Cuz We Said So

New RSS and Email Feeds

I’ve re-tooled some of the plumbing behind Cuz We Said So, in part because the e-mail subscription service I had been using stopped working for us some months ago, and I haven’t been able to figure out what the problem is.  I thought I should getting around to replacing it so that the literally hundreds... okay, tens... okay, units of people who were signed up could start getting e-mails again.
 
So!  I’ve switched the RSS feed to FeedBurner, added subscribe links for RSS, My Yahoo, NewsGator, and Google, and added the new e-mail sign-up box. 

The downside to this plan is that if you were signed up for e-mail before, you’ll need to re-subscribe.  Sorry about that.  On the other hand, the upside is that once you do that, it should actually work.

Price Drop on the M400

Thanks for all the positive feedback I’ve received on the Toshiba M400 demo video I posted last week.  I’m glad it’s been of interest.  I’ve also received some good suggestions for other demos people would like to see, which I may try to put together as work and life permit.

While I’m on the topic of the M400… if you’ve been thinking about buying your own, be glad you’ve waited this long.  You see, it looks like Toshiba has significantly dropped the price on the customizable model, at least here in the United States. 

When I bought my pre-configured M400–S933 two weeks ago, the configurable model carried a premium of around $500.  Now that I’ve bought mine (of course) they’ve dropped the price on the customizable machine.  Insert suitable profanity here.

As you can see in the picture, the configurable M400–ST9113 unit is actually the cheaper option at the moment.  Even with the $40 upgrade to a Core Duo T2300 it’s cheaper. 

Ah, well.  No reason why you should miss out just because my timing sucks.  Of course, if you buy one now, and they drop the price another $500, don’t come crying to me.

David's M400 Tablet Tour

My new M400 arrived safe and sound, and I spent much of the weekend playing around with it. My initial impression: what a great little machine.

I realize this isn't the first one out there, but for grins, I put together a short (8.5 minute) orientation video, highlighting the major components, and threw it up on YouTube. You can click the picture to view it embedded here...

...or click this link to go to the YouTube copy.

See what I mean?

Study warns of heavy casualties if another big earthquake strikes Bay Area

When, not if.

David's New Tablet, Take 3

Well, after several months of weighing my options, I have rejoined the ranks of tablet PC owners with the purchase of my third tablet, a Toshiba Portege M400-S933.

To quickly recap my previous tablet PC adventures, I bought a Toshiba M200 tablet in 2004 and promptly dropped a suitcase on it. Undeterred, I replaced the broken screen mask and thereafter enjoyed twelve rewarding, productive, trouble-free months with it, until one day, just out of warranty, the cooling fan failed, followed shortly thereafter by the system board and the hard drive. My local Toshiba repair center kindly offered to repair the unit for over half the cost of a completely new machine. I graciously declined the offer.

Unfortunately, I was at this point hooked on the tablet form-factor, and found myself surfing around, looking for a replacement. I was a little annoyed with Toshiba at this point, so I ruled out a purchase of another Toshiba machine, let alone a second M200. After doing a little research and reading favorable reviews, I decided to follow Marc Orchant's example and pick up a Gateway CX200X.

Of course, when you buy a computer on the Internet, sight unseen, you're taking a bit of a gamble. In this case, as it turned out, my fortunes were mixed. Fortunately, the Gateway has some great things to recommend it, including strong performance; a big, bright, beautiful screen; a nicer pen than the M200; a large, comfortable keyboard; solid, high quality construction; and overall, a good blend of features for the right kind of user. Unfortunately, it became quickly apparent that despite all that, I was not that kind of user. At over 7 pounds, I found the CX200X unacceptably heavy, and I discovered it was missing a number of seemingly minor design features present on the Toshiba that I found I had taken for granted, but that proved to be a make-or-break part of my tablet experience.

Fortunately, I discovered my incompatibility with the Gateway fairly quickly, and Gateway has a 15-day money back guarantee. Unfortunately, I didn't decide to return the machine until the morning of day 16, when an e-mail from Gateway customer support advising me that what I had taken to be a technical problem with the digitizer was actually inherent to the design became the straw that broke the camel's back.

Fortunately, Gateway agreed to take the machine back anyway, even though they didn't have to, because of this technical problem. Unfortunately, because Gateway's support operation favor speed over consistency, and send every communication to the company to a different customer rep, Gateway then reversed themselves, and proceeded to jerk me around for two weeks, alternately acceding to my requests and saying that they would accept the machine back, only to change their minds with the next message, offering to discuss my concerns on the phone and then failing to call at the agreed upon time, promising to follow up in e-mail and then never doing it, and finally, refusing my requests to escalate to a supervisor.

Fortunately, I was able to sell the Gateway on eBay for only a few hundred dollars less than I paid for it, and can console myself with the knowledge that while Gateway was within their rights to keep my money, it's the last dime of my money they will ever see. (If they had just said "no" to begin with, I would be quite a bit more understanding.)

Anyway, since January, I've been pondering whether to get another tablet at all, and if so, what model to get. I considered the Lenovo Thinkpad X41 because I work for IBM (disclaimer), and am already fond of Thinkpads, one of which I use on the job, and because all the reviews I've read are favorable. The downside with the X41, though, is that it has no internal optical drive, one property the M200 had shared I had found limiting. Also, at this point I realized that many of the things I really liked about the M200 were Toshiba-specific additions to the tablet platform. I began considering the possibility of buying another Toshiba, this time with a 3-year warranty. I looked at the R51 and the M4, but these are larger machines than was the M200, which led me to hesitate, remembering my unhappiness with the heft of the Gateway.

And it was at this point, to my delight, that Toshiba announced a brand new tablet, the M400. It's roughly the size and weight of the M200, appears to offer all the little convenience features I liked in the M200, features a faster processor, a brighter screen, and an internal optical drive. Nice! It took me a few more months to act, but a shiny new M400 is now sitting in in a box in my office back home. I'm on the road at the moment, as I am most weeks, so I don't get to play with it until Thursday--but I think I'll live. If I have time this weekend, maybe I'll fish out the camera and camcorder and share some impressions.

General McInerney on Iran

I've heard various pundits suggest that the United States has no feasible military options against Iran, a view that the Europeans and the leadership in Iran seem eager to promote.  Retired Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney disagrees, and thinks the military option is critical if diplomacy is to have any hope of success.

Taser Armor

A security firm in Tuscon has created a fabric that protects the wearer from taser weapons.  Here's a candidate for my favorite description of a product feature ever, courtesy of Sploid:  “Thor's high conductivity is the secret. Instead of 50,000 volts running through the wearer, the juice loops through the fabric and back into the gun, much like the way Jedi Knights can repel electrical death rays.”

Who First Thought This Was A Good Idea, Anyway?

I love to travel, and a large part of the attraction is sampling local delicacies.  Here, however, is something that will not be finding its way onto my approved list.  I first blogged about “Kopi Luwak’ (aka civet coffee) back in 2002, and I’m sorry to say it’s apparently still out there.  I'm going to bet that hunting through the undergrowth for coffee beans in civet turds is one of those “jobs Americans won't do” we keep hearing about.  Writing news stories about the stuff, on the other hand, would be a great job.  I mean, as a journalist, how often do you get to write lines like this?:

Andrew Gross, an Australian roast master, climbed the mountain to find out for himself what the attraction is of coffee that passes through the backside of a furry mammal.

Mr Gross said the coffee had 'some substance.'  Just like a wine connoisseur, he slowly slurped the brewed coffee, letting it travel across his tongue for the first time.

Thanks to Dave Barry for the link.  No thanks however for the mental imagery.

Audi A7

Here's one from a few weeks back, Autoblog's post on the arrival of the a new Audi, the Audi A7:

You've heard about the skads of new cars coming out of Audi in the near future... the A2 shooting brake (MINI, here we come!), Q5 SUV, A3 and A5 verts, the Roadjet, and not to mention the next TT. Now Audi lovers can look forward to the brand's answer to the Mercedes CLS -- the Audi A7 coupe. The four-door coupe fits nicely in terms of size between the A6 and A8 (kinda like the number 7, dontchathink?), and should show its pretty little face in concept form this November when the Los Angeles Auto Show moves to the fall.

The new Audi front end design didn't do anything for me when it debuted, but either they're refining it in subsequent iterations or it's growing on me, because I really like the look of this take on it.

Laser Progress

“If I ever get to build a laser weapon again, next time, it's going to be done right.” Noah Shachtman has a blog post and a Popular Science article about the work underway to develop laser weapons using technologies that don't require the vats of nasty poison required for chemical lasers. As with so much of science, it appears the secret may be a willingness to repeatedly fail until you don't.