Tablets

No; I did not run out on Black Friday and buy a cheap tablet! Will I probably buy one in the next year of so? I'd say that the chances of that are pretty good. I think that they are conceptually interesting, and I think that what my wife does here at home can mostly be accomplished on a tablet vs. her big laptop. However, my budget and the frugal part of me say that, now if not the time. So, why are we talking about it?

I do need to throw this caviat out there, that this is NOT A REVIEW and that if this has sparked interested in one or more of these tablets, you should find full-blown reviews written by professional who are getting paid to do it and are supported by full test labs. That's what I do. So this is just a synopsis of what I've found so far.

First of all, as any long standing reader probably knows; I tend to research extensively. That might be an understatement, but be-that-as-it-may: the research has begun in earnest. Secondly, my buddy Steve asked me to weigh in with my opinion on his possibility of purchasing one or more for himself and mostly importantly for his wife, for Christmas. He and his wife are both educators with 2 children as well, so it goes without saying that they have similar budgetary constraints as our household. His original question to me was are there any "refurbished" deals out there that aren't into the iPad price-range?

It pretty much goes without saying that in this market-space that the original iPad established, that all conversations start with the current version of it as the baseline. Because, as much as I decry the whole "look how cool I am using an Apple product" mentality, the fact is that as a mature/general use tablet, and in terms of feature as well as build quality, there is no equal. However, you pay the price. The current iPad2s start at around $500 new with the price going down as far as $450 at some places during Black Friday. That price goes up from there and keeps going up to somewhere in the $700+ range for the full-boat, 3G and 64Gb version. And that's before throwing another $100-200 worth of folio/cases, and other nebulous accessories at it!

So, let's look at options: there are of course the Android based tablets that run the gamut from less than $150 to very high end versions that are every bit as expensive as the iPads, then there are a few out there that run their own software like the Blackberry. We'll start by throwing out all the uber-cheap, resistive-touch/no-name Chinese knock-offs. They all tend to be somewhat glitchy and generally don't function well due to the poor responsiveness of the screens AND the old hacked up versions of Pre-2.2 Android OS that most of them use. I will give them one thing though: they are cheap! I saw a Big Lots (!!!) Black Friday ad for a Pandigital tablet for $59.99. Big Lots....really?!? My prediction is that there's going to be a bunch of these things at pawn shops after Christmas priced at $75 because Uncle Jim Bob couldn't figure out how to make it work and tech support was non-existent. Enough about these things.

Let's move on to the players in this market space who don't wear a prominent Apple logo. To me, you have to differentiate between the use of them before we go on. There is of course, general home use, which is generally the 10" (give or take) models that take over many of the function that people use laptops for, such as web surfing, social networking, accessing electronic media and light messaging. Then there are the 7" models that folks will tend to carry with them more and use as big smartphones. Most manufactures have both versions in their lines and many have optional sub-models with both 3G/4G and Wi-Fi only. Now, really "Wi-Fi" only isn't as "only" as you might think, since many (if not most) have tethering applets, allowing them to connect to your data-plan equipped smartphone and not have to pay for another plan. But obviously, the ones with wireless data onboard are going to be more expensive than the other.

I'm just going to throw this out there that the most impressive package, in terms of performance to me is the Blackberry Playbook (7"). It's fast, and handles streaming very fast, and relatively inexpensive at around the $350 pricepoint. However, it doesn't run Android; it runs Blackberry's own OS which obviously limits you in software available. But you really should read some of the reviews and look at some of the YouTube videos: It's really quite impressive for more than $100 less than the iPad2. Blackberry does know how to move data!


Then comes the two Taiwanese heavy-weights: Acer and Asus. The Acer Iconia line comes in a variety of flavors ranging all the way from a small inexpensive (again in the $350 range) all the way up to the 10" versions designed to attach to a notebook type dock which are more in the iPad range. The Asus is generally very similar product with almost identical feature sets. Both of these pads run the newest Android 3.0 "Honeycomb" OS and function very nicely.

Which brings us to the Motorola Xoom, which might very well be the most iPad-eque of all the Andoids with it's VERY nice build quality, smooth function and similar $500+ price-point. The Samsung Galaxy is a very much like it at a similar price, but in a 7" form-factor. It seems like many of the reviewers who do a lot of traveling have used this tablets personally for the last 6-8 months, but it's pricey.

I understand there WAY more tablets out there, but I'm going to end on this one. The Lenovo IdealPad A1. Yup; I get that this make it look like a biased opinion by a ThinkPad lover, but the fact is that this tablet is a well-functioning Android OS (albiet 2.3 "Gingerbread", but fully flash capable), 7" model selling at $200! Yup, I put my hands on one at Fry's the other day, that was not on special marked at that price, which was in stock! Yup, it has a capacitance type screen (same as an iPad). Yup, it has a MicroSD slot AND MicroUSB connectivity as well. It's not a surprise that PC World called it a "....$199 Bargain"! It's a bit chunky and heavy for a 7" tablet, but goodness gracious....it's a $199 tablet!

Black Friday 2011

I'm normally not a participant in the festivities of Black Friday (this where you gasp....what!?!), yes, I know I know: it seems to run contrary to what a "frugal" person would do right? Wouldn't you want to stand in line for hours and freeze to death to save a few dollars in the interest of frugality? Well....really....no; and here's why. Firstly, almost all of my needs are fulfilled on the used market, not the new. Secondly, I advocate buying nice, well built products at a low price, not cheap products at the same price! Cheap is cheap, is when it's bought, will continue to be as the product ages WAY faster than a superior product and end up costing more in the long run when it breaks before the other. Enough about that; lets get on with what I did on Black Friday 2011.

Let me start by saying that I left the house at about 10am, not pm! I had seen a couple of ads from the large outfits that had some peripherals that I wanted. But, being peripherals, I sure wasn't going to stand in line hours before they opened just to get them! Besides, they are so low-priced and common-place that I figured (rightly) that there'd be plenty left.

First of all, I went up to Micro Center (did I ever say that it's my favorite "brick and mortar" retailer?) and found the Cooler Master NotePal U2, Notebook Computer Cooler. It's basically a perforated piece of aluminum with a "hook" on one end that served as the mechanism of elevation (right-side-up), and as a wrap-around device to hold your computer when turned the other way around, thus allowing it to be completely compact and able to travel with your computer without taking up very much space at all.

There are seemingly dozens of devices just like this; what's the big deal about this one? The U2 version (there are U1 and U3 as well), has the exact size of our Z61m workstation's footprint.

I had looked at and coveted them before (but it was a non-starter at $25 MSRP), with their nice heat dissipation due to the aluminum construction and moveable/detachable fans which run on a USB pass-through.These not only allow you to remove them for transport, but to move them around so that they are position where the heat is the worse on your particular notebook.

Then it turns out that the curled over part designed to hold the notebook is the exact depth needed to accommodate the "Zs" as well (ready to do the happy dance now).

....and of course the most important part.....Black Friday priced at $10. Plus I also picked up one of those generic laptop hard drive housings that lets you put in any random drive you have laying around (and I have many) and use it as a USB connected storage for $6. So, after a little bit of a wait at checkout, I'm out the door at around $17 after taxes.

I was so please with how well that went, that I decided to brave the Fry's Black Friday sale, since I had seen another Cooler Master, the X-Lite notebook cooling pad advertised at $10 with a $10 rebate......and Fry's is on the way home. This particular pad wasn't like the other in that it's not really made to be transportation friendly. It's made of molded ABS plastic shaped like a wedge.


Instead of the 2 removeable fans underneath like the other one, this pad has one BIG fan in the middle of the wedge which is definitely not designed to be accessible. Of course, it size allows it to turn at a low rpm making it virtually silent. Very nice for use in the bedroom while the wife is asleep!

Here's a collage of pictures showing all the relevant features.

I haven't even gotten to the best part yet. It's virtually (within mm) of the footprint of my X300 that I commonly use in the bedroom!

So, my Black Friday consisted of $27 spent, of which $10 is coming back and 3 non-essential, but never-the-less, nice to have peripherals bought.

Next post: my other reason for the Black Friday trip. Tablet research....

Grateful Propellerhead

On this Thanksgiving of 2011, I have a few propellerheaded thoughts. Let's start by saying that it's been a very good year and there's a lot to be thankful for!

• The network became something more useful than allowing internet access for all the computers. The actual use of it in a modern sense of backing up or computers and distribution of media has been a revelation.
• The file server running Windows Home Server, allowing all our machines to not only be backed up and access to files, but the goals of centralized media distribution has changed everything.
• Of course, the thing that makes the home server a really useful was the media PC installed into the main AV system.
  
• Combination of an across the board migration to Windows 7, along with the built in Windows Media Center. This turned into a virtually perfect interface with the my media as well as what's out there on cable and the internet.
• Upgraded my wife from her R52 to a Z61m, my son from a T42 to a Z60t, my daughter from an X30 to an X31, plus added a Z61m to my arsenal.
  
• Upgraded my desktop in several important specs, but most importantly a new 22" 1920 x 1200 S-PVA monitor.
• And of course, last, but not least, is the camera upgrade to the D300. Although it didn't go without incident, it eventually got done and I couldn't be happier!

Of course, I'm certain that I've left off a few things, but WOW! It's been a good year for a frugal propellerhead and I certainly have a lot to be thankful for!

"Street Shooter" Part 3: Send in the Clones

This third part of my series on a camera for "Street Shooting" is really less a commentary on that particular camera than it is about how things are in the photographic industry as well as electronics in general.

Most enthusiast are well aware that "cloning" or "badge-engineering" is common in many industries as well as electronics. It's been around for many years in the automotive industry: as in small Ford are pretty much Mazdas, and Escalades are rebadged Suburbans with uglier sheet-metal. In consumer electronics, the practice is often much more blatant, with HP simply putting on a different logo onto the iPods they were selling, although it can be much more sophisticated such as the different electronics and mechanicals used on the Canon laser engines at the heart of most HP LaserJets.

In this case, the device of interest is the Olympus E-330 that I started talking about several weeks ago which I'm interest in acquiring at some point. In the process of researching it, I came across several interesting things. The first tidbit that caught my attention was the fact that the resolution at 7.5 was half a megapixel lower than the 8mp of the E-300 that it replaced. This is something that almost never happens in the digital camera marketplace so I looked into that a little and as it turns out; Olympus changed from using the original supplier (Kodak) to Panasonic for the sensors. This opened a completely separate can of worms onto itself! Besides the obvious that the Panasonic sensor although lower in resolution, had the killer feature that Olympus was after in "LiveView", Panasonic, or more correctly their parent company, Matsushita, is one of the "big dogs" in the electronics world and it's always advantageous to be connect with them. This has a number of ramifications including the fact the there's a far greater number of cameras/sensors involved beside just the Olympus ones, and therefore lowering costs, but another peripheral connection as well. In this case, we are talking one of the truly "Prestige" names in the photographic world which was the venerated Leica!

In the highly complex world of Japanese corporations, these agreements are even more key than most people know. Without getting into an extended history of Japan and explanation of keiretsus, these alliances tend to be archane where often agreements are done without money changing hands and tends to be quasi-secretive in their operations. So, although they are part of the 4/3rds consortium, Kodak isn't part of the the "inner-circle" and ultimately became a casualty. Leica got in on this show, by not only becoming part of the 4/3rds consortium, but as per their licensing and technology sharing agreement vis-a-vis Panasonic. This started out with the optical glass end of things of course, since Matsushita had great electronic expertise, but none in high-end optics. It was a natural fit since Sony of the Mitui keiretsu, had already locked up an agreement with the other prestige German glass maker/designer, Zeiss.

After that little aside, lets get back to the camera. In any case, I've gotten neck deep into research on the E-330 and as it turns out, the info on these "agreements" led me to the fact that within the space of 10 months, 3 companies introduced cameras with the same sensor, lens mount as well as shape and size........hmmm.......suspicious. Hint: look at the number, location, and size of the controls as well as access doors on the different cameras. They can change a lot of things visually, but can't change those without spending LOTS of money.

Olympus E-330 (Jan. 2006), $1100 new MSRP, <$200 used

Panasonic DMC-L1 (Feb. 2006), $2000 new MSRP, $400-500 used

and Leica Digilux III (Sept. 2006), $2500 new MSRP, $1000-1400 used

......verrrry inttteresting!!!

As you can see, the prices on them vary greatly; on the current used market as well as the original "list" (which bear no resemblance to "street") price. As you can see from the "used" prices above, a quick scan of recently completed auctions on eBay indicate that there's quite a disparity on pricing. Granted, both the Panasonic and Leica were originally sold with the highly thought-of Leica D 14-50mm/f2.8-3.5 Vario-Elmarit Aspherical lens, and the Olympus sold with the Zuiko D 14-45mm/f3.5-5.6 lens, but GOOD GRIEF, that $1200 differential is one heck of a lot of money!

One last thought before I go feed the kids (and me) lunch. Lens aside (most people, including me, aren't as good as their lenses are anyway), the basic of the bodies are essentially the same with the exception of the fact that the Olympus has an articulated screen (no small thing with LiveView), but it's a long standing camera company with a history of innovation with electronics as applied to photography. And with digital photography, that end of things is at least half the equation. Soooo, which one of these three would you put your money (pun intended) on to deliver in that area? Yes, I understand that "build quality" is important and I'm a disciple of that, but double, or $1200 worth of it?

Besides; since they all use the same lens mount, you can even run out and spend $500 or so to buy the Leica lens for your Olympus. Personally, I love the looks of the Panasonic (I'm a sucker for flat black and squared-off look), and if I could find one at a great price, I'd have to look long and hard at it, but at the sub-$150 that the E-330 sell for......it's the right camera for a frugal propellerhead.

The "Ark"

As you guys know, the “Grail” has already been attained (in the form of the Nikon D300), so in the grand tradition of that esteemed (and mythical) archeologist Dr. Henry “Indiana” Jones, my current “Frugal Propellerhead” project has been anointed; the “Ark of the Covenant”. Other than the relatively blasphemous/irreverent connotation, it’s appropriate in that the Ark was the box constructed to hold the “tablets of the law” as handed down from God to Moses. Besides, my friend and fellow ThinkPad fanatic has already claimed the use of the “Holy Grail” term for his amazing Z61m.

Anyway; on to my project…… You might ask yourself, why someone who owns a fairly nice desktop workstation, AND a super-cool ThinkPad X300 would need (or even want) another computer! Here it is: now understand that this may or may not bear any actual “good logic”, but just what I think of as a half-decent rationale for me having this really cool thing.

I’m thinking about starting yet another “side-business”. You know that I already have a computer business that supports my technology addictions and sometimes the occasional family outings to Chick-Fil-A. Now, I’m thinking of leveraging my meager photographic skills and growing collection of equipment into a business as well. Yep, I know, there are more, “I own a DSLR camera and know a little bit about taking pictures than you” photographers than you can shake a stick at, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I’m better than most of them, plus I have a better plan!

Most photographers really make the bulk of their money charging you for those pictures in print form and if you want the files, they charge you more, since they, not you, own those. My plan is to charge straight up for my time and expertise (well…OK, mostly time and the use of my expensive camera), and you own the files. “Flash Drive Photography” You bring me a flash drive; I take your pictures, we’ll take a look and see if they’re any good right then on a computer, I put them on the flash drive. You pay me, take them away, print them, email them, use them in whatever manner brings joy to your life. Simple huh?

Yes, the concept is pretty simple. Take something that is already a pretty serious hobby and that I’ve got money sunk into anyway and try to make something out of it. We maintain a yearly family membership to the Dallas Arboretum since that is way less than the cost of paying for professional portraits for the kids anyway. Now for the last piece (not really since there’s always more equipment to be bought, but humor me); I need a computer that’ll allow me to dump the files and review them “on site”….which is where this whole post was going anyway.

I do have that James Bondish/”Q” Branch-cool ThinkPad X300, but it’s not really something that you’d want to use to review photo files on a regular basis. Yes, it whips out from your svelte aluminum briefcase on the London to Paris, EuroStar train dodging bad guys, while you look dashing in your tux, but some random old house, field, railroad tracks that you are shooting at!?! Not so much. Besides, of its weaknesses, probably the most glaring is the screen that isn’t very large at 13.3”, and has particularly poor viewing angles as well. Not something that you’d want your clients to look at while deciding whether or not that you made them look good….or not in their pictures. Plus, it’s primary storage and boot drive is a 64Gb SSD. Fast yes, but obviously, not a lot of storage AND SSDs are not something that you want to constantly execute a bunch of writes and erases on either.

Therefore, my answer is the ThinkPad (what else?), Z61m, that I picked up as a partially completed project from my friend Ed ($75). It came with a bad screen (lower third shows jibberish), small HDD (40Gb), little RAM (1Gb), slow processor (Celeron version of the Core Solo), and bad battery. However, it had the really cool looking titanium cover, webcam, 15.4” screen which can be replaced with up to a UWXGA (1920 x 1200) screen, UltraBay Enhanced modular bay which can take a variety of devices, and the ability to take the “Merom” version of the Core 2 Duo line of processors. Therefore, I could turn it into a VERY powerful computer, the trick would be to be able to do that without breaking the bank! Here’s what I did:

• Picked up an Intel T7200 (2ghz Merom) CPU from a recycler for $24. That’s the most bang for the buck since it’s the slowest (therefore the cheapest) of the 4Mb cache “Merom” line, but has double the on-die cache of the previous Core Duo “Yonah” line.

• Bought a Samsung 128Gb SSD in the 1.8” micro-SATA format complete with 1.8” to 2.5” adapter for $125. Eventually, Two reasons for the 1.8” drive: they are cheap right now (way cheaper than the 2.5” drives of the same capacity), AND I’ll be able to use it to eventually upgrade my X300. By then the bigger SSDs like the 256Gb should be a lot cheaper.

• Bought two compatible Atheros A/B/G/N WiFi adapter from Hong Kong for $26 each (one goes into my wife’s Z61m) so the machine can connect to the new/faster “N” home access point at the faster speed.

• $40 for a replacement WSXGA+ (1680 x 1050) screen, from an eBay recycler.

• $15 for a UltraBay Enhanced, SATA HDD adapter so I can use a 500Gb Samsung SpinPoint drive as storage. The drive was given to me by a friend who needed files copied from it since the USB connector from the external case malfunctioned.

• $35 for a 85% 9-cell battery from another ThinkPad Forum member.

• Accumulated 4Gb of RAM and A/C adapter from dead machines, no costs.

• $340 total spent on a machine worth easily twice that.
  

• Fun of the project and scoring the parts cheap: PRICELESS!

The idea is that this machine not only has a bigger screen, but it’s larger, has far wider view angles as well as higher resolution, so better able to handle the large photo files. Of course, the ability to have a big 500Gb mechanical drive will be advantageous for storage. Now, if I can figure out a way to anodize the titanium lid a really cool satin black, I’ll be one happy camper!