iPad Review - do we like it?I ended my recent trek in to the Grand Canyon with a few days rest and relaxation in Las Vegas.
The iPad and the iPad 3G were already on sale in the USA and Las Vegas has three Apple Stores. So I expected to turn up at one of the stores and simply buy an iPad over the counter. However, it turns out that Apple are unable to keep up with initial demand, or possibly they are purposefully drip feeding product to keep their fans excited.
The best I could do was pre-order one. I was told that my order would be met when stock came in. Given that I only had 4 days there, the natural question I attempted to ask the staff was, how long I would have to wait? Would it be next day, next week or next month? They were obviously trained to deflect this question as, to a man and woman, the answer was "we simply don't know".
It was only when I befriended a particular geeky staff member on my second visit that I found out that stock usually comes in daily and the wait for pre-orders is approximately 2 to 4 days. He also suggested that I order one of all 6 models to stand a better chance of getting hold of one before I left.
I found that you could only order from the intranet in-store and then found that you are restricted to one device per Apple ID. So over a space of 30 minutes I wondered around the store creating six different Apple IDs and ordering one of each model (3 different capacity iPads and 3 different capacity iPad 3Gs).
Two days later two emails popped up to inform me that my iPad 64GB and 32GB were ready for collection. I opted to get the larger of these two models. Four days later, once I was back in the UK, I received the remaining emails to say my 3G models were ready for collection.
What's wrong with the iPad
Sat Nav - only if you splash out. First and foremost the iPad potentially makes a fantastic Satellite Navigation device. However, Apple have decided that the GPS chip is only to be included in the 3G models. I have no idea why this should be. It means that you have to buy the more expensive 3G models if you want to use GPS even if you have no intention of taking out a 3G data contract for your iPad.
It's too nice and too delicate to carry around. There is no doubt that the device, which is essentially a large iTouch, is beautiful to hold and use. But I wouldn't want to walk down the street with it. It's simply too fragile, too awkward and too flash to cruise the streets of NW London carrying.
Where is the camera? You have a tablet that you hold a couple of feet from your face or prop up on a stand on your desk. The obvious application is full screen video conferencing via Skype or any one of the other applications available. Likewise, with potentially such a large bright viewfinder, taking quick snaps is another obvious application. So the iPad desperately needs two inbuilt cameras - one rear facing and one forward facing. Or one that rotates 180 degrees.
No Flash. Due to Apple's on-going argument with Adobe, the 'full featured' Safari browser in the iPad, like the iPhone, will not display flash content on web sites. Whatever your opinion on the use of Flash, there is no getting away from the fact that it is everywhere. And thus while Apple remain intransigent, you certainly do not get the full web experience on an iPad.
Not a laptop replacement. The iPad is neither a laptop nor mobile phone replacement. It is a device in its own class. Although one could travel with just an iPad and a few additional "Apps" it would not be a nice experience. Not least because of the touch-screen keyboard and lack of full office type applications. In addition, getting content on to the iPad is complicated, and, in fact, impossible for some content, without a separate workstation or laptop running iTunes, to pair it with.
What's right with the iPad
It is wonderful to play with. It is a gorgeous gadget with a highly polished and well thought out interface. Email, music, video and photos all work as expected and the web browser is fast and easy to use, other than the Flash issue mentioned above.
Battery life is great. Before the 11 hour flight back from Vegas I converted a number of DivX movies and TV shows I had on my laptop to a format compatible with the iPad (It must be said that this is not something a less technical user would be able to do) and loaded them to the iPad using iTunes. I figured, during the journey, I would start watching on the iPad until it ran out of juice and then continue on the laptop. I reduced the screen brightness and turned off both Bluetooth and WiFi and, to my surprise, the iPad ran video content for over six hours and still had charge to spare.
Video is superb. Watching a movie on the iPad is great. Especially sitting in a cramped space like an airline seat. Unlike a laptop there is no keyboard to get in the way and changing the angle of the screen position causes no issues. The quality of the display and the smoothness of the video is very good indeed.
Conclusion
If you can afford an additional bit of kit on a whim, love gadgets and are not looking to replace a current device, get an iPad, you will love it!
If cash flow is tight and you need to justify a purchase, then the iPad is an unnecessary expense.
Jason Ozin is a well-known IT professional, technical architect and joint owner of Technica Solutions - www.technicasolutions.co.uk. Jason consults leading UK and international enterprises on real world technical and IT issues. Jason specialises in business infrastructure and IT security matters.
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Meet our team. We have added a team page to our main site.
We profile each member of our team and provide a photo and a bit of background. You can now put a face to a voice.
Jason Ozin is a well-known IT professional, technical architect and joint owner of Technica Solutions - www.technicasolutions.co.uk. Jason consults leading UK and international enterprises on real world technical and IT issues. Jason specialises in business infrastructure and IT security matters.
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As USB 3.0 begins to make an appearance on the latest motherboards and add-on cards, so Intel has shown it's logical successor at their Developer Forum currently running in Beijing.
Intel demonstrates Light Peak - twice as fast as USB 3.0Light Peak currently runs at 10Gbps, a fraction over twice as fast as USB 3.0, and Intel have suggested that the optical cable technology could be tweaked to 100Gbps. Cable lengths can run to 100 meters, and the cables can pass signals from multiple protocols. One interconnect could carry USB 3.0 data along with HDMI signals to a monitor for example.
The Beijing demo used a USB-sized port which carried the usual USB copper cable in addition to the new Light Peak signal, making for a painless upgrade path. For the future, the Light Peak port could be much smaller, good news for phones, cameras etc.
David Izen: Partner, systems, quality, procedures, ER-6n, MP33, 1dIII, philadelphia cream cheese, beardies, 1990C4Cab, rhythm-free zone, ribena
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New technology is constantly paraded through the halls of Technica and you'd think this week's arrival in outlets of the next-generation Audio-Visual amplifiers would be met with universal excitement, but not so.
Sky are very close to rolling out 3D services via existing Sky HD boxes and have already demonstrated 3D sports transmissions in adverts and in selected venues - Technica had a tour of a 3D-ready OB van, courtesy of long-time client Telegenic.
With news that 3D TV sets are likely to land on shelves this summer at estimated start prices around £2,000, the prediction was that 3D would hit the ground running.
Not all is rosy however. Current generation AV receivers switch video source via the extremely convenient HDMI cable. Connect the amp to your TV via one HDMI cable, connect Blu-Ray, Sky HD, PS3 and XBox 360 similarly to the amp and you can switch between sources with the amp's remote. However, to provide 3D you will need an HDMI 1.4-equipped amplifier, and most of the new features introduced in HDMI 1.4 will require a new HDMI chip and will be beyond any firmware upgrade. Recent adopters of HDMI AV amps will have to replace their fairly new kit with the latest 1.4 versions in order to pass signals between source and TV. Naturally if you're going straight from source to TV without amp you won't have an issue - if the TV can show 3D it will be equipped with HDMI 1.4 anyway, and we know the Sky HD boxes will be fine - just be sure to buy an HDMI 1.4 cable, avoiding the earlier 1.3 and below cables and now the Micro HDMI plug (soon to appear on mobiles and cameras) and even the automotive application plug.
HDMI 1.4 does more than just 3D of course. There's an integrated ethernet channel (saving using a hub to link your source devices together, though that was unlikely to phase too many), and a number of 3D formats have been defined and catered for. There's also support for a massive 4,096 x 2,160 pixel resolution at 24Hz, so the future of 'Super HD' begins to roll before vanilla HD is out of diapers. There's also support for an audio return channel, so data from the target (TV) can also be sent back to the amp (for TV's with built-in tuners for example) and extended support for larger colour spaces which should help colour reproduction when viewing your PC or PS3 slideshows on the TV.
So the good news: If you've not taken the plunge and bought an HD TV or HDMI amp yet, well done you. There will be some cracking kit out soon.
If you've bought either, well, it probably wasn't the first time and most likely won't be the last we get stung by technology improving radically in double quick time. 3D amp, Super HD TV and a stack of HDMI 1.4 cables are on the wish list.
David Izen: Partner, systems, quality, procedures, ER-6n, MP33, 1dIII, philadelphia cream cheese, beardies, 1990C4Cab, rhythm-free zone, ribena
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The Partners and staff of Technica Solutions are fortunate to count many charities as clients. We offer support to these organisations at reduced charity rates.
However, sometimes we want to go that little bit further. So over the last few years we have been giving both our time and donating equipment to a wonderful local primary school called EJPS.
As well as supporting all the school's computers, we have also donated a 12 station ICT suite, pictured below. This comprises 12 workstations, a server and various peripherals.
The school is due to start work on a new £5million state-of-the-art building. But until then the suite is located in one of the old buildings on their site. That doesn't stop the staff and pupils making full use of the facility.
It is great when we pop in and see our donations and hard work being used and enjoyed.
Jason Ozin is a well-known IT professional, technical architect and joint owner of Technica Solutions - www.technicasolutions.co.uk. Jason consults leading UK and international enterprises on real world technical and IT issues. Jason specialises in business infrastructure and IT security matters.
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As we roll out more and more virtualized environments, including our own (all of the in-house servers at Technica are virtual machines running on Microsoft Hyper-V), we come across tweaks that make an engineer's job easier.
We started to virtualize some of the servers in one of our hosting centres and found that BlueOnyx, a CentOS Linux hosting platform that we use for hosting some clients' sites, gained hours per day, due to the way that the guest OS responds to the virtualized clock.
The official Microsoft solution is to add
clock=pitto the kernel lines in the grub start-up file called menu.lst
As you might have guessed, this made no difference at all to the time drift.
We found eventually that the proper solution is as follows:
Add to the end of each kernel line in /boot/grub/menu.lst
(remember to including the kernel line you will find in the comments at the top, so that new kernels inherit the argument)
this string:
processor.max_cstate=1 clock=pmtmr divider=10You may also want to update the Linux OS's clock with a trusted time source weekly.
We do this by editing root's crontab:
crontab -e (allows you to edit crontab in vi)
# update clock every Sun at 13:00
0 13 * * 0 /usr/sbin/ntpdate -s -b -u pool.ntp.org
# sync hardware clock 5 mins later
5 13 * * 0 /sbin/hwclock –-systohc
We hope this little snippet from our in-house knowledge-base helps a few of you who find yourself stuck in the same position.
If you have need for Virtualization consultancy or advice, please feel free to get in touch.
Jason Ozin is a well-known IT professional, technical architect and joint owner of Technica Solutions - www.technicasolutions.co.uk. Jason consults leading UK and international enterprises on real world technical and IT issues. Jason specialises in business infrastructure and IT security matters.
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It was interesting to see Apple clean up again in a Consumer Reports magazine study into after-sales service. As happened last year, Apple’s overall ranking for problem solving, phone waits, phone staff and online support put the company head and shoulders above their nearest rival – 32 percentage points clear on desktops and 26 percentage points up on laptops.
Those firmly ensconced in the PC camp deride Apple for the limited choice available when specifying and configuring a Mac, but it is exactly those restrictions that make it possible for Apple’s support team to offer such accurate and effective after-sales support. It's pretty tough to find a poor processor or GPU these days and we're close to 4GB RAM being a standard offering; sacrificing variety on hardware for quality support makes plenty of sense to me.
At Technica we’ve been aware for quite some time that providing a number of standardised core solutions, covering not just desktops and laptops but servers and infrastructure too, help us to offer our clients exactly the levels of service they need and now expect. From the support engineers’ viewpoint, fewer variables, along with confidence in proactive maintenance, undoubtedly lead to greater familiarity and security that queries can be dealt with efficiently and with extremely high client satisfaction.
David Izen: Partner, systems, quality, procedures, ER-6n, MP33, 1dIII, philadelphia cream cheese, beardies, 1990C4Cab, rhythm-free zone, ribena
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Everyone who knows me knows how super fit I am and how well suited my body shape is to climbing down, through and back out of the Grand Canyon, over four days with nights under canvas and days navigating steep inclines. No showers or proper toilets and I've been told that my Blackberry won't work....
You can read more about it here and hopefully be persuaded to sponsor me.
Jason Ozin is a well-known IT professional, technical architect and joint owner of Technica Solutions - www.technicasolutions.co.uk. Jason consults leading UK and international enterprises on real world technical and IT issues. Jason specialises in business infrastructure and IT security matters. Jason does not specialise in doing exercise!
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Good morning,
Welcome!Today Technica would like to welcome VAT Advice Line as our newest client.
VAT Advice Line Limited provides independent, quality VAT consultancy advice to small, medium and large businesses both in the UK and abroad.
Craig Fisher is a partner in Technica Solutions - www.technicasolutions.co.uk and is highly regarded as a sales expert. He is regularly asked to speak at many events on the subject of generating new business.
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This is an email we received from one of our clients after a support call...
Magic,
You guys are like wizards in normal clothing.
Cheers.
Mark
Craig Fisher is a partner in Technica Solutions - www.technicasolutions.co.uk and is highly regarded as a sales expert. He is regularly asked to speak at many events on the subject of generating new business.
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