Tablets, Tablets everywhere

I can't even believe that I have a blog that I specifically started for tablets, and yet with ALL of the tablet talk and devices coming out, I have not posted on ANY of it!!

There look to be some game changers on the horizon, with the Apple iPad, some yet to be fully announced Android OS tablet devices, and the HP Slate running a full Windows 7 OS... then there is the Microsoft Courier that looked to be only a rumor, but is now looking like it may be released this YEAR!

I have been having a ton of trouble with my "BlogPress" app on my iPhone, where it can not seem to post to my blogs. Since I am not at a PC when I am not working these days, it is hard to find the time to post anything with any real substance. I hope to start posting more regularly though, so look for more from this site! ;-)

I even forgot to mention about Windows Phone Series! See... I'm slackin'.

Appigo Todo and Toodledo… a dynamic duo!

I recently purchased both Appigo's "Todo" iPhone app (for $9.99) and Toodledo's Pro account (for $14.95/yr) which offers advanced features over the free account that were important to me. However, the free account itself is pretty spectacular, in the sense that every other web-based backend that works with an iPhone app charge you a yearly fee, and generally over $24.99/yr (which is what Remember The Milk charges for the account that works with its iPhone app or Appigo's Todo)! You, personally, may never need anything more than the free account from Toodledo, but I like what the Pro account offers in conjunction with what Appigo's Todo application offers with such grace and ease in their iPhone app. The most important to me being subtasks to create "projects" and "checklists", both which *require* sub-tasks (in all honesty, Toodledo can still handle this in the free version, but the subtasks show up as regular tasks. For you, it may not matter, but I like seeing where they are associated and also be able to hide them to remove the clutter). To demonstrate this, I suggest that you visit Appigo's site and watch some of the screencasts. It helped me better understand what the capabilities are, and is partially what sold me on this iPhone app over others. I also first downloaded the Appigo Todo Lite app, which is free, signed up for the free account at Toodledo and upgraded to the free 7 day trial of the Toodledo Pro account to check it all out together. The Todo Lite app only allows 10 tasks total, but it was enough for me to see the benefits over other solutions out there. By the way, checklists and projects seem to be considered 1 task for the limitation, but there is also a limit of about 5 subtasks for these in the lite version (NOT in the full version).

I suppose I should give a little background on my situation regarding task management so you can better understand what I was looking for in a system. I've read

BlackBerry to replace my iPod

Well, that title has more sensation than reality. ;-) However, my playing with the media player on my BlackBerry today put it in a very good light. The sound quality is damn near as good as the iPod for songs in the same bit rate (if not as good). Because I only (currently) have a 4GB card in the BB, I decided to limit the quality of songs to 192kbps (I mean, it IS for *mobile* use, so I doubt I'll really hear a difference with so many other noises around me in those situations). I synced my BB through WMP11 (Windows Media Player), so it automatically converted the songs higher than 192kbps for me. I tried to sync a playlist from WMP, but it did not show up in the BB. This honestly doesn't bother me because I generally listen to whole albums at a time anymore. If you have a ton of playlists and really like that feature, you may want to try something different. I believe there is a sync utility from BlackBerry to allow you to sync with iTunes and all it's playlists. I stopped using iTunes a while ago and I'm not looking back.

As far as playlist capabilities are concerned, I was actually really impressed with the BB's feature set on creating playlists. It allows for both Automatic and Manual playlists. Like I said, this isn't a driving factor for me, so what it has is plenty good for me.

The fact that the BB Curve has a standard 3.5mm headphone jack is AWESOME! It allows you to use much higher quality headphones without having to buy or mess with an adapter. ALL phones trying to provide media playback should have this. Listening with some higher end headphones produced sound that (I believe) equals the iPod on the same exact file and bit rate. I also used my two Bluetooth Stereo headsets that have the ability to control the media player functions aside from normal call functions. Their sound was great through the BB Curve, but they are obviously no match for the higher end wired headphones. However, the fact that there are no wires and you can control the media player from them makes up for a lot in convenience. Good for several activities. Lastly, I tried the stereo headset the BB Curve comes with. Their drivers were obviously more sensitive, so had higher volume levels, but the sound really wasn't very good (as can be expected).

I had the Verizon LG Chocolate2 which was *supposed* to be like an iPod phone... no thanks!! The media player ABSOLUTELY sucked... and that's saying it lightly. It had proprietary connections and more. It didn't even have the ability to read the ID3 tags and determine the songs track number to play them in the correct order... instead it played songs alphabetically. WTF?!?!? The BB has no such issue. In fact, the only complaint I would have about how it organizes songs is that for Artist, it uses the individual song artist instead of the "Album Artist" value which is a better way to sort in my opinion. It's really not a big deal, and some people may prefer this way.

I don't see this replacing my iPod any time soon, mainly because of storage limitations. My iPod is 60GB, and the most you will ever be able to get in a BB Curve is 32GB when they eventually release microSDHC cards that high. For now, I will most likely get an 8GB card (I don't think I can wait for the 16GB ones due out later this year... partially because they will be much higher in price for a good while). When 32GB cards are available for reasonable prices, I could see me carrying my iPod less and less. The iPod will probably always be a "better" media player... but convenience and only carrying one device has to count for something. Being mobile and travelling taught me that.

Just couldn't take it... Switched to a BlackBerry Curve

There were several things that bugged me to the point of deciding to switch from the Treo 700w and Windows Mobile devices in general to a BlackBerry Curve from Sprint. I'm not sure I can capture them all here, but I'll give it a shot.

1. OS and Apps crashing - I updated to the latest firmware for the 700w. It was still WM5, and I don't know if WM6.x solves these issues, but I didn't want to risk spending more on a new device to find out it's the same old same old.
2. Battery Life - The battery just wouldn't last long (not even a full day) and that's without push email working (more on that later). I did not set it up to automatically download email either because the battery would drain even faster. When traveling, there are MANY instances where there is no opportunity to charge... I also can't be without a phone when traveling.
3. Push Email not working - This was not the fault of the device or WM, but rather my companies inability to get Exchange ActiveSync working. HOWEVER, that would *only* enable push for work email, not any personal accounts... so getting those personal accounts emails still required manual intervention or no battery life. That's just not acceptable to me.
4. Beautiful Apps with great features/functions... that don't always work - I can say, after only a couple days of using the BlackBerry and the apps (some the same as the WM apps), that the WM versions are MUCH prettier to look at, and in some cases have better feature sets (Viigo as one specific example). However, these apps seem buggy and prone to issues. I don't think it was the application developers fault, but it is what it is. Maybe I'm even alone on this finding and those apps are working perfectly for others on WM, but my experience was not good... and this follows back through the history of Windows CE, PocketPC, etc. Some of the apps I'm referring to have a pretty long history on Windows Mobile through it's life stages... so with that kind of history, shouldn't they work better?
5. Multi-tasking and pitfalls - One thing WM had over the Palm OS was multi-tasking... but the BlackBerry handles that in spades now. WM seemed to have issues here if an app was posing problems, which happened frequently enough. I don't doubt that the BlackBerry could run into these same issues, especially bumping into a memory limitation, but if the apps are more stable, I have to believe it will happen less.
6. Touchscreen functions as opposed to hardware buttons only - I know there are WM phones that do not have a touchscreen, but I'm certain they are plagued with many of the same issues listed above. The problem with the touchscreen is that you have to change your input method, and in MANY cases need to pull out a stylus and use that because whatever you need to press or click is too small for your fingers. I set the touchscreen to lock when in a call on the Today screen... but then it displayed a lock message over some of the on screen buttons and I couldn't tell which was which to mute the call or put it on speakerphone. All of the touchscreen functions REALLY bugged me to no end. Any way I sliced it, I was getting a phone that did NOT include a touchscreen. (for those out there in love with their iPhone and touchscreen only input... good luck. I have a friend who's iPhone touchscreen stopped working in certain sectors of the screen, namely the unlock slide, and also the "one (hardware) button" eventually broke. When he went to speak to the Apple "Geniuses", they told him there was nothing they could do to fix it and he would need to buy another one... WTF?!?!?)

So, I am VERY happy with my choice thus far and plan on posting my findings about the BlackBerry. I also plan on detailing things I liked better on Windows Mobile than the BlackBerry and vice versa. I'll probably discuss apps for it and review them as best I can.

Obviously, everyone's mileage and opinions vary... this is just mine.

Viigo... acting funky on my Treo

**Update** See the comments... you'll never believe this...
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If you missed my post on Viigo, check it out.

Well, I know this is still beta, so I'm truly not upset... but I thought I'd share something that has been going wrong with Viigo on my Treo. My guess, too, is that this is more an issue with WM than it is on Blackberry devices.

Because Windows Mobile has the ability to multi-task, or have multiple applications running at the same time and switch between them, I think Viigo is getting confused or something. If I run Viigo and do not leave that app, it seems to work just fine and great even. However, if I turn off my screen or try and switch to another app, it seems Viigo is actually crashing. I say "crashing" because it doesn't appear to close cleanly. The app takes up the full screen, so even the WM title bar at the top of the screen. When Viigo crashes, it leaves the Viigo app covering the title bar. So far, the only way I found to get the title bar back was to do a soft reset on my device (essentially rebooting it).

One other thing that I noticed, it's not the fastest app on my Treo. This could be for a couple reasons: 1) Memory?, 2) CPU speed, 3) The app is not optimized enough for WM?

Working on the theory that the app is not optimized for WM, I think this may be it because if I have Viigo running and go to the start menu and select it again, it starts another instance of that app. This may not be the best way to get back to an app, but all my other apps in WM will get me right back to the running instance if I select it from the Start Menu and it's already running. The reason I use the Start Menu is because it requires the least amount of steps to get to it (it has a hardware button and then select the app, instead of bringing up the task manager, selecting the app, then clicking "Activate").

Anyway, I'm not trying to take anything away from how awesome Viigo is, just throwing out a possible bug with the current beta version.

NoviiMedia... dud on my 700wx

As I posted, I installed and tried NoviiMedia's remote application.

At first, I thought maybe I wasn't using the correct code bases for my electronics, but after everything failing from my couch, I decided to get up close and personal with my electronics and see if it was a distance thing (the NoviiMedia site showed the Treo 700wx having an effective range of 6-12 feet). Once I got right up to it, the remote did in fact work.... ummm, isn't the idea of a remote to allow you NOT to be within arms reach of the device you are trying to control?!? ;-)

Oh well, I wasn't THAT hopeful it would work. It would have been cool, but it's not that big of a deal honestly.

So, my advice to ANYONE with interest in this app: Try before you buy (I did and am glad).

I know they had SD card IR sensor add-ons for the Treo 650, but I haven't looked for that and quite frankly I don't think I'd go to all the trouble of pulling out my current SD card and inserting that thing just to get a semi-decent learning remote with limited macros. I'd rather spend the $99 and get the Logitech Harmony or the XBOX 360 centric Harmony since I have a 360 hooked up to my Vista Ultimate PC. ;-)

Wow! It's been a while...

A lot has changed for me, but I still use my n800. I have, however, stopped using Linux on my desktop PCs and switched to Windows Vista on my desktop and Windows 2008 Server for my server. I have been VERY happy with my change back to Windows.

On top of that, I am now switching back to a smartphone after having abandoned the idea and switching to a more standard phone. I'm switching back because I've started texting and the lack of a real keyboard was starting to piss me off. So expect to see some posts regarding that and other posts on how my outlook and computer use has changed.

So check back soon... maybe tomorrow I'll actually have a new smartphone.