Steve's Seaside Life

Daily Archive: May 10, 2005

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jk makes the right choice – a TC1100!

Tc1100_2It may be an old machine, but it is still in many ways a near perfect design.  I have listed before the problems I had with my original TC1100, and why I changed my mind, but at the end of the day fixing the problems would introduce new weaknesses.  jk of jkOnTheRun documents his decision process.

so I have ordered the HP tc1100.  The tc1100 has a 10.4″ screen and only weighs 3.1 pounds without the keyboard attached which I really like.  This is the closest device to my dream mini-Tablet in both size and function.  The tc1100 is a true hybrid Tablet with a keyboard that can be attached or detached at will so it will be the best solution for the way that I work.

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The End of Corporate Computing – Rubbish!

WaterIn this article Nicholas Carr describes the “End of Corporate Computing” and justifies as follows:

Three technological advances are enabling this change: virtualization, grid computing and Web services. Virtualization erases the differences between proprietary computing platforms, enabling applications designed to run on one operating system to be deployed elsewhere. Grid computing allows large numbers of hardware components, such as servers or disk drives, to effectively act as a single device, pooling their capacity and allocating it automatically to different jobs. Web services standardize the interfaces between applications, turning them into modules that can be assembled and disassembled easily.

I don’t see it this way at all for the following reasons:

  • Corporate computing is about people, employees, customers, suppliers etc and their interactions.  None of these people think of computing as Virtualised Servers, Storage, Grids etc.  These are the utilities that corporate computing runs upon, not the essence of Corporate Computing.  This analogy is like saying the end of corporate heating and lighting, just because electricity is supplied by a utility.
  • Slightly closer to the truth is the part concerning Web Services, but again he looses me when he says “modules that can be assembled and disassembled easily”,  surely this …

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X1 Now Searches Notes

X1X1 Technologies on Friday started shipping a version of its X1 Desktop Search software that supports Lotus Notes, the first time that the local and network search product has deigned to deal with IBM’s messaging product.  I installed it but Notes does not appear in the list of Email systems to index, so I will have to investigate 🙁

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RSS grows beyond blogs

RssThis article describes numerous uses for RSS that go beyond the ubiquitous blog.  It’s an interesting read, especially because it confines itself to implemented uses, rather than the hundreds of uses we can envision.  On a related note I noticed this quote in an article by CRN:

Microsoft partisans imagine a day when business users get realtime pings on their Office desktop software whenever their ERP systems detect inventories below a certain level. Beneath the covers, that simple-looking alert will rely on a confluence of technologies, including Office desktop applications, Microsoft’s planned “Maestro” realtime reporting server and a back-end SharePoint Portal/Excel Server combination.

Decidedly “RSS like” capability although probably not using RSS as the format.  The same article goes on to describe some of the conditional alerting that would be enabled by Excel Server:

“You’d set up an Excel model on the desktop, export it to the server, bind it to a [database] or, via Maestro, to an application source,” he said. “The model runs constantly on the server, feeding updated dashboard data via new Office 12 tools or a [business intelligence] tool. Or [it can] send you an e-mail or an instant-messaging or a VoIP call.” Microsoft, …

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Kids and Tablets

KidsusingtabletsMy daughter has recently inherited by old Tablet PC, a TC1000.  She has an auto-immune disorder and secondary Raynaud’s and these conditions mean that she suffers from cold hands, is very stiff and not that strong.  As a result she often struggles to carry her bag around and with writing.  About a year ago I wrote an article explaining why I thought a Tablet would help here and a few weeks ago I demonstrated my Tablet to the school teachers and her assessors.  As a result they have agreed that they will try and get her a grant for a Tablet ready for high school which is great news.  In addition they will get her a book scanner.  Although scanned books are not perfect, nor many eBooks, as I mention here, they are often better than paper.

In preparation she is taking her Tablet into school 3 days a week to get used to the logistics and the envious kids and how to deal with them.  Since she got the Tablet I noticed that she has started using the computer at home a lot more as well.  I often find her sitting in bed browsing the web, writing …