The question is: If you start with a laptop that has Windows Vista, that is, Windows Vista that has never, ever been updated since the day it was brand-spankin’ new, how many updates does it take to get it current?

The moral of the story is: There is no free lunch. I spent the 2011 Christmas Holiday enjoying great food. In exchange, I fixed Shaun’s laptop. Fair trade.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/02/dell-latitude-e6410-e6510-finally-make-it-to-us/

(click on any photo for larger size)

How this came about is, I’ve been waiting for the new Intel  i7 CPU update for the Dell Latitude to come out for months now.

My old Latitude is literally wearing out, so I’m limping to the finish line with it. Every day brings another prayer, another incantation and another stuttering trip through a day’s productivity, ever uncertain that I’ll reach tomorrow with a functioning computer.

Consequently, I’ve been monitoring the tech blogs and Dell’s site closely for signs of the updated Latutude’s arrival and spotted the 6510 and 6410 on Dell’s web site the first morning they were available in the U.S.

In the previous days I saw the new model numbers start to appear on the Dell site’s laptop accessories listings, so I knew the new laptops themselves were imminent. Sometime between 11:30 PM 30 March when I checked before bed and 6:30 AM on 31 March when I got up, the new models went live on the Dell U.S. site.

I ordered my 6510 while I drank my first cup of coffee that morning.

I do not know if mine was the first consumer order or not, but I doubt it. There was probably some guy in his pajamas sitting up all night, every night, waiting for them. That wasn’t me since I was, officially, sleeping every night. And besides, prior to their consumer launch the 6510 and 6410 were available to enterprise customers and large institutions for pre-order, so there wasn’t going to be any iPad level hype surrounding being first in line.

Engadget, a tech blog, monitored the updated Latitudes through their design and regulatory approval process, as well as their intro in foreign markets such as the U.K. After I ordered mine, I emailed the Engadget reporter who wrote the U.K. story for Engadget and used their “Tip Us” feature to give them the news. It took them more than a day to get it posted. Note that, yes, I waited until my order was in the queue before unleashing the masses straining to buy new Latitudes who might have delayed mine. Mea Culpa.

 The Dell Latitude series laptops are built and optimized for IT deployment in large organizations. The Latitude line has design requirements of five years of design and utilization stability for accessories, such as power supplies and docking stations, and 18 months for the design model (the laptop models themselves). This aids people responsible for purchasing, configuring and deploying large fleets of laptops in their organizations to buy products that will stay viable for lengthy time-cycles in their organizations. In addition, they are designed and built to withstand the rigors of delployment into the hands of a typical corporate workforce. That means getting coffee spilled on the keyboards, being dropped off of conference tables and desks, being plugged into outlets all over the world, getting punched when bad news comes in, etc.

After years of loyalty to Thinkpads, which I used for our entire field force in my last company, I bought our original D620 Latitudes on the recommendation of my brother, Jeff, whose company, Emerson, had excellent experiences with large deployments of Latitudes.

At the time, I needed two identical laptops, one each for Steph and I, that could survive going overseas for a few years.

I took my Latitude D620 out  of the box, plugged it in, loaded some software and ran it non-stop for a few weeks at 100% CPU load rendering video files for a massive family history project.

Between then and now my D620 traveled all over the world, from the world’s driest desert,

to the 100% humidity of the Amazon basin rain forest.

It spent a lot of time in the salt air of the beach at sea level,

and at very high altitudes for weeks at a time, such as on this road at over 16,000 feet  (4,877 meters) elevation.

While in some very unlikely places, such as next to this glacier,

I used my D620 to write thousands of emails, scores of blog posts, dozens of essays, a few white papers and two books.

As well as editing, processing and posting tens of thousands of photos.

(click photo for full size collage)

Including a few from some very special places,

and a few from places where we had absolutely no idea where we were.

So, now, after several hard drive and memory capacity upgrades, after thousands of hours of 100% load usage, after literally wearing through the keys, and after zero failures, it’s finally time to retire the trusty Latitude D620.

The King is dead. Long live the King.

Not seeing any need to rush into this, I took my time before committing. I especially felt there was no need to rush into this since when you’ve been away for a while and you come back here, everyone looks very, ummm, tethered to their smartphones.

Nonetheless, I could see that given we were going to be here for a while, I might as well jump in, especially considering it would help me to evaluate opportunities for a few business models I was considering.

The first trigger point was when Steph was unpacking her office stuff out of storage and found her old Palm. She was giddy, since she was looking for a way to have her calendar with her while she was out of the house. Instead of either a) installing and supporting the LG application for her laptop that would synch her ancient cell phone to Outlook, or b) installing and supporting the ancient Palm application that would synch her equally ancient Palm, I chose c) and bought her an iPhone, which, since it’s from Apple, doesn’t require any support and never fails. Ever. At least that’s what I told her.

It was all enlightened self interest. It would allow me to play around with the iPhone OS and apps, as well as have one less thing to support in her information and productivity environment. Admittedly, that would be along the lines of one less grain of sand on the beach, but every little bit helps when it comes to supporting Steph and her digital domain.

But for me, after getting her iPhone set up and working with it a bit, I was still undecided. I also played around with a few Blackberries of friends, relatives and at the Verizon store.

While doing research on the mobile market in general, it became clear that the iPhone market was stuffed with existing applications and business models. If not mature, it was certainly crowded.

The same can be said for the Blackberry market: very robust, very mature, very stable.

So both of these options looked more than viable from the smartphone standpoint, but not very exciting in the market segment upside department.

Both were great devices, enthusiastically, even fervently supported by their patrons. OK, yes, some iPhone owners do cross the line into full-on, post-Kool-Aid, cult levels of rabid to violent defensiveness. Strand Consult, in a recent analyst report, even compares fervent Apple defenders, including some of the press, to Stockholm Syndrome hostages. But that didn’t put me completely off of the iPhone because I personally know several iPhone users who do not foam at the mouth. Most of the time.

In the end, my bottom line evaluation was:

• iPhone – great UI, good to very good ease of use, more apps that you could ever wade through, ubiquitous accessories, and it includes the fruit logo guaranteed to gain you acceptance in certain quarters.
• Blackberry – rock solid OS, secure platform, badge of honor in any corporate meeting room, fledgling app store and the best physical I/O device in the business (depending on the model).

Touch decision. But I had to choose one or the other.

So, my decision was: neither.

Instead, I waited until early November and bought an Android OS based Motorola Droid when they launched. I spent a few weeks with it, exploring the device, the apps, the OS and the user experience. Three days short of my 30 day cut off to return it, I mailed in the rebate form and locked on the typical American mobile carrier service agreement handcuffs.

Like the iPhone and the Blackberry, the droid is not perfect. However, unlike the iPhone and Blackberry, it’s a high growth market segment with a lot of opportunity. And it’s got some “the new new thing” buzz around it.

Biggest upsides:

• Verizon network; no comparison between the real-world network experience between AT&T & Verizon, and that’s not even including the 3G aspect. AT&T itself admits its calls in the NY City metro area are dropped at higher rates than its internal standards. And that’s in New York City for goodness sake. Imagine what it’s like out in the hinterlands that lie between the Hudson and east LA.
• Open platform, and it has been rooted for those so inclined.
• Open development environment and market; no mysterious and arcane application screening process by Apple app store gatekeepers (although I understand the business reasons why they do this, and I would too if I was in their position).
• Great screen.
• Multitasking (multiple open applications)
• HyperGeek developer community and nascent tribe (read: If I need to recruit some Ruby On Rails developers I might gain a little street cred by flashing my droid).

Biggest downsides:

• Verizon network; uses CDMA, so unless I’m going to one of 40 or so countries that have some CDMA network coverage, it’s worthless overseas as a phone.
• Lacks the trackball/trackpad of the BB, which is, IMO, by far the best user I/O device in any smartphone. Ever.

Biggest surprises:

• I thought I had to have a physical keyboard but use it very little.
• The small screen size of a smartphone vs. a laptop is less limiting than I anticipated for most things I do.
• I’ve been using it for reading more than my Kindle. Especially useful for couch surfing, research, newsfeeds, etc.

Realities:

• The droid is not an iPhone and never will be. The iPhone wins the ease of use and optimized customer experience hands down. The result of this is the anti-iPhone (as in everything it is not) marketing campaign. I think the droid team did a pretty good job picking a marketing strategy. There was very little potential in anything other than an “uncola” approach.
• The droid is basically a tribeless device. You are not going to automatically gain entrance into the cool hipster or locked-in corporate type tribes with this smartphone. While researching smartphones I found a story about a guy who went to D.C. for a new job and was told that he’d have to swap his iPhone for a Blackberry or it would destroy his career chances. The same would probably work in reverse if he was going to certain careers in LA or NY City. The only place the droid is cool right now is at meetups of Android OS / app developers. And that will last precisely until the next coolest Android OS phone hits the market.  

Observations:

• Smartphones are a little about telephony and a lot about a pretty powerful handheld, networked, mobile computing and media device with significant levels of internal telemetry.
• The potential of this intersection point of capabilities (telemetry, geolocation, computing, media, network & communication) have not yet been even partially explored. Yes, even with the iPhone’s 100k apps. Not even close.

The numbers:

            Global GSM users: ~4,000,000,000 (4 billion)

            Global CDMA users:  ~423,000,000 (423 million)

Apple iPhone apps:  >100,000

Android apps:            ~20,000

Android apps market: 37.7% paid, 62.3% free.

Projected sales for Motorola droid between launch 9 November and year end: 1,000,000.

Smartphone OS sales in North America, Q2 2009 (prior to droid launch):

1. Blackberry, 5,500,000
2. Apple 2,600,000
3. Windows 984,700
4. Symbian (Nokia) 383,600
5. Android 380,000
6. Other 480,300

Global mobile sales, Q3 2009:       308.9 million, 0.1% increase year over year

Global smartphone sales, Q3 2009: 41.0 million, 12.8% increase year over year

Global mobile manufacturers’ market share, Q3 2009:

• Nokia: 36.7% (down 1.5%)
• Samsung: 19.6% (up 2.5%)
• LG: 10.3% (up 2.5%)
• Motorola: 4.5% (down ~4%)
• Sony Ericsson: 4.3% (down ~4%)

Global smartphone manufacturers’ market share, Q3 2009:

• Nokia: 39.3% (down 3%)
• Research In Motion (RIM)(Blackberry): 20.8% (up 4.9%)
• Apple: 17.1% (delta not reported) (7.04 million units in Q3)
• HTC: 6.5% (delta not reported)
• Samsung: 3.2% (delta not reported)

Futures:

• An Intel backed 4G standard named WiMax (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) is currently rolling out in limited markets in the U.S., including here in Austin, Texas (see photo). A competing standard known as LTE (Long Term Evolution) will begin rollout in 2010 to 2011. U.S. WiMax provider Clear states their speed is 6 Mb/sec (mega bits per second) downstream and 1 Mb/sec upstream on its 2.5 Ghz (gigahertz) network. European LTE 4G system provider TeliaSonera promises speeds of 20 to 80 Mb/sec on its 2.6 Ghz network. Actual LTE data rate will depend upon the frequency at which your local system operates. For instance, Verizon has committed to cover the entire U.S. market with LTE at 700 Mhz (megahertz), which will probably deliver lower data speeds than higher frequency band systems. LTE is the clear winner in this global standards battle, even though it will be later to market, as it has majority support among infrastructure and device manufacturers, and carrier networks.
• It wasn’t that long ago that we all got very excited about moving from a 10 Mb/sec hard wired network to the then-new, blazing 100 Mb/sec copper network. A global standard 20 to 80 Mb/sec. mobile network added to a two to five years increase in computing power at the handheld smartphone level adds up to some very interesting possibilities.
• The mobile development market will remain fragmented. As if the world needed it, Samsung recently announced it would build its future smartphones on its own, proprietary OS named bada. Consequently, the cross-platform development frameworks space (Rhomobile, PhoneGap, Appcelerator, etc.), which implies, if not promises, “build once, run everywhere,” will continue to exhibit rapid growth. Acquisition of the leading players may happen prior to IPO, with appropriate suitors being the hot question of the moment.
• In addition, mobile fragmentation is not just limited to the OS, it also includes the delivery of media, specifically video. In the long term, HTML 5 may handle video adequately all on its own. Prior to that, the pending release of an updated Adobe Flash player browser plugin will help it be fairly mobile ubiquitous. However, Flash will never reach the 96.71% market penetration it enjoys on the web on smartphones, if for no other reason simply because Apple won’t allow it on the current iPhone platform as a browser component, although they will allow standalone iPhone apps to display Flash based content. Consequently, video Content Delivery Networks (CDN) that handle all necessary scaling, formatting, presentation and delivery to all mobile platforms from a single segment of video media will remain viable for the near- to mid-term.
• The majority of the world’s mobile users are using 2G phones on 2G networks. The highest growth rates in mobile are at the high end with smartphones and at the low end with very low cost plans, such as $2 or less per month, especially in India. While most people concentrate on opportunities at the high end, the numbers on the low end (3.5 billion users) are staggering. It’s important to remember that even 2G phones can do text.

The Clear WiMax marketing balloon drifts over our neighborhood on local market launch day morning, 10 December, 2009.

Sources: The Register, Strand Consult, Gartner, Cnet, Wall Street Journal, Wired, AndroLib.com, 3G Americas, StatOwl.com. Gartner press release is here: http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1224645

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Exterior Storage Compartments & Garage

Here’s all the stuff that was carried in the exterior compartments and the garage:

Not shown: Contents of the camper basement storage compartment / wine cellar that I forgot to unload and include in this photo, including the vise, wine, spare parts, first aid kit, etc.

This is what the exterior stuff looked like once binned and loaded onto the pickup.

Camper Interior Storage

Here’s what was stored in the interior of the camper:

This is the majority of Steph’s craft/scrapbooking/stamping supplies and tools.

Following is the rest of the stuff stored in the camper interior.  

Not shown: >400 pounds / 182 kilos of stuff removed prior to shipping.

All of the stuff in these photos, exterior and interior storage, weighed almost exactly 3,000 pounds / 1,361 kilos.

And keep in mind that we’ve been removing things from the truck since a few weeks after we began our journey in June of 2007, including more than 800 pounds / 363 kilos of stuff we removed in January 2009 while in Ecuador that we hadn’t touched in 18 months of full time living in the rig.

Stuff. We have seen the enemy and the enemy is us.

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First, let me say that I think the iPhone is a very cool device. I may even end up with one. Soon.

But before I drink the Kool-Aid and join the cult, while I still have a teeny, weeny bit of objectivity left, I have to stifle my snickering for a moment and point out a few things from the Apple launch web page for this new model http://www.apple.com/iphone/iphone-3g-s/   (link  kindly provided by my friend and Apple Guy - Floyd).

First, and the winner by a landslide is: “Cut, copy, and paste words and photos, even between applications.” Imagine that, “even between applications.” Earth shattering. Now if I could only have more than one app open at once…

A close second is: “You can even forward one or more messages to others.” I hope you were sitting down for that one.

My personal favorite, but the irony would probably be lost on most: “Internet Tethering – Surf the web from practically anywhere. Now you can share the 3G connection on your iPhone with your Mac notebook or PC laptop.

Tethering is not currently offered in the U.S. and some other countries. See your carrier for availability.”  

Unfortunately, I don’t have a font small enough to approximate the 2 point used on the web site. Only in America. Or perhaps only on AT&T’s sclerotic  network already overwhelmed by all you iPhoners sending each other photos. Or Facebook updates. Or Twitter feeds. Or whatever it is you do with those things. Just wait until iPhone users jailbreak their way into clogging the network with all the videos they can shoot with the new model. Can you say “All circuits are busy now. Please try your call again later.”? I think you can.

A somewhat techie thing: Maximum operating altitude: 10,000 feet (3000 m). It’s a really good thing we didn’t use an unlocked iPhone as our GSM phone in South America. It would have exploded at the altitudes we were at.

A somewhat more techie thing.

Q. What is missing from this list?:

Video playback

Video formats supported: H.264 video, up to 1.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Low-Complexity version of the H.264 Baseline Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; H.264 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Baseline Profile up to Level 3.0 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats

 A. Flash support. Adobe Flash is the web standard used for video, animation and applications. It is by far the ubiquitous standard for video playback on the web, e.g. YouTube, etc., with over 90% market share. I think there’s some deeply rooted emotional scarring around Apple’s competing Quicktime standard being among those sharing the remaining 10%. Consequently, I’m not holding my breath for Flash on the iPhone, as much as millions would like to see it.

There’s lots more that’s missing from the iPhone platform, even with 3.0, but it’s hard for people who are already down the rabbit hole to appreciate that, being addled by the apps as they are. If you are wondering what the iPhone could be, in the way of capabilities, OS functionality, business tool synch, etc., spend a little time with a Blackberry tied to a corporate BB server or, better yet, take a look at webOS on the Palm Pre. They are way ahead in areas that matter. But then again, so was Beta, but we all bought VHS.

Yes, the iPhone definitely has sexier apps, and the AppArmy will ensure that it will dominate in that area from this day forward, mark my words, unto the end of time (as we know it). So no matter what, iPhone owners will always be able to just shake it and it will do something incredibly cool and fun. Even if it’s just to entertain the kids, as our friends Jay and Alice demonstrated to stunning effect for us in NYC last week. iPhone as kid tranquilizer. Who knew?

And before you all start burning crates of apples on my front lawn (as if I had a front lawn), I’d like to remind all of you that I used to write software for Macs. I’m not an Apple basher. I’m just not a member of the cult. Yet.

After a little less than one month of use, my Kindle 2 died. It was a horrible, distorted death, manifested by the unfortunate Lewis Carroll as illustrated here:

For those of you who are not familiar with how a Kindle 2 is supposed to look while it is sleeping, here is a comparison between the quick and the dead:

As you can see, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, a.k.a. Mark Twain, is much more, well, together, than the aforementioned unfortunate Mr. Carroll.

All my efforts, as well as those of Kindle tech support, to revive Mr. Carroll proved fruitless. Thus, Amazon kindly replaced the dead Kindle 2 with a replacement Kindle 2 (the one on the left). The process was quick and painless. All my books were automatically available on the new Kindle 2, and the entire process was, with the exception of being Kindle-less for a day, without trauma.

However, there has been trauma in my book reading and purchasing habits. My units purchased has increased, no doubt to the delight of Mr. Bezos, who runs Amazon. In addition, and much more significantly, I have now conciously stopped buying any title that is not availalbe  in a Kindle edition. That process took about two weeks from the point my lovely and brilliant bride presented me with our “shared” Kindle. (Ha! Shared! What was she thinking?)

I have books that have been recommended to me, that I actually need to read, that are not available in Kindle format, so I’m not buying them. Or reading them.

Again, that change, after reading hundreds of analog books in my lifetime, took about two weeks.

Sometimes, change can be compelling.

PS – The original Kindle 2 had been dropped from bed to a carpeted floor a couple of times due to dozing off while reading. Otherwise, it experienced no shocks, immersions, etc.  I hadn’t even hacked into it yet, which will come as quite a shock to some of you.

Click here for the rest of the story: http://www.hackneys.com/travel/ecuador/stuff-o-holic.pdf

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