jameswharris

Lessons from Blogging

Exercise for my flabby memory is the top reason why I put so much time writing on these blogs. If I go too long without writing, I’ll notice that I’m forgetting more words in day to day conversations – I have to keep writing to fight the decline of my mind. But am I writing anything worthy of reading? I have no trouble thinking up zillions of things to write about, but are my random inspirations really interesting to anyone but me?

I wished I had the discipline to knock out one 1,000 word essay each night, and only in an hour. What a fantastic workout in my word gym! I’m lucky to finish two essays a week, each taking 4-8 hours. And that doesn’t count the two to three abortive pieces each week I don’t finish.

Every evening when I sit down to write, I hope to have an idea that I’ve been contemplating all the day to polish. It helps if I’m thinking clearly and not tired, which means I need to keep my body in shape. Sometimes when I’m tired, focusing on an idea will generate energy, so it helps to try to write. I wish I could say that I’m always inspired by my topic, and it allows me to chisel out one clear expression of a carefully considered thought.

What really happens is I start with one vague concept that causes me to vomit out a torrent of words as fast as I can, which I shape by rewriting several drafts. As I write, I research with Google, hoping to find concrete pieces of information to support my ideas. Between struggling to retrieve lost words, phrases and memories out of my own noggin, I trawl the net looking for new words and verifications of poorly remembered details. Often I use Google to find the words I can’t recall by searching on related ideas.

I’m sure if I didn’t write these essays, my mind would turn to mush. Rereading my essays I realize I have a long ways to go towards developing coherent structured writing. So a new theory has occurred to me about blogging. What if writing is more beneficial than just strengthening my ability to recall words. What other lessons am I learning from my WordPress exercising?

It’s quite easy to blather away about anything, but that’s not good neural exercise. And, quite often I might mention, I’ll tackle a subject that’s either too big for a blog post, or beyond my ability to define clearly, and I’ll have to abandon the project. Finishing a piece is part of the healthy process, and giving up on an idea leaves me feeling the same way as when I’m having a conversation and I can’t find that damn word I want.

Up to now, I’ve mostly been working to express an idea that quickly flashed by in my brain. Sometimes, if I write about a specific topic I’ll do a lot of research to gather facts, like when I write about subscription music services. This gives me a taste for journalism. Just a small taste, but enough to realize the work required to write non-fiction. Opinion essays can be as creative as writing fiction, but both are way to easy to do badly.

The next question is: Do I write anything useful for other people to read? If all I’m doing is exercising my wimpy brain, why would a reader care? My life is no more interesting than anyone else’s, so why would anyone want to read my thoughts? I think the next stage in the evolution of my writing, I should think about each essay as a product that is useful in some way. Since my product is free, I don’t actually have to worry about it’s monetary cost to readers, but I personally consider time, extremely valuable, so I don’t want to waste your time.

That means the next challenge I work on learning from blogging is to write 5-10 minute essays that are well worth their cost in time. That’s quite a challenge, one I’m not sure I can achieve.

Looking at my statistics tell me which essays have been more successful than others. I know from the WordPress stats that I have around 20-25 people subscribing to my blog as a RSS feed, and 200-300 people finding their way to my pages accidently, through Google and other search engines, or by links put up on various blogs that are kind enough to list Auxiliary Memory. It is flattering that people actually read my blog at all, so I feel a responsibility to write something time-worthy.

When I think of all the great books and magazine articles I read, I can’t believe people would waste their time on any blog, much less mine. And there are thousands of blogs better than mine. I have to assume that there is a quality to blogs that people like that they don’t find in regular magazines. Or I have to wonder if people only read blogs because they are like kudzu growing over the net, choking up search engine returns, just too visible to ignore.

Learning about what people want to read will be my second lesson from blogging. My most popular essay is, “The Greatest Science Fiction Novels of the 20th Century,” with over 10,000 hits total, and getting 30-60 more each day. In other words, I’ve accidently picked a topic that a small number of people want to know about daily. If you search on that title in Google, I’m 3rd in the returns at the moment, after two links to books at Amazon.com.

This doesn’t say anything about the quality of my essay. I’ve just hit the right combination of words and ideas to be rated high with Google, and the topic has a steady interest. I call that “topic background radiation.” Occasionally I’ll write about something that people have a time related interested in, like the Toshiba NB205 netbook, which just came out and I immediately reviewed. I’ve gotten 74 hits on that one so far today. When the Toshiba NB205 gets outdated, those numbers will drop off. But until then, was my review useful? I know I solved one lady’s problem, with her new netbook.

Generally, I talk about my reading. For instance, I wrote a weird take on “The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury. I’ve gotten almost a 1,000 hits on that one, trickling in at 3-4 a day, which is a revealing topic background radiation. I’m guessing it is a story used in schools for discussion, because I’ve written on far more famous SF novels, and their topic background radiation is very low, like 1-2 a week.

Of course, this all depends on how Google ranks my page. For some reason, I’m in the first page of returns for “The Veldt,” but on the second page for Have Space Suit-Will Travel by Robert A. Heinlein and Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke, two books I think are very worthy of reading but seldom get hits at all. Or is that because people seldom go past the first page of Google returns when searching for a review? And if someone is thinking about reading one of those books, did I say anything to help them make their decision?

Once in a blue moon I’ll accidentally mention something that’s in the news, like the Kindle Reader for the iPhone. That post got scads of hits for a day or two, and hardly ever got called into reading action since.

If I wanted to just get hits, I would go to Google Zeitgeist everyday and pick a topic. Why are “basking sharks” and “raging elephants” so interesting on July 14th, 2009? And who the hell are Shane Carwin and Lisa Loring? Shows my lack of pop culture knowledge. It is quite doubtful that Google will rank my page within its first 100 returned just because I mention those hot search names and phrases. It’s not that easy to get noticed. And God knows, many people try. For what value are hits, really? There’s no guarantee that people read what they hit on.

Take this essay, for example. What value is it? Because I’m not reviewing a book, movie or computer product, I’m pretty sure it won’t get many hits at all. Hopefully, I haven’t bored my handful of regular readers, but have I given them anything worth their time? If anything, I’ve taught them not to read blogs but write them, it’s good memory exercise. If I had some quantitative way of proving writing blogs helps with memory, I might have a good article. Readers love self-help topics.

Here’s something to consider that might be worth your minutes spent here reading. If everyone read a little each evening, but only read the absolute best essays and articles, the English speaking world would only need ten monthly magazines, but let’s stretch that to one hundred for reading variety and the coverage of the diversity of sub-cultures. All writers would compete to write the very best essays and articles each month to sell to those one hundred editors. Everything else could be considered crap and thus time unworthy.

So why read off the web? Because it allows you to read exactly what you want to read, at the moment you choose. It’s pitiful to think that any of my essays come up on the first page of Google returns. If you search on the phrase “The Time Machine by H. G. Wells” my essay comes up 5th. It really shouldn’t. The real lesson from tonight, is why the very best essays ever written on any topic, aren’t the ones that Google links to in your search.

JWH – 7/14/9

Big Brother – Baby Boomer Edition

Theoretically, I like the concept of the reality show Big Brother, but watching horny kids in their twenties throw tempests in teacups becomes less appealing every year as I get older. Youth really is wasted on the young. With the first season, back in 2000, I thought it was a great anthropological experiment, with us TV viewers observing the private conversations of caged Americans. The contestants were more aged varied back then, and more unique personality-wise. Now the shows seems to focus on the young and the randy.

Big Brother has local editions in 70 countries – see the above Wikipedia link for a rather fascinating account of the worldwide success of this show. But pardon me if I bitch and moan a bit about the television’s obsessive focus on youth. Give us reality shows for the over 50 demographic. Why can’t they have a Big Brother with all Baby Boomer Houseguests? I’d like to see a dozen people from my generation trapped in the Big Brother House together. We’d see an “Oh, my God, I’m getting old!” melodrama instead. I could relate to that. And this summer would have been perfect, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Woodstock.

I doubt TV voyeurs would find the same titillating action with boomer houseguests, especially after 10pm. Would many young internet viewers rise with the dawn to watch the oldsters when they are fresh and frisky? Would old flabby bodies draw in the same Nielson numbers? How many Beatles generation women, would want to prance about in their big white granny panties and show off their droopy asses? Or how many men from the same generation, who once might have had hippie hair and sinewy bodies preen their bald and flabby bods for TV viewers, and as for being studs, reveal their only wood comes in the morning when they are half asleep, or their major lust is to be left alone to drink a beer in peace and quiet, away from female chatter.

On the other hand, Big Brother Baby Boomer edition might be rather educational for the young. Listening to my generation talk about their regrets over lost youth could inspire the under 30 crowd to get off their asses and stop watching so much damn TV. Would teens and twenty-somethings watching fifty-somethings find warm and fuzzy lessons about life? Or would the inner lives of old house guests be as invisible to young viewers as the inner lives of their parents?

I find the reality shows do have value. They are very revealing about the varied types of personalities in life. Unfortunately, most reality shows focus on the brawn and bikinied, who all seem to have a very shallow inner lives. Or do producers just cut out all the philosophical conversations, and leave just the whining?

And would Baby Boomers debase themselves so willingly in the Food Challenges? Maybe the young and the clueless are all Big Brother can recruit. But if we did get to eavesdrop on a bunch of fifty-something imprisoned in the Big Brother House, all sitting around the mini-pool, what would we hear? Bragging about success? Soliloquies of regret. Tales of memory loss and fears over physical decline. Or would we see examples of fighters, people who won’t go gently into that good night. Stories of world travel and adventure. Deep philosophical rants. Meditations on mystical insights? Normally, the houseguests are young, and they have their whole life ahead of them, so what would a show be like full of contestants that are heading into retirement?

I wish CBS would change the format of the game. Most reality shows are based on the idea of eliminating one player each week. With Big Brother, the appeal to me is the interaction between the players, I wish they’d invent a system where they kept all players till near the end, then find a way to compete based on a more complicated scoring system. In real sports, you don’t vote out players. Eliminating people solely based on likability, or lack of, and chess-play like endgames is getting boring.

I think Head of Household should be an elected position, because the politics for winning it would be far more fun than just a twenty-minute game. It would give more purpose their daily lives. To make it more complicated, make the reason to win Head of Household different each week. One week, they could elect the most ambitious member of their group, and the next, the smartest, or the sexiest, or most scientific, or the most conniving, or even the most spiritual. Acting and lying would be allowed in these competitions at an extra dimension. By keeping all the players, there would be more alliance intrigue. Then have a rush of eliminations in the last two weeks of the show, like in sport playoffs.

Also, make the Food Challenge and other games less clownish, and more elaborate, and maybe longer lasting. There is too much sitting around doing nothing by the contestants. Give them more to do, make them work for that half-million. I’m not sure mature people would put up with all those silly competitions. And maybe that’s why the producers can only get silly people to want to be on the show.

For example, have a trivia contest that lasts a week. Allow the players to talk with each other and share guesses. If the producers gave out a 20 question quiz with really hard answers, imagine how much the contestants would struggle as a group-mind to find the answers, but still selfishly horde answers to be the winner. Or have an art show contest, giving the players a week to produce a work of original art voted on by the TV public. Another fun thing, would be to have them build elaborate mouse-trap like gadgets. A weekly cooking competition would be great for people trapped in their situation. The current games are getting stale after 10 seasons.

The Big Brother reality TV show is like a science experiment in psychology and sociology. The producers should work with scholars in these subjects to develop real science worthy experiments, letting the TV viewers in on the setup. Big Brother 11, the 2009 season, is working with high school cliques. That might turn out interesting. It would be fascinating to see the current season run concurrent against the Baby Boomer edition, to see if the same cliques 30 years older play out in the same way.

To be honest, I can barely watch reality shows. Their novelty has worn off. I will admit I did find a lot of guilty pleasure in the first seasons of Survivor, Big Brother, The Amazing Race, Project Runway, America’s Next Top Model, Project Greenlight, and a few others. I still watch them sometimes to be social and have something to talk about with my friends and workmates, but as a whole they are getting to be a tired concept.

Yet, I have to wonder if the shows are getting tired, or if it’s me, by getting older. I do long for shows and movies about people my own age. And I hate it in reality shows when the token old person gets voted out immediately. I also hate when the token old person is a nut job. Or if the old contestants aren’t nutty, they come off bitchy or bossy by the young, and get immediately voted out.

Of course, are there young bloggers out there complaining that the young are totally misrepresented on reality shows, and they would like to see the youth of America get better TV representation? And why do reality TV producers always make up teams from a collection of token diverse stereotypes? Why not have an all computer geek Big Brother, or all African American Survivor or GLBT Biggest Loser that might get viewers for forget the personality clichés and see individuals.

I have to give these shows credit for one kind of success. Watching reality TV reveals deeper personality aspects than what we’re normally exposed to in our day-to-day work lives. This happens in two ways. First, the contestants are willing to let more of their inner thinking hang out naked for the world to see, and second, television viewers get to hear thoughts from groups of people they normally never get to know. How many people would ever get to meet a Richard Hatch in real life? And I’m not referring to the gay issue per se, but maybe how many people get to meet such unique Machiavellian?

I think reality shows could capitalize on this virtue of theirs by getting past their own successful formula. What would a reality show reveal if all the players were older than 75? And why not show foreign reality shows here, with sub-titles and commentary about local customs and traits. Right now reality shows like Big Brother and Survivor contain a mixture of people, mostly whites in their twenties, one or two black people, maybe a Hispanic or Asian, one gay person for sure, and a token old person, either in their forties or fifties. Get away from that PC formula. For instance, what if Big Brother 11 was composed of all gay contestants, but still organized by the same cliques of Athletes, Populars, Brains and Off-Beat, with a varied age range. Now that wouldn’t be tired.

JWH – 7/12/9

iPhone Revelations

The iPhone is a disturbance in the Force. The personal computer revolution, starting back in the 1970s, has gone through many radical paradigm shifts, with the most profound brought on by the Internet. Ripples of change, caused by Apple’s telephone, indicate revolutionary upheavals in the fabric of the cybernetic collective. In other words, Dudes and Dames, get ready to be impacted. For over a decade now, tech philosophers predicted the total ascendance of the Internet browser as the Imperial Interface between the real world and the digital wonderland, but now the iPhone has accidently started a rebellion, one that might overthrow that Emperor IE.

Kids say the darnedest things, now in 140 characters or less. They have rejected talk for texting, and email for tweets. Going further, they jettison the bloated browser for tiny applets on the iPhone. Strangely, the byproduct of selling to twitchy unfocused minds is writing programs with jewel-like simplicity where form dictates functionality. But then, programming has always determined what percentage of the population embraces the geek lifestyle.

Take word processing. Remember WordStar commands? Back then mostly secretaries and lawyers were the only people to apply their brainpower to the task. Then came Word Perfect, with its elegant text menu making a revolutionary advance over memorized commands. Millions switched to doing their writing on a computer because of this. Finally, came the GUI, and WYSIWYG, with Microsoft Word becoming the Cro-Magnon of word processors, killing off Neanderthal Word Perfect.

The Internet has been around longer than personal computers, but it wasn’t until it was combined with the GUI based web browser that the mundane Dick and Jane joined the nerd herd online. The ascent of the browser, starting with Mosaic in 1993, has slowly crowded out almost every other fat client except Microsoft Office. And cloud computing cowboys are programming as fast as they can to dethrone that King too. The browser has evolved to the one-size-fits all condom on every computer.

Now Apple disturbs the Force with the iPhone, with netbooks out on the ocean, being the potential next tsunami to shake things up. Programming for the 3.5” screen is changing the game. Safari might be a dog that talks and dances, but who cares, it’s the applet mice at play that are pointing the way to the future. Instead of relying on the browser that can do a billion things, people seem to prefer and handful of custom tools that fit their day-to-day on-the-go lifestyle. All designed to work specifically and elegantly on a 3.5” screen with constant Interact access. Until you play with an iPhone or iPod touch, you will not understand what I mean, and I don’t have enough time before bed to make point by point examples. Seeing is believing. Get your iPhone friends to demo their favorite apps.

Netbooks are machines with 10” screens. If they becoming baby desktops, powered by IE or FireFox, they will not rippled the Force, but if, on the other hand, developers write programs customized for the 10” window like they did for the iPhone, and netbooks are universally combined with broadband connections, we should see another disturbance in the net hive mind.

The browser owns the 13” through 24” LCD display. Browsers suck on 3.5” screens. Browsers are annoying at best on 10” screens. If netbook programmers take lessons from iPhone programmers and develop functionality for the 10” form, then we should see new application species emerging that will create new paths for computing users to take. The iPhone has been the 1849 gold rush for programmers, and the netbook should become the Alaskan gold rush. Lets see.

JWH – 7/6/9

The First Three Minutes by Steven Weinberg

The First Three Minutes by Nobel Prize winning Steven Weinberg, is a short little book about how our universe began. It is not new, first appearing in 1977, and updated in 1993, but still very readable and not quite out of date, a scientific classic. While reading The First Three Minutes, I can’t help but compare it to The Book of Genesis. Weinberg chronicles the science behind, “Let there be light.”

I would like to say this book is readable by any well educated person, but I don’t know if that’s true. I do think any reader who has kept up with popular science should find it a thrilling quick read. The first link I give at the top is to Google Books where you can read as much as you like online and decide if you want to buy a copy, but I will say Weinberg has done an excellent job of explaining an extreme mathematical subject with very little actual mathematics.

It is quite presumptuous of scientists to talk about the first three minutes of creation from 13.7 billion years ago, except that we have one direct existing clue, the cosmic background radiation discovered by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson in 1965. However, that’s like saying we should predict a cake recipe by taking the temperature of a slice of German chocolate before we pop it in our mouth. What Weinberg is saying, by knowing the average temperature of the universe now, by measuring its rate of expansion, by studying all the sub-atomic particles we can, we can plot backwards to a point in time when the universe was infinitely tiny and very hot.

This is why we spend billions on high energy particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider. The more we know about all the sub-atomic tiny, the more we can say about the super big cosmos. Once you get a taste for reading about this kind of science, the more you realize that speculating about the first three minutes after the big bang isn’t just idle chatter. Our scientific view of reality is based on putting a puzzle together of logical pieces. A student of popular science might begin with a 50 piece puzzle, to get a vague image of the universe, but eventually you’ll want to move on to 500 and 1,000 piece puzzles. Every science book read helps create a finer mental model of how reality works. The First Three Minutes by Weinberg provides many major puzzle pieces.

I like to think of our universe as rather hot, because of all the fiery stars, but in actuality, our universe is in a very cooled state. The average temperature of the universe is just a few degree above absolute zero, whereas during it’s early stages it was millions upon millions of degrees hot, so hot that the particles and atoms we all know and love could not exist as we see them now. Our visible universe, full of empty clear space, through which light from distant stars and galaxies shine, didn’t develop until the universe got relatively cool. Before that the universe was opaque.

The First Three Minutes was written just a dozen years after Penzias and Wilson discoveries in New Jersey, and the updated edition was written after early results from the COBE satellite was put into orbit in 1989, giving more confirmation to ideas that were originally just speculation. I highly recommend people read the CMB and COBE links at Wikipedia. I wish Weinberg would write a totally new edition of The First Three Minutes, and expand it greatly to show what science has learned about the Big Bang since 1993. For example, Weinberg had only known the Hubble Telescope during its early failure state, and not the mega success it would become. He still thought Texas was going to have a super collider. And there’s no telling what will go in the science books when research from the Planck spacecraft starts coming in.

Weinberg has continued to write science books, such as last year’s Cosmology, but it is expensive and more suited for graduate students, being The First Three Minutes with all the math left in. It would be nice to have a complete rewrite of The First Three Minutes for us cosmological ground hogs. I’m having a difficult time finding a current popular science book that covers the same territory as The First Three Minutes but catches up with all the latest scientific discoveries. Even the 2004 Big Bang by Simon Singh is barely past the early COBE results. I’d appreciate anyone posting recommendations to more current reading.

JWH – 7/5/9

Toshiba NB205 Netbook

I finally made the plunge and bought a netbook, a Toshiba NB205. I had been wanting one since the Asus Eee PC 2G Surf was announced. I kept waiting for better battery life, better keyboard, better screens, and finally decided I’d buy either the Asus Eee PC 1005HA or the Toshiba NB205 because of reviews in Laptop Magazine.

The extensive review in Laptop Magazine practically gushed about the Toshiba, giving the Toshiba 4.5 stars, .5 more than any review that I had seen for a netbook, but the magazine was also was quite fond of the 1005HA, which it gave 4 stars, a rating many netbooks had achieved there. And the Asus 1005HA had some features I really wanted more, like wireless-N, a better webcam, slightly better battery life, and not having a weird battery butt hanging out. However, the Toshiba got rave comments from an Amazon customer reviewer who owned a Macbook Pro and claimed the Toshiba was the first netbook that had Apple-like build quality – that swayed me a good bit. Plus everyone said the touch typing on the Toshiba was fantastic, and I had always found typing on any the netbooks I had used so far as being yucky at best. Typing on the Toshiba is surprisingly great, at least for me.

I highly recommend using the netbook you are thinking about buying at a store before you purchase one. Don’t just order one from Amazon, sight unseen. Sales are staggering for netbooks, and I think a lot of people aren’t ready for this new computer size.

The whole concept of a netbook is a compromise. I paid $399 for my netbook. When people hear they can get a laptop for $399 they think its a bargain they can’t pass up. Buyer beware, netbooks use an Intel Atom processor that is far slower than your standard Centrino. They use smaller and cheaper components. 10” screens are tiny, and the keyboards are very different.

Too many people I’ve met wanted a netbook because they are cheaper than a laptop. Netbooks represent a functional design to meet specialized tasks. Don’t go by price. Buy one because you want to carry a computer to more places than you do now. Or because you want a small form factor for a specialized reason. I bought mine because I want to make it into a multimedia ebook to use in my La-Z-Boy. A guy on Amazon said he bought one because he was afraid to take his expensive MacBook Pro on trips, but wasn’t afraid to risk a $400 machine.

Think of a netbook as a device that fits between an iPhone and laptop in finding a purpose for existence. Smart phones allow users to take the Internet everywhere, but at a cost $70-$100 per month, and limiting their users to seeing the web on a 3.5” screen and typing with one finger. A netbook requires no monthly fee, but getting the Internet means mooching Wi-Fi connections or buying a broadband subscription, but you get to see the web through a 10” window and type with all your fingers. Netbooks originally came with 7” screens and tiny keyboards, but it was soon realized those dimensions were not practical unless you were a child with tiny fingers.

Unpacking and Setting Up

I bought my Toshiba at Office Depot, and they tried to pass off an opened machine as unopened, so I had to take it back and get an unopened box. That annoyed me, but the actual experience of opening a new NB205 was very nice. I was up and running very quickly. Boot-up was fast. There wasn’t much crapware on the machine, just a 30-day trial of Norton Internet Security 2009 and Microsoft Works with a bunch of custom Toshiba utilities for improving netbook living. There were a handful of promotional short cuts on the desktop that I immediately deleted.

Netbooks don’t have CD/DVD drives for installing software, so anything you want needs to come from USB or over the net. A very useful utility for owners of netbooks is a ISO image mounter, that allows you to treat an .iso image file like it was a CD/DVD drive. I got a free program called Virtual CloneDrive from Slysoft. This allowed me to install programs from work on my machine. I downloaded the .iso file, clicked on it, and I had a virtual H: drive to install the program. Very cool.

Like most computers I set up at work, wired connections are a snap, but wireless ones are annoying. The Toshiba comes with the wireless and Bluetooth turned off. I quickly spotted the FN + F8 key combination that would turn it on, but many people will miss that. The Toshiba comes with damn little documentation. Mostly a warranty and little pamphlet about Safety and Comfort. Plus the standard Quick Start Guide. It does not come with an install CD/DVD, but it does have a hidden partition to reinstall itself and provisions to make your own install DVD. But you’ll need a USB DVD burner.

On the Quick Start Guide they tell you to launch the User’s Guide on the computer. It’s an Acrobat file. Although the little NB205 screen is very nice and bright, I sent the User’s Guide to my desktop so I could read it on a 22” monitor. The manual is okay, but like most, they have to have all kinds of wordy warnings, and exceptions depending on which country you are living in. It’s hard to zero in on just the stuff you need to know immediately.

Computer makers should put out two manuals – one that their lawyers would approve, and a second, that readers will like. Better yet, put out a training video, or put a link to the web, and offer a better multimedia experience.

[Update: At work, on a .11b network I’m getting 4.85 Mbps downloads, so the problem discussed below is a conflict with my home wireless-N router. I’m leaving the original content below to be illustrative of the kinds of problems people face with new computers. I’ll post further updates when I find the fix to my home network problem.]

[Update 2: I contacted Toshiba’s 1-800 tech support, but got little help. The guy tried, but it’s obvious that the Atheros wireless doesn’t like my Linksys router and he had no previous problem reports to help him. The support guy was all to ready to get rid of me and showed no real interest in helping me solve my problem. Bad sign. I could take the Toshiba back, but I hate taking things back. I really like the keyboard on this dingus. My next step is to contact Linksys. I’ve already checked and there is no firmware upgrade to try. The wireless works well enough for web browsing, just not good enough for streaming videos. Since the Toshiba’s wireless uploads plenty fast, I’m wonder if the problem is in the download encyrption routines. To test that would require taking all my other wireless devices off encyrption and that would be a pain. So for now I’m going to take my chances hoping an update will show up that fixes things. Like I said, the Toshiba works fine with other routers. Another wireless problem has shown up, though. Neither Moblin or Ubuntu Netbook Remix will recognize my wireless card. That’s not uncommon for Linux distros, but it makes me wonder how common Atheros is used.]

I’ve been spending hours trying to find a way to make the wireless work correctly. This is a bad first experience bump in the road. I don’t know if it’s Toshiba’s fault, or something with my Linksys Router. But my other wireless devices work fine. I hope it’s just a miscommunication setting.

Wireless Speed

Laptop Magazine reported that the Toshiba NB205 got faster than average transfer speeds with the built-in wireless connection, getting 21.30 Mbps download speeds at 10 feet from the router. At ten feet from my router I’m getting .4 – .7 Mbps downloading speeds, which is significantly wrong. I average around 2.2 Mbps upload speeds, which is great, but bizarre since upload speed are usually a fraction of downloading speeds.

Like most laptops today, the Toshiba came with wireless software that tries to wrestle control from Windows to manage the wireless connection. The NB205 ships with Atheros, which does have a nice little utility to give back control to Windows. Under Windows my download speed sucks, under Atheros, I can’t even make a connection, even though both systems tell me I have an excellent wireless connection.

Using a wired connection I can go to http://www.speedtest.net and achieve 22 Mbps download speeds. Switching to wireless and I get .5 usually. Where’s the problem? So far I haven’t figured this out myself, and I may have to wait till after the holidays to contact Toshiba. Carrying around my netbook in the house I can use the net, but it’s very slow, and unsuitable for streaming video, a feature many netbook users like. I did check Hulu and YouTube under the wired connection, and the videos look great on the Toshiba’s little screen.

Battery Life

Laptop Magazine reported the NB205 got 8 hours and 33 minutes of battery life on their tests. I used my machine over over 4 hours today and had 55% left on the battery meter, so that seems to pan out. Not only that, the screen shows nice brightness with the power connector pulled. I hate laptops that go all dim just to save battery life.

The reason why I wanted either the 1005HA or NB205 is because they got between 8-9 hours of useful battery life. You can carry your machine around all day and not need to bring the power brick and cord.

LED LCD Screen

The LED backlit screen is lovely. Bright and sharp. I got TweakUI and removed the Recycle Bin from my desktop and set my taskbar to auto hide, so my desktop is completely clear of all icons and menus. I always install Webshots, a desktop photo gallery program. I want my desktop to be my art gallery, not an ugly collection of icons.

If you pay Webshots a $19.99 annual fee, you can download unlimited photos from their archives and get wide screen crops. I don’t know what Webshots does to the battery life, but I like seeing a slideshow of great nature photos for ten minutes now and then. Having the outdoors as part of my indoor life is restful and contemplative. People who come to my office at work often get mesmerized by my Webshot slideshows. I’m used to visitors not looking at me when they are talking to me, but looking over my shoulder to my image gallery. Some photos are dazzling.

I’ve set up Dell Mini netbooks that had higher resolution than the Toshiba, but the fonts are just too tiny. 1024 by 600 is a decent size, and the Toshiba’s desktop doesn’t looked squashed or stretched like I’ve seen on some netbook screen settings. It’s a perfect little XP window. I’ve very happy with the screen.

Keyboard and Track Pad

The keyboard is excellent for touch typing. I like the island style keys, because the design does feel right. Often on other keyboards I hit two keys at once, but not on this one.

The track pad also feels good, and has multi-touch features. I keep doing something wrong though, with my fingering, because I keep causing the browser window go back a page. That’s annoying, but probably my fault for unintentionally giving it the wrong command.

Plans for the Toshiba NB205 Netbook

I don’t want my little netbook to be a pint-size version of my desktop computer. I want to find apps that take advantage of it’s size and on-the-go potential. Take for instance Safari on the iPhone and iPod touch. It’s very cool to have a browser that works so well on a 3.5” screen, but in reality I never use Safari to browse the web on my iPod touch. But I don’t consider that a failure. What Apple developers have done is bypass the browser with custom apps.

There are web pages that sense Safari on the iPhone and show a cut-down web page for better viewing. And that’s great. Instead I prefer a custom app for each task I routinely need.

For example, instead of using Safari to browse the web for movies and show times, I use an app called Now Playing. It looks great on the 3.5” screen. When I launch it, I’m shown a list of nearby theaters. I pick one and I’m shown a list of movies playing at the theater with show times and Rotten Tomato ratings. If I select a movie I’m given a paragraph about the movie and buttons to a video of the trailer, reviews and links to several web sites that offer more reviews. I can even add the movie to my Netflix queue or send the movie times as an email.

In other words, several sites I’d normally browse to research going out to a movie, are combined into one app and formatted perfectly for the 3.5” screen. What I want to find for the netbook is an app that does the same thing formatted for the 10” screen. See the distinction. Understand why I don’t want my netbook to be a tiny desktop?

Now I might have to get away from Windows to achieve this goal. Jolicloud and Moblin are two alternative operating systems that make a button menu system like on the iPhone for netbook computers. But that’s just the start. They also need to reformat the web applications so they are designed to be perfect on a 10” screen. Right now they just call up desktop applications and browser applications for regular computers.

For example, most people who create magazines and newsletters to be distributed in acrobat reader, format them for 8.5 x 11 inch paper. On rare occasions, I’v seen magazines formatted for acrobat to fit a full size computer screen. This makes a stunning difference. I wished I had a link to illustrate this. iPhone apps are great because developers format for their screen. Web apps on desktop computers often look odd because they were designed for the developer’s monitor and not yours. How often have you gone to a web page with teeny tiny fonts and an extremely busy layout. I bet it looks wonderful on the developer’s 24” Macintosh display.

I don’t know if developers will develop applications specific to 10” netbook displays, but I’m hoping. Although I have Office 2007 running on my little machine, and it’s very usable, it’s not pleasurable to use. Now I might be able to put Word in full screen mode and be happy, but I’d rather have a word processor designed for a 10” screen.

I did downloaded Microsoft Reader and eReader to see how they looked on the Toshiba. They are okay for reading ebooks on the 10” screen, especially eReader, because that program can be configured for a two page layout that makes the screen look like I’m reading from an open book. I’ll have to explore more later, especially my old account at Fictionwise.com. I’ve been trying to find a comfortable and practical ebook reader for years and years. I have to admit the Kindle was very close.

I’ll return to the subject of the NB205 in the future, as I find more applications and tasks suited for what I want. It’s a very nice little mini laptop. I’ll need to buy a purse or some kind of messenger bag to carry my netbook. It can’t be an on-the-go computer if I don’t take it everywhere I go.

JWH – 7/4/9