according to jeff

For helping me obtain a new health insurance policy that provides better coverage than my current policy for 40% of the cost, Rick is added to my Nice List.

If you live in the Cedar Rapids area and would like to contact Rick for assistance with your health insurance or investment needs, contact me privately and I’ll send you his last name and phone number.

Here’s a site that is both useful and fun. Check it out: http://tinyurl.com/yek7ymx

Yesterday, Apple announced the iPad, which is projected to ship in the US in March (WiFi version) and April (WiFi + 3G version). My status as an iPhone developer doesn’t get me any super-secret inside information. Apple didn’t rush a review copy to me. I don’t know if the three Laridian iPhone apps are among the “most” of the 140,000 apps that will “just work” on the iPad. (However, I expect them to work just fine.)

So, just like most of you, my faithful readers, I’ve only seen the information at the Apple Web site, watched the video, and read some reviews and opinions from other Web sites, such as:

• Wired: Would You Buy an iPad? Wired Readers Weigh In
• Wired: How Will the Apple Tablet iPad Change Our Kids’ Lives?
• CNet Poll: The Apple iPad: Will you buy one?
• Telegraphs (UK): Apple iPad review
• Engadget: Apple iPad first hands-on!
• LA Times: The iPad shows up the Kindle; will Apple’s iBooks store challenge Amazon?

Some of these articles and article commenters seem to get it, such as the author of How Will the Apple Tablet iPad Change Our Kids’ Lives?. However, I’ve been surprised how many are not getting what seems so clear to me.

This quote from Wired’s Would You Buy an iPad? Wired Readers Weigh In article reveals the confusion.

Though Apple’s Steve Jobs introduced the iPad as a device that would occupy the world between smartphones and laptops, potential customers aren’t convinced. A full 71 percent of 934 readers polled said they won’t buy an iPad, because they are happy with their smartphone and notebook.

To understand the iPad, you have to first understand what it isn’t. Steve Jobs makes that clear in the above quote. The iPad isn’t a phone. The iPad isn’t a laptop. That is, the iPad isn’t expected to do all of the things that you might do with your phone or your laptop. Yet, 71% of the poll respondents “won’t buy an iPad, because they are happy with their smartphone and notebook.” These 71% don’t understand what the iPad isn’t.

So, if the iPad is not a phone or laptop, what is it? From the Apple video, it’s pretty clear: the iPad is a mobile media machine.

• Surf the Web.
• Read a book.
• Listen to music.
• Watch a movie.

Sure, you can install the iPad version of Pages and write a term paper on it, but that’s not the primary purpose. So, comparing it to a laptop isn’t reasonable.

But comparing it to my iPod and Kindle is. And, based on what I’ve seen and read so far, the iPad is looking pretty good. Yes, it costs twice as much (or more), but look at all of the extra stuff that it can do!

Here are some of the common complaints or concerns that I’ve seen.

• The iPad name suggests that Apple has a serious lack of women in it IT department.
  Seriously? I never made that connection. iPad is just a derivative of iPod. And beside, the IT department has nothing to do with a product’s name. That would come largely from the marketing department.
• “Ink” technology (i.e. Kindle) is better on the eyes than the backlit LED that the iPad uses.
  I really like reading my Kindle, so I’m a fan of Ink technology. Still, I can’t read it in the dark without a pretty bright light shining on it. And, I usually spend most of my day in front of a computer screen, and my eyes don’t feel fatigued at the end of the day. So I’m not yet convinced that this is an issue.
• The iPad doesn’t allow multitasking, so I can’t listen to Pandora streamed from the Web whilte I read.
  OK, you have a point. On the other hand, the iPad is an iPod. My iPhone doesn’t multitask either, but I can listen to music from the iPhone’s “iPod” feature while doing anything else. Plus, I don’t listen to Pandora. Now, if you were to tell me that something important was missing, like that MLB won’t have an app for listening to live baseball games, I might agree with you.
• The Web browser doesn’t support Flash.
  OK. This might be annoying every now and then. However, my Kindle not only doesn’t support Flash, it doesn’t support ANY Web browsing.
• Once again, Apple comes out with an overpriced toy.
  I admit, when I saw Apple introduce the iPad as a magical and revolutionary device at an “unbelievable” price, I was skeptical. I wouldn’t classify the $499 price for the least expensive model as “unbelievable”. While it is expensive, it’s not necessarily outrageous.

The iPad has been “announced” for a full day now. I haven’t seen one in person. But, based upon what I have seen and read, I think it looks very promising as an upgrade to my Kindle.

For helping me resolve a oh-so-typical Windows problems, Process Explorer is added to my Nice List.

Today, my Windows XP PC seemed both sluggish and to be running hotter than normal. The task manager was consistently showing my processor running at 100%, and revealed that one of the svchost processes was the culprit.

In the past, I’ve found such issues to be related to an update that some program (often from Adobe) wanted to perform. Upon removing the useless items from the startup with msconfig, the problem was usually resolved. (Adobe applications have a bad habit of inserting themselves back into the startup list on a regular basis.) Not so today.

Unfortunately, the Windows XP task manager will identify that svchost is consuming the processor, it doesn’t identify which of the many processes that are running is the problem.

However, Process Explorer does.

Once I downloaded and ran this nifty tool, within mere moments I was able to identify the service was started with this command line:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\svchost.exe -k HPService

A google search then identified this further as “HP Network Devices Support”, a service that monitors network printers for changing IP addresses. Since my network printers have fixed IP addresses, I don’t need this service. It was then a “simple” matter to turn the service from “automatic” to “manual”.

And now, voila, my PC is cooling off and running better again, and I can get back to what I really wanted to do today.

My friend Brian turns 40 tomorrow.

Using math that isn’t entirely clear to me, Brian is celebrating his 40th birthday in 2010 with an 80′s themed birthday party. Guests are supposed to talk like we talked in the 80′s and dress like we dressed in the 80′s.

This is a problem.

You see, I’m pretty sure I wear the same things now that I wore in the 80′s (though there’s a small possibility that what I wear now is in an ever-so-slightly larger size than I wore then). Yes, I’m pretty sure that I wore blue jeans, knit shirts, mirrored sunglasses and tennis shoes back in the 80′s, just as I do now. I did wear a ball cap a bit more often back then, so maybe that’s the addition to my wardrobe that will make it “80′s”.

Or perhaps you can help me with this dilemma?

For taking the time to write a letter to Macworld’s editor to promulgate the ability to use the spacebar to page up and down in the Safari Web browser, Link33 is added to my Nice List.

While it is a rare thing for some one to take time to write the editor of a newspaper or magazine, it is an even rarer things for some one to not only take the time, but also to write something worth reading.

Well done, Link33.