Apple's New iPad - Everything You Wanted . . . and less!

Oh dear me now . . . has Apple done it again, or has Apple just released a great big iPod Touch? It looks to me like a great big iPod Touch with an 'improved' screen (LED-backlit IPS) that might just be sharp and clean enough for ebook reading but for the glare bouncing off the shiny surface. There's more (much more) at the Apple web site. The first devices won't be available until March 2010. So what do we think? Frankly, we think you don't need another gadget, especially one that's been announced at a price range of $499 (16GB, WiFi only) in increments up to $829 (gasp) for the 64GB WiFi + 3G version. It's big at 9.5" x 7.5" x 0.5" and somewhat heavy at 1.5-1.6 lbs (depending on the version). By comparison, the biggest 9.7" Amazon Kindle DX has a more readable screen, is 0.5" taller, 0.15" thinner and (most important) 7oz lighter, and $10 cheaper than the base-model iPad. Apple will need at least one more revision after the initial release to get this one right. The biggest issue we have is that of half-baked convergence. The iPad is not a good netbook (no hardware keyboard for fast text entry - typing, notes, email, etc., etc. - sorry folks, but an onscreen keyboard just doesn't spin our crank). The iPad is large and heavy in a big vest or jacket pocket, and it certainly won't fit in the big pocket of your cargo pants (or shorts) unless you don't object to the iPad banging against you with every step (at 1.5 lbs it will be felt). There's no USB or FireWire port, so forget about even that part of netbook handiness. The iPad really is a great big iPod Touch, but without the convenience of manageable size. Forget about ebooks and doing anything else made so difficult and eye-straining by the glossy LED-backlit touch screen. Ho hum. What else? Some good things. The mediocre-but-ubiquitous iPod sound is fully integrated, as is the wonderful iTunes Store. Video viewing (if Steve Jobs' demo at the product launch is anything to go by) should be smooth, color-rich, color-accurate and fast courtesy of the 1Ghz, Apple A4 System-on-a-Chip. All in all, it's not the device for which the masses seemed to have been clamoring for the past few months.

The Best Thing About CES (2010)? Great New Products!

CES 2010 awarded the Lexmark Platinum Pro905 color inkjet printer the Innovations in the computer peripherals category. Frankly, any top quality with a $5 black ink cartridge wins us over every time. That's it—an MSRP of only $5, which makes it one of the best choices for SOHO and small office use. Color ink cartridges for this one are $9.95 each, much less than cartridges for competing printers. Pre-order yours at Amazon. D-Link has released the D-Link Touch DIR-865. The Touch works at either 2.4GHz or 5GHz concurrently. It almost maintains multiple data streams which together allow a total throughput of up to 450Mbps as long as its communicating with 802.11N-enabled device. This is a really nice little device and seems to be the new top-of-the-line for D-Link. Too bad it's going to be pricey. We like the equally zippy D-Link DIR-655 Extreme N Wireless Router and the dual band version (if you absolutely need dual band) DIR-855 Xtreme N Duo Dual Band Media Router. Navigon's MobileNavigator looks superb. We already love the Navigon 7200T 4.3-Inch Portable GPS because it's got one of the best interfaces on the market. More to come from CES 2010 . . .

The All-Shiny, All-Tech, Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2010

Las Vegas, Nevada is jumping (as usual), only moreso this week as CES kicks off once again. Every new great, awful, lame, terrific, incredible, pathetic, remarkable, stupid, and interesting consumer electronic product will be on display, being hawked/pushed/yelled about big-time by its maker. We're covering pre-CES product announcements of interest to SOHO and small business (well - there's plenty of consumer stuff too actually) on the KSN blog pages. The page is being update several times per day right through the end of Wednesday Jan 6, so keep checking for new stuff. As soon as the CES doors open to everyone on Thursday, January 7, we'll start posting real (read: actually available, as opposed to coming real soon) product items here, along with links.

Lake Superior State University - 2010 List of Banished Words

Don't worry . . . this is good censorship. Once again, the Word "czars" at Lake Superior State University "unfriended" 15 words and phrases and declared them "shovel-ready" for inclusion on the university's 35th annual List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness. "The list this year is a 'teachable moment' conducted free of 'tweets,'" said a Word Banishment spokesman who was "chillaxin'" for the holidays. "'In these economic times', purging our language of 'toxic assets' is a 'stimulus' effort that's 'too big to fail'." Former LSSU Public Relations Director Bill Rabe and friends created "word banishment" in 1975 at a New Year's Eve party and released the first list on New Year's Day. Since then, LSSU has received tens of thousands of nominations for the list, which includes words and phrases from marketing, media, education, technology, science, arts, entertainment and many other areas. The spot-on 2010 list can be found at the LSSU web site. Need a good word for something? Regret not paying enough attention in school all those years ago? Buy a dictionary and a thesaurus for crying out loud! Start 2010 with a grammatically and expressively accurate bang: The New Oxford American Dictionary - one of the best you can get in hardcover for the U.S., with excellent reference sections and pronunciation guide Merriam-Webster Third New International Dictionary of the English Language - by some estimations this one is even better that the New Oxford for American english definitions and usage Roget's II The New Thesaurus, Third Edition - the most completely useful English thesaurus on the market bar none, helps you find the word you need The Elements of Style - the small, justifiably famous booklet written by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White remains the unerringly accurate standard for english grammar Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success - the best book of its kind we've seen in over twenty years of looking at this sort of thing English Grammar for Dummies - the usual "Dummies" treatment, on point, useful and effective Books, books and more books at Amazon.com. Make 2010 the year that everybody understands what you write, blog, text and email.

Flash Drives, USB Keys, Thumb Drives - Are These Things Useful or Safe?

In the wake of the dreadful admission in late December 2009 by Durham Region Health Services just east of Toronto, Canada that an unencrypted USB thumb drive containing upwards of 80,000 H1N1 vaccination records and related personal information was lost, we've all got to wonder yet again if anybody is truly minding the store. I can't walk into my own doctor's office to look at my own medical records without the presence of a licensed physician. I can barely keep track of my car keys, let alone the foolishly large collection of USB keys I've, um, misplaced over the years. Yet experienced medical staff thought little of transferring confidential medical records — lots of them — on an unencrypted key. There's even security surveillance video captured just outside a Durham Region Health Services building showing a citizen picking up the flash drive and placing it visibly aside, presumably in case the drive's errant owner returned during a search. Unfortunately, there's also succeeding footage of another citizen picking up the drive and making off with it. Thanks buddy — you're a real hero. For crying out loud, don't transport important or confidential business or personal data on one of those little devices unless the data is encrypted. Even then, make sure the data is securely backed up before committing an encrypted copy to any USB flash thumb/drive/key. We did some digging because we absolutely know you're going to use a USB flash thumb/drive/key at some point soon. Here are our picks, all available at Amazon.com, for the most secure: Lenovo 4GB USB Ultra Secure Memory Key - automatic, password protected encryption, all through hardware so there's no software installation EMTEC S450 Secure Slider 32 GB High Capacity High Speed USB Flash Drive - same AES encryption as the Lenovo, but software is installed for the password protection Kingston DataTraveler 200 - 32 GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive - It's a fair choice, but note that you can only store date securely in a password protected "Privacy Zone" on the device, and note also that the security software utility is Windows-only Lexar JumpDrive Secure II Plus 64 GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive - set up multiple protected areas called "Encrypted Vaults" similar to but more robust than the Kingston, with software for password setup and vault management Apricorn Padlock A25-PL256-500 500 GB Secure 256-bit AES Hardware Encrypted Portable USB Drive - a fully on-board hardware encrypted USB external drive that's pocketable, accessed through a browser window Happy trails. Keep your eye on that USB drive!

Latest Reviews - January 2010

Too much year-end partying has put us behind. To that end, and in an effort to catch up, here's the latest list of new reviews. Seems we're getting a bit digital imaging product saturated lately, but that will change (as usual) as get deeper into all the interesting productivity and utility software coming up over the next few weeks. Rolling, Medium Size, Carry-On Camera Cases - sturdy, secure and carry-on compliant bags. Uniblue DriverScanner 2009 - honest, it's a really good driver updater. Think Tank Urban Disguise 35 - for amateurs and pros alike, one of the most versatile ever Handy Folders v3.5 - fast access to regularly used folders is easier than you think.

Microsoft Loses Again, But It's Almost Irrelevant

Microsoft just lost it's appeal against the patent infringement verdict handed to Toronto-based i4i. It's all about the Custom XML function integrated in Microsoft Word, in both the standalone Word 2007 and the bundled version in Office 2007. Copies of Word 2007 and Office 2007 with the feature removed will be available for U.S. sale by Jan. 11, and "beta versions of Microsoft Word 2010 and Microsoft Office 2010, which are available now for downloading, don’t contain the technology covered by the injunction," said Microsoft's Kevin Kutz, after the judgement. i4i developed a custom XML editor and patented parts of its software product. The courts have ruled that Microsoft knowingly infringed on the i4i patent when it included a similar custom XML editor in Word 2007. The whole idea here is that a great, big, multinational corporation such as Microsoft can't willfully eradicate a market being developed by small companies. Competition is one of the things that helped make Microsoft what it is today: highly successful. Now that it's a vast multinational, proceeding ethically (and legally) through the competitive business world is much harder work. Microsoft must be more careful. I'm still using Office 2007 though, and if you're using it too, there's no need to switch. In fact, the alternatives are basically inadequate anyway. So what's the effect of the ruling against Microsoft? Aside from the fact that it now owes i4i about $290 million, not much else. Big enterprise users of Office 2007 and (late next year) Office 2010, can use i4i's excellent custom XML editor (just like they were doing before), or one of any of the dozen or more custom XML editors on the market. Existing boxed versions of Word 2007 and Office 2007 are unaffected by the patent ruling. OEM versions of Office 2007 have already been patched. In the meantime, at this time of year Office 2007 and Word 2007 are selling at comparatively bargain basement prices at Amazon. Get Word 2007 here. Get Office 2007 here.

Happy Holidays

Best of the season to all of you. Thank you for looking and reading and giving us lots of reasons to keep digging up new products to review and new information to report. We're not quite at the new year just yet, but we're certainly looking forward to it. 2010 has lots in store for SOHO, small business, and digital imaging. We've got dozens of products in the review pipeline, we're looking forward to a much healthier business year for everyone, and some great opportunities in the bargain. Stay healthy, stay happy, and be prosperous. From all of us at Kickstartnews.com — David, Mario, Elise, Mark, Lianne, Jim, all the research associates and me . . . Peace.

Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Elements 8 - All You Need?

Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 and Adobe Premiere Elements 8 represent the next significant step for the photo and video editing one-two punch that the company has been flogging for the past eight years or so. Mind you, only three years ago did Adobe decide to combine the two Elements products into a discount bundle. Is this bundle the best deal for the money on the market today? We think so. In fact, as far as photo editing and organizing goes, Photoshop Elements 8 is close enough to the grossly expensive Adobe Photoshop Creative Suite 4 that only serious pros should choose CS4 over Elements 8. It's also true that Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements 8 provide even seasoned pros with an easier-to-use set of powerful tools to do almost everything. That means you and me should be able to fly with Elements 8. Look for our full review soon. In the meantime, you absolutely can't go wrong for $149. Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 and Premiere Elements 8 bundled, will get your creative juices flowing. More important, both products in the bundle are genuinely easy to use, come with a huge set of tutorials, and with just a bit of practice will help you produce superb results. Get Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 and Premiere Elements 8 at Amazon.

Tablet Computers . . . dumb or dumber?

My good friend (Kickstartnews Contributing Editor) Mario Georgiou and I disagree on the usefulness of tablet computers. He likes them - I don't. While the iPod Touch/iPhone are probably the best currently examples of how a highly responsive touch screen should work, the option of a hardware keyboard option within the same form factor seems to escape the priority list at Apple. So we're left with the heavy, awkward and rather powerful notebook-sized laptop tablets. What I want (hmmm, make that, what many tablet computing fans want) is a tablet which combines the best of all worlds in a form factor that is not much larger than the best netbooks. They're coming. They're here. The HP EliteBook works extremely well and it almost qualifies as an ultralight. With a 12.1" screen, it's very portable - bigger than a netbook; smaller than a typical laptop. This should be considered by business travelers as a great all around workhorse. The Lenovo ThinkPad X200 clocks in slightly heavier than the HP, but noticeably tougher for business use, travel, college/university use and so on. It's our best buy. Lenovo had a few quality control problems which began a couple of years after it took over the ThinkPad line from IBM. Time, focus and attention to detail have put the ThinkPad line back near the top of the heap. The HP Pavillion tx2500z is the least expensive of the good quality 12.1" tablets PCs. It's tough to beat for home use. The Asus Eee PC T91MT netbook tablet has the typical 8.9" netbook screen, but rather than a hard drive for storage features 16GB of SSD/Flash memory. Useful for certain - at home, traveling, and for casual use just about anywhere. Limited storage capacity and the slightly underpowered Intel Atom processor will limit its popularity. A good little machine nonetheless with almost 5 hours of battery life and very light weight.

Microsoft to Release Office 2010 in June

The problem with all the alternatives to Microsoft Office is mainly that they aren't reliable enough for serious business use. OpenOffice is good and apparently getting better. Our aging review was quite enthusiastic, and we even pointed out that OpenOffice was most likely all that most home users would ever want or need. Business use is another matter. Complex text, spreadsheet and presentation documents containing unique formatting created with Microsoft Office often break the import filters in OpenOffice. In a business environment - especially considering the time constraints which severely restrict the number of cycles most small business owners have available to fiddle around fixing messed up documents - Microsoft Office is the absolute standard. Google's online office software applications are interesting, limited in features and scope, and work only as well as the speed and stability of your Internet connection allows. The same is true for ThinkFree. Both lack the complex filters needed to import (or create) complex formatting (no indexes, tables of contents, footnotes, etc.). The Microsoft Live products online fare somewhat better, and they perform clean imports of complex documents. Use the others if they suit your needs. For me, Microsoft Office is still the king of the hill now and for the foreseeable future. Get Microsoft Office from Amazon.

Service Costs Are Getting Out of Control . . . but what phone should you buy?

It looks to me as though wireless carrier markets (read: your cell phone carrier) are being fought over and gradually divided into territorial grids. It's not intrinsically a bad thing, but it will end certain levels of competition. The specific down side? The more data you use/download/upload, the more you're going to be charged. Once again, you get what you pay for? Not necessarily. The problem is mainly that you won't get to choose exactly what you want in the way of data access. While there certainly are a variety of plans from which to choose, true customization is not possible, and there don't seem to be any plans in the pipeline for any sort of granular plan customization. What does it all mean for business users? Most likely, increasing wireless usage costs. From my perspective, a phone or personal digital assistant (PDA) which helps you get the most done (online and offline) is very soon going to be the deciding factor, as opposed to the competitive cost of the access plan which is usually the deciding factor now. The RIM Blackberry Curve remains for me the most effective wireless business tool. Screen, hardware QWERTY keyboard, storage capacity, slick and seamless email connectivity, and the myriad apps satisfy the vast majority of my business needs. Everything else (including the iPhone in my opinion) is second best. I have tried the iPhone and I just don't buy into the hype or the cachet or the cool factor (and the onscreen touch keyboard really sucks for me). The effusive praise heaped on the Apple App Store is not enough to move me off the Blackberry - not by a long shot. Get the Blackberry Curve 8900 here.

Amazon Kindle vs. Sony eReader - Business, Home and Travel

I use a Sony PRS-300 and I love the thing. It's small, fast, has an excellent e-ink screen, page turns are jerky, memory/storage capacity is good and it's definitely portable. The new Touch Edition (which is larger, has a touch screen and 3G connectivity) beckons however, so my small PRS-300 may be replaced. The Amazon Kindle, model for model, is slightly larger than the Sony eReader. It's available in two editions vs. the three editions of the Sony eReader. Amazon concentrates on expanding coverage (books, newspapers, magazines, multimedia) while Sony concentrates mostly on books. But the top-of-the-line models from both companies let you organize access to daily newspapers and other timely information sources. I've used both devices. The differences between the two don't amount to anything, except for one little thing - the data format. Sony (which used to be a major proponent of its own propritetary ATRAC music format) has embraced the standard ePub book format, which makes the Sony eReader quite format and recession proof. The Kindle, on the other hand, recognizes only its own proprietary format. I just finished a two week trip carrying the Sony eReader. My carry-on bag was several pounds lighter than normal because I was carrying a lot less heavy paper (my usual 5 books and magazines were replaced by the diminutive eReader). This is a good thing. Get your eReader here. Get the Kindle here (in the U.S.) (and in Canada now as well). Happy Reading!

Copyright is Supposed to Spur Creativity, not Stifle Competition

In this corner, artist and metal sculptor of artisanal Firebowls, Mr. John T. Unger. In the other corner, Mr. Rick Wittrig, competitive purveyor of remarkably similar Firebowls. The dispute? Mr. Unger avers apparently unreservedly that Mr. Wittrig has copied his Firebowl designs. This is a big deal to Mr. Unger considering that he holds a copyright for the designs. Mr. Wittrig has responded, essentially stating that the copyright held by Mr. Unger is inappropriately applied and that He (Mr. Wittrig) is entitled to a copyright of his own. Really. For those who think Wittrig is attempting to generate profitable sales of Firebowls based on Unger's designs, without in any way compensating Unger, the situation is outrageous. For those who believe that Unger has copyrighted something which is (or rather should be) essentially uncopyrightable, Wittrig is a knock-off type of competitor of the same kind that has helped make the schmatta business, the electronics business and many other businesses thrive. Some people point out quite accurately too that such thriving business segments are so insanely competitive now that the only place you can make a garment (or a stereo) is in a Chinese factory at which skilled workers are paid a ridiculously tiny fraction of the wages formerly paid to identical workers (albeit Jewish, Italian, Afro-America, Puerto Rican and Mexican, not Chinese) in the U.S. back in the day. The law suits are flying, but because neither Unger nor Wittrig are anything close to financially Trump-ian, the matter will likely be settled quickly. After all, both of these guys probably realized that the attention from all the foofaraw between the two of them has attracted more attention to their Firebowls than they've ever had before. Good on ya guys! Copyright was originally devised to foster creativity, not stifle competition. Too often over the past 25 years or more however, copyright has been used as a cudgel - something which has to stop. Imitation really is a form of flattery, but it's also a sign that your blissful little world is being invaded by competitors who think they can do a better job than you. Take the hint - all you creative types - and make sure you're not just sitting around admiring your handiwork, basking in the glow of your immense marvelousness. The moment you relax, some putz will steal/knock-off/copy/imitate your heretofore unique design. And, um, yes - plenty of mass produced Firebowls are made in China these days. Some of them are quite nice, but they're not the high quality artisanal designs originated and made in the U.S. by John T. Unger. So there. Anyway, Firebowls are really cool - just the thing to light up while you're contemplating a lawsuit. Amazon has dozens of them in a wide variety of designs.

I've Had It With Google (the new 'Evil Empire' perhaps?)

In a rather chatty and gleefully positive and 'helpful' December 2009 blog post, Google announced that all the world's news gathering and publishing companies (read: all of the major papers, major broadcasting networks and wire services now publishing on their own web sites) needn't fret about their original articles and information being re-published on Google search result pages and iGoogle-based home pages because the 'ol Goog had figured out a way to make nice. Basically it boils down to this (at least in the Goog's thinking): give Google some stuff for free and charge visitors to the original news and information publishers' sites for access to other stuff. Here's the problem. Rupert Murdoch and several other media poo-bahs have only recently figured out that Google cheerfully re-publishes headlines and article excerpts (accompanied on each search result page by ads from which Google earns big money), and which collectively cost the aforementioned media magnates hundreds of millions of dollars (for paid reporters, agencies and sources, bureaus, etc.) to gather and publish in the first place in their own newspapers, web sites, magazines and television broadcasts. While the Goog helps you find all this stuff online, its search result pages loaded with ads at the same time help the Goog make money. To many people, this all makes perfectly good sense. The media magnates who spend big dough gathering news and information in the first place would much prefer to be collecting all (or at least a significant portion) of the revenue Google is squeezing out of the magnates' investments. Consumer groups (including the Electronic Frontier Foundation - the EFF) haven't quite figured this one out. Here's the rub. If it costs lots of money to gather and publish original information, and if the major news publishers who fork over big money to gather the news from around the world can't make a buck doing so, how long will it be before most of the information we see is nothing more than reprints of corporate and government press releases absent any challenge, any analysis and any opinion. After all, if there's no money to pay people to do that sort of work, why would anyone bother to do it? Google's logic has large holes in it. So I say let Google contribute to its own information storehouse by jumping into the same pond as the real media companies. It's all well and good for Google to avoid such a commitment by stating that it has never intended to engage in such work, but the reality is that Google profits directly from the investment of others in news gathering and media companies. It's a bit of a free ride which Murdoch and his compadres are getting ready to halt. We all used to pay for newspaper subscriptions which supported little more than the cost of delivering the paper. All other revenue came from advertisers. Now that Google has scooped large buckets of money out of advertising budgets formerly devoted to the news gathering and media companies, those companies are asking Google to either contribute news gathering of its own or get out of the water. Google can't have it both ways.