I took a technological sabbatical. After way too many years of being mired in the quicksand of tech innovation, I pulled myself out and mentally sat on the beach drinking Mojitos. 

It’snot that I got off the grid completely, it’s just being digital became something I wanted to do, not because I had to.

I monitored Facebook but rarely updated my status. As far as I was concerned, Twitter flew south for the winter. I got a new laptop, not because I was enamored with the latest and the greatest but because my old one died. Being retired, I couldn’t just go to my company IT guy and order a new one. I’m my company IT guy and he was under orders the brass to cut costs. Since I’m also the brass, there was no appeal.

I hear that there are a lot of new phones on the market with competing operating systems, competing App stores and seriously competing lawsuits. (Look up the Lotus look and feel lawsuit.) I did get an iPhone 3GS because my beloved Palm died both literally and as a separate company. The iPhone has been a real pain. No joke. My death grip on it for nearly two years has caused carpal tunnel syndrome. I do have a very cool wrist splint.

However, I’m stuck with the iPhone or its progeny because I’m grandfathered into AT&T’s unlimited data plan. My accountant –me—says don’t messed with fixed costs.

Tablets and other small screen devices aren’t ideal for those of us with less than ideal eyesight. I did lust after the iPad when it was first launched  . Though it amuses me when I hear tech pundits rant about a device being an ounce or two to heavy. My first portable computer, ,  weighed 26 lbs and battery life was non-existent because it needed to be plugged in at all times.

I used to be a gamer but no matter how stunning the graphics are, I just can’t see the bad guys soon enough and I don’t solve puzzles as well as I used to. My bad knee is a good excuse for not using a Wii or my small living room for the Kinect.

I’m not becoming a Luddite but maybe a tech curmudgeon. I love all things digital but I’ve been here long enough to know that everything old is new again. Ah, how beautiful the Unix makeover looks on Macs.

The title represents things that all Windows users should do periodically but it is about some lingering items that I haven’t written about. The title sounds a like more interesting than “Spring Cleaning.”

First the news – with a nod to Jude Biersdorfer of Tech Talk.

I spent several hours at Apple stores on April 3^rd checking out the iPad. See my pre-release article. I had not been one of the fortunate few to have received a review copy in advance of the release date. I visited the Soho store mid-afternoon when things had settled down from the early morning frenzy. The store was busy but not so much that you couldn’t walk in and roam around without feeling claustrophobic. The iPad folks were divided into two groups, the payers and the players. The pay line was significantly longer that the play line.

There were about a dozen iPad’s for people to try before buying. It was a really orderly and diverse group. I met a couple from Finland, two guys from Japan and a very nice woman of undetermined origin because I didn’t recognize her accent and she didn’t seem to speak any English. The informal protocol was to spend about 10 minutes and then step aside to let the next person have a crack. I wasn’t the only one who returned to the end of the line more than once.

All told, I spend about an hour using the iPad. It’s an amazing device, well worth the hype. But was I ready to get into the pay line? The more I used it, the better I liked it. But I found myself trying to justify spending the money. What happened when I’m out of WiFi range? When I first starting writing this article, the Wifi problems hadn’t been reported yet. I could see myself spending hours looking at new apps and reading books and listening to music. Bottom line for me became whether I could do any real work on it? If I’m going to lug around another device, is this one or should I opt for one of the new eBook readers coming on the market? It’s deciding whether I want an iPad or do I need and iPad? I sure want one.

eSlick Reader

I can however, make a much better case for me needing an eBook reader. Of the new batch, I’ve been using Foxit’s eSlick. The one feature that made it standout was its ability to manipulate PDF files. My eye sight isn’t what it used to be and I’ve found that I actually can read faster on an e-reader using a larger font.  While I have no scientific data to back this up but I’m able to process faster the three or four paragraphs on the screen rather than an entire page in a book. I’m a fast reader but I seem go twice as fast electronically.

Unfortunately, with the other e-readers, increasing the font on PDF files makes the type bigger but the text doesn’t reflow. You have to scroll right or left to view the entire page. The eSlick is the only one I’ve seen so far that reformats PDF files so no scrolling is necessary. And because it has an SD card slot, unlike the iPad, I can load hundreds of documents on the card. Right now, I need utility over flash. Oh, I forgot, the iPad doesn’t do Flash.

One of the items I’ve kept meaning to write about is the MotorMouse from Motormouse USA. It’s no secret that I love wacky twists on computer accessories. My friends know of my collection of USB drives in every shape, size and color. Not so well-known is that I have mice in various sizes, colors, with blinking lights and weird sounds. So driving my cursor around with a classic red sports car was appealing to the dormant gear head in me. I’ve seen other mice in the shape of cars, but this is the first one that I think that I’d spend 50 bucks for. It’s small enough to be used as a traveling mouse but large enough not to feel like you’re using a kid’s version. The wireless USB adapter is one of those scaled down ones that fits almost flush with the laptop so you could leave it plugged in with minimal chance of losing it. The mouse itself has a slot in the trunk to store the adapter as well as doubling as the battery compartment. The mouse buttons are the sides of the front fenders and the scroll wheel is where an old school turbo charger would rise from the hood. It’s only available on the website at this point.

Keeping with the travel vein, I colossally like to take a full or at least fuller sized keyboard on the road. I’ve sort of got over it but I still have flashbacks of how good it felt to type on the keyboard of the IBM Selectric. For those too young to know, look it up. While nothing will really ever measure up, keyboard designers all seemed to have studied the Selectric and tried to recreate those elements that made it so beloved.

It’s easier to get a full-sized keyboard feeling and even sounding like the Selectric keyboard. Tactile feedback is necessary. If you can’t feel the key descend and the pop back it doesn’t feel like anything happened. That is why touch screen keyboards feel so unsatisfying. Even cell phones have tactile feedback.  And that clickety-clack sound, while unnecessary to the real working of the keys, gives another physical cue that something happened.

Trying to recreate that on a keyboard small enough to travel with is no mean feat. The Microsoft Bluetooth mobile 6000 comes really close. It makes some of the same compromises that laptop keyboards have to make, such as losing the numeric keypad and the extended wrist rest at the bottom; it does it in such a way that it doesn’t offend my Selectric sensibilities. Maybe I’m just getting used to curved keyboards. While it’s super-thin, you really feel the keys travel. It’s not that loud, you definitely hear the keys click. For the number crunchers, there is a separate keypad. I found it pleasant to get my laptop off my lap and replace it with a nearly weightless keyboard. Despite its virtues, it’s on the pricey side at nearly $90 retail. But if your job entails a lot of traveling and a lot of typing, it is probably worth it. The only real negative for me is my laptop didn’t have Bluetooth and I had to buy a $30 adapter. But that investment let me connect to some other Bluetooth devices that I had not been able to before.

Update: Several people have asked me how the cup cakes tasted at the Lenovo Edge announcementt. Sad to say, I didn’t eat any, even the ones the bakery made special with ThinkPad written on top in chocolate. It really did smell good inside the truck though.

I’ve been to product announcements in a lot of strange and bizarre venues — a biker bar, a blimp, and even inside the Brooklyn Bridge. But the announcement of Lenovo’s two new ThinkPad Edge models of laptops takes the cake, literally. It took place inside a mobile cupcake bakery. Sweet! The Cupcake Stop is a Manhattan phenomenon that parks in various parts of the city and notifies the faithful via Twitter where it will be and what are the featured confections of the day.  Appropriately, it was parked in the heart of Silicon Alley.

The Edge series is targeted at small and medium-sized businesses. SMB is the new TLA – Three Letter Acronym. This is a refreshing return to basics after a few seasons of SOHO,VoIP, WiMax, WLan, and no way to shorten “Social Media” that doesn’t induce Fanboy giggles.

, J.R. (Jay) McBain

Lenovo’s Director of Small and Medium Business, J.R. (Jay) McBain, says the new laptops “were designed from the ground up.” He goes on to say, “We didn’t strip out things from our enterprise machines.” Starting at under $600 for the 14-inch and topping out at under $900 for the 15-inch, the price is affordable for companies with few employees and even fewer resources. Implicit in Lenovo’s strategy is recognition that its prime customer base, large firms have scaled back because of a down economy and fewer employees. Click for the ThinkPad Edge specifications.

Think Pads are still considered a quality brand but the new breeds of laptop purchasers are not as willing or able to pay premium prices.  A lot of those people are out of work because of layoffs and cutbacks. They have started their own businesses or are freelancing and consulting. In either case, they still need computers but lack the money or an IT department for support. This is the niche that the new Edge line is hoping to fill. The company has provided a lot of support services combined with the built in services in Windows Vista 7.

While it seems clear that the economic climate has pushed Lenovo’s thinking toward new kinds of customers, the company, despite taking over IBM’s global market, still focuses mainly on the developed world. The Edge line, full-featured, powerful, and relatively inexpensive, is just what the rest of the world needs as well. But the distribution channels vary widely. For example, I can find dozens of dealers in Russia but only two in Uganda. And this is data gleaned from searching only Lenovo’s website.

Jon Gosier

This is not to pick on Lenovo. It actually does pretty well. But Kampala is becoming a software development center in Africa. Jon Gosier of Appfrica Labs, a leading programming incubator, has repeatedly complained about how difficult it is to get top of the line hardware without paying outrageous markups.

I know that developing new markets is tough and expensive at first. But taking a longer view could prove profitable. Any objective review of the data suggests that Africa is a growth market for technology. At some point, sooner rather than later, a lot of electronics will be sold. And consumers everywhere go for quality goods at affordable prices. And by the way, there are nearly a billion people in Africa.

Disclaimer: Jon Gosier worked on a project on which I was a consultant. I came to the project long after he had been hired by the principals. He and I have never actually met, but I am a fan of his blog http://appfrica.net/blog/

I occasionally break my rule against eating and drinking near the computer. The lure of munching Crunchy Cheetos while getting my daily dose of international news from BBC America becomes overwhelming. Adding to normal airborne detritus, guilty pleasure goodies give off SD’s (Snack Dust). Keyboards are magnets; with many tiny crevices for dust and dirt to hide.

Traditional solutions are to turn the keyboard upside down and shake. Not the best idea for a laptop. Also, the, shall we say, oily residue from certain foods glue the debris in place.  The canned air duster does a decent job of blowing out the gunk, but it just gives it a chance to re-circulate and resettle.  Dismantling the keyboard is tedious and time consuming; not to mention voiding the warranty on some laptops.

This brings me to Cyber Clean. It’s a cleaning compound for getting into the nooks and crannies of electronic devices. It looks and feels like DayGlo® Silly Putty®. It can be stretched over a section of a keyboard and pressed down. When you peel it back, dust and dirt adhere to it. You then roll it into a ball mashing the waste inside. You can repeat this process 20 or 30 times before the compound loses its effectiveness. It also changes color to let you know its gone bad. You can then just toss it because the company says it’s non-toxic and biodegradable.

The Cyber Clean Compound comes in  several sizes but the basic re-sealable, single pack retails for under $5.

The best thing about Cyber Clean is that it meets my lazy man’s standard for cleaning stuff:

1.       It is cheap.

2.       It is dirt simple to use.

3.       It lets me know when it is time to replace it.

4.       It can be thrown in the trash guilt-free.