if connected

Today, I’ve been testing out an Arc mouse, which Microsoft created for laptops. People forget that Microsoft makes hardware — at least mice and keyboards — and has done for years, way before the Xbox or the Zune.

The Arc mouse looks like something Apple designed, except it’s black. However, Microsoft’s website does the Arc no justice, unlike Apple’s representation of its gear.

The Arc is both innovative and yet still does many things right:
(Many flawed products have far too much innovation.)

• The mouse folds for transport. The action of opening it up automatically switches it on.
• The tiny USB wireless transmitter attaches to the mouse underside using magnets when not in use. Plus Microsoft supplies a pouch to keep the mouse clean.
• The fold design makes the mouse large to hold, but small to put into a bag. It’s close to a best of both worlds between desktop and laptop.
• Works without any extra software on both Windows and Mac OS. Although, to have the extra button trigger Expose on Mac OS requires a driver install.

So far, so good, but like all mobile products the jury is out until I’ve been using it for a few days.

After the pain of trying to download Windows 7 and failing repeatedly (you need to use Internet Explorer which installs an Akamai download manager), I’ve installed the beta on a Mac using Boot Camp. I’ve previously used Vista 32bit on the same machine. Win7 seems to be working fine.

So far, only had time for initial impressions:-

• Appearance – Looks very like Vista with the exception of the start bar and the system tray. I rather liked Vista’s look — especially the translucent window border — so this isn’t bad by me. But if Microsoft is trying to distance Windows 7 from Vista then they should try harder!
• Memory – Idle memory on start-up is lower than Vista. I’m not sure how much lower as I’m making a guesstimate by comparing this vanilla install with a Vista that had many applications set-up, some of which ran on start.
• Sleep/wake – Goes in and out faster than my old Vista install, but slower than XP or Mac OS.
• Functionality – It really doesn’t seem much different. The only enhancement I’ve noticed and liked is that the ‘tray’ icon for the current WiFi network shows signal strength. The hyped ‘jump’ menus from the application task bar icons seem a little pointless.
• Boot camp / running on a Mac – The Vista Apple boot camp hardware drivers installed just as they would on Vista and seem to be working. This appears to confirm that there is little under the bonnet difference. I will try running Windows 7 under VM Ware Fusion later this week.

Unusually, while commuting to the office on the tube yesterday, I used my laptop to work rather than my mobile phone.

Two things made this possible:

• My new laptop has a flash “hard drive” which means there’s no risk that bumps will damage it — really important on the tube — and also it’s fast to start up and put into sleep.
• This time of year there are seats available. Laptops don’t work standing up, unlike phones, unless someone knows otherwise?

This year I learnt a pile of new things:

At least one hospital cares little about mobile phone use. As my son was being born, a phone rang in the corner of the operating theatre. My other half started blaming me, but the consultant answered her phone so ending the argument.

Hospital walls are too thick for good 3g reception. I spent many a night browsing online with my laptop in a hospital room on mobile broadband, but it kept falling back to 2G.

Some cameraphones really do have good enough cameras. On an increasing number of occasions I have left my real camera at home, instead taking a mobile. I even went to a wedding with just my cameraphone.

Working for a company that is bought by a larger competitor has plus sides. Can’t talk in detail here.

Flash/SSD drives for laptops transform the convenience of using laptops. It’s their quietness as much as their speed that makes them a pleasure to use. Hopefully in 2009 I’ll be saying how much better their reliability is as well. It’s too soon to say now.

TV set-top boxes are becoming louder than PCs. Plus, they crash about as often, based on my experience with a UK pay TV DVR supported by a little Google searching.

Babies can be distracted from using your laptop with a fake keyboard. But only a real mobile phone will satisfy them.

WiFi works better for location finding in cities than GPS. Mobile handset GPS’ have particularly poor reception indoors. Even dedicated GPS units struggle.

Dell’s next day on-site repair is less convenient than a drop off service. Having to wait at home for several days in succession during a repeated failure to repair a PC is a much greater waste of time than using a repair centre.

Every time I set up a new computer it seems to take ages. I’ve wondered how much of that pain were subjective perceptions caused by the number of clicks / restarts vs the actual time taken.

This time I kept note.

The new laptop has both Windows XP and Mac OS installed. I can make comparisons as both Mac and Windows are using the same hardware.

Scorecard Windows XP, using bootcamp. (Note, this could have taken longer: I downloaded Windows updates on an above average speed connection (12Mbps), apps had been downloaded ahead):-

• Windows = 23 minutes for XP itself (SP2).
• Windows updates = 42 minutes. Included four reboots to install and update Windows.
• Drivers = 14m… another reboot
• Windows applications = 124 minutes, including a further two reboots.

Windows total = 203 minutes, or 23 minutes over three hours, with seven reboots. But I’ve not still not migrated across all my data yet or tweaked all the numerous application preferences. The worst of it was that I had to be present for every minute.

Mac OS = Unsure exactly, as I didn’t need to do much and left it running, probably about three hours in total.

The Mac ‘migration assistant’ is one of the Mac’s best kept secrets. It will transfer everything from either another Mac or a Time Machine backup. For me, it copied across all my applications (including third party ones, both paid and free), preferences and documents. I left it running which made it feel painless.

I fell of my chair when I realised what it had successfully done and how much effort it saved me.

Migrating to a Mac is about as painful as migrating from one PC to another. But migrating from an old Mac to a new one is absolutely simple, provided both run Leopard.

Public WiFi is tricky to find and hotspots always seems to require some different arcane sign-on process. Logging on via a scratch card token or entering credit card details is slow. Every sign-on web UI is different and requires concentration to make sure things work first time. The comprehensive roaming agreements between “networks” that would make this easier have never happened. Even if they had, they wouldn’t cover the numerous one-off free hotspots that still require a web log-in for t&c compliance.

Worse, once connected, WiFi hotspots often block some applications/uses but not others, or deliver poor speeds. But it’s only possible to test this after paying the WiFi connection charge or the indirect charge for the coffee needed to be able to sit in the particular cafe with WiFi. In Europe, that WiFi charge is often greater than an entire month of mobile broadband use.

Mobile broadband is quick to connect to and predictable.

Yesterday, I wanted to check something online fast on my laptop while I joined a conference call. I booted the laptop. I could see a faint BT Openzone WiFi signal but ignored it as I only had one hand free to type my credit card number and I wasn’t sure the signal was strong enough to be reliable. Instead, I hit the connect button on screen and my laptop created a bluetooth connection to the Nokia phone I had and went online. Time to connect was about 20 seconds, no more, and as soon as I was online I knew for sure that email, IM and everything else I needed would work as I’d used this mobile network for Internet access many times before.

WiFi is faster and less battery draining, but for genuinely mobile out-and-about use the convenience of mobile broadband wins.

1. The more digital stuff you own the more you have that can fail.
2. The more stuff, the more of your time you will be spending trying to resolve customer care problems and fix failures.
3. You own too much digital stuff if you have no time left to have a digital life, due to the time spent fixing things.
4. Warranties, backups and insurance will not give you back the time you wasted trying to talk, or talking with, customer care or restoring your backup.
5. The last failure you had is no guide to the next failure. Never fight the last failure, always be prepared for new ones.
6. The more mobile phones and broadband connections you have the better. One working connection is all you need to be happy, and to contact customer care about the others.
7. The more devices you own the more variery of failures you will enjoy.
8. More devices does not mean you will have a suitable replacement device when one fails. You will discover that all devices are unique in some subtle way that will only become clear when you need that device to stand in for one that has failed.
9. Price and brand are no guide to how likely something digital is to fail. Everyone uses the same underlying components now, often it’s these that are the root of fail.
10. Murphy will play rock, scissor, paper with your digital stuff’s weaknesses: Drop proof items will never be dropped, water resistant ones will never have water spilt on them, and surge protected items will never encounter a power cut.

This post was prompted tonight by a failure of my home broadband, but I’ve had so many fails over the last few years that these rules have been a very long time cooking.