Too few hours in the day //Jafoca.com

So after receiving my arduino last week from Seeed studio, I have been itching to give it a roll.  Unfortunately, as I mentioned before, I stupidly forgot to pick up a breadboard so I have been pretty limited to what I can do.  That has not stopped me from hooking up a single LED and my giant mushroom button!  That is the standard 2nd or 3rd development tutorial step.

I then set to work creating a toggle’d light switch with the button.  One press turns it on, next press turns it off kind of thing.  The problem is that you experience a phenomena called bouncing where the light may not do exactly what you want it to do when you activate the switch.  I thought I could figure out how to de-bounce the input from the switch myself, however it was a bit more of a pain that I thought it might be.

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This one falls on the HARD side of hardware…

Inspired by my good friend Nick, who does EE and works at the product design / idea house TwisThink, I decided to jump into the world of physical computing via Arduino.    I apparanty know a thing or two about software, so I thought I would mix it up a bit and learn something about hardware.

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So I have been desperately looking for a new notebook computer for work and play.  The laptop that my employer provided me with to do web design is awfully insufficient, a dell D600 with only 1.5gigs of ram, a single core Pentium m processor, and a wobbly screen.

My personal laptop, another dell – e1505 in this case, trumps the first by 512mb of RAM (running in dual channel mode! go figure…), one additional processing core, a 15inch 1680×1050 wide screen, and Windows Vista (which I do consider to be an advantage).  While this computer is sufficient in power for most of my work needs, the screen is currently held on by a sloppily applied injection of Gorilla Glue (that stuff foams EVERYWHERE!!!)

So, like i really need to emphasize this point anymore, i am desperate for a new laptop!  After Tuesday’s release of the new MacBook lineups, I decided that they didn’t look that appealing to me for various reasons (1440×900 screen mainly), but then today while at work I was overcome with an itch to get a different computer.

This evening after work I headed off to the local Apple Store with my credit card setting my pocket ablaze – I needed a new laptop, and perhaps I could deal with the low resolution screen as long as it is getting higher than expected benchmarks in games(C.O. PCmag)….

So here are my thoughts:

Pros:

• Sturdy case – for sure
• Screen looks nice
• Trackpad is nice and big, would be cool if multitouch worked in windows

Cons:

• The new trackpad button – stiff.  Requires too much pressure.  Also, pressure sensitivity is uneven, hard to press up top and easy on the bottom
• Heavy – I guess that goes with the sturdy case
• The new rounded case actually makes it look fatter / less slim IMHO – Big mistake

Other Comments:

I thought I would hate the keyboard, I mean REALLY hate it.  Turns out it is not too bad, a little strange but i would probably get used to it (that is probably the same with any other KB).’

Expensive!!  The one I would have probably have gotten was $2500, then add to that $250ish for applecare, which would extend the warranty to 3 years, and VMWare Fusion $99 (because I could not live without windows), two video port adapters $60 (because mini displayport is silly), and we end up at something like $2900.00  Yikes!!

osX would probably be little more than a novelty for me.  The truth is that I don’t know how to use it, for one thing.  While I am sure I could overcome this, I would probably loose productivity for quite a while making the adjustment.  Additionally, I am somewhat invested and attached to my windoze software.  Office 2007, MS Outlook (Exchange at work, yay for my iPhone), Windows version of Photoshop (provided by work), etc.  Kind of makes me a bit attached.  I know these things can work even integrated into OSX nowadays, however at that level, what is the point in switching at all?  Windows allows me to do all that I need to anyhow.

So…. What would it take to make me pull the trigger on the mac? Some minimal combination of the following items would probably push me over the edge.

• The model I like should cost $2-300 less (or included 512m ram gfx on the base MBP)
• Apple should have gone with a more common display cable type, or at a minimum included at least one adapter
• A docking station.  The new monitor that has 3 fancy pants cables does not cut it.  Any “pro” uses external monitors for doing serious work anyway.
• Higher Res screen – 1680×1050 would be good.  Heck, my 3+ year old dell has better resolution

The iPhone has been a huge success over the past year.  The things effectively bring handheld computing to the masses.  I of course would not be talking like this if I did not own one.

I like my iphone a ton, the immediate access to the web and my email is brilliant beyond belief.  One example of why I like this was when Neil and I were on our way to chicago, and out in car GPS decided to start on fire.  Without the iphone, I would have missed my exit and stayed on the gridlocked expressway wasting probably more than an hour of our trip.  This was all thanks to the Iphone’s gps simulating cell triangulation, and the google maps application for the iPhone! yay!!!

Now, google has seen the potential of a small computer in your pocket, (clearly!  a device to send advertisements to everybody everywhere!!!) and they decided to create their own platform called android.  The first android phone was released today, called the HTC G1.

The G1 was released with a lot of the (potential, google is making it up to 3rd party devs to write more of the software than apple did) features as the iphone.  There is one (hardware) feature that is RATHER ODDLY MISSING – a headphone adaptor.  Of course this was priority for apple when creating the iphone, but google was thinking about people using its phone as a mobile media platform as well, they added an amazon music store that allows you to download DRM free music on the go!  Why in the world would they not add a headphone jack is well beyond me…

One other questionable choice that I see is there is no program for the PC with which the G1 will sync.  Handset backup is most definitely a desired feature, so I am not so sure about this either.
Why google why?

(should I google for an answer to this question??)