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Scott's Column
Tablets, Laptops & Spare Parts
March 2, 2011
By Scott Lewis
Introductory paragraph goes here.
Current Topics:
I am patiently waiting to see what the laptop and tablet market does.
Last month I talked about tablets in general and what I thought it would
take to beat Apple with its iPad.
In a nutshell, nothing will beat the Apple iPad. Everyone else is
playing catch up, while Apple is so far ahead and not resting on its
laurels. Today Apple announced the iPad 2... with dual core processor &
thinner design. Yes, it now has front and rear facing cameras. To me,
what you get is a faster and thinner tablet with the SAME battery life.
Not bad. I assume next year we will get some more improvements. The
competition might as well go home now.
Motorola's Xoom is more expensive than the iPad 2 and the iPad 1, which
is a direct violation to what I said last month... you have to be better
AND cheaper than the iPad to beat it. The Xoom is $800 without a
contract for 32 GB. Granted, it included 3G even if you don't use it. So
it directly compares with the iPad at $729. But if you don't want the 3G
you have the option to save $130 and get a WiFi only model from Apple.
No such option exists for the Xoom. Oops!
Apple has sold over 15 million iPads. I will bet that over 98% of those
customers will never switch brands of tablet. Why
should they. The hardware will get better and better over the years (as
we have seen today), and Apple's products already have a built in
upgrade path... iTunes. Just sync all your music, video, books, games &
apps to a new iPad and your done. No extra work to switch to a newer
tablet... since it would be completely compatible with the previous
Apple iPad.
Changing brands will always require more effort on the
customer's part. Even if another tablet manufacturer created a computer
program that could completely and seamlessly migrate all your content
from iTunes to their own syncing software... there are still the apps,
which are platform specific. Plus the others don't have an ecosystem to
maintain it all.
For Android tablets to beat Apple they will need to expand the Android
Marketplace to including buying music, as well as renting and buying
video content. This will not likely happen fast enough to prevent more
and more Apple sales. Why? Because you have too many companies to worry
about. Google makes the Android OS. HP, Samsung, Motorola, HTC, Etc.
makes the hardware. Which company is going to invest in building a
market solution that can compete with iTunes for music, movies, TV
shows, books, podcasts and apps? And how long will it take? How many
more iPads will have been sold by that time?
So... Apple already won the tablet space. I would call it the Tablet
War... but that would imply there was a war. There is no war. Apple took
the market by storm... and will never loose it.
What about laptops. Apple recently revamped the entire MacBook Pro
line... 13", 15" & 17" all got upgrades... on the inside. Hardware is
updated, but nothing special was added. Yea, Intel's Sandy Bridge for
integrated graphics... big deal. That is not enough to get me to buy a
laptop. Plus plenty of Windows laptops will start having those same
Intel chips. It seems to me that the Apple laptops are just cruising
along right now... not setting any real trends to justify the high price
for hardware over other brands.
Why didn't they put the 1440x900 display from the MacBook Air on the 13"
MacBook Pro? This is the biggest reason to NOT buy a MacBook Pro 13. The
15" MacBook Pro gets the 1440x900, but at least can be optioned with
1680x1050.
What about the instant on feature of the MacBook Air? Why didn't that
make it into any of the MacBook Pros?
As far as I am concerned the laptop of choice for me is still the
MacBook Air.
It is my opinion that Apple's iPad will rule forever in the tablet
market, and for me the MacBook Air is still the standard to compare all
laptops. I will be waiting and saving over the next few months. Let's
see what others come up with. As it is my own choice is looking like do
I get a MacBook Air or an iPad.
I am still trying to decide what to do with my spare parts. To recap
I have a Core i5 processor, a motherboard, 4 GB memory, a 1 TB hard
drive and a power supply. I was thinking about building a Home Theater
PC (HTPC). I would need a fast video card to do this right. If I really
put a PC in my living room I would want to game on it.
I recently bought an XBox 360 (used) so my sons could bring their games
over and play. I am thinking my gaming in the living room should be
covered. I already use my Blu-Ray player to play videos over my network.
In fact... I just recently updated all my downloads of the
Hubblecast and put them in place to watch on my 46" Plasma. I watch
plenty of content stored on my server as it is.
So now I am thinking about using the spare parts to build a new server.
I am not in the mood to revisit the computing ecosystem from last year
(scott201004.html#ecosystem). That was based on where to put files for
redundancy based on getting a Drobo. Unfortunately, the Drobo is just
too expensive for me to afford right now, and external hard drives get
bigger and bigger and cheaper and cheaper.
My plan for this new server would be to use all the pieces above and get
a super cheap video card. After all, the only time I will be using the
server after setup is through Remote Desktop. I would use my existing
case to save money, and just put the modern power supply into it.
I am tempted to just pull the 320 GB drive from my current server and
use it as the boot drive for the new server. This has one major
advantage... instance setup. I would have to update all the drivers for
the new hardware, but I should be able to get the server up and running
in very little time. Plus I won't have to spend time figuring out how to
configure my web server... it would just work.
The down side is simple... the hard
drive is 4 years old.
I will use the new server the same as the old... a web server to host
this site and a file server for all my files. Since this motherboard has
USB 3.0 I would like to move the
external hard drive on my PC to the
server. Since the server would be connected to my PC with Gigabit
Ethernet the performance difference would be negligible. I do keep all
my iTunes and Zune files on that external drive, so they would have to
move to the internal drive of my server, but other than that it would be
an easy move.
This would allow my server to have the following storage:
1) 1 TB internal hard drive
2) 1 TB external USB 3.0 hard drive
3) 1.5 TB external USB 2.0 hard drive
I would configure the drives so that my media would be on the two fast 1
TB drives... and I would use the
older USB 2.0 drive for backups of all critical files. I love
redundancy. My next purchase would probably be one of those 3 TB drives.
I saw one at Best Buy over the weekend for $150. That would bring the
total storage to 5.5 TB. Wow!
There is one kink in this plan. A friend offered to buy the parts to
build a media server of their own. When I did my income taxes I ended up
owing over $5000. I failed to adjust my deduction status
when I moved out. So I was
hurting for money and offered up the parts. I managed to get my taxes
taken care of without the need to sell the parts. At the same time I
don't want to disappoint my friend either. So if asked... I will
probably still sell them. After all once I changes my deduction status I
imposed a pay cut of $460/month.
So we will see if I still have the parts in a month or so. If I do I
will be playing around for a weekend building a new server.
Conclusion
Wait until next month and see what happens to the spare parts. I have a couple of ideas I left off this month's article. I have to have something to write about next month, don't I.
Until then...
