The weekend draws near and that means it’s time to share the past week in Mobile Tech Manor with you. Mobile Tech Manor is my home office with the revolving door. That door is needed due to the constant stream of cool gadgets that come and go. A couple of new toys crossed the threshold of the Manor and I got a new cloud-based backup system working.
The Toys
Two new notebooks arrived this week, and I haven’t gotten too much time with them as they showed up on Thursday. Both of them have a 10-inch touchscreen, but the similarity pretty much ends there. The first to show up is one of the smallest 10-inch netbooks, and it is designed firmly for the enterprise crowd. The last to arrive is aimed squarely at the consumer camp. That one doesn’t fit in the netbook category, at least the way I define netbooks.
The first notebook to show up is the HP Mini 5102. This model is a refreshed configuration of the Mini 5101 I tested last year. HP smartly kept the device largely the same, but added a touchscreen option and a unique carrying handle. The touchscreen is a standard capacitive design, but since HP sent the evaluation unit with Windows XP it only does standard single touch. The screen recognizes light touches on the screen as is standard for that type of digitizer.
I’m still not convinced that a touchscreen on a laptop without a swivel screen adds much value. While it’s easy to reach out to a laptop screen and touch something, it’s not comfortable to do so. This unit has the standard Windows XP interface, so it’s not touch-friendly at all. Some folks like this sort of configuration, however, and that crowd will be pleased. I would definitely get Windows 7 if I was buying one of these, as it is more optimized for the touch experience. The full multitouch would work on Win7, too. I’ll be shooting a video of the Mini 5102 soon, to show off the touch capability.
The other notebook that arrived this week is the Viliv S10 Blade. Viliv is the Korean company who has been pumping out slates and convertible notebooks of all sizes. The S10 is a 10-inch convertible notebook, and the ability to swivel the screen around into a thin slate form is very useful. Thin is the key descriptor for the S10, as the entire unit is less than an inch thick. It has a keyboard that is nearly full-sized for use in a notebook configuration, and Viliv has packed quite a bit of punch inside this gadget.
The Viliv S10 Blade has something I’ve never seen before. The multitouch screen is a resistive digitizer, so it reacts to stylus input. It can be operated by fingernail, too, something capacitive digitizers cannot do. Unfortunately, there is no palm rejection technology onboard to allow resting the hand on the screen while inking, and that sorely limits the ability to write on the big 10-inch screen. I’ll be doing a video soon that demonstrates this unique touchscreen.
Syncing in the Cloud
In last week’s column I recounted my difficulties deploying a syncing/ backup solution using Dropbox. The service works well, it just doesn’t work the way I prefer. A great suggestion was given by several of you to try Sugarsync, and I successfully deployed a system this week that fits my needs.
I use both Macs and Windows systems, and a number of them. Sugarsync lets me keep all of my documents, music, pictures and other files in sync with both the cloud repository and with any system I choose. Once the initial sync from my main system to the Sugarsync cloud completed, it keeps all of my systems up-to-date on the fly. That initial sync was a slow process, as it had to move 40 GB of stuff from the Mac to the cloud. I started it last Friday afternoon and it finally complete late the following Wednesday. It never interfered with my work while it was syncing, so no big deal
Browser update
These days I am using Google Chrome as my browser of choice on the Windows platform, and Firefox on the Mac. I prefer Chrome on the Mac side, too, but it tends to bog down in the WordPress editor I use all day. Kevin doesn’t have this problem using it so I need to isolate which Chrome extension is causing my problem. I would rather use the same browser on both platforms, and Chrome is so darn fast.
I am able to jump from browser to browser at whim due to the great Xmarks bookmark syncing solution. I have long used it in Firefox as a method to keep all of my bookmarks and site passwords up-to-date on any system I use (there are quite a few of them). Xmarks has grown over time to also work with Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer, so I put it on every system I use. It works well although I get duplicate bookmarks occasionally, which I believe is due to the multiple browsers I use. I need to prune out the Xmarks server and resync across the board, which I think will fix the problem of duplicates.
Speaking of the Chrome browser, Kevin found two extensions for Google Calendar and Reader that are awesome. Helvetical simply makes Google Calendar display nice and legibly in the browser, as does Helvetireader for Google Reader. Good finds, Kevin!
Web coolness
I don’t usually get into cool stuff I found on the web, but the latest music video by the group OK Go just can’t be missed. The group is famous for their viral music videos on YouTube, and the latest is simply awesome. It depicts the biggest, baddest Rube Goldberg system in the video that was shot all in one take. Breathtaking and not to be missed. Be sure and watch it all the way through, the ending is great.
e-Book of the week
Alas, I have completed the entire Nic Costa series by David Hewson, at least the books available as e-books. This week I returned to James Patterson’s great Alex Cross series, although Alex Cross’s TRIAL is not really about Alex Cross. It is pure historical fiction, taking us back to that dark time in U.S. history when lynchings were rampant. It is a typical great Patterson novel, although hard to read due to the terrible subject matter.
Wrap-up
That’s my week, thanks for sharing it with me once again. Until next time, stay healthy and safe.
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