Engadget has an extremely thorough review of the Palm Pre with all of it’s pros and cons.  Since I don’t have the phone, I can’t give you my take in comparison, but I can give you my impressions, hopes, and expectations for what the Pre will do over the next few months.

If you know me, then you know that I have a very passionate love/hate relationship with Apple.  I love how they innovate and drive competition, but I hate the mass appeal and the strict control they place over their products by default.  It’s a complicated situation.  Despite the amazing things they have done with the iPhone, I have always been hoping for something better to come into the mix from some competitor.  A real competitor.  One where the term “iPhone killer” has some genuine legitimacy.  Could Palm have created that phone?

Personally, I don’t think they have a killer on their hands.  I think it will take a lot more for Apple fans to abandon their current devices and migrate to another product, and this phone doesn’t seem like it will do it.  However, I DO think that this phone will give people who are not already iPhone owners and fanboys a valid alternative as a great smartphone for the masses.

Palm has learned from Apple’s successes and failures.  They acknowledge that sleek, simple, and sexy are key to a well received product.  It’s not just the phone itself though; it’s the software.  Palm has created a completely new operating system called WebOS that is revolutionary in its capabilities.  WebOS will be a legitimate competitor to Apple’s mobile operating system in time.

Part of the reason why I say that is because WebOS is not going to be restricted to just one phone maker like the iPhone is.  WebOS is like Google’s Android which is now being offered on multiple carriers around the world and will soon be available to other phones besides the T-Mobile G1 here in the US.  The flexibility to support multiple phone styles while still providing the same awesome software experience for users is a big one up over Apple.

To learn what the perks of WebOS are, read the Engadget review linked above.  You’ll see that there is a lot that is great, a lot that is good with much potential for growth, and only a little that isn’t really meeting expectations.  Because of WebOS’s over-the-air (OTA) update capability, fixes, security patches, upgrades, etc. can be pushed out to every device quickly and easily.  This is another great advantage over the iPhone, which requires upgrades to new versions (often at a cost) very aperiodically.

In addition, developing applications for WebOS is going to be really easy for developers because all they need to know is basic web programming: HTML, CSS, Javascript.  That’s it!  It’s like the whole operating system is a big sexy browser, capable of running multiple web applications in parallel.  It’s genious.

Another great thing about the Pre, is that it is being offered by a great service provider: Sprint.  Sprint’s network is not the largest in the country, but it is certainly one of the fastest and most affordable.  They will attract a lot of new customers from this phone and it will hopefully encourage them to grow their coverage so they can truly compete with the likes of Verizon (which has fewer good phones) and AT&T (which is a crappy network and provider).

I believe in the potential of the Pre to make people question if iPhone is the end-all of pseudo-smartphones.  It will open peoples’ eyes to the possibilities.  Great performance, easy to use, sexy, affordable, a physical keyboard, greater flexibility…it exists.  Here is to a great future for WebOS, Android, and all other Apple competitors.  May they learn from each other and build toward better phones for us all.

Happy Computing!

Everything begins with a good real estate agent.  If you have someone who is going to work hard to help you find your dream home then you are most of the way there.  The information I am providing in this article are meant to supplement the real estate agent role, not replace it.  And in fact, the first tool I am going to talk about was only made available to us as a result of our agent providing us access.

MLS Listings are the lists of all properties that are being sold in a given area.  Each home has different categories associated with it (Age, Type, Sq Footage, Price, etc) and is represented in a large table in a web page.  Our agent set us up so that when new properties matching our desired criteria hit the market, we received an automated email with a link to the listings with the newest ones at the top in bold.  We could then dive deeper into each property to view details, see pictures, and see a map of the location.  This was very helpful in seeing all of the different properties that matched our prerequisites.

If your agent hasn’t provided you access to the web listings, then I believe you can purchase access individually.  If you don’t really want to pay the extra amount then you can turn to zillow.com as your secondary tool of choice.  This website integrates with Google Maps to allow for someone to view approximate prices of any property, anywhere.  It generates the prices based on the sale history of the home and a comparative market analysis against other homes of similar characteristics in the area.   You can zoom in on a home after searching for its address and see the prices of all neighboring properties.  Very convenient and helpful.

In addition to these major listing sources, there are also listings that aren’t as widely publicized at Craigslist.  Sometimes a seller will avoid agent and listing fees by selling the property themselves and will then post to places with a lot of traffic (like Craigslist), but less organized centralization.  You have to be very dilligent to keep up with the listings here because they change a lot throughout the day and there often repeat posts over time.

These tips will hopefully get you on your way to a new home and making the most of the technology available to save you time and money.

Happy House Hunting!  Oh, and Happy Computing!

The internals of the 3G S have changed a little to support greater performance.  A new 600 MHz processor, double the RAM, and an upgraded network data card supposedly provide a little more speed when opening applications and browsing the web.  The major hardware addition to this phone, though, is the 3 megapixel camera that can…get this…record VIDEO!!!  Haha.  I had to poke a little fun there.  Obviously every other phone and its grandmother has had video recording capabilities for a couple generations now, but the iPhone finally got it and it apparently works pretty well with autofocus and all (still no flash).

So hardware-wise, the 3G S is a souped up 3G.  It’s the Shelby Cobra against a standard Mustang.  Is it worth the extra cost for an upgrade?  That depends.  From most bloggers’ standpoint, if you don’t already own an iPhone, get the 3G S.  It’s only $100 more than the 3G, but it’s a lot zippier.  In fact, Engadget has reported that upon disassembly of the new phone they discovered that the processor is actually capable of speeds greater than 700MHz and recording up to 720p video.  This is both really cool and kind of lame.

On one hand, it shows that there is potential for growth.  The downside is that, yet again, Apple has decided to cripple the full capabilities of the hardware until they decide you can get the most out of it.  I can’t say I support that mentality, but it won’t matter for most people anyways.

Coming back to the question at hand about upgrading, if you already have an iPhone and are up for contract renewal in the next few months, you can actually get the upgrade now at a subsidized price (look at AT&T be nice for once).  But is it worth it?  This is how I would decide.

Ask yourself the following, “Is my iPhone experience too slow for my satisfaction?”  And be honest.  If you rarely complain about things slowing down because you don’t open many applications in parallel, if you don’t have a jail broken phone, if you don’t browse the web frequently, or if you just don’t notice any real lag that causes you to get frustrated then you might as well just hold on to what you have currently (assuming you have the 3G) and just upgrade to what makes a huge difference: 3.0 software.

The software is what makes the iPhone so great in the first place, and this update finally provides some long overdue features.  Top on the list would be “Copy and Paste”.  The fact that they got away with not implementing that out of the gate is pretty amazing.  That just says what kind of fans Apple has: devout ones.   So now you can copy and paste, plus there is a new compass feature for kicks, voice control, a landscape keyboard, and an enhanced spotlight search.  These are the real upgrade benefits.

Every day it seems like the iPhone’s customer base grows a little and with competition getting stiffer in the smartphone market thanks to Palm, Google, RIM, and Microsoft, they will need to keep pushing the pace so that customer base sticks around the next time contract renewal comes around.  If you want to check out a comparison of the two iPhone versions, Engadget has a good review.

Happy computing!

Yeah, I said it. EMAIL has made the fax obsolete.  Anyone with a touch of youth on their side completely acknowledges that faxing is a nuisance more than anything.  The thing that frustrates me is that we use these copy-center machines at work to do the faxing, so they can copy, fax, and scan documents into a PDF that is then emailed to any destination address.  Why then does the fax still need to be used?

The thing about faxes that makes them so worthless these days are the need for a cover sheet and the grueling dial-up speed in which each individual page is transmitted.  It’s just unnecessary.  No additional benefit is gained from the use of fax (such as security, ease, flexibility), so why do some people still insist on it?

Recently my wife was seeking some tax information from one of her financial institutions and they required that she provide them a fax number for them to send her some files.  It was either that or snail mail.  As soon as I heard that I thought, “why don’t they just email the documents to her?  If they are worried about security they can zip the documents up with a password-protected archive or add a password to the documents as a PDF.”  They can even transmit the emails using SSL encryption and my wife can check the email while logged in to a secure mail server (with https:// in the URL).  There really are no reasons that validate insisting on the use of fax.

I’m even going out there and saying that email has also replaced snail mail these days.  Don’t get me wrong, the post office still has its purpose: sending things other than documents, guaranteeing in-person delivery, etc. but for all intents and purposes most of the mail delivered these days could have been done without the need to waste paper.  Hence the ability to sign up for eBills and eNotifications rather than getting bogged down with paper.

For a while I wanted to keep paper documents for my records and tax purposes, but all credit card companies and banks keep online records of your transactions these days, so there is no need to store all of your receipts and files for long periods of time.  If you are concerned about the bank servers going down or having your info lost somehow then typically you can download your statements and summaries to your computer for maintaining local copies.  After that, as long as you keep backups of those files on a separate drive or computer you will have access to accurate financial records whenever you need them and you won’t have to store them in a box under your bed (um, fire hazard?).

These are just my rantings based on experience.  People like to make excuses and avoiding action due to laziness.  I know because I have fallen victim to it myself.  The thing about my suggestions is that they actually require less effort because all you have to do is copy a file to the directory you specify and set up automatic backups to occur whenever you’d like.  Remember, the idea behind the Digital Age is that things are supposed to be made easier and more efficient.  If you are not experiencing that added ease then you are probably struggling with the initial learning curve and will get the benefit of your efforts soon enough.  Don’t give up the good fight and help rid the world of obsolete technologies like fax!

Since two years have passed, the components that would have cost a pretty penny back then have dropped in price significantly.  Her computer has a 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo T5200 with 2MB of cache and a 533mHz front side bus.  Again, this was good stuff at the time, but upgrading the processor isn’t easily doable for a notebook.  The graphics chip is integrated so no opportunity for upgrading there either.  Instead I focused on the two easiest components to remove (other than the crappy battery): Memory and Hard Drive.

I had initially splurged for 1GB of DDR2 RAM split into 2 Dimms and, figuring that I had recently upgraded to a new 80GB hard drive myself at the time, opted to get her one of those running at 5400RPM.  My goal of giving her a 15″ laptop that would get the job done for her while keeping the cost below $1000 was met, but now I had to put a little extra in (and I wanted it to be as little as possible).

I did the research and found out that she has PC2-4200 memory, but her motherboard could support PC-5300 667MHz RAM as well (which would just underclock to 533MHz).  Unfortunately, the maximum capacity is 2GB, so I could only double her RAM, but I was able to do so for less than $20 (it’s amazing what two years will do to make RAM dirt cheap).

One of Heather’s biggest complaints recently (aside from speed) had been the lack of space she had on her hard drive.  She recently started a very popular makeup blog at Coloruza.com and has been taking lots of makeup shots for her posts.  These photos, plus her collection of music and other pictures from the last few years, has eaten up most of her 80GB (which is actually more like 50GB after Vista takes its cut).  I knew I was going to get her a 7200RPM drive like mine because it makes a very noticeable difference, but I wasn’t sure about the size or brand.

My goal with these upgrades was to keep everything as close to $100 as possible, but my wife likes to go big and, when asked, proposed a 320GB drive.  Initially, I was looking at 160GB or 250GB drives for around $70-$80, but that day a deal at Buy.com listed $10 off of a $90 320GB Seagate drive.  I was going to jump on it, but I read some of the reviews listed and saw that the same capacity Western Digital drive was only $10 more and had better reviews overall.  I know the Seagate would have been fine and actually had a slightly faster seek time, but I figured this drive would be something that she could carry over to her next machine because it was spacious, fast, and reliable.  The extra $10 was an investment into the longevity of the drive (hopefully an investment that will pay off).

When it comes to upgrading hardware, I typically hand over the tasks to my Dad.  He has tons of experience putting together computers so he knows what he is doing.  But, because I don’t see him often and it would be harder for him to do a notebook, I decided to give it a shot myself.  I looked up the Dell documents for replacing memory and a hard drive and got started.

I started with the RAM first since it would be a quick change.  The first time I put it in, the system didn’t boot up.  I opened it up and reset the modules then turned it on again and the machine booted and loaded.  Success!  Next step was the hard drive…

I took out the drive and set it aside and then loaded the new drive.  My plan was to use the information that I read here to copy her Vista installation to the new hard drive without having to start from scratch.  When I attempted to mount the old hard drive into an external enclosure that I already had I noticed that the enclosure took IDE connections but her drives were both SATA.  That sucked.  I ended up going and buying an enclosure from Frys a couple days later and then mounting it.

When I first started Robocopy as instructed on the website, I got nervous because Heather’s old drive had multiple partitions.  It had the main OS partition, a Recovery partition (that was there when the computer first arrived), and a hidden partition with no name.  I decided to just start with the OS partition and see what happened.

I noticed that some files weren’t transferring because of permission issues, but I let the process continue.  It went for a while and then froze part way through.  I reluctantly disconnected and it killed the transfer completely.  I read some other documentation about the errors I saw with permissions and added the /B flag to the command to run in backup mode and restarted.  This time the command froze a lot sooner and I was concerned.

I decided to remove the drive from its enclosure in case it was getting too warm and let it sit for a bit before trying again.  This time it went for two hours or so and finished properly.  I decided to just give it a chance to boot without getting the data from the other partitions and it worked!  I successfully updated the hard drive, RAM, and copied the installation.  The performance gain is noticeable and my wife is happy

In addition to teaching my “Tips and Tricks” class every semester, I also have taught Introduction to MS Word, Introduction to MS Excel, and Intermediate Word and Excel.  Those classes were taught multiple times as a result of the normal instructor being ill for a while and needing coverage.  It’s hard picking up someone else’s curriculum and teaching based on it without having seen them actually teach the course first, but I learned a lot from the experience.  This semester, I am also offering a Social Networking introductory class for the first time based on some input from the extension staff.  It should be a fun and informative class.

The majority of the students that have enrolled in the classes I have taught are middle aged or older.  This is really nice because they are very willing to learn, attentive, and appreciative of their newfound knowledge.  I also never have issues with discipline or disruptions.  Typically, they are professionals looking to enhance their career skillset or are just looking for some new tools that might open doors to new opportunties.  Either way, the class environments are usually really enjoyable for everyone involved.

For all of you out there that aren’t super comfortable with your computer use, or want to master a new program, or just want to take your knowledge to the next level, I highly recomend you check out the extension courses offered by your local community college.  Usually, the classes are pretty affordable and you can come out of them with a lot learned in a very short amount of time.  The one bit of advice I would offer, is that you should plan on taking what you learn and practicing it on your own at home so that the information really sinks in and becomes part of your applied routine.  Sometimes students have expectations that they’ll be able to retain everything after a 6 hour class, but that’s just unrealistic.  Turning skills into habit takes time and repetition.  If you keep that in mind, you’ll get a lot out of the experience.

Consumer Awareness:  Is my computer infected with a virus? What should I do?

Be alert! After you open and run an infected program or attachment on
your computer, you might not realize that you’ve introduced a virus
until you notice something isn’t quite right. Here are some signs that
your computer might be infected:

* Your computer runs more slowly than normal
* Your computer stops responding or locks up often
* Your computer crashes and restarts every few minutes
* Your computer restarts on its own and then fails to run normally
* Applications on your computer don’t work correctly
* Disks or disk drives are inaccessible
* You can’t print normally
* You see unusual error messages
* You see distorted menus and dialog boxes

These are common symptoms of infection-but they might also indicate
hardware or software problems that have nothing to do with a virus.

Be smart!
* Do not ignore the symptoms. Write them down, especially the text of
any unusual error messages.
* Look for a pattern, and make a note of it.  For example, are all of
your applications affected?  Is the problem only with printing?  When
does your system crash?
* Contact your network administrator (computer help desk) or your
Internet Service Provider, or call the technical support number provided
by the manufacturer of your system.
* Answer the technician’s questions carefully, and describe the problem
in as much detail possible. The more useful information you can provide,
the quicker the problem will be resolved.
* The technician may advise you to stop using your computer. If so,
follow that advice. Short-term inconvenience is better than losing all
your data or having your identity stolen.

More information: http://www.microsoft.com/protect/computer/viruses/indicators.mspx

If you think you might be infected, you can also contact us here at ComputerJourney.com and we will assist you in diagnosing your problem.

The first step to getting rid of some excess stuff is to run the disk cleanup wizard (as described in this maintenance basics article), which will go through the recycle bin, temp directories, and other areas of the computer where temporary content is stored and tell you how much stuff is in each of those areas.  You can then decide what to delete and what to keep.

If it still seems like you have less free space than you’d like, try downloading a program like JAM TreeSize which will scan your hard drive and show you where all of the space is being sucked up on your machine.

Being able to visualize where the bulk of your non-operating system files are is really helpful.  From there, you can zoom down into your drive’s tree and delete whatever stuff you no longer need.  If you find that you can’t really delete anything then you should consider:

1. Getting an external hard drive
2. Getting a new hard drive
3. Backing up your important stuff to another machine with larger hard drives and delete it from your machine (it’d be good to have two different copies of your files, each on a different hard drive on the other machine)

The final thing you can consider to give you some extra space and performance is to remove programs you no longer use and operating system components that you don’t need.  When removing programs, you just have to be sure you still have the installer before deleting them.  For operating system components you have to be a little more selective and careful, so look up each component before removing them.

After that, run a disk defragment program and you should be pretty set.  Happy cleaning!

Let’s start out with Apple’s offering.  OSX has done some great things that can be seen reflected in their growing market share and duplicated functionality in Windows Vista and the upcoming Windows 7.  Its focus is on ease of use throughout the whole system.  Whether you are installing a program, connecting to a network, installing a printer, or browsing the web, OSX tries to keep as much of the technical muck underneath so that the user never has to deal with it (like they often do with Windows).  Its simplicity of use is best exemplified by the long-running stint of using single button mouses and click pads.  It’s almost as if Apple is saying “Why use a two button mouse on that system when you can do the same stuff on ours with just one?”

Though I am not a frequent user of OSX, I have spent some time on a Mac before and I can see what the appeal is to many people.  Coming from a PC upbringing, finding your way around a Mac takes some initial “unlearning.”  What makes sense on Windows is completely backwards to a Machead.  Apple products focus on user intuition because it makes the most sense for someone who has had little prior experience using a computer.

Apple also provides some extremely nice looking aesthetics to their system with the flashy looking toolbar, window animations, and 3D icons (Windows Vista has some awfully similar looking features).  They have a style and class that has claimed the attention of many consumers and turned them into extremely loyal fans.  Some could liken it to a cult where the word of Steve Jobs is the gospel.  Either way, it’s impossible to ignore the effect that Apple is having on the market and the growing popularity of their products.

The second major Windows competitor is just one of a hundred or so different flavors of an operating system called Linux.  For a long time, Linux was an OS for real tech junkies.  These are people who still love the command line (because they can do things a lot faster without a mouse), love developing software to share with others for free, and actively seek to weaken Microsoft’s hold on computer software.  With the rise of Ubuntu, everything changed.

When I mentioned that there are over a hundred different versions (or “flavors”) of Linux, I wasn’t joking.  Check out this list on Wikipedia.  The thing about all of these different distributions is they all have their roots with the original version created by Linus Torvalds.  He had some deep philosophies about what an operating system should do  and should be for its users.  With those beliefs he gathered a large following of software developers who shared his ideals.  That group has continued to grow and spread as it evolved into open source projects headed by Sourceforge that now creates freely available software for everyone that isn’t strictly limited to just operating systems.

Linux really hit the limelight when it was first included as an option to be pre-installed when you bought a new Dell computer.  The flavor that was chosen was Ubuntu because it was very graphical (like Windows and OSX) as well as much easier to use than traditional versions of Linux.  You didn’t have to compile source code into running binaries, you just had to download the installer and the operating system did the rest.  The ease of use was enough to bring it into the mainstream, and the cost savings delivered to the consumer (because Linux is usually free or very cheap when licensed) made it very appealing.

Today, we see Linux on a lot of systems beyond just standard computers.  Linux is on almost all netbooks sold, is the basis for OSX (that’s right, Apple made their own version of Linux), and is the guts of Google’s mobile OS: Android.  Someday, it is very likely that Linux might become as popular as OSX and Windows because it will be cheaper, just as capable, and just as easy to use as the other systems.  Only time will tell.

In addition to providing consumers with more choices for what to run on their computers, by stepping up as legitimate alternatives to Microsoft’s dominating OS, these other systems have helped push Microsoft to improve it’s products and keep up with the innovations introduced by its competitors.  It’s just like when the iPhone first came out.  Tons of people flocked to AT&T to get their hands on Apple’s creation.  When the rest of the phone manufacturers saw the success of the product they changed gears on their strategies and immediately started creating similar functioning and styled devices themselves.  Competition in the marketplace helps consumers get better products because they flock toward whatever is the most impressive technologies, and that forces everyone else to keep up or go obsolete.  Let’s hope the fight between these three operating systems continues to generate great benefits for all computer users.

I called it GParkS because it uses GPS to find where you parked your car like the iPhone app “Dude, Where’s My Car?”  It doesn’t use Google Maps like the iPhone app, but it allows for you to store up to three different locations and give them custom labels (like “Car”, “Home”, etc.) and relies strictly on GPS coordinates provided by the GPS API functions (so if your phone doesn’t have a GPS chip, this probably won’t work for you).  It uses compass directions and the distance between you and the destination to guide you toward it.

I released this program to the masses at the XDA Developers Forum, a community of developers and mobile phone hackers who have banded together to provide custom ROMS, apps, and a whole bunch of great advice to smartphone owners.  I joined the community when I got my first smartphone (or Pocket PC more specifically), the Verizon XV6800 (aka the HTC Titan).  I wanted to make it faster, stronger, more customized, and as optimized as possible and this community really helped me achieve that goal.

You can find my release post at the XDA site here, but unless you join the community you won’t be able to access and download the program.  Thus, I am posting it for you to download here if you’d like.  I will work on a follow-up version that uses arrows instead of compass headings eventually, but no guarantees about when that will be released.  Feel free to contact me with your thoughts.  Enjoy!