AI, Mobile, and Eveything Around the Cloud

I had dinner with a friend tonight.  Dumplings, scallion noodles, and more dumplings.  Before dinner, I had some time to kill. I got to the restaurant early.  A lot earlier than I expected.  I guess with the $4 a gallon gas, more folks are staying off the California roads.  If this dinner was not pre-arranged a while back, I probably be home glad that my SUV was not taking me to the poor house. So there I was, sitting around waiting.  Then I figure I could get some work done.  No games.  Real work.  I made a few calls overseas using the Skype app on the iPad.  During the call, I checked on some Excel files, PDF, and Binged something.  Then I made another call to a dealership that we're trying to sell a car to and checked out the paperwork that was e-mailed to me in PDF.   After that, I updated my cities in We Rule and We City.  Made my moves on Words with Friends.  Then, it was back to looking at some research for wor...

It's taken a while but solid state drives, SSD, are coming nicely. What I mean is that I see them more and more as an option from the major PC makers. Everyone from Dell to HP to Apple, its MacBook Air being very popular over the Holidays and demand has not let up, are using them as a premium add-on. Now we are seeing SSD sizes at more affordable prices. Not only that, the drives are bigger. Still, I am not quite ready to pluck down $1,500 to $2,000 for a 480GB drive. For that kind of money, it would be more economical to get a whole new laptop. Say a MacBook Air with 256 GB or storage. So what is in your laptop or MacBook? Have you moved onto a SSD or consider making the move in the near future? - Posted using BlogPress from my iPod touch

Over the weekend, I took my MacBook out for some time at Borders. I had to do work on the laptop that I cannot do on the iPad at this time. And this is an older MacBook. Late 2008 and the battery life has been put through it's paces in the last couple of years. According to a battery utility, it's got 80% left of the original charge left. When it gets to 70% or less, I'll probably have to decide if I should get a other battery or invest in a new MacBook. I turned it on and it attached itself to the free wifi. And the battery indicator said there was 2.5 hours of work I could do. But I wanted to spend my afternoon there working so I turned off the wifi. It has been quite some time since I've done that. The long battery on the iPod touch, and specifically, the iPad has really spoiled me. The battery life jumped to four hours! I was there for about four hours and got about three hours of work done so there was some change left in the battery had I wanted to stay longer. Bu...

Depending on who you talk to you and who you believe, the netbooks, perhaps even lsptops, are taking a sales hit because of the iPad. Perhaps. Then there are those who are not so sure this is happen on a large scale. Given the potential that Apple may be on the verge of a $20 billion quarter and cuts on orders by dorm laptop and netbook makers, it has industry and mobile observers such as myself very excited. Is this the beginning of the end of mobile computing as we know it? More at Greenjava Mobility .

It used to be that any time Apple introduces a new Macbook revision, it was cause for celebration in the blogosphere. These days, unless we get something extraordinary, you hear it for a day, maybe two, and it's back to iPhones, and now, iPads. What does this say about the state of mobile computing? How about our expectations of of a digital mobile life? Arguably, we are more excited about the next iPhone that we just were with the last Macbook Pro refresh and today's Macbook update. And believe me, the 2.4Ghz speed increase and a 43% uptick in battery life to 10 hours ain't nuthin' to sneeze at. I am sure the Macbook will be a huge hit with the fans and anyone looking for a first rate laptop. Still, it isn't the huge attention draw it once was. I do foresee a day when Apple blurs the line between the iPad and the low-end Macbook. How? Adding more traditional Macbook features to the iPad, such as camera and mouse support while simply killing off the Mac...