Apple's iPad is a lily pad in the tablet computer pond

Today marks another incredible birth date for Apple Inc.  After a litter of iKids over the last few decades another one joins the Mac Clan; the iPad...which shall remain in transportation limbo (electronic incubation) for another 60 days.
 
Although another lagging product from the free-spirited computer and communications technology collective; the iPad in Apple fashion awes the customer upon first glance with an inspirationally shiny screen.

However the machine is no more impressive than the Tablet PCs that have existed for years.

Perusing online one can find a comparable machine for a comparable price.  Or a beefier machine that's really a hybrid tablet/laptop.

Yet the iPad offers no removable hard-drive connection, what you buy is what you get, no information on Apple's site indicated it had more than that Apple 30-pin port.  No USB connection, nor Firewire. 

Former Apple employees disclosed that Apple has been working on such a device "for more than a decade," reported the NY Times.

However, the company executives could never conclusively decide upon why to market a device that was power inefficient and awkward to use compared to a keyboard and mouse, the former employees told the NY Times.

That power inefficiency however, came from Apples' use of PC microchips, stated the former employees speaking about prototypes.

Which is odd considering that Apple has made their own chips for just about every machine, despite the effort involved why didn't the prototypes get a house-heart from the start?

For certainly other Tablet PCs have been lulled by battery longevity, yet they retained the ability to have a stronger battery replace their stock; which Apple has not with the iPad.

But Apple claims to have achieved a 10 hour lifespan per charge for the iPad; while pursuing a mixture of surfing the web via Wi-Fi, watching videos, or listening to music.  All due to their homemade 1 Gigaherz A4 processor, which apparently is a low-powered high-performance chip.

But a combination of the above mentioned processes is like mixing booze; the more the mixture, the faster you crash and burn.  Given Apples history with lithium batteries, 10 hours may be a stretch, but who knows!  They ship in 60 days, Steve Jobs just wanted customers to get their teeth wet with a marketing stint bent on salivation salvation.

More to come Mac-olites.

Pricing options for the iPad.
16 Gigs of memory - $499
32 Gigs of memory - $599
64 Gigs of memory - $699
Most expensive - $829 (3G models = price + $130)
Plus $15 or $30 data transfer per month for internet access.

HP recovery...Vista drudgery

In April the AC power adapter for my laptop broke.  The pin which connected the laptop to the adapter separated from the body of the adapter.  It was a sad spring day.

After having committed to a mission of purchasing a new desktop while maintaining some money for books, the adapter replacement fell down the list of financial priorities.

Which is one thing great about Christmas.  With my Christmas cash on my card after a trip to the bank, I went to Buy.com and bought a generic power adapter and cord.  It arrived yesterday, allowing me to do something I haven't in six months.  I turned on my HP dv6000 and that friendly Vista jingle filled my ears for the first time in over half a year on a warm winter day.

But after six months without my dear dv powering up, she slowed down sluggishly.  Luckily Hewlet- Packard, like other computer companies, has a factory partitioned space on the hard drive loaded with all materials necessary to complete a full reformat and reinstallation of your operating system.

How many clicks did it take to select and run the easily identified option which set the laptop back to it's "factory shipped condition"?  Five...

After a restart I hit the f11 key during start-up.  This loaded some files similar to slipping a Windows CD into the drive which led to the HP recovery window.

"Use this program to recover your computer to its original factory condition." - "Next" - Click 1

"Would you like to launch Microsoft System Restore?" - "No" - "Next" - Click 2 & 3

"Would you like to perform a system recovery?...System recovery is a procedure for restoring your computer to its original factory shipped condition." - "Yes" - "Next" - Click 4 & 5...the rest was patience training. 

The time it took to reformat and reinstall Vista and start-up into the operating system, 24 minutes...

Now Windows is loaded back up, the ol' dv is running well, but I have 70 Vista updates to install and configure.  The only bust to the reboot, three years after purchasing my laptop Vista has bloated like a well-fed balloon.

However, the ability to reformat my machine while fully reinstalling my operating system within a half hour feels great.  Although this operation has become common place for myself, as for other computer users, the advent of a recovery partition has streamlined the manual procedure.

Step 1
-Enter BIOS, select boot sequence 1 to cd-rom
-Save & Reboot

Step 2
-Open cd-rom quickly
-Put in Windows CD
-Closer cd-rom quicker

Step 3a
-If done fast enough mash keyboard when instructed to hit "any key to boot from cd."

Step 3b
-If not done fast enough, restart and consult 3a.

Step 4
-Patience training, windows has to load lots of files to reinstall the operating system.
-After windows files loaded follow on-screen instructions.

Step 5
-Select to reformat your hard drive
-Patience training, this will take 15 minutes to 30 minutes depending.

Step 6
-Wait for computer to automatically restart
-Patience training, wait for same windows files to load
-Follow on-screen instructions to install your operating system

Step 7
-Patience training, your Windows installation will take about 30 minutes.

Step 8
-Update.

See what I mean about five clicks?  Feels great having a streamlined partition.