We’re back from an extended Holiday Season visit to my brother and his family, my parents, and some social calls on both sides of the continent. Highlights included seeing my niece dance in the Seattle Ballet’s Nutcracker for the second year, and a Roast Goose New Year’s Day dinner with my parents in Baltimore (including Spaetzle, Green Beans, and Red Cabbage — the theme was clearly German Cuisine). I’d not had roast goose before, and it is a treat, particularly if you like ‘dark’ meat. Even the breast meat on this bird is dark!
Pam was able to swing north to Massachusetts for a few days to visit with her brother and his family, while I helped my Dad upgrade to Leopard. A good thing, too, as his upgrade was just as difficult as mine (once again taking 3 attempts, and ending up with a call that went to 2 Apple Tech Support Reps and ultimately required a clean install, as well as us manually installing all applications and moving all of his email accounts, documents, calendars and address book entries — just as I had to).
The trip to the States was not without some culture shock (it always hits me, despite my best efforts to prepare for the differences). On our flights there, my seat companions were constantly reading Bibles. On the way back (with a stop in Cincinnati, where I was able to get some Cincinnati Chili at the food court, a delicacy of my undergrad years), we were amazed at the throngs of soldiers everywhere, with make-shift lounges set up in all of the airports we were in. Religion and the Military: not a great combination for me.
I’m still recovering from a nasty cold that I caught while away (which unfortunately, my father also caught and in his case it has since turned into Flu). Work starts up, but for me it’s just a week as the following week I’ll be in San Francisco for MacWorld Expo.
Speaking of things in Tech, my brother alerted me to a somewhat puzzling honour for our family:
Drucker : next gen Windows Mobile smartphone from Palm
January 6, 2008 – 11:22 amNow that all of Palm’s flagship Treo 750 smartphones have been upgraded to Windows Mobile 6, it’s now time to look forward to 6.1. Engadget reports that the next high end Windows Mobile phone from Palm is code-named “Druckerâ€. Here’s what we know so far about Drucker:
- GSM/EDGE/HSDPA
- runs Windows Mobile 6.1
- 2 Megapixel camera
- 1500mAh battery
- 320×320 screen
- Bluetooth
Drucker, which will be a replacement for the Treo 750v, will be the first smartphone from Palm that supports WiFi. It’s also the first to match current Palm OS-based smartphones in terms of screen resolution. Drucker is expected to have a retail price of £270 (about US$534), and will probably be available first for Vodafone.
I have nothing to do with this phone, and frankly, I’d probably never buy a phone using Windows Mobile. I wish they had at least code-named the Palm OS phone with our last name, but then again, these days, if it’s not an iPhone, I’m not all that interested. I’m less and less satisfied with my frequently-crashing Treo, and I doubt if a new one is in my future. I’ve been a Palm user for perhaps 12–15 years but it’s clearly time to move on if the best they can do is to use Windows and code-name the device after our clan. (Heh).
Religion and the Military: not a great combination for me.
Amen to that, David! 🙂
Since you’re going to be at the MacWorld Expo, will you discuss the Leopard problems you’ve had? I’ve been suggesting to my David that when our main PC gets replaced, perhaps we should go Apple as they look so cool and the rep as being a simple O/S. What I’m reading about Leopard has me a bit leery, however .…
Hi Bob -
In the cases of both my father and myself, we were on our 3rd (or perhaps even 4th!) upgrade of our system, on an older computer (G5s, in our case). In the other upgrades I’ve done for Leopard on more recent machines (and especially the newer ones running on Intel chips), the problems we had were non-existent. In fact, Pam was up and running with no problems save a minor email annoyance.
Leopard did get a lot more ambitious (and is hence, a bigger upgrade for those with older computers), but it has a bunch of superb new features and tools: continual backup with a unique user interface, far better tools for email, built-in on-the-fly file-viewing (with no need to launch the application in many cases) a faster browser and better videoconferencing and screen-sharing tools.
In my case, I’d hate to have missed out just because I was running on a system with a lot of cruft (accumulated garbage). With the new system installed, my computer is faster and can do a lot of things better. I only wish that I had been better prepared for this upgrade.
If you are getting a new system with Leopard pre-installed, there’s nothing at all to fear. In fact, there’s less to fear in terms of lost data due to a disk crash (or even you mistakenly deleting a file); Time Machine helps you recapture a lost file faster and easier than any backup software I’ve ever seen to date; you just have to be sure you have an extra hard drive to dedicate to the backup, and those are getting cheaper every day. Yesterday I saw a Terrabyte hard drive for about $350, and that’s a Canadian price!
Looks like David will have to get with you for MacTips!
Thanks for the scoop, and have fun at the Expo.