Smart-Watch This!

So......yeah...... I got an Apple Watch last night..... OK; I didn't buy one. I didn't need it. However, when something falls into your lap..... Here's what happened. I've been trying to sell off my "reconstructed" MacBook. I took a liquid killed MacBook, married the screen to a good base with missing parts and there you go. It still had a dead battery, and I had some bad luck with it, like when I met a buyer about a week ago, and it wouldn't fire up. Turns out that the Starbuck's plugs were out, but he got scared off and I was stuck with this thing that I neither wanted nor needed. Then, this weekend, a guy contacted me to see if I wanted to trade the MacBook for his Apple Watch. I neither wanted nor needed one, but here it was....

You see, I have this. Actually, have had for around a year now and love it! It does pretty much everything I want and last for something like 4 days on a charge, which is very close to what my iPhone 5S does (I'm not a heavy user). And if I switch back to Android (which I'm contemplating), it will work just fine with that as well. 

Then, what's all this nonsense with the Apple Watch? Caught up in the hoopla? Want the latest "cool gadget"? Ah.....no, none of those things. Sure, I'd like to see what a more "complete" iteration of the smartwatch can do for me. And I'm thinking that the tight integration with my iPhone will make both more useful. But the bottom line is this: It's worth around $200 and I was having trouble selling the MacBook (it was a Mid-2009 Core 2 Duo CPU) at $165. So, if it turns out that I don't think it's worth keeping, I'll bet that I can sell it for something close to the market price. So, that's it? a simple business calculation?

No, not completely. Today, is the day of the wearable. These things have hit the sweetspot in terms of function, desirability and price. I usually know this when my wife tells me she wants some sort of gadget. Earlier this month, for Mother's Day, she asked for a Fitbit. This tells me everything I need to know. Just like 12 years ago when she asked for an iPod. I knew it was time.

I will say that in her case, it was more about monitoring health, than communications (like me). She's had trouble sleeping and wanted to keep an eye on that as well as her pulse-oxygen, so it's "a thing". I must say, that it's a pretty cool concept. We'll see how it plays out. Whether it's just a fad or a lifestyle change.

For me; as of today, I'm wearing a Space Grey, Sport model. We'll see whether it'll be a nicer looking Pebble or I'll actually end up learning to use the additional capabilities. Actually, my biggest concern isn't whether I'm going to use the capabilities, but it's more whether I'm going to be OK with a need to recharge in less than half the wear-time? Stay tuned..... Only time will tell.....
 

nVida Shield Eco-System

If you've been wondering what's going on with my blog posts, the simple explanation is "the time of year". I'm a teacher and the last month or so of the year is incredibly busy and stressful. Combine that with the fact that my children were both born in the later part of May and that this year, we have a wedding to participate in (my step-sister-in-law)..... we've been a little pre-occupied! I'm actually squeezing this post in between the birthday/wedding-week and the year-end computer club game night/graduation-week! This post isn't about the craziness; it's about what's gone right with our family's tech in the middle of all this. My son and I have found the sweet-spot in the middle of everything else. You might remember that in the last year, I came across the nVidia Shield family of products and had in short order bought a Shield Portable, and Shield Tablet along with a Shield Controller.

At the time, we were hip-deep in Apple products of all sorts, reaching a high of 3 iPods, and 7 iPads. Since that time, due to the end of "Bring Your Own Device" at my wife's school, we've sold off 5 iPads and are looking to get rid of 2 more. Still love my iPods despite Apple killing off the product line, but have learned a few things about ourselves in the process. I'm phone agnostic: really couldn't care less about which smartphone I use. Although, I'd prefer to have both phone and tablet on the same OS, it's really not a "thing" for me. I use my phone like a 55 year old, not an 18 year old! 

But as far as tablets are concerned; I love this thing! It's the right size, right shape, right features and the right amount of power for me. The 8" is good amount of screen real estate (1920 x 1080) so I don't have too much trouble reading on it, while quite a bit more portable than my old ThinkPad Tablet (1) which was 10" and quite a lot heavier. Why not the iPad Mini that we've had a bunch of? For me the narrow and long format works better than the 4:3 that Apple uses. I also carry a lot of content with me on the 64Gb MicroSD card that resides in the reader that the Mini doesn't have! The last few months with this thing has been perfect. It does exactly what I need and with the powerful K1 processor, it has done them in a snappy manner as well. What about my son? Some of you might remember that I had originally looked into nVidia's Shield line of products to find something that he'd like and have some gaming potential.

If you aren't familiar with the world of 12/13 year-old boys; let me fill you in a little bit. My poor wife of the all-girl family is still in a bit of shock and denial! I'm a bit of an "expert" though, in this area having taught and coached 7th and 8th graders for about a decade! They look remarkably human, but are not..... Parents try mightily to keep from sending them off to military boarding school, relatives are glad when they leave and females of all stripe have as little as possible to do with them. They have amazing intelligence, but relegate those energies to such things as; all things XBox One/PS4, or Pokemon. Personal hygiene is a rarely exercised option. Clothing choices are dominated by what brand is popular among socially and maturationally deficient professional athletes, or what was worn the last 18 days...... rumpled Khakis, muddy tennis shoes and dark hoodie. Oh..... grades...... that bane of their existence and causes all mothers to go into fits of rage..... Let's just say that my son has been grounded from virtually all his electronic devices for the majority of this school year!

 At the end of all that; they are still remarkably sensitive and needy at that age. They just mostly refuse to communicate those wants and needs to anyone who's not 12/13! While I was on the Shield binge several months ago, I saw this. Now, I don't mean I saw it for the first time. No, there had been a LOT of advertising for it some 2 or so years ago when it was introduced. I just hadn't paid a lot of attention to it..... being an adult..... and an older one at that. So, when I finally looked into it; the concept looked really cool and the reviews by hard-core tech-heads were very good. I instinctively knew, he would love it. I bought one at a good price. But this was in the middle of his academic doldrums and after setting it up and playing around with it for a while, it went into the closet of doom and was forgotten about. 

Then came the birthdays...... and unfortunately for him, although it fell on a fortuitous Saturday this year, it was also on the day of the wedding! Oh, it gets better! Not only was it on the wedding day, but we also had to drive nearly 4 hours to get there, thus blowing up the whole day! Yes, we did in fact take the kids to Great Wolf Lodge in Grapevine, TX last weekend to make up for it, but it was a gut-punch none the less. Luckily, I was able to give him the Shield Portable for this big gift.

How did it go? Well.... if you're waiting for a 13 year old to jump up and down...... you'll be waiting for a loooong time. But when we told him that he could go get it out of the car (during the to a kid, hours of hob-nobbing after the ceremony), he got busy with it. Periodically, I'd see him over there, explaining it to some person. When a teenager is excited, they talk about whatever they are excited about. So, I'll call it a win. 

And this is only going to get better when he gets the hang of "game streaming" from his gaming PC that I built for his birthday last year. So yeah.... I guess you could say that we're fully invested in the nVidia Shield Ecosystem now.