GearWERKZ TechBlog

Like many articles on the 'WERKz, this is an article written more so for the layman, less so for the technorati. This is for he or she who has perhaps not yet crossed that digital divide between their desktop environment into the mystical thing being called the Cloud. And it is not a general survey of every cloud computing productivity solution under the sun. It is a small discussion on the specific tools that I use and how I use them.

I have written a couple of articles of this ilk during my tour of duty over at CarryPad and UMPCPortal. This post is the first in what will be a short series of feature articles on the productivity tools that I use. What sparked a desire to revisit the topic was an intent to relay similar information as the two articles linked above, but to include information specific to my recent experiences on the Blackberry Playbook. In the buildup to that post, I thought it might be a good idea to revisit some oldies but goodies, and to put my "now" perspective on things.

Today, we are going to start with the desktop. While perhaps not as exciting as what is going on in terms of productivity in the mobile space, it all got started for me, as I am sure it did for many of us, on the desktop. The tools I seek out in the mobile environment are driven by either a desire to recapture those desktop experiences, or in some cases, an attempt to deliberately avoid them.

CMS - If part of your workflow involves posting content online, then you might want to get some of your work done in a CMS, or Content Management System. If you have gone through the motions of setting up a blog or other online journal, then you will have been exposed to this schema. It primarily revolves around going to the website URL where you have everyone else viewing your content, logging in as an admin, and entering an HTML workflow schema that allows you to manage posts, view site statistics, and manage media you have posted to or linked to the site. Many online services offer blog-type applications, such as Windows Live Blog and Google Blogger. There are also blog-specific services such as Tumblr. I specifically use a blogging engine that is provided as a service through my domain host. I have put in a little time, not a lot, at a few different blogs and so I have had some experience with a few different CMS'. Specifically WordPress, B2Evolution, and Typo3.

WordPress has tons of style sheets already written and facelifting a site can be pretty easy for a casual blogger, yielding appealing results that meet the minimum need of the non-pro. I have not had a chance to check out its auto-moderation tools, but they appear to be more robust than those in B2Evolution. B2 has far less robust tools, but does a good job of minimizing presentation anomalies as long as you use the HTML view. There are too many head-fakes in the WSYWIG view that make things come out not like what I see, so I tend to always work in the HTML view. Typo3 has a powerful set of tools, but like most things people will sell you, accessing that power is built around a need to master an arcane and tribal interface that is far more frustrating for the layperson to work in than it is worth.

That all being said, I almost never work on any content in the actual CMS. I far prefer writing offline in a basic text editor, or a cloud service, and then copying and pasting my content in to the CMS once I have written and edited once. Once I am in the CMS, then I start managing images and video integration into the post. I have heard some tech journalists comment on the fact that they work in their company's CMS directly. Unfortunately, I think that is part of the pathology of the decline of quality in a lot of tech news outlets. The order of the day is inflammatory headlines and click-bait galleries that have no mouse-overs, instead of the emphasis being on the written word and the quality of the ideas being communicated. I perceive that this is incentivized when you work directly in a CMS while writing. The naturally tendency might be to focus on managing the media content, layout, and presentation, rather than encapsulating the writing experience and focusing on communication. That potential distraction is why I choose to bifurcate my writing explicitly from the content management schema. I am not saying one way is definitively better than the other. I am just describing my own perception and concerns and reasons for structuring my own workflow as I do.

I am running a bit short on time this morning, so in the next post we will get into how I use Evernote, Springpad, DropBox, and Google Drive as cloud productivity tools.
- Vr/Jay

There was a time when Computer Jay (my digital world alter ego) was very tightly coupled to and defined by my browser experience. What I mean by that is that, about 3 years ago, I was very particular about my browser. You could say that my perspective was that none of the browsers offered were a perfect fit for my online workflow in every use-case. Sometimes Firefox fit the bill, sometimes Chrome, sometimes it was Opera. I didn't mind using Safari, and sometimes I was just forced to use Internet Explorer. In those years, having that range of choice was very important to me. And I tended to load each computer I ran with one browser, using a different product on each device.

These days, the relevance of that choice seems to be diminished, and perhaps not relevant at all. The truth is, without tight coupling to a bank of services that are persistent, my browser is just a commodity, and the presence of multiple browsers on the market seems to be unneccesary. None of the browsers translate their experience one-to-one to a mobile experience, so I am not compelled to pick a desktop browser that easily links to a mobile version. Certainly there are seamless browser experiences that are available via syncing. However, too often is the time that I am consuming content on a desktop browser that I am not interested in continuing in a mobile browser due to the viewing constraints on mobile platforms. So I do not personally need that hook, it and it just doesn't matter.

There was a time when different browsers offered different tools, and that made a difference. Now it is about services available via different pipes. My online workflow goes through my blog CMS front-end, Flickr's uploader, YouTube's Uploader, and note taking in Evernote and Springpad. So it no longer matters that one browser has a built-in FTP client. Or the ability to take notes in a discrete tab. The most important thing for me today is that my browser not get in the way of my utilization of the various services that form my self-realized workflow schema.

Today, the only feature that I really need from my browser is for it sync my bookmarks. I used to lean on XMarks for this function, and I am so glad that they were saved from extinction. However, that period of uncertaintly [when we were not sure if they were going to go under or not] made me find both my own local mechanisms for syncing bookmarks, and also forced me to place most of my trust in browser platforms that including bookmark syncing as a native feature.

Sure, I use my browser for streaming music. But it is more of a novelty and the result of experimentation that I do so that I can answer questions for others. It is never an experience that exceeds any local desktop music client in my opinion. So I do not need any special protocols or embedded browser functions that might accentuate the audio streaming experience.

I do manage my email in the cloud through my browser now, rather than run a local email client. However, I do not lean on Gmail for this experience. So I do not need any browser optimizations that enhance the utility of any specific emai client.

I will admit that I am not even sure if any of the browsers now enhance video playback and streaming through certain services or protocols over the others, but I can say that even if they did, I would not need this either. The PC and the browser are just not my central points of viewership now. That occurs predominantly via set-top boxes attached to large screen TVs and then mobile devices; predominantly tablets. The only thing that I care about with regards to browser capability today is that I be able to easily and readily disable Flash.

At the end of the day, it seems like there are no relevant browsers in the desktop space other than Chrome due to its tight coupling to your Google profile and Google services, and Internet Explorer because you just cannot get away from the thing. There was a time when Firefox was relevant because of the large number of plug-ins, and the fact that those plug-ins enabled capabilities that were not available as services. Opera was relevant as a competitor to browser heroes that were missing the mark in key areas that Opera could capitilize on; and because none of the browsers were particualrly fast. Safari was the equivalent of IE; Mac users could not get away from it, and Google services were not big enough for Mac users to have a large enough incentive to purposefully seek out Safari alternatives. I was a Mac user and I grew to find the difference between Firefox and Safari pretty ethereal. And I needed Safari in order to sync my iOS devices with a high level of reliability in the first years of the iPhone and iPad.

So today I use Chrome ubiquitously. The topic of how my Chrome experience does not translate 1:1 into the mobile space is worthy of a post of its own, so I will skip that conversation today. But even that is not a nod to Chrome and saying that it should be used above all others. It is more a statement about the fact that I am most dependent on service channels and I now need my browser to just not matter; to be as unobtrusive as possible.

When Chrome first arrived, I railed against its minimalist presentation. I wanted my ribbon bar, and a menu veritably spilling over with handles for control and options infinitum. Now I just want my browser to open and to never squawk at me; pretty much about anything. I want it to be fire and forget; to set my security options once, and not be bothered again unless I want or need to change something.

The browser developers and the tech media are having this ongoing dialogue about how much each browser is offering and about how much additional stuff the developers are putting in. Maybe we should be having conversations about how much our browser is like a windshield. It protects us from getting bugs stuck in our teeth going down the highway, but it never obstructs our view and if it were not for the occassional bug on the windshield, we would, in fact, forget that it was there.

- Drafted on the Acer Iconia Tab W500 mounted on a Griffin Tablet Stand and using a USB Mini-Keyboard and a Logitech M305 Wireless Mouse

GearWERKZ Thumbs Up: The most responsive GUI experience I have seen on an Android Tablet to date, ample storage of 32GB, rubberized back panel has a nice quality feel

GearWERKZ Thumbs Down: Buggy, inconsistent performance and user experience, too much crapware and it cannot all be uninstalled or hidden, hard reset does not actually wipe all user information

A good match for whose requirements: No one's. At best, I would only recommend this to avid and experienced Android users who are willing to try installing a custom ROM, or believe that they can work around the defects identified here while they hope for an update from Acer that will make it better.

It has been a trying time putting this review together. This is the first of what I hope will be many more formal reviews on GearWERKZ.net, so I have been spending some time in developing the framework and template of what content I wanted to cover. In addition to that, the review subject, the Acer Iconia Tab A510, has proven itself reluctant to be the target of the battery of tests I had planned. As will be the case with all devices reviewed on the 'WERKz, the intent of reviews here is to take a device for a 2 week test drive. I order it, receive it, unbox it, present immediate impressions, do a 1-week follow-up, and then a close-out at the 2-week point. The approach here is to have a device under test replace a slot in my current utility belt and use it as if it were my own; as if it were prepping for a 2 year tour of duty as part of my kit.

You can check out my unboxing and 1-week update videos. For this entry, the 2-week close-out, I am assuming that you are already familiar with that content. I will add that I have not read any other tech journalist/blogger reviews while this device has been in the 2-week test window. There are reasons I will get into closer to the end, but in some cases, I did not get some of the test events done that I had planned. Again, my approach is to use the device in real-world use-cases and report on those; less so to do things like run benchmarks. There are other sites that do that. So. Away we go.

Hardware

Battery Life - Subjective: After a full day on standby doing app recovery, the A510 had 83% battery power after about 12 hours. What I mean here is that I charged the device overnight, started recovering all my apps from my Google profile, and left the device running the recovery. When I got home 12 hours later, it was at 83%. From this anecdotal observation, it appears that the device will not be a battery hog. I had planned on doing a battery rundown test, but I cut the review short before doing so. It is one of the last things I do as it is not a priority. People rarely run their batteries down watching video in a single shot, but they do carry their mobile devices for a full work-day, or leave them on a stand until they get home at night in standby.

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Primary Audio/Visual Workstation: Asus G73JH-RBBX05

Baseline System specs are here

This is the headliner workstation in the 'WERKz right now. It is used for:
○ Gaming - since I have set it up for its second tour of duty, I am playing Steam downloads only
○ Video editing of techblog videos for my YouTube Channel
○ Audio editing of the Regular Joe Gamer Podcast using Music Creator 6

I have had this laptop since September of 2010 (21 months), so it is 9 months shy of the tour of duty record holder in the 'WERKz, my old 2008 15" MacBook Pro. That device served for 30 months before I gave it to my sister-in-law.

I am considering a mix of options for handling the eventual retirement of this PC. Option one might be to get a higher end TabletPC to replace the Asus U46E-RAL7 that I am using for work and grad school right now. In that case, the U46, which can also handle multi-media duty with its 2nd generation Core i7 CPU, 8GB of RAM, and 750GB HD, would go downstairs to replace the G73. It would mean taking a break from PC gaming for a bit, but that might be ok until grad school is done.

Option 2 would be to replace it with an ultrabook. Right now, the specific model would be the Asus Zenbook UX31E-DH72. Again, it would mean taking a break from gaming. But, as I start to put more time into spinning up content on the GearWERKZ TechBlog, and hope to make a few tradeshows and conferences next year, it may be worth it to have a powerful portable package more so than a big gaming rig.

I originally bought the Asus G73 in the wake of my Xbox 360 dying for the fourth time. After that red-ring of death, I decided I was done with that platform, and that it was an excellent time to refocus my gaming time back on PC gaming.

Likes: I like the G73's display, keyboard, and its expansion capability. It actually has 3 RAM slots, and so I have bumped it up from its original 8GB of RAM to 12GB, without the need to toss either of the two RAM chips that were in it already. It also has 2 Hard Drive bays, which I used to populate a 2nd 500GB Hard Drive, bringing the total storage capacity to 1TB. Not bad room for a laptop.

Dislikes: Mine has 1 bad pixel, which I did not notice until I was outside of the bad-pixel replacement window. Probably more bothersome is that it is a 17" laptop, but the design of the rear panel and the rear exhaust ports is such that most 17" laptop bags will not take it; the rear end extends just too far for most bags to be zipped up around it. The only bag I have that will take it is my booq Python XL backpack.

Peripherals: Microsoft SideWinder X4 Gaming Keyboard and Microsoft TouchMouse

Here we go...my one-week status update on the experience of living with the Acer Iconia Tab A510. Three topics are on the agenda: mainly cost, bluetooth connections, and the gaming experience.

My biggest concern with the A510 over the first week has been on system availability. That is the amount of time that the device is available or unavailable to me as a user when I go to it with the intention to perform a specific task. It has not been the greatest with the A510, and while system availability is sometime always a concern, even if slight, with any Android device, the frequency of app crashes, software defects, and strange behavior that I have been exposed to with the A510 has exceeded my desired thresholds and expectations for stability. So that causes me to question how much the device is going for and what is its comparative value in the tablet market.

While I want to continue to sample this tablet as my evening ride for another week, I do have some thoughts on where this device breaks out in the current tablet market. The major competitor that should be considered is the Asus TF300 Transformer Pad.

I have not had an opportunity to demo the TF300, but just on specs: the TF300 has an IPS display, and is retailing for $399, while the Acer A510 comes in at $449. The Acer processor is clocked slightly higher at 1.3 GHz, while the TF300T is at 1.2 ghz. That will likely not matter much in practical real-world use. The two devices are very comparable, and the Asus is selling for $50 less. The Asus also has DDR3 memory, vice the Acer's DDR2; again possibly not a difference that will be noticed in day-to-day use, but still a differentiator with regards to price.

Bluetooth: in the accompanying video, I chose to use one of my Microsoft BT 6000's, which is one of my favorite bluetooth keyboard models. I actually have a couple of these. I also connect a Logitech Bluetooth Mouse. Bluetooth connections seem to go through pretty quick and easy. I have used BT keyboards with several tablets, but it is often a crap shoot as to whether a device will pair quickly, or if you are going to have to pair, unpair, and pair again to get a connection to finally take. The Acer A510 does not seem to suffer from that problem, which I have seen often in Android tablets. Give the video below a flyby; hopefully we will see the same consistent behavior I have been seeing over the last week…then we'll demo a few text entry lines in a productivity app.

In gaming performance, the Acer A510 performs pretty well overall. I have been trying out a handful of titles. I have about 42 or so total loaded on the A510. And I have specifically been interested in how the tablet performs with titles from the nVidia TegraZone gaming series, which are games optmized to run on Tegra processors. Unfortunately I do not have anything groundbreaking or super-new to run from the gaming front, but I do have some of my older titles that I have been playing and I run through a couple of those this in the video.

In the demo, I fire up Bang Bang Racing first. There has been one time on the Acer A510 that this title bogged down at race start. Quitting out and restarting the app cleared it up. A few games that I really like would not load; I assume that this is maybe due to those games needing an update to play well on a quad-core processor. Specifically Battlegroup and Can Knockdown 2 would not play on the Acer A510.

For the demo below, I also connected the A510 to an HDMI monitor. I had an adapter connected to my full-size HDMI cable run to an Acer H233H 23" LCD.

So far, the Acer A510 is proving serviceable, but it would not be at the top of my recommendation list. Check back here in one week to see if the extra time surfaced any reasons for me to think otherwise.

I will admit that the average life-cycle of a gadget in the 'WERKZ is somewhere between 6 and 9 months [although I am trying to get better]. Still, there are some devices that meet some incredibly practical need and are able to keep their lease on service life well beyond that metric. In the RetroTech series, I periodically take a look at a device that has stood the test of time and is still putting in good hours. It's time to take a break from the 2-week review of the Acer Iconia Tab A510 and visit and oldie but goodie.

Today's honoree is my AppleTV. And I am talking one of the original models. I did not get mine until I moved into my house a couple of years ago. When I did so, I set up both a Media Room upstairs, and a Home Theater downstairs with a 50" Samsung plasma TV. I wanted my iTunes content available downstairs, but did not want to have to take my MacBook Pro down there to leave it hooked up to the TV.

AppleTV to the rescue. While the device has been called an Apple hobby, and was met with lukewarm reception until its reincarnation as an iOS device, my specific use-case made it the best fit. I have a WAP down in the basement that extends my wireless network from the main floor to the lower level. However, my house is older and has plaster walls. I did not want my viewing experience to be limited by 802.11g propagation and disruption, so local storage on a digital content device was necessary.

I have since added a Playstation 3 and Roku to the basement setup, both of which obviously have access to streamed content. However, the local content I keep stocked on the AppleTV is the persistent content I rely on most. I keep whatever television series I am currently watching in iTunes on it [right now that is The Greatest American Hero, Season 2]. I also periodically stock it with the last week's video podcasts that I subscribe to, as well as my most recently purchased music, and recent photo albums. It is a big plus when my family visits to be able to go through our family photo albums on the big screen without hooking up an additional device. I also love the sound output from the AppleTV as I have the rear audio outs pumped through my Sony home theater system.

The AppleTV has its hiccups. I have had to reset it a few times each year. The first few times I did this, I did not know what I was doing and actually wiped the device. That meant reloading and syncing 140 GB worth of data over 802.11g. Painful. Since those incidents, I have only loaded the content I expect I will be watching and listening to, rather than syncing my entire iTunes collection of video and music (which is about 150GB now). I have also figured out the differences in the reset options, and also realized that if it locks up, I should just wait for the reset options to present themselves, rather than hitting the reset pinhole on the back of the device.

The AppleTV has been in play in the 'WERKz for 26 months. That is one of the longest gadget runs around these parts in a long time. The only thing I can think of exceeding it was my MacBook Pro, which went for about 30 months. The difference here is that I see no reason to be getting rid of the AppleTV within the next 4 months, so I expect it will beat the MBP's record. It has been and continues to be an essential component in my man-cave. Here's to you, OG AppleTV. Salut.

- drafted on the Acer Iconia Tab A510 in Beautiful Notes, using a Microsoft BT6000 Keyboard and a Logitech Bluetooth Laptop Mouse.

The Acer Iconia Tab A510 is the successor to the flagship crown in the Iconia Tab product line. This will make the fourth device from this product tree that I have either tested or owned. I used an Acer Iconia Tab A500 as my work-notes machine for a few months, and then at home for a total of 9 months before recently selling it. I also checked out the 7" variant, the Iconia Tab A100, for a brief period last year. Today, I use the W500, the Windows-based variant that sports a keyboard dock in its stock configuration, as a sysadmin and house project machine on my at-home network. Does the A510 hold up to my expectations for this line of products? As far as initial impressions go, yes, so far, it does.

The hardware design is an improvement on the A500 from a physical standpoint. The rubberized back had me pretty much right off the bat. The design is minimalist. Perhaps to a fault. One of the big allures of the Iconia Tab A500 was that it featured a full-sized USB port and a full-sized HDMI port. No adapters necessary. The A510 has reduced those to mini and micro-variants of USB and HDMI, respectively. However, if the tradeoff was no full sized ports in order to get the size down, then I can acknowledge the prudence in making that trade.

The A510 has the same wedge-shaped, taper at the edges where you hold the device as the A500 did. I am a fan of this aesthetic; it gives gripping the device by the edges a very natural feel, and is a means to differentiate it from other Android Tablets.

My impressions from initial light-off? Nice. Very nice. I am going to make the early call that this thing is fast. Packing a 1.3 GHz nVidia Tegra3 processor, I expect great things from the A510. It is only anecdotal evidence, but from the light-off and how quickly it booted and was at the ready in the initial cfg screen leads me to believe that it just might fly in comparison to the Honeycomb devices I have been on.

Check back in about a week to see my one-week impressions. Follow the feed and ask questions or make comments on twitter where I am @gearwerkz. Random musings that occur during the evaluation period might appear there. See you back in a week!

It is no secret that I am an introvert. And one of the things I have struggled with is keeping in touch with friends and family. I have been through my phase of "when gaming, I accept no phone calls"; actually that phase is probably still in practice. I was one of the first in my circle to go to electronic comms (email, text, and instant messaging) only. In the last few months, three of my five guys who were groomsmen at my wedding have all moved on; one left the company, one was transferred, and one is doing work for another division in the company, on the road 5 days a week. The few friends that I had gathered locally are now in that same concentric ring of people whom I only communicate with electronically. But I am not doing as good a job of it as I used to, and virtual keyboards are partially to blame.

One of the things I looked most forward to when I bought my first smartphone six years ago was that I would have more time-on-task in maintaining comms. My smartphone would be with me all of the time, and I could tap out emails anytime I was awake without having to be chained to a PC sitting on a desk. That meant bathroom emails, waiting for the movie to start emails, waiting in the grocery store checkout line emails...you get the point. Of course back then, virtual keyboards were largely unavailable on smartphones; almost all of them were physical keyboard only. Even once smartphones went to capacitive displays, I still insisted on at least one of my two smartphones having a physical keyboard. However, last summer, we returned to Sprint and my two phone selections, the HTC Evo 3D and the Samsung Galaxy S 4G, both only have virtual keyboards. Since I went to this cfg, the degree to which I stay in contact via my smartphone devices has been on the decline. One of the reasons is the somewhat frustrating experience of being on virtual keyboards as my only input option.

I am beginning to realize that there is a certain capacity I have for gadget frustration. If it is a cup of finite volume, I can only take filling that cup so much. When at least one of my smartphones had a physical keyboard, that cup never approached the fill point on this subject. I was normally on my virtual keyboard (VK phone for a few days a week before I switched to the physical keyboard phone. My exposure to VKB frustration was even less pronounced because back then, my physical keyboard phone was always my work-week phone, and I only carried the VKB-only phone on the weekends [minus the 7 months that my OG iPhone was my primary phone]. With VKB's as my only smartphone input option now, I find myself frequently hitting VKB input fatigue throughout the week. Every day is a blur of me screaming expletives at auto-correct shenanigans, and trying to use the infuriating cursor placement/scroll interface in Android. If my wife had a nickel for every time I sent her "Live toy" instead of ending my text with "Love you" she would be a rich woman.

Needless to say, some of this has led to me texting and communicating with my friends less. My wife and I exchange many emails a day; more so since the recent birth of our first kid. My communications volume with her is not optional, and is frequently not something I have much control over. Add the occasional comms thread that needs to take place over our email channels, and the time and patience I can apply to communicating with friends in addition to my wife via a
VKB-only platform is significantly reduced.

My wife and I have been in recent talks about her smartphone. She is currently on an HTC Evo Shift 4G. She, too, has insisted on being on a physical keyboard platform since I got her to move to a smartphone. But she is not happy with the Shift; thanks a lot HTC for the boiling mess that is HTC Sense. So we have been looking at options to do an out-of-cycle upgrade for her. I want her to get the best phone available, which would mean a touchscreen-only phone. Not the best phone available that has a hardware keyboard, which, today, on Sprint, means getting a somewhat mediocre phone. A few weeks ago, before my recent epiphany, I was in the mode of telling her that touchscreen-only phones have improved so much that going without a physical keyboard is easily manageable. Then I hit the wall. Now I am rapidly backing away from giving that advice. That was the advice I would give before I hit on this root cause as to why I have not been pumping as many friendly feelers out over my own normal comms pathways.

The truth is, this is the first time since I moved to a smartphone that I have been without at least one smartphone with a hardware keyboard. Now, admittedly, there are some silver linings in my own personal mobile cfg. This problem is a little less infuriating on the HTC Evo 3D due to the larger screen where typing accurately is a little easier. And this problem of VKBs does not extend so much into my tablet space. Of course, the problem there [on tablets] in keeping in touch with friends is that there are no solutions for sending text messages from those platforms that do not require paying for an app and a subscription, or do not annoy the absolute bejeezus out of you if the use the free versions.

And admittedly I cannot blame my lack of communications frequency entirely on VKBs. Back on my first personal Blackberry, a 7100v, there were no apps to speak of beyond the stock install base. Now there is everything on my phones from productivity apps, to video, news streams, and games. Yeah; a lot of my lack of time-on-task in email and texting is due to many rounds of Sentinel 3, Air Control, and Battle Group.

The biggest thing this causes me to have to figure out is my cell phone selection algorithm. I have a set way in which I select phones during my upgrade windows, and my overall objective is to end up with the two arguably best phones available on a carrier at a snapshot in time. I use to triage that selection by requiring the two phones to wield different mobile OS', as well as requiring one of them to feature a hardware keyboard. I have moved away from those two down-select criteria; in my last round I selected two phones running Android, neither of which have a hardware keboard. Now I am asking myself if I need to reinstantiate one of those previous criteria or both.

The only thing I can say is, check back here about mid-year, when I will be ready to upgrade my Nexus S 4G. Right now, I cannot answer the question for myself, so no telling what I will decide later in the year. What would be great is if some breakout phone arrives that has a hardware keyboard, or the world's best VKB, and answers this question for me.
- Vr/Z..>>

Pencil's down. It has been one of my roughest semester's in school, but it is over. Time enough to lick my wounds and reflect on why I am subjecting myself to this pain. Six weeks before the Spring session starts. Time enough to play games in something less than the grey blur that I saw them through in the waning weeks of this past semester.

Yep; you read that correctly. Despite getting my can kicked up and down the academic avenue, I was able to find time to squeeze some gaming in. The sessions were mainly just study breaks to keep me from becoming completely demoralized. And they were short. And because of those two points I just made, they were mostly mobile.

The last few months while I have been incognito on the interwebs have seen some significant changes in my thoughts on gaming. Here is what went down and how:

* Most of my mobile gaming had been on the iPad. It quickly supplanted my PSP as my primary mobile gaming device. However, it died a few months ago, and I was unwilling to replace it. So, into the power gap rushed all of my Android devices.

* And I realized that I had been sleeping on Android, or maybe compeling games just happened to come to the fore at the moment that my iPad died. I have two of those Android devices sitting next to me now as I type this; my primary cell phone, which is an HTC Evo 3D, and my #4 tablet, which is a Kindle Fire. There are 32 games loaded on the Evo, and 8 loaded on the Kindle, which I do not use as a gaming device primarily

* the explosion in Android titles has been fueled not only by an improvement in quality, but also by a spate of great sales. Google's $0.10 celebration run this month, and the daily free apps available on Amazon, made for some early self-gifts

* I love PC gaming and console gaming, but I sometimes go for weeks not getting any gaming done because I feel like if I cannot sit and invest at least an hour in gaming then it is not worth doing it at all. Enter mobile gaming, or maybe I should say, Enter mobile gaming to the top of my gaming priority list. The experiences may not be as deep, complex, or fulfilling, but I will be hitting the mobile gaming scene before just going for weeks without gaming at all

A few of these titles really helped me get through finals. It was just not possible to leave my study and take breaks in the Media Room or in the basement Home Theater; if I was going to give my cramping brain a little rest, I had to do it in a medium that would not snag me for more than 30 minutes at a time. Over the holiday break and periodically from now on, I will post a few notes on the mobile titles that keep me coming back for 5 minutes of joy. Here is the first.

Fieldrunners: I first encountered this title as an iOS game. It was one my first significant forays into the Tower Defense sub-genre, and it had me hooked from the beginning. I play it now on Android, and it is one of my go-to titles on the Kindle Fire. My only gripe about the Kindle Fire version is that, with its smaller screen, it is much easier to wind up hitting an undesired control when placing or upgrading units in the lower left-hand corner of the screen where the systems controls are for the game.

That being said, there is precious little fault I can find with this game. With most games on any platform, there are a few bugs or design choices that make me absolutely irate, evern if I love the game overall. Fieldrunners, and any other mobile title, are, by definition, limited in their scope, so I hesitate to call the game flawless. That would invite an unbalanced connotation when considered in the same category with PC and console games. Still, what I can say is that there is no one aspect of the game design that makes me feel like poking myself in the eye. Maybe the start game menu could be a little cleaner; I am not sure that the goofy carousel effect for selecting maps really adds any value, and it can make just jumping into a game quickly less than optimal, but that is a small nit.

The graphics positively drip with eye-candy. A lot of times I just enjoy sitting and watching my erected defenses wreak havoc with the would-be invaders. While I was skeptical about its ability to render the game well, the Amazon Kindle Fire makes beautiful imagery out of exploding waves of enemies.

As well as the game looks on the Fire, it is that much more beautiful on a 10" tablet. I put a few rounds in on the Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet as well on the walk-up to final exams. Good stuff. Quite honestly, I do not think you can go wrong with the game on any platform on any device. It is pure fun, and a welcome challenge in geometry. I am sure that gamers truly steeped in the Tower Defense genre will have strong feelings on the title, both good and bad. There seems to be a very deep and passionate community engaged in this gaming type, and they all speak and critique titles at a much more granular level than I. What I will say is that, for someone who is new to the genre, Fieldrunners is a wonderful experience that keeps me entertained on the go, or when time is short.
- Vr/Zeuxidamas..>>

I like it when I do my small part to help make some news. Clearly, my recent purchase of a Thinkpad Edge E420 (pictured below) was the one sale that pushed Lenovo over the top to score killer earnings in Q1. Leading the charge to one of its highest earnings reports since the Chinese company bought the PC arm of IBM 6 years ago, were largely increased sales in China and emerging markets. Sales in China were up 13% and comprised nearly half of the company's revenue this past quarter. Sales in emerging markets were up 26%.

Lenovo is attempting to make the tablet product category a core part of its portfolio. However, with so much momentum behind Apple's iPad, to call that prospect an uphill battle is an understatement. Still, Lenovo has debuted their K1 Tablet with review scores comparable to other Android tablets on the market. The hook of the K1 is that the GUI is designed to surface functionality more so than an emphasis on discrete apps. Lenovo is hoping that this approach to simplifying functional access at a higher level will give the tablet an ability to compete with the iPad's perceived ease of use, as well as differentiate the K1 from other Android tablets. Android devices continue to be seen as tools for tinkerers, although it has gained significant mainstream appeal. However, the mobile OS is still not the first one that consumers new to smart mobile devices reach for on store shelves.

Despite Lenovo's gains, the company is still projected to come in lower than HP and Dell in terms of total PC market-share. However, Dell has reduced its year-end revenue projections, and Lenovo has closed the market-share gap to within 0.5% of Dell, with the latter holding 12.5% ahead of Lenovo's 12.0%. This represents a 2% market-share increase from the previous quarter for Lenovo, resulting in the company almost doubling their net profit from last year, coming in at $108 million.

In addition to tablets, Lenovo will now try to drive increased market-share by entering the ultrabook market. However, COO Rory Read does not feel that the company will get the product under the magic $1000 mark until sometime in 2012. In the company's earnings call, Read intimated that he "...wouldn’t say by the end of the year necessarily but…that’s definitely going to happen.”

Here is the link to the Press Release: Lenovo Earnings Call

Source: Bloomberg

Source: Athenna