some tech stuff
on 05/11/2012 at 12:43 PM
The real problem is that with current LCD fabrication technology, I don’t think it’s possible to create a 7 inch screen with the same resolution as it’s 10 inch big brother. You’re talking about a nearly 50% reduction in the size of pixels that are already the smallest we can make today.
...And phone service is not supported on iPads either.
You can install Skype and make calls without any sort of contract rubbish, but you will have to be at a wi-fi hotspot for that to work.
Honestly, this is probably going to be a case of “too small to be a good tablet, and too big to be as portable as a smartphone.”
I don’t think storage will be an issue, but would hazard a guess that battery life will be.
It’s hard to pack enough into a full-size iPad. What this mini will have remains to be seen.
Best wishes!
Posted by heldmyw
05/11/2012 at 07:49 PM
The Kindle is fine for its designed purpose (reading books) but its not much use for email. As far as tablets go I think they are a waste of money and a triumph of style over substance. A decent laptop is the same price with a lot more functionality.
And a lot more weight and size. The idea of a table is great - a PC that you can slip in your coat pocket or purse - but the Do Everything power demanded by the confluence of the business world and the “there’s an app for that” generation just isn’t quite there yet.
Convergent technology is an experiment; the market will determine what the eventual ‘perfect’ size gizmo is, although it’s power will be ever-increasing. Some years back a cellphone was as big as a pocket calculator and thrice as thick. Just a few years ago, when a cellphone was just a phone, or at best a phone with a PDA, size ruled, and we got fold up phones nearly as small as a pack of paper matches. Now everyone wants to text, so we’ve got phones the size of playing cards with QWERTY keyboards. Next step was the ‘smart phone’ - hey, there’s an app for that! - and we’re back to having phones/PDAs the size of a pocket calculator. But this time around that gizmo is at most 1/2” thick, and it has half the power of a modern PC and nearly as much storage space. Plus the things are visually stunning and hypnotically habit forming. Now they even talk, and you can just about hold conversations with them.
There’s an ad on TV, where sitcom cutie Zoey D. can’t even be bothered to look out the window to see what the weather is; she asks her phone and it speaks back “yes it’s raining”. Being too lazy to pour a can of soup and a can of water in a bowl and stick that in the microwave for 2 minutes, Zoey has the phone find a local eatery that will deliver her a bowl of soup. Then, while waiting for delivery, the phone plays music for her so she can dance around in her jammies. She’s adorable, and the phone pretty much runs her life.
My expectation is that in 3 or 4 years we’ll have folding tablets; your smart phone will fold open to give you twice the screen size, making fixed sized tablets obsolete. OTOH, the Google Glasses things I saw on the news a couple weeks back ... combine them with the positional sensors you get with the Wii game controller and some nano-tech so that they become finger rings or even fingernail appliques ... and we’re almost at the personal invisible holographic keyboard and screen moment. The Google Goggles will give you a 3D wide-screen super HD retinal IMAX visual, with built-in micro earbuds for total surround sound, while the fingernail stickers (they’d be disposable peel offs tuned to your personal frequency at the store by your scanner code) would allow everyone to surf the net and communicate by sitting quietly with their fingers twitching slightly in their lap. All of this wirelessly connected to a super PC the size of a pack of smokes in your pocket. Forget “texting”. We’ll call it “being” or something. No worries, cars will drive themselves on government approved interactive roadways. And this will be fine, until the next generation of devices actually jacks you in via a direct connection to your nervous system. No data goggles, ear buds, or finger sensors then needed. We already have at least 75% of the technology.
Welcome to the matrix. And it’s a good thing Neo, so stop complaining.
I’ve got one of the e-ink readers (Kobo). It’s just B&W, which is fine for most books. It’s got wi-fi which is one way of loading books into it, or uploading the firmware. It also has a USB port and mounts as a flash drive if you plug it into a pc. That’s how I load it, using an ebook manager program called “Calibre”.
I bought me a Barnes & Noble “ColorNook” last year. Can’t get ‘em yet this side of the pond yet and I can’t download books in Ireland, but since I travel back a forth frequently it’s not a problem. Besides B&N is talking to Waterstone books about offering the Nook here.......some day.
I compared the Kindle and Nook and found the ColorNook superior. It was a bit pricy, but you get what you pay for.
I use to read a lot of library books in the States and found they had a great selection. Unfortunately, I found the Irish libraries have mostly crap.
I’m a WW-II, Korea & Vietnam fan. So I found myself carrying a whole suitcase of books from the States every time I flew over. That was a problem. Now I download about a dozen books and put my ColorNook in my carry-on.
Storing “real” books is also a problem since both my wife and I never throw out books we have a room full collecting dust.
Well, having dropped my land line last month I now only use a prepaid cell phone. For me, a phone is difficult to use to due multiple hearing issues. I love bound books and don’t envision using an e-read due to the DRM (and sneaky stuff like the publisher or retailer deleting my books for some reason). I just can’t see a use for these devices.
They can sure come in handy when you’re out and about. I don’t want to haul a laptop around with me everywhere. A smartphone and a data port jack make it easy, and so many places have either free wifi or cellphone antenna boosters inside. But at home, give me an old fashioned hard cover book with good binding and I’m a happy camper. Good books are like old friends, and they need to be visited again and again. Most paperbacks these days fall apart after just 2 or 3 reads. And my high bandwidth PC.
jackal40: There are plenty of sources on the net for free ebooks, both legal and not.
Over at the Gutenberg project, there are thousands of pre-copyright ebooks free for the download. http://www.gutenberg.org/
I have too many books for the space I have… it’s a lot of work, but I have actually scanned and OCR’d some of my favorites for use on the e-reader. Much easier to pirate music.
I’d probably carry a smart-type phone around with me now even if it wasn’t a phone. They’re great even just as multimedia devices. Camera, videocamera, listen to music, listen to the radio, watch TV shows or movies I put on there, use it as a portable hard drive....
And with how often people upgrade to the latest and greatest phones, that means used ones depreciate fast, even though they’re nearly as good as the new ones.
As for actual phone service, prepaid is great. It used to be only people with bad credit used prepaid, but now, unless maybe you use a ton of data, prepaid can be great deals compared to a typical contract.
Normally, in the U.S. anyway, the only way you can have a really cool phone is if you pay an extra monthly charge for data. With some prepaids, you can use any phone you want, whether you use data or not. So you get an older but still way cool phone, turn off the data so you don’t get charged, you can still use wi-fi if you want if it’s available, and now you have a way-cool phone that does everything except non-wi-fi data for cheap.
Posted by Wes B
05/12/2012 at 07:40 PM
05/12/2012 at 09:47 AM
