{"id":245475,"date":"2010-01-29T07:11:26","date_gmt":"2010-01-29T12:11:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jkontherun.com\/?p=55351"},"modified":"2010-01-29T07:11:26","modified_gmt":"2010-01-29T12:11:26","slug":"this-week-in-mobile-tech-manor-73-the-ipad-has-landed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/245475","title":{"rendered":"This Week in Mobile Tech Manor #73: the iPad has Landed"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/a>Mobile Tech Manor (MTM) is what I affectionately call my home office as it has seen more mobile tech gear pass through the doors than just about anywhere on earth. This column is where I share the events in MTM for the past week. It is my look at things from a personal POV, and there is no telling what will be covered each week. Come join me for a look at the past week.<\/p>\n

It’s an iPad<\/strong><\/p>\n

Easily the biggest event this past week was the announcement of the Apple iPad. It’s been covered to death here and everywhere else so I’m not going to get into too much of that in this column. I do feel I should broach whether I think I see an iPad in my future, and why.<\/p>\n

It’s practically a no-brainer to arrive at the decision that I will almost certainly be getting an iPad. Buying gadgets I don’t really need is nothing new to me, it’s practically a hobby. I can state with certainty that I don’t need an iPad because I have lots of other mobile gear in MTM. There is not any function the iPad serves that I need, but that’s not the point.<\/p>\n

I am positive that I will get a lot of good use out of the iPad, and certainly a lot of enjoyment. That’s enough reason right there to get one. I am also certain that once I have one I will get a lot of benefit from using it. I am jumping on the web all the time in my leisure hours, for a number of reasons not the least of which is to check on this site after hours. The iPad will do that with ease, and that is worth a bunch to me.<\/p>\n

I’ll also enjoy using the iPad as an e-reader. I already use a fair number of gadgets for reading e-books, and I sense the iPad will end up being the best of the bunch for that purpose. The 9.7-inch screen is a great size for reading e-books, and the device is thin and light enough to do so comfortably. Most importantly, it will end up being the most versatile reader as it can access all of my e-book libraries in one place. I can buy and read iBooks from Apple of course, although I don’t see doing so.<\/p>\n

I do see reading my Kindle books on the iPad, through the Kindle for iPhone app that works so well. I expect it will work even better on that large iPad screen. I can also access my eReader\/ Barnes & Noble library on the iPad via the appropriate apps. This flexibility may end up making the iPad the reader of choice for many e-book consumers as a result.<\/p>\n

If I do get an iPad, I won’t get a 3G model for sure. I have no desire to pay extra for a lousy AT&T data connection. Most places I will end up using the iPad will have Wi-Fi available, and for those that don’t I already have (and pay for) the Verizon MiFi. When I need it I can tap into a real 3G network, not the blue one.<\/p>\n

I will most likely pick up the 32 GB model as I think that amount of storage will be more than enough. Truth be told I can probably get by with the 16 GB model as that’s how much storage is in my old iPhone 3G. But I figure doubling the storage is worth the extra $100 so I expect I’ll do that. It’s a good thing my birthday is coming up.<\/p>\n

Gadget stuff<\/strong><\/p>\n

That’s enough about the iPad, don’t you think? I must admit I’m getting pretty sick of the iPad bombardment this week. I can talk a bit about another tablet that I am still getting good use out of. That’s the ThinkPad x200t that Lenovo has loaned me to evaluate. I am still getting tremendous use out of the versatile convertible notebook. I would say that on an average day I use it about 70 percent of the time in slate mode, due to the great touch screen. It is wonderful to use a 12-inch touch screen, and I do it all the time.<\/p>\n

I have been using Kindle for PC on the ThinkPad and find the large screen to make for a wonderful reading experience. The page holds even more text than a hardcover book, and I just tap the screen to turn the page. I did blog this week about a syncing problem<\/a> I have with Kindle for PC on this notebook. The program uses the vaunted Whispersync technology to keep my library and reading place in sync across devices, yet sometimes I find it fails to update my bookmark on the ThinkPad. It’s not a deal breaker but an annoyance I could live without.<\/p>\n

It’s great to write for a highly visible blog, as I was contacted in less than a day of writing about the problem by a member of the Amazon team that develops the Kindle for PC program. They are now working on isolating the problem and getting a fix out to everyone faced with the same issue. That’s outstanding support and Amazon deserves recognition for this. Hopefully there will be a beta fix that I can test soon for Amazon, so they can then get it out the door to everyone.<\/p>\n

This week I received a cool security gadget that works with the BlackBerry Storm. I haven’t done too much with it yet but I will be testing it to give the developer feedback. It’s not available yet but will be in a few months. I’m not going to get into details about it as they made a big deal that I couldn’t mention any problems I encountered. That’s not cool so I’m not going to mention any good things about it either, or even what the product is. That’s just how I roll.<\/p>\n

Pretty new site<\/strong><\/p>\n

I guess by this time you’ve noticed our nice new look at jkOnTheRun. It took a lot of hours of elbow grease but the results are well worth it. I’d like to thank the development team that made this redesign possible. It is everything I wanted and even more. Let me know what you think about it.<\/p>\n

Upcoming SF trip<\/strong><\/p>\n

Next week I have a quick, two day trip to the GigaOM office in San Francisco. I enjoy these trips and look forward to seeing the entire team once again. I will be traveling light as far as mobile gear goes, given how short the trip is. I will take either the MacBook or the ThinkPad x200 and the MiFi. That’s pretty much it, and I’ll be carrying it in the CES press bag I showed earlier. Nice and light, I can’t wait. I’ll be in SF this time next week so this column may be late.<\/p>\n

e-Books of the week<\/strong><\/p>\n

This week I had one of those delightful, rare experiences of starting a new series of novels that I find to be simply wonderful. I would never have found this series if Amazon wasn’t providing book one of the series for free for the Kindle. Yes, it turns out to be a masterful marketing ploy as I downloaded book one and quickly found out I couldn’t wait to read the rest of the series. I immediately bought the other four books so Amazon, your ploy worked and sucked me in.<\/p>\n

The first book of the series by James Clemens is Wit’ch Fire<\/a>. The story is a fantasy series that is much like Lord of the Rings, and that is not something I say lightly. The story is very engaging, the characters wonderfully constructed, and I have spent every spare moment reading. I finished Wit’ch Fire and am currently engrossed in the continuation, Wit’ch Storm<\/a>. I can’t say strongly enough how much I am enjoying this story. Highly recommended if you like LOTR.<\/p>\n

Wrap-up<\/strong><\/p>\n

That’s how the week went down at MTM. As always, I enjoyed sharing it with you and hope you found something to take away from it. Until this time next week, take care.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mobile Tech Manor (MTM) is what I affectionately call my home office as it has seen more mobile tech gear pass through the doors than just about anywhere on earth. This column is where I share the events in MTM for the past week. It is my look at things from a personal POV, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":686,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-245475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/686"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245475\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}