must rant...
I can't take it anymore, I can't take the Microsoft "I'm a PC" commercial, which ends with the guy saying "I'm a PC because I'm really picky" one more time without comment.
You just spent the whole commercial finding the cheapest blandest laptop in Best Buy. That is not being "picky". Buying the cheapest piece of crap you can find is THE OPPOSITE OF BEING PICKY!!
"I drive a Kia because I'm REALLY PICKY!!"
No.
You may now return to your TV viewing and repeated airings of those Microsoft BING commercials. With as much money as they have, you'd think Microsoft could make a series of commercials that doesn't irritate the fuck out of me.
Tuesday, June 16
kindle dx review...
SCREEN: Everything they say about the screen is true. Reading the "e-Ink" screen is nothing like reading a computer screen. It's a very odd image to wrap your head around, but it's much more paper-like than LCD-like. I wish the contrast were just a tiny bit greater (one review referred to the screen background as "dishwater grey") but I expect it to be as easy on the eyes as a normal book. Plus you can crank up the font-size to Old-Guy-With-Bifocal levels as needed. (Sometimes, see below.) The "blink" of the page-turns that a lot of people complain about when they first see the device...? I'm already starting to get used to it and ignore it.
FORM: I quite like the size of the DX, and it feels pretty sturdily built. Not quite iPod/iPhone sturdy, but close. It feels sleek and thin, but it's just a teensy bit too heavy. I know that seems like a silly complaint for something that weighs less than 20 ounces, but when you have an arthritic left thumb like I do... holding it up with one hand for too long is difficult. It's definitely designed for 2-handed use, or to be propped up on a lap or a knee.
CONTROLS: This is where I have complaints. I'm so spoiled by Apple's interface designs that I get VERY frustrated by things that don't work the way you expect them to without thinking about it. (Including Apple, by the way... I could make a list if you like) So when the Kindle has a click-joystick AND a "menu" button, and I find myself all the time clicking the click stick to make something happen that was supposed to use the menu button, well... someone has not thought out the UI well enough. The keyboard is impossible to type more than a few words on, but I don't expect to be doing so, so... whatever. I wish there was a "next page" button on both sides like the original, since apparently I like to hold a book in my left hand and do other things w/ my right. (Hold a drink/pen/slice of pizza). I think I will most often be using the device upside down (the screen auto-rotates) so the button will be under my left thumb. Again - if there are users who prefer to use your device UPSIDE DOWN, then you have not thought out the controls well enough.
(The real problem here is that the device BEGS to have a touchscreen!)
FORMATS: A few frustrating things here. First of all, if it has a web browser, why can't it read html files? Second, everyone complains about the no-folders problem for organizing your files. I've enacted a three letter tagging system to group my titles (FIC, SCI, REF, etc) but folders would be better. The fact that it puts txt files under "Books" and pdfs under "Documents" makes no sense at all. Some of my pdfs are BOOKS and some of my txt files are personal documents.
As far as plain text files go... I had of helluva time getting text files from Project Gutenberg to display properly on the Kindle, because they come with hard linefeeds that (depending on your font size) will generally not match the width of the Kindle, so the lines wind up all crazy. So you have to find a text editing program (like BBedit) that can easily strip that stuff from the file before putting it on your Kindle. Not always of course... depends where you got the file. I got a bunch of Arthur C Clarke txt files off P2P that display perfectly. The website ManyBooks.net has a bunch of Gutenberg's content already converted to the native Kindle format, which is nice. (Stuff in this format displays perfectly.)
Now, on to PDFs... a really mixed bag. The lack of a zoom or any ability to resize pdfs means that some large format/small type stuff is virtually unreadable, even in landscape mode. Any pdf that has page margins the size of a paperback or a small novel will work fine. (A Harry Potter book in pdf format displays at a perfectly readable size.) But large textbooks that have bigger-than-8x11-pages... or magazines with a 3 column layout... forget it, with my eyes anyway. Given that one of the markets for the Kindle was supposed to be college students... I dunno... not unless some of the textbook manufacturers seriously reformat their content.
One last issue - if a pdf file is text-based, then it displays quickly, but if it is based on an IMAGE SCAN (such as many of the books from GoogleBooks) the display is unusably slow. As in... page turns take 5 or 6 seconds. Not cool.
WEB BROWSER: Amazon refers to the browser on the Kindle as "Experimental", which I suppose is code for - we know this doesn't work too well, so don't bitch about it. I can describe the experience of using the Kindle web browser quite vividly, for some of you. Has anyone out there ever surfed the web on a Mac Plus or Mac Classic using NSCA Mosaic 2.0? That's almost exactly what this is like. Same screensize, same greyscale, same speed, same clunkily displayed HTML. And yet - it's fucking FREE people!! So, while I won't be doing loads of surfing on it, the ability to Wikipedia something really quick or pull up some news sites or blogs that have a good text-only mobile feed... I'm pretty excited about it.
OTHER FEATURES The text-to-speech ("Story Time with Dr. Hawking"!) is useless. The background music/mp3 implementation suffers from the lack of controls or organization. You put some files on it, it plays them in order, you hit F to skip. No back? No shuffle? I haven't used any of the subscription services yet, but I'm sure I will. They all come with a 14 day trial period that you can cancel with no fee, so I'm sure I will subscribe to all of them for 10 days, one at a time. For my trip this week, I'll probably sign up for the NY Times and Salon.com or something.
(Oh, and... for what we paid for this thing, could you throw in a cheap cloth slip-case?? I know part of your business model is selling $50 leather folios for the thing but... fuck... give us SOMETHING.)
UPSHOT? Is this thing worth the almost-$500 price tag? No. Not by a long shot. Not unless you have way more money to toss around than I do, or maybe if you read 20 hardback best-sellers a year. If I did not have $1500 a year that was earmarked for travel and gadgets, I would be WAY outside the market for this thing. But is it cool? Yeah it's pretty cool, and genuinely futuristic, and I think... as someone who spends 4 hours a day on trains and subways... I'll use it a lot. But there are enough interface and feature quibbles, that I don't consider it a "home run". Honestly, it just makes me pine for the day Apple releases the iTouchMax/Newton3000/tablet-device that all the rumor mills claim they are working on.
SCREEN: Everything they say about the screen is true. Reading the "e-Ink" screen is nothing like reading a computer screen. It's a very odd image to wrap your head around, but it's much more paper-like than LCD-like. I wish the contrast were just a tiny bit greater (one review referred to the screen background as "dishwater grey") but I expect it to be as easy on the eyes as a normal book. Plus you can crank up the font-size to Old-Guy-With-Bifocal levels as needed. (Sometimes, see below.) The "blink" of the page-turns that a lot of people complain about when they first see the device...? I'm already starting to get used to it and ignore it.
FORM: I quite like the size of the DX, and it feels pretty sturdily built. Not quite iPod/iPhone sturdy, but close. It feels sleek and thin, but it's just a teensy bit too heavy. I know that seems like a silly complaint for something that weighs less than 20 ounces, but when you have an arthritic left thumb like I do... holding it up with one hand for too long is difficult. It's definitely designed for 2-handed use, or to be propped up on a lap or a knee.
CONTROLS: This is where I have complaints. I'm so spoiled by Apple's interface designs that I get VERY frustrated by things that don't work the way you expect them to without thinking about it. (Including Apple, by the way... I could make a list if you like) So when the Kindle has a click-joystick AND a "menu" button, and I find myself all the time clicking the click stick to make something happen that was supposed to use the menu button, well... someone has not thought out the UI well enough. The keyboard is impossible to type more than a few words on, but I don't expect to be doing so, so... whatever. I wish there was a "next page" button on both sides like the original, since apparently I like to hold a book in my left hand and do other things w/ my right. (Hold a drink/pen/slice of pizza). I think I will most often be using the device upside down (the screen auto-rotates) so the button will be under my left thumb. Again - if there are users who prefer to use your device UPSIDE DOWN, then you have not thought out the controls well enough.
(The real problem here is that the device BEGS to have a touchscreen!)
FORMATS: A few frustrating things here. First of all, if it has a web browser, why can't it read html files? Second, everyone complains about the no-folders problem for organizing your files. I've enacted a three letter tagging system to group my titles (FIC, SCI, REF, etc) but folders would be better. The fact that it puts txt files under "Books" and pdfs under "Documents" makes no sense at all. Some of my pdfs are BOOKS and some of my txt files are personal documents.
As far as plain text files go... I had of helluva time getting text files from Project Gutenberg to display properly on the Kindle, because they come with hard linefeeds that (depending on your font size) will generally not match the width of the Kindle, so the lines wind up all crazy. So you have to find a text editing program (like BBedit) that can easily strip that stuff from the file before putting it on your Kindle. Not always of course... depends where you got the file. I got a bunch of Arthur C Clarke txt files off P2P that display perfectly. The website ManyBooks.net has a bunch of Gutenberg's content already converted to the native Kindle format, which is nice. (Stuff in this format displays perfectly.)
Now, on to PDFs... a really mixed bag. The lack of a zoom or any ability to resize pdfs means that some large format/small type stuff is virtually unreadable, even in landscape mode. Any pdf that has page margins the size of a paperback or a small novel will work fine. (A Harry Potter book in pdf format displays at a perfectly readable size.) But large textbooks that have bigger-than-8x11-pages... or magazines with a 3 column layout... forget it, with my eyes anyway. Given that one of the markets for the Kindle was supposed to be college students... I dunno... not unless some of the textbook manufacturers seriously reformat their content.
One last issue - if a pdf file is text-based, then it displays quickly, but if it is based on an IMAGE SCAN (such as many of the books from GoogleBooks) the display is unusably slow. As in... page turns take 5 or 6 seconds. Not cool.
WEB BROWSER: Amazon refers to the browser on the Kindle as "Experimental", which I suppose is code for - we know this doesn't work too well, so don't bitch about it. I can describe the experience of using the Kindle web browser quite vividly, for some of you. Has anyone out there ever surfed the web on a Mac Plus or Mac Classic using NSCA Mosaic 2.0? That's almost exactly what this is like. Same screensize, same greyscale, same speed, same clunkily displayed HTML. And yet - it's fucking FREE people!! So, while I won't be doing loads of surfing on it, the ability to Wikipedia something really quick or pull up some news sites or blogs that have a good text-only mobile feed... I'm pretty excited about it.
OTHER FEATURES The text-to-speech ("Story Time with Dr. Hawking"!) is useless. The background music/mp3 implementation suffers from the lack of controls or organization. You put some files on it, it plays them in order, you hit F to skip. No back? No shuffle? I haven't used any of the subscription services yet, but I'm sure I will. They all come with a 14 day trial period that you can cancel with no fee, so I'm sure I will subscribe to all of them for 10 days, one at a time. For my trip this week, I'll probably sign up for the NY Times and Salon.com or something.
(Oh, and... for what we paid for this thing, could you throw in a cheap cloth slip-case?? I know part of your business model is selling $50 leather folios for the thing but... fuck... give us SOMETHING.)
UPSHOT? Is this thing worth the almost-$500 price tag? No. Not by a long shot. Not unless you have way more money to toss around than I do, or maybe if you read 20 hardback best-sellers a year. If I did not have $1500 a year that was earmarked for travel and gadgets, I would be WAY outside the market for this thing. But is it cool? Yeah it's pretty cool, and genuinely futuristic, and I think... as someone who spends 4 hours a day on trains and subways... I'll use it a lot. But there are enough interface and feature quibbles, that I don't consider it a "home run". Honestly, it just makes me pine for the day Apple releases the iTouchMax/Newton3000/tablet-device that all the rumor mills claim they are working on.
Monday, June 15
dear postal service...
This...
... is not "TRACKING". Telling me that, just before noon yesterday, my package arrived at some undisclosed location between here and Indiana... this information does me NO FUCKING GOOD AT ALL.
A stamp costs what, a buck seventy-nine nowadays? Invest a little of that in a computer and a laser-scanner-thingy for fuck's sake.
This...
... is not "TRACKING". Telling me that, just before noon yesterday, my package arrived at some undisclosed location between here and Indiana... this information does me NO FUCKING GOOD AT ALL.
A stamp costs what, a buck seventy-nine nowadays? Invest a little of that in a computer and a laser-scanner-thingy for fuck's sake.
Tuesday, June 9
dr. dave - "peekster"...
Take a minute to watch your humble host publicly dis Apple and reveal himself to be a cheap bastard... ALL CAPTURED ON VIDEO!
Take a minute to watch your humble host publicly dis Apple and reveal himself to be a cheap bastard... ALL CAPTURED ON VIDEO!
Thursday, June 4
whore...
This consulting gig of mine has started requiring about an hour or two of work out of me every day. There are 2 big workshops this summer, so there are all sorts of conference calls to make and schedules to write up and documents to prepare. And what I have learned from doing this hour or two of work every day is that I'm really only good for an hour or two of work every day. Meaning Im dumping all my most productive hours into the consulting stuff, and doing very little of the work I need to do for ME. And because the work I do for ME doesn't pay$93.50 an hour, there isn't much incentive to change the situation.
This consulting gig of mine has started requiring about an hour or two of work out of me every day. There are 2 big workshops this summer, so there are all sorts of conference calls to make and schedules to write up and documents to prepare. And what I have learned from doing this hour or two of work every day is that I'm really only good for an hour or two of work every day. Meaning Im dumping all my most productive hours into the consulting stuff, and doing very little of the work I need to do for ME. And because the work I do for ME doesn't pay$93.50 an hour, there isn't much incentive to change the situation.
Wednesday, June 3
mail time...
Well, I'm on the train to the city for the first time in weeks. I had hoped to get a little work done, but instead I spent the WHOLE TIME answering nagging emails that have been piling up in my inbox.
My problem lately is that I have this belief that once I accomplish ONE THING for the day, the day is over, and I need not apply myself to any more tasks. This means that I will be able to accomplish roughly 60-80 things this summer. I wonder what they will be?
Well, I'm on the train to the city for the first time in weeks. I had hoped to get a little work done, but instead I spent the WHOLE TIME answering nagging emails that have been piling up in my inbox.
My problem lately is that I have this belief that once I accomplish ONE THING for the day, the day is over, and I need not apply myself to any more tasks. This means that I will be able to accomplish roughly 60-80 things this summer. I wonder what they will be?
Tuesday, June 2
this week...
TODAY: Sent inquiries to two publishers I talked to at the conference over the weekend. One a reputable academic publisher of a successful philosophy series, another, a publisher of graphic novels based on historical figures and classic literature. Guess which one I'm most excited about?
TOMORROW: Meeting with the director of a new charter school in the morning to discuss their science curriculum. Being interviewed for a cable-access TV show in the afternoon.
THE NEXT DAY: Consultant conference call in the morning. Then meeting with the director of a new charter school in the afternoon to discuss their science curriculum. A different one.
Someone who didn't know better might mistake me for a successful scientist.
TODAY: Sent inquiries to two publishers I talked to at the conference over the weekend. One a reputable academic publisher of a successful philosophy series, another, a publisher of graphic novels based on historical figures and classic literature. Guess which one I'm most excited about?
TOMORROW: Meeting with the director of a new charter school in the morning to discuss their science curriculum. Being interviewed for a cable-access TV show in the afternoon.
THE NEXT DAY: Consultant conference call in the morning. Then meeting with the director of a new charter school in the afternoon to discuss their science curriculum. A different one.
Someone who didn't know better might mistake me for a successful scientist.
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