dc0de’s & friends notes…

This is why I'm not getting one...

The iPad may be “cool” but I fail to see the point.  It’s not going to be the “next big thing”, tablets have been out for YEARS people, and they are relegated to minimalistic roles in the computing industry.  Would I use a tablet? Sure, if I had a way to input information as fast as I can type, which at last test was in the 55/wpm range.  Voice recognition isn’t there, handwriting analysis isn’t there, so what is the purpose of a “tablet” based computer?  Here’s what I can see as a viable use for such a product:

• reading documentation (similar to a kindle & other ebook readers)
• drawing and sketching
• surfing the web with a mouse only, as typing is cripplingly slow on any tablet interface
• performing tasks that currently have specialized equipment, such as retail inventory systems and bar code scanning
• a new pretty interface for McDonalds(tm) POS terminals

Aside from those, this is just another pretty toy.  When you couple it’s fixed configuration and limited battery life, you’re going to be sending it to the scrap pile in 3 years, adding to the pile of trash that we as Americans produce.  I’m still not giving up my laptop or my netbook, as they are both upgradeable (to a point), and provide all of the same functionality that I could get with the iPad.  Until there is a fully upgradeable tablet computer with a full keyboard that has the battery life of my netbook, I really don’t need this toy.

Way to go Apple, another non-green product for our future.

Official Gmail Blog: Today’s vowel outage.

In yet another blow of outages and problems for the Cloud Computing proponents, it seems that Gmail has suffered yet another problem.  Over the past year, Cloud Computing supporters have raged over the features and benefits of computing “in the cloud”, yet outages like these continue to occur in massive numbers.

Google‘s Gmail blog today noted that they are suffering problems with their flagship free email service.  The blog post states that the problem was noted at 6:01am Pacific time, and that it began spreading to other data centers in an almost virulent fashion.  The gmail blog goes on to state that the letters a,e,i,o, and u, are missing from the alphabet on their web servers.  Google has yet to determine why this is happening, and recommends that you track their blog for ongoing details.  (linked here)

The Gmail staff and Google headquarters have refused to comment on this outage, stating, “We do not discuss ongoing technical support issues.”