Adventures in home working

I have had an excellent Minolta Dimage Z1 camera for a couple of years, but the 10X zoom makes it really heavy and awkward to carry so I tend not to take it with me.  In particular there’s no way to carry it in the gadget pocket of my everyday rucksack, or my bum bags or pocket.  As a result I have been after something that:

1. Uses rechargeable batteries – cheap to run
2. Has a docking station for charging and USB connectivity – easy to use and always ready
3. Has a USB mass storage interface – no drivers or other software to install
4. Used SD cards - which I have plenty of
5. Is small and light
6. Is robust enough to not need a carry case
7. Is cheap

Ebay came to the rescue again and I managed to find a Nikon Coolpix S2 for

My second hand Thinkpad X60 tablet arrived today via HireIT and eBay.  Its an ex eval model and in perfect condition even though it was less than half price.  Even better HireIt seem to give you whatever model they have available and in my case the spec was up-rated quite a bit from the model they were selling on eBay.

So that’s the good bit,  the not so bad bits were:

1. I got the Tablet and the power supply, no manuals, disks etc.  No loss really
2. They had installed their standard image onto the machine,  not too bad an image as they go, but unbelievably on a TABLET they had installed XP Pro!!

For the average user this would be a bit if a issue, but not for me as I was going to blow the image away anyway and install Vista.  This is what I did to get a completely clean Vista install:

1. First off I wanted to delete the IBM hidden system restore partition as I don’t need this backup capability.
2. To do this you need to go into the BIOS by pressing F1 during boot and pick security,  and then PreDesktop and then select disabled.  The partition will then be visible to Vista
3. Boot from the Vista DVD by pressing F12 during boot, initially go into repair operating system, and open up a command prompt
4. At the command prompt run diskpart – you will use this to delete the partition (5GB)
5. The following instructions DELETE ALL YOUR PARTITIONS, i.e destroy all data on your disk!!!
6. I don’t remember the exact DISKPART command but it goes something like this.  Type SELECT DISK 0, LIST PARTITION, SELECT PARTITION 1, DELETE PARTITION OVERRIDE.  do this for every partion on the disk. 
7. Reboot and hit F12, this time install Vista rather than repair.  You will only be presented with the option to do a customized install because you have deleted the old partitions
8. Install Vista
9. In my case at the end of the install both wireless and wired networks were working fine so I left Vista alone for an hour to download and install all the updates
10. I then installed an Anti-virus product, in my case the free and excellent AVG Free
11. The I installed the excellent Thinkvantage system update utility and installed everything except the rescue and recovery tool (this is the backup product that I didn’t want to use)
12. This downloads and installs most of the drivers, help files etc that you need, but strangely a few are missing.
13. You also need to install the Active Protection System, this is needed it you want the auto-rotate function to work
14. And you want the Shortcut menu
15. Once you have installed the shortcut menu press the key associated with it – between screen rotate and escape, and pick settings (lower left) and enable ActiveRotate
16. That’s all I’ve noticed so far

Over the holidays I decided to give my ageing Treo 650 a tune up.  I wanted to develop a more efficient workflow.  Here’s what I came up with:

1. I have my Treo on my desk all through the day, its a waste of space, so I decided that it would make a great clock.  To achieve that I needed to configure it to keep the display illuminated when it was docked during normal working hours.  CradleCare does this well and Big Time is a great clock with a large display giving date and time and two additional time zones (I normally work with Australia and the East Coast of the USA).
2. Mobile reception in my house is dreadful and I get quite a few mobile calls, which is a real drag.  I wanted my Treo to automatically forward all calls to my business line when its docked and unforward when its undocked.  CradleCare does this as well.
3. I have wireless email but I find I don’t use it that much, as most of the time I am out I don’t want emails intruding into my quiet time. What I need more is a copy of my Inbox, all my Sent emails and a few key folders like my Admin folder (that has all my licence keys, order numbers, procedures etc in it) my Wireless email doesn’t do this so as an experiment I have switched back to using mNotes again.  mNotes is very slick!  If I really need emails on the move I can get them on my Tablet PC.
4. I find it annoying that after a restart the phone doesn’t get turned on and the SD card doesn’t mount.  PowerUp and CradleCare again do this just great
5. I always forget to sync up, so I need a way to automate it, CradleCare to the rescue again!
6. To make sure that the clock gets displayed after each hourly synch I need a way to restart it automatically,  AfterSync (freeware) does this.
7. I love podcasts and need a quick and easy way to get them onto the phone,  I have a 2GB SD card and I used to pop it into an external reader.  I tried card export but it Wasn’t reliable.  Then I found the less flashy Card Reader and it works perfectly,  I have never had an issue with it even copying over 1GB of files at a time!

All in all I think the software cost about

Ricardo from El Salvador just emailed me asking me how I managed to install the Palm Desktop on a Tablet PC.  Palm say it’s not supported, but it’s worked fine for me, once I managed to get it installed, which seems to work fine provided you follow these instructions:

1. uninstall any earlier version of palm desktop
2. restart Windows
3. make sure nothing else is running (i.e. don’t start any applications)
4. install palm desktop
5. when it hangs at ‘removing backup files’, bring up task manager (right click on the task bar) , go to process tab and kill any and all ‘idriver.exe’ instances
6. Installation should then continue

IF this doesn’t work first time, give the process above another try, some people report that it doesn’t always work first time, although I have never had to repeat the process myself.

I have just installed Vista RC1 – build 5600 – and want to use the trick I posted a while back that allows me to disconnect from a remote desktop connection to my Tablet, without my tablet locking (i.e. presenting the login screen).  On XP to do this I would run a batch file that contained the command:

tscon.exe 0 /dest:console

Under Vista to achieve the same thing the command needs to be:

tscon.exe RDP-Tcp#0 /dest:console

this command needs to run as administrator, so in my case I right click on the shortcut on my desktop and pick “Run as administrator”

when combined with synergy, this allows me to:

1. use my tablet display but my desktop keyboard and mouse for casual tasks
2. click on a saved RDP config file that brings up a full screen RDP session to my Tablet on my left hand screen when I want to do some more serious work, I prefer this because I get a lot more screen area to work with and because under Vista UAC prompts can not be responded to using synergy, but they can be responded to over RDP
3. right click disconnect.bat when I have finished with my RDP session, which leaves my tablet just where I started and without having to login etc, I can just continue working with it using synergy.

I don’t like having the room light on while working at my PC, so this idea on Lifehacker gave me the kick I needed to come up with a cheap way to backlight my monitors and it works really well.

Behind my displays I have a 30W 1 Meter fluorescent light fitting which kicks out the equivalent of 3*60W bulbs,  I added a small inline toggle switch for easy access. 

The effect is excellent, I get a nice background of reflected light that means I can clearly see everything on my desk, but I also get this great glow behind the monitors which is really easy on the eye.  Overall I am very pleased with the effect, and as a twist I assembled it all during a conference call briefing this afternoon – one of the best conference calls yet!

National Semiconductor recently decided to give all of their employees an iPod, according to their press release:

Our employees were vital contributors to our most successful year in National’s 47-year history, and we wanted to equip them with the tools to help us create more value for our customers

This is pretty original,  I’ve heard of companies giving their employees similar gifts for great performance, but never the whole workforce.  It seemed to me a pretty bold move, especially when you consider how they plan to use the iPods, once all their employees have them:

We’re looking for new and more effective ways to communicate with our employees — and the iPods will help us do both,” said Brian L. Halla, National’s chairman and CEO.

I got more insights from a Podcast by Podtech:

National Semiconductor announced Monday it’s just given every one of its 8,500 employees a 30GB video iPod. But employees won’t just be catching up on soaps or rocking out at work. Jeff Weir, the company’s director of Worldwide PR, said the company will be podcasting corporate messages, product information and the like – right into its employees’ earbuds.

I really liked this idea,  I think the iPod could a great corporate communications channel and this certainly seems to the the vision of the company as I listened to the podcast, however I was a little disappointed the more I heard:

1. There was a lot of focus on the delivery of broadcast quality training and corporate communications, produced professionally from a studio,  this ruled out a lot of potential content
2. The idea of letting individuals within the business podcast was not being considered
3. The idea of routinely recording audio and web conferences and making them available had not been considered
4. The idea of ad-hoc communication via podcasts, for example letting managers podcast weekly status reports etc was not on the agenda
5. Microsoft channel 9 type video blogging that would increase cross company awareness had not been considered

Overall it seemed an opportunity missed and many of these additional use cases could have been achieved just by providing managers with an iPod and an external microphone.  Even so it seemed that National Semiconductor would have generated a lot of goodwill with it’s employees and that’s worth a lot right, wrong:

1. Even though National spun the iPods as a reward to the employees, those leaving the company were asked for them back, which generated a lot of negative press
2. It seems that a lot of employees didn’t seem to understand the importance of the iPod as a necessary part of the new way of doing business at National and decided to give their iPods away or sell them on eBay,  as soon as you can no longer assume everyone has an iPod it’s value is reduced.

Would I have done the same?  Not on reflection, instead I would have given every employee a Windows Mobile 5 Phone (assuming they were a Microsoft Exchange user), and a 2GB SD card and a USB cable for work and home.  I would have also made it clear that it was a company tool, that they had to use until they left the company at which point they could keep it.  That way I would have:

1. provided everyone with a platform for mobile email, calendar and applications
2. reduced my phone handset costs
3. still provided a great platform for podcasts
4. not had the problems with people leaving, because they could take it with them

Although I guess I would have created myself another problem – who picked up the bill for the mobile data usage!

I work quite a lot on mobility but I still find it difficult to get good insights into the way different companies use PDAs and other mobility solutions, so I was surprised when I came across this post by Mary Beth Raven.  In the post she asks her readers:

As we speak to customers, we are hearing about the growing use (some call it their “addiction to”) of Blackberries and other PDAs. This has made us curious about a few things regarding how people at your company use them and how you use them.

If you read through the 38 comments to the post you get a really good insight, at least I found it very useful

For the last few weeks I have been testing an iMate SP5,  I had high hopes for it thinking it would be a great complement for my TC1100 Tablet.  My main requirements (with scores) were as follows:

• small enough to take anywhere *****
• worked great as a phone *****
• seamlessly receive push email in the background without impacting mp3 playback ******
• basic calendar, mainly used in day view ***
• ability to lookup people in company address book for email and phone numbers  X
• mp3 playback of mainly podcasts and recorded conference calls ***
• rock solid stability ***

Overall conclusion:

I really liked it, but won’t be keeping it.  In the end it just doesn’t compare with the Treo 650 which with a few important additions is optimised for me to be the perfect device.

Detailed conclusions:

The SP5 is a compromise device,  if you start out wanting a great phone with a well integrated contact address book then you are onto a winner.  The fact that you also get calendar integration and email are real bonuses.  Because I have a Tablet I hadn’t expected to use the SP5 to send emails - I have never been very comfortable with a keypad – but the SP5 has well integrated voice email functionality so I ended up using that a lot whenever I needed to send or reply to email.

Size – great, very small and light, keys are a reasonable size
Sound – the external speaker was very loud,  much louder than the Treo,  sound via the headset was ok too.
Battery life – reasonable – about one day of intensive use
Stability – I have had to restart it on average once every 5 days, once because it completely froze and all the other times because it slowed to a crawl.
Bluetooth – not tested
Storage – Mini SD card, under battery.  Not very easy to change but I used a 1GB card and so it was fairly roomy, drag and drop of files made it easy to add/delete files without taking the SD card out of the device.
PC integration – ability to copy files to and from the SD card was very reliable,  I copied hundreds of MB’s at a time without a hitch, application installation was quick and easy.  I actually didn’t need to use ActiveSync as all my sync was wireless via OneBridge which is just as well as I had an issue with Active Sync, caused by using Windows 2003 Server.
Speed – just acceptable, no where near as fast as the Treo, switching between applications was painfully slow at times.  However music always played just fine
Launcher – I dislike the fact that I can not control the order in which the applications appear, but otherwise it works ok
Buttons – rubbish there are not enough hardware buttons and no modifier keys to make the few buttons it does have dual use.  I really like hardware shortcut buttons on my Treo so this was a big usability issue for me
Wifi – never got it configured, not sure what I would use it for
Phone – great, I think the signal strength was better than my Treo, the speaker phone was loud and easy to use.  The call history is good, quick redial is good.  I particularly liked the fact that you could do a type down search against the call history.
Contacts – great,  but I really wanted directory lookup, which didn’t work in my configuration – OneBridge GPRS connection to Lotus Notes.  I particularly liked the type down search
Email – great for reading, even with the small screen emails were easy to read.  Wireless synchronisations worked well, ticking away in the background.  On the Treo OneBridge can not run in the background with an mp3 playing without causing the mp3 to stutter every 10 seconds or so,  so I had to use on demand sync.  Great for sending email as well provided you already have the person in your address book, or are replying to an email.  In both cases sending is only viable if you are a keypad wizard or – in my case – you are happy to record and send voice notes.  I think voice notes are fantastic and seem a much better idea than sending terse emails that are easily misinterpreted
MP3 player – I really didn’t like Windows media player,  it’s handling of podcasts is poor, its library management is fiddly, the lack of a slider to skip backwards and forwards in long podcasts was annoying, the headphones were ok, but I really missed the ability to use the button on the headset to control the media player.  On the Treo you can use Headset control to turn any wired headset into a remote control.  I tried 3 or 4 alternative media players Pocket Player was the best but it’s no where near as good as Pocket Tunes on the Treo.
IE – ok if you are really desperate to browse the web,  but obviously the screen size and slow speed make it a real challenge.
Task manager – rubbish, but then I don’t use task management in Notes, so I never really used it
Calendar – poor – the day view is pretty good,  I personally hated the week and month views but I am sure others must use them for something.  Creating personal appointments works, but you can not create meetings, invite remote attendees and have this information sync to Lotus Notes.
Voice Notes – I had high hopes for the voice notes function, but the quality was very low and their was no hardware button for it.  I use CallRec on my Treo and this is amazing well integrated, especially if you make most of your voice notes whilst listening to podcasts or music like I do.  It also records phone calls.
Camera – pretty good, much better than the Treo as expected.  I am a big fan of good camera’s in phones I think they are incredibly useful, especially with good desktop integration like that promised by OneNote
RSS reader – I tried out NewsGator Mobile.  I had very high hopes for it,  the usability and speed were acceptable and I think it would have saved me a little time at my desk because I could use it whilst queueing etc.  In practice as it was a beta I found too many bugs in the synchronisation to be able to use it much.

SP5 vs Treo 650

I have used a Treo 650 for over a year so when I was asked to test the SP5 it was only on the condition that I could keep the Treo in case the SP5 failed to impress.  I knew the Treo would be hard to beat!  What surprised me was how subtle features made the Treo the better SmartPhone for me, and also how good the low cost/free software is for the Treo.  It seems obvious to me that the developer community has taken to th palm platform and the Treo in particular with great enthusiasm and fixed many small usability issues.  

The SP5 wins over the Treo in only a few areas:

• Smoother multi-tasking, in particular this is noticeable with the email background synchronisation that never seems to affect other functions of the device.  On the Treo OneBridge in particular causes mp3 playback to stutter
• Smaller and lighter, the Treo is not a small device, however you do get a keyboard!  However the weight really affects me now as I have a couple of great clip in cases that are very easy to use, and get close to the dock in case experience of the Blackberry.
• Voice notes/Email integration,  this is very slick and easy to use on the SP5.  Definitely a feature I will be requesting on Treo.
• PC integration, especially the ability to drag and drop files from the desktop.  I use Card Export on the Treo to do the same thing,  but it’s not as reliable or as easy to use

The Treo wins over the SP5 in all other areas,  but particularly worthy of note:

• The media playback experience, especially for podcasts and recorded events
• The larger screen and keyboard, make reading longer documents easier
• The touch screen, means that more functions can be surfaces for easy access, on the SP5 you have fewer features and the few there are are hidden away behind several menus
• The voice recording, this really is very slick on the Treo,  as I do a lot of my research on the move,  I listen to a lot of podcasts, conference sessions, analyst briefings, recorded conference calls etc on my Treo.  Using headset control I can pause/play/skip them with a single headset button click and now with CallRec I can record snipets from them, or record notes for myself – ideas, web sites, book names etc – with a single side button click.  If a make or receive a phone call my media player auto-pauses and restarts after the call and I can also record all or any part of the call with a single side button click as well.

I like a good keyboard and really struggle even with the so so keyboard on my Treo 650.  However one of my friends can tap out messages pretty quickly without even looking at his phone number pad and many people have told me that most kids can do this really rapidly (although not mine – not enough allowance to text all the time ).  This seems to be the first of many ways in which I really am being left behind by the youth of today and I need to start to think carefully about assumptions I make. 

This need for vigilance will probably become increasingly true when it comes to disruptive technologies like the keyboard alternatives that Microsoft has recently been showing off for small format devices.  I have tried software implementations of them and failed hopelessly to use them effectively,  but I can imagine that kids will soon be using them to enter text as fast as I can on my full sized keyboard!