#178 Late April 2010 ramblings

I got my hands on an iPad that a customer had last week. I was setting up the WiFi in their home so the iPad could pick it up and be Internet functional. It is lightweight and the screen is brilliant. You really can't multitask and if you surf the web, beware that any site that uses Adobe Flash (lots) won't look right since Flash is not supported by the iPad (or Apple). I played with some of the apps that come with the iPad and they all seemed fast and well designed. Still its a lot of money for single tasking item that doesn't do Word or Excel.

HP announced yesterday that it is buying Palm. HP has made PDAs for a long time, but they never could compete with Palm. HP has NOT been in the phone market, so this buy puts them in that group. Palm is barely a viable company. They only have a very few products and their old stand by PDA, isn't bought by most people since phones can do all a PDA used to do. I own a Palm Centro phone by Verizon and honestly if I had to get a new phone today, it would be a Palm. Why? Because the Palm's apps work better then most other phones Verizon sells. Also I've had a Palm for over 10 years so TRADITION! Will this be a good purchase for HP? I really doubt it. But you just never know in technology.

I'm looking to replace my venerable Suuntro Vertex watch. This watch has a clock, stopwatch, altimeter, barometer, compass, and thermometer. I mainly use the clock and altimeter. I'm considering a watch with a GPS. Nephew John has the Garmin GPS watch. He is an addicted runner and uses the GPS for training and race running. I'm a mountain biker and having a portable GPS would be especially nice. Let me know if you have any recommendations. So far I've looked at Garmin and Sunntro GPS watches.

The latest/greatest phone coming out is the Nokia N8. This is a super duper phone based on the Symbian operating system. The specifications just blow you away: 12Megapixel camera, HD Video recorder and player with Dolby Digital plus sound, 16GB standard memory with up to 48GB available with micro SD card, Free for life GPS navigation, Facebook and Twitter built in apps, WiFi Internet browser and it really is a phone. We don't know who(which phone company) will be offering the N8, but expect it in the US at the end of 2010.