Kindle 2 not coming to Canada? Who Cares?

 

Kindle 2 not coming to Canada | Quill & Quire

So, Kindle 2 is coming to 100 countries worldwide, and Canada is not one of them. Certainly not surprising. From the quote in the above post, it would seem that most of the issues preventing Kindle form coming to Canada involve digital publishing rights and negotiations with wireless carriers (isn’t that what held up the iPhone from coming to Canada for a long time?).

For me, it is really a non-issue. I cannot imagine spending that much money (it will probably be $500 in Canada, even with the favourable exchange rate) on yet another single-purpose tool.

I read eBooks on my slate Tablet PC. Google Reader and other tools in full screen mode provide a great reading experience. I can also use tools like PDF Annotator to mark up, red line and highlight  to my heart’s content. I can take pieces of text and print them to OneNote to consolidate research on a subject. Then on top of that, I have an actual PC so I can do all of the PC things I want to do.

Why on earth would I want to downgrade to a Kindle?

UPDATE:

Also reading this article on CNN. I notice the statement:

Apple is working on a tablet computer that is expected to launch in the coming months and which includes all the functionality of an e-reader.

Either the author did not do any homework, or is purposely biased (as most of the tech media is) towards the uber-coolness that is Apple (note extreme sarcasm here). Microsoft has had Tablet PCs for 7 years which also includes all of the functionality of an e-reader (I know, since I have been using it for that purpose for most of those 7 years).

It must be nice to be like Apple and Google, and have the so-called press do much of your marketing for you.

Young people and the Tablet PC

As I said in a previous post, I have been looking at the HP TouchSmart TX2 series convertible tablets for my daughter, who starts university next month. Well, this weekend I pulled the trigger and bought one, so that we can evaluate it (we have 14 days to return it) and so I can help her learn to use it. I plan on doing a review of some sort of it over then next little while, but in this post, I want to talk about an observation I made this weekend as my daughter (and one of my sons, as well) learns to use the Tablet – and the differences in how I work versus how they work.

I grew up writing things. I took notes on paper. I wrote reports and essays on paper. If I wanted to write to someone, I wrote a letter. Very rarely, I would write a document on a typewriter, but I was such a poor typist that it was always very painful. Even now (or before I had a tablet) I did most of my brainstorming, architecting, and thinking on paper, or on a whiteboard. So, I always wanted a computer that would let me work the way I like to work. Freeform. Scribbling. Making notes. Drawing diagrams. And the Tablet PC does just that – but better, because it is permanent, searchable, share-able, etc.

On to my kids. My kids have done very little handwriting – and have does less the older they get. They actually do not write well in cursive at all (there never seemed to be much focus on it in the schools they attended in Alberta or here in New Brunswick). They have done everything on computers and other electronic devices. Most of their communication has been via IM, and more recently by text messaging. Most of their school work has been done on computers. Yes, they take notes on paper, but even that they do not do well. Luckily, they often get electronic access to course notes.

This leads to an interesting question. I have always thought about the barriers to adoption of Tablet PC technologies in terms of my generation – people who grew up using pen and paper for a significant part of their lives. I still believe that these people present a significant barrier – because they are old enough to be resistive to new ways of doing things, and many of them are so thoroughly brainwashed with the idea that keyboard and mouse are the ultimate computer interface that it is hard to convince them that there could be a better way – much the way it was (and still is) hard to convince command-line folks that there is any other way.

At the other end of the spectrum is the younger generation – anyone under 25 or 30. They are largely receptive to new technologies, and to new ways of interacting. Unfortunately, many of them have spent little of their lives using pen and paper, and so a pen-based Tablet PC does not feel natural to them.

So the Tablet PC faces a conundrum. On the one hand, the group of people who are comfortable with pen and paper are too resistive to change to adopt an “electronic pen and paper” solution. On the other hand, the group which is receptive to new technologies has no interest in pen and paper at all – real or electronic.

Makes me wonder if the naysayers are right – maybe there really is no market for a pen-based, handwriting-centric platform.   

Making it hard to buy stuff

I have been looking around at computers for my daughter who is starting university in a month. I am leaning towards the HP TouchSmart TX2 tablets. Now, if you follow that link there is some slick content about this Tablet, and a button which says “Shop for it”.

Well, clicking that button takes me to the following page (and has for several weeks):

Talk about not making for a good shopping experience!

Why consumers won’t buy tablets – CNN.com

 Why consumers won’t buy tablets – CNN.com

Ok – so this guy really doesn’t get it (not surprising – there are few tech columnists out there who grasp anything that is not already mainstream). Then, hardly anyone else gets it, either. The one things he does have right in the whole article is that tablets are too expensive – but this is, of course, driven by the fact that they have never caught on enough to drive the prices down.

However, he also makes the statement “…you need a keyboard for doing real work…” This is entirely, utterly incorrect. The problem is, you do need a keyboard to do any real work only if you insist on working the same way you do on a device that has a keyboard.

Later, he says “…a Netbook like a $200 Acer Aspire One offers a better bet: it has a real keyboard, its own storage, and you can take it on the road and do real work on it, like a notebook computer or a Netbook.” Other than the keyboard statement, this is utter rubbish. A tablet has comparable storage to a laptop. And as for taking it on the road and doing real work – a tablet works better in a meeting room, on an airplane (where there is rarely room to open your laptop anymore), and my table gives me 7-9 hours of battery life. And if you are using the table as a tablet, the keyboard becomes irrelevant.

Later, he says “…you’ll probably be able to plug a keyboard into any of these yet-to-be-released tablets…” – get with it, I have been using tablets with support for USB and/or Bluetooth keyboards since 2002, and they are the same keyboards you use with your desktop, so nothing special to buy.

Working on a tablet is a different user experience, and requires a different way of working – a way of working which seems more natural if you are used to working with paper and pen. In order for a tablet to be effective, one has to get used to working with handwriting again, and get away from on-screen typing, and also away from converting handwriting to text all the time.

I learned this way back when Tablet PCs first came out (I have been using a tablet pretty much continuously since 2002). When I got my first tablet, I soon realized that I  could not use it the same way I did a “normal” computer. So, I tried a little experiment. I got rid of all of my computers except the tablet. For six months, I used the tablet exclusively. Honestly, it was really, really painful at first. Then, I gradually learned to do things in ways which made sense on the tablet – and many of these new approaches were much more natural than working with a keyboard and mouse. What did I learn? Here are a few examples:

• Handwriting is a slow way to create large documents – typing is much faster (even for me)
• Creating large documents with a pen may be slow, but marking up someone else’s document is great
• It is more effective to leave most of your handwriting as handwriting
• Dictating documents and presentations was quite effective (even more so on my later tablets than on my first)
• When dictating documents, you have to stop think of correcting and formatting as you go (a BAD habit to begin with). Just dump your ideas out as fast as possible, knowing that you are going to go back and edit and format later.
• Brainstorming tools are great

I also use the Tablet to read ebooks (in standard formats, rather than proprietary formats) so I do not have to blow several hundred dollars on a Kindle that does nothing but display ebooks.

Think back to the days before we used computers for everything. When you were working on a document, would you typically start at a typewriter? Or would you start with a notebook, or a pad of paper, collecting notes and ideas, creating outlines, and even writing drafts? Then you would take all of that and create the final document.

Think of the tablet the same way. using tools which are tablet-aware (such as Microsoft OneNote, MindJet Mind Manager, and others), use the tablet as you would you pad of paper. Make notes, scribble ideas, brainstorm, create outlines. Even better, you can even clip notes form online sources and collect them together as part of the process. Then after you have done all of your intellectual work, you can do the final stage – typing up the results.

Note that I admit that there are something for which a keyboard is needed. Creating and editing any significant documents requires a keyboard. Does that mean I consider my tablet “just an accessory” to my main computer? Not at all. Most of the tablets available today are convertible, and hence have a keyboard available – giving you the best of both worlds. In my case, I use a slate table – but I also have a stand for it, and a Bluetooth keyboard (I can use my tablet on its stand at my desk, with a wireless keyboard, mouse, and network – then grab it, go to a meeting – come back and set it down and I am good to go).

About the only reason I have other computers is that I spend a considerable amount of my time doing development, and my tablet does not have the computing power, memory, or screen size to be an effective development machine.

The biggest barrier to acceptance of the Tablet PC form factor in the consumer market is indeed price (and price to power ratio). In addition, as I have said before, the Tablet PC has been marketing cluster$!&% by Microsoft from day one. This is a shame, because with a good marketing campaign, and a little bit of evangelism, tablets really cold become a dominant form factor.

PS – Others with no clue:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2009/08/tablets-are-toys-not-mainstream-machines.php

Here they claim “It’s because you can’t work on a tablet. You can’t get things done without a decent working keyboard”. I beg to differ, and might even go so far as to say the author is full of crap.

These are the same kinds of people who said consumers would never want computers in their homes, and that nobody wanted a GUI interface.

PPS – I am also in the process of looking for a Tablet for my daughter, who is starting university in September. I a looking strongly at the HP TouchSmart TX2 series – they seem to be pretty well configured and priced reasonably in the $1000 (Canadian) range. More than a NetBook for sure, but not much more than a comparably configured laptop.

Re-focusing

So, the time has come to re-focus my blog a little around what I am currently working on. In the last year, I have gone through a fairly significant transition in my career. After close to a decade in a product-oriented startup, I have moved into a consulting role at T4G. This is a big change for me, at least it feels like it – the mental shift from focusing on products, product features, and product life-cycles  to focusing on client engagements and project-oriented work. My mind tells me that in many ways the two are not so different – they just feel very different.

The main focus of my work (at least initially) is on portal technologies, specifically SharePoint. In addition to the engineering and mechanics of implementing SharePoint solutions, I am focused on a number of other related topics:

• A repeatable approach to delivery of SharePoint solutions
• Process/methodology models for SharePoint implementation
• Estimating models for SharePoint projects
• The art of the possible – what could clients be doing with SharePoint

I will also be spending a significant amount of time establishing a Moncton office for T4G. By the way, if anyone knows any SharePoint resources (or good .NET or ASP.NET resources in the area, send them my way ).

While my new role is as a consultant in an consulting company, I do not plan to abandon my roots in software development, software development processes, and programming. I also maintain a strong interest in innovation processes. Finally, there are a number of technology areas I am continuing to investigate, including Tablet PC applications, Silverlight, Office Business Applications, Social Networking, etc.

I am also hoping to have more time to blog a little more regularly

ASUS’ R50A UMPC goes legit – Engadget

Post on Engadget about the new ASUS UMPC. It is interesting that the main complaint they have (and many of the comments agree) is the “lack of a QWERTY keyboard”.

When are people going to grasp that the whole point of this form factor is to not have a keyboard? Of course, people predicted doom for the iPhone because it did not have a keypad, but Apple was smart enough to point out that that was the idea. People are so locked into one way of interacting with their hardware that they cannot think beyond it. I went through the same thing when I got my first slate Tablet PC. At first, everything I tried to do seemed extremely cumbersome and awkward. I was constantly hooking up a keyboard and mouse to create eMail and documents. Then I got rid of all my other computers, and my keyboard, and my mouse, and tried to work entirely within the Tablet paradigm for a couple of months. What happened is that I discovered that how I did things on a laptop did not work well on a pure tablet. In addition, there are things that a pure tablet is good for, and there are things it is not. For example, I find the Tablet extremely useful for:

1. Taking notes and leaving them in hand-written form (using OneNote)
2. Brainstorming with tools like MindManager
3. Reviewing and marking up documents in ink (using Word, or PDF Annotator)
4. Reading eMail, and responding, if I want to send a written response (anything more than a few lines is inconvenient to do with the TIP)
5. Web browsing for research (and sending results to OneNote)
6. Reading eBooks
7. Watching video contents
8. Dictating documents (if you have good microphones, and enough processing power)
9. Delivering Presentations (with the ability to annotate slides on the fly, save the annotations, and distribute the marked-up slides)

Things it is not great for:

1. Creating long documents or eMail in text format.
2. Creating presentations without dictating
3. Anything which would normally be done with a lot of typing – again, any amount of text input using the TIP is a pain.

What it comes down to is that Tablets and UMPCs are very useful without keyboards, but not for everything. That does not mean that they should have built in keyboards – it means they should be used for what they are good for.

The Future of the Tablet PC (does it have one?)

Reading a post by Loren Heiny, Will the Tablet PC find a new advocate?, got me thinking (again) about the future of the Table PC – more worrying about whether the Tablet even has a future. I am worried that because of the complete mess Microsoft has made of marketing the tablet platform, without Bill’s continued visible support behind it, the Tablet will either disappear, or be relegated to a very narrow niche product.

I think I have mentioned (over and over) that I am a big fan of the Tablet PC. I think that in many respects it is far more innovative than anything to come out of Apple in the last 10 years or so. And in terms of the industry as a whole, it has opened up both a hardware and potential software market well beyond Microsoft (take note of that all you Apple fans – what has the ultimate closed source community at Apple produced that has benefited any business other than Apple?).

The problem now, of course, is that the Tablet is old news. It is 5 years old, has not lived up to early predictions that soon “every laptop sold will be a Tablet” (though in real terms has been reasonably successful), there is a shortage of really “tablet specific” or even “tablet aware” applications (notable exceptions of course are OneNote and MindJet MindManager). It has really missed the boat on the hype cycle it could have generated. And now, the primary champion of the platform, Bill himself, is no longer involved in day-to-day operations at Microsoft.

So, whither the Tablet PC? Loren makes a number of good points in the referenced article - and I will not repeat them here (hey, go read the original!). I agree whole-heartedly that the fact that those of us who support the Tablet PC have our work cut out for us if the momentum is to be maintained. I have been looking for projections about the size and growth of the Tablet PC market, but doing a Google search I do not see anything that is newer than about 2004. Are there any more current projections out there?

Another thought I had, beyond Loren’s observations, is around open source and the Tablet PC. The hardware specifications for the Tablet are fairly well defined. Unfortunately, the only software that supports it is Windows (not that I dislike Windows, but it means the entire Tablet PC industry is at the mercy of Microsoft’s decsions about continuing the platform). how about some of these really innovation open source types take the Tablet PC to new heights? Lets create a Linux-based (or not) OS, put a novel, Tablet-specific UI on it, and drive the Tablet market in that way? I know there are people out there who have put Linux on the Tablets, but I am talking more than just getting so it doesn’t crash, and works like a laptop with a funny shaped mouse. Something that really IS a Tablet computer. That would be a really innovative use of Open Source!

Thoughts?   

Vista Flops? I beg to differ….

I have been reading posts (blogs and in more traditional press) since Vista came out (well, since long before it came out, actually) about how bad it is, how unstable it is, about how nothing works, about how disappointing it is, and so on, blah blah blah….

Today, I came across this post Vista Flops, Users “Upgrading” to XP (there are number of similar posts in the same place, I will not link to them all).

I am rapidly coming ot the conclusion that people in the computer industry are the biggest whiners in existence – even worse then Canadians (just kidding – I AM CANADIAN). I have been using Vista as my primary OS since before the first release candidate. I use it on 5 computers (3 laptops, 1 desktop, and 1 Tablet). I have found it to be at least as stable as Windows XP (and more stable than many other versions of Windows in similar stages of their lifecycle). Performance is as good as I had under XP for most things. Overall, I have found it to be pretty good.

Are there things which I would like to have seen? Sure. Are there things that were in the original preview of Longhorn I saw at PDC 2003 that I wish were in the final version. Absolutely. I also recognize that features get cut and modified over the course of development, usually driven by the marketing department and feedback from those same whiny users.

The biggest complaint I have had about Vista is not against Microsoft so much as it is against the hardware and software community surrounding it. The availability and quality of updates to drivers and applications has been abysmal. A fair number of the devices I use (especially on my Tablet) were not supported when Vista was released, and some still are not and probably never will be. What happened – you guys get surprised by the release of Vista? Didn’t know it was coming. Come on – get with it. The same can be said for products from Apple (iTunes) and Adobe (Reader – the number one crashing product I have under Vista).

Get off it people – if you do not like Vista – do not use it. But please, stop whining about it!

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