
- Palm Pre — Most fun. A joy to use in every way.
- HTC Hero — Most useful. Only had it a week yet it has proven its usefulness already.
- BlackBerry Storm — Best email. Hands down, the most efficient phone for working with email.
- T-Mobile G1 — OK phone. It’s dated already, and I pick it up less frequently than I did before.
- iPhone — Good phone. That’s a lame description, but the iPhone does everything well. It’s still my main e-book reader, strictly due to software. This is the Gen2 iPhone, not the 3GS.
I am also asked which one of these would I buy today. You guys love to ask tough questions, I can tell you that with certainty. I bought every one of these phones with the exception of the Hero, that is only here for a brief evaluation period. That said, since you won’t let me keep skating over this question, if I owned none of these and had to buy one, it would be the HTC Hero. It is state-of-the-art hardware, the good Android platform, and HTC has customized the phone in a super way. There, I’ve said it out loud, sort of.
The Nobel Prize for chemistry
You don’t expect to read about the Nobel Prize here, but this week it touched us albeit from a distance. Surj Patel is a great guy working for GigaOM, someone I truly respect given my contact with him. He is understandably excited as his father-in-law won the Nobel Prize for chemistry this past week. This is so truly awesome it is beyond description. I am amazed just knowing someone who is close to someone who actually won a Nobel Prize. Congratulations to Surj and his entire family, they must be so very proud.
e-Book of the Week
Last week I confessed I like the ABC show Castle, and a commenter pointed out that the main character (Richard Castle) actually had a novel published. It turns out it is the novel that the Castle character is working on as part of the TV show plot, and is a clever marketing ploy. Like I said, I like the show so I had to get the book. Heat Wave is the story of detective Nikki Heat and her interaction with Rook, a famous journalist. Sounds like the TV show, Castle, doesn’t it? Hey, they never said they were clever, just good marketers. I am a sucker so I picked up Heat Wave, and I admit I enjoyed reading it. It was a very strange experience, though, for while reading the novel I kept picturing the TV show characters. It kept turning my head around, that’s for sure.
Wrap up
That’s the way my week went down and I enjoyed sharing it with you. Next week will be another busy week, no doubt, full of mobile tech and fun gadgets. I will for sure be sharing about the new Dell technology — Latitude ON. They put an ARM processor in a conventional notebook to provide a secondary computing environment that is battery friendly. Don’t miss the next column as you never know what else might happen. Peace.
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