These are the rants, questions, and statements that get thrown my way on a daily basis these days. Everyone seems to be attracted by the idea of owning a tablet of some kind. What used to seem outrageously over-priced and gimmicky now seems like essential technology, both for personal and for business use. But is the tablet the way to go mobile? Are we looking at the future of computers?

I have a few opinions, so I’m glad you asked! But first, I would like to say there there are no definite answers to these questions (OK, except for that world hunger one), but there are several areas that need to be considered before you can make an intelligent choice on whether a tablet is for you.

It Starts With Software

The first question I have for anyone that is looking for a tablet is “what do you hope to accomplish with it?” In my experience there seems to be a disconnect for folks when it comes to this question, because they see a tablet as something more than a computer and more than a phone. While there are certainly apps that are built for the iPad or Android that are more functional than their smartphone counterpart and provide a new or unique experience, by and large the software that runs on a tablet is the same as a smartphone, coupled with a display that is more akin to a laptop. If you are comfortable with what a high-level smartphone can do, but are looking for a larger, more vivid experience, then a tablet may be the way to go.

On the other end of the spectrum is computer software like Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite products like Photoshop and Illustrator, and all of the normal, day-to-day software selections that we depend on. A tablet’s operating system is normally not going to be a Windows or Mac OS, so understanding what you can and can’t do on a tablet will really narrow your list of options.

Connectivity

Another consideration that my business-related questioners often forget about is that unless you pay for monthly data from a carrier that provides your tablet, you’ll be limited in your ability to use many of the apps that you are used to using on your smartphone. For some this can be a benefit, especially if they don’t pay for a data plan from their wireless carrier, but for the average business user this is a huge negative. Having the ability to check email, use a GPS, or browse a customer’s website while on the go can be essential to working on the go, and paying for the data plan required for these features is sometimes forgotten about.

Other Devices and Peripherals

For most people a tablet is considered a “tweener” device. They already have a laptop and a smartphone, but are looking for a “best of both” in a tablet. Personally, I am of the opinion that a tablet is almost totally redundant in this scenario. It doesn’t have the software or keyboard of a laptop, and it is accomplishing most of the same tasks as the smartphone but without the cell data connectivity. To carry 3 devices around and not accomplish much more doesn’t make a whole lot of sense!

The ideal candidate for a tablet would be a user that has fewer, (if any) devices, and is looking to get “more connected” than they currently are. This might be a student on the go, a business user with a desktop at the office, or a home user who wants to use it all around the house. A keyboard or dock can make the tablet experience fulfill many of the needs that these users might have.

Storage

Where should I put files so that I can pull them up on multiple devices? Where do my pictures go? How about my music? How do I access documents from my tablet, or media from my computer? A lack of knowledge regarding storage options is becoming a major problem for home users today, with multiple family members using multiple devices and trying to maintain vast libraries of media, and keep those libraries backed up and secure.

For those that decide to make the move to the tablet I have 2 words for you: Cloud Storage. This is a competitive, rapidly growing industry with some great services that can provide you with solutions for the problem of “dispersed data”. Check out services like iCloud, Dropbox, and Google Docs. For a small fee these industry leaders can house loads of data in the cloud that is accessible to all of the devices you use.

Battery and Always On Availability

One of the best aspects of the tablet, as opposed to the laptop, is the battery life and “always on” functionality of them. The ability to have a tablet available at any time of day “ready to browse” is a huge plus. These days typical tablet batteries last 8-10 hours under constant usage! That means no waiting on boot-up, no waiting on charge-up, and not worrying about “conserving battery life” while on the go. This is the future of mobile technology for sure, even if it ends up not being the form factor.

Conclusion

The conclusion to this debate is that “it’s worth having the debate”. As the mobile landscape changes and more devices try to think outside the box these conversations will continue to happen, and as long as the decision is made after considering all the factors it will be a much more satisfying purchase.

Please let me know your thoughts on this debate, and if there are other usage factors that I need to consider!

Admittedly, that’s a LOT of cloud storage for only $120/year, and the service works great. But I’ve never been able to make the jump with a price that high. Call me cheap.

But as my life becomes more mobile, and my devices varied, I felt like the time had come to search out a more affordable path to a cloud existence. I calculate my “net data” to be around 100GB including my music, movie, and photo collections, and to have those items available on the go, at the office, or anywhere else for that matter is the next logical step.

Enter Google Docs. We’ve all seen how Google has handed out 1GB of free storage for Google Docs (unless you have your files in the Google Docs/Spreadsheets formats, in which case your storage space is limitless). What I found after looking closer was a much better price/year for vast amounts of storage space. Here’s the breakdown:

• 20 GB – $5/yr
• 80 GB – $20/yr
• 200 GB – $50/yr
• 400 GB – $100/yr
• 1 TB – $256/yr

Now that’s a ridiculous amount of space for really cheap! I’ve signed up with the $5/year plan to start with, just to test it out, but $50/year should house my entire electronic livelihood without any trouble. 200GB in the cloud is just silly. And awesome.

But wait, you say! How am I supposed to auto-sync my folders to Google Docs like I do with Dropbox? Ah, you’re right, that’s always been the rub. Dropbox’s sync mechanism is very reliable and extremely fast, and in this area Google can’t compete. But with a subscription to a $20/year program called SyncDocs it’s possible. Is it as reliable as Dropbox? Only time will tell. But so far it’s been able to keep my 3GB collection synced up just fine, and is as unobtrusive as Dropbox in the system tray. From my initial observations it doesn’t seem quite as fast, but once I get my collection up there it shouldn’t be difficult to keep synced. The only major difference I’ve seen so far is that in order to share a folder I’ll have to visit the Google Docs website, but that’s not exactly a hardship.

If anyone has any better (or cheaper) options for always-on cloud storage, please pass them along!

Cloud’s The Word, Part 1

Anyway, over the last couple of weeks I’ve been attempting to update our Sharepoint WSS 3.0 server at work to Foundation Server 2010. When I started out, I didn’t think it would be that big of a deal. Both of them are made by Microsoft, this upgrade has to happen all the time, right? Well… not exactly. Not from what I found out anyway.

Honestly, we still haven’t conquered it. What I found out when I got started was that Foundation requires a 64 bit server, which wasn’t a big deal since I was hoping to upgrade the server anyway. The issue came in when I realized that we are currently running WSS3 on a 32bit Windows 2003 server, and hosting the database in our 32bit SQL 2000 server. Foundation requires not only a 64bit server, but also a 64bit SQL server. Oh boy.

Here are the steps we took to try and upgrade this server, and the results:

• Installed Foundation on the new server, installed SQL Express 2008 64bit on the same box. Then tried moving the database from old SQL to new and upgrading the database. Figured out all the required settings in the “Import Database” wizard in the Foundation administration console, and bingo! At first it looked good, but then I realized that the upgrade hadn’t happened properly. We couldn’t use any of the new themes and a lot of the functionality of the site was missing. Result: Restore Hyper-V snapshot!
• Same as last step, but this time the database upgrade worked! Still, there were site functionality issues. It seemed like half of the “Site Settings” area administrative links would take you to a database error page. Result: Restore Hyper-V snapshot!
• Tried downloading 3rd party software that is supposed to migrate databases over. Never could get it to connect with both servers simultaneously, I think since it was going from SQL to SQL Express, or else from an external SQL Server to an on-board SQL installation, but I’m not sure. Result: Take a break for a couple weeks and then start over!

If anyone out there has experience with this process and can offer an insight, or a helpful tool to accomplish this, I’d be grateful!

On the whole, the music player is OK. I’ve read some reviews that are blasting it for not being enough of a “music store” like Amazon’s Cloud Player service, as well as some praising it for being completely wonderful. So that I don’t bore you with the details of the service, here are a few of pros and cons from my perspective:

PRO

It’s fast. The music is great quality, takes almost zero time to buffer, and doesn’t have any issues changing to the next track. All of these were issues for me with Amazon’s Cloud Player.

PRO

It’s got tons of capacity for a free service. With Amazon I was limited to around 800 songs before I needed to upgrade to the paid version. With Google I have a limit of 20,000 songs. ::satisfied sigh::

PRO

A “music uploader” utility is available to automatically upload your entire collection to the service, as well as monitor your music folders for new additions so that you don’t have to remember that in the future. For those of us with a home server of some kind, or even just a music repository on our computers (or on and external drive) this is a very nice feature.

CON

There is no “currently playing” list that you can add and remove music from. You have a build a playlist anytime you want to play multiple albums. With over 3,000 songs in my online collection, I don’t want to listen to the same playlist every day, I just want to scroll through my albums and grab 4 or 5 CDs to listen to, then click play. And if I want to remove a few CDs from the list in the middle, I don’t want to have to start the process back over again. This is fairly annoying to me for some reason (Amazon’s player works the same way) and it’s why I’ll use my Windows Home Server remote player a lot of times while I’m working.

PRO

Google Music has an app for my Droid. Not only an app, but a fairly extensive one that saves local copies of music I’ve recently played, in case I want to travel outside of data coverage territory. I don’t use the app too terribly much, but it’s great to have in the car when we want some variety.

CON

No song-sharing or download capability. I guess the issue here is really the licensing and liability issue, but I was hoping that this could be kind of a backup location for my music collection. Nope! Once uploaded, my music is not downloadable again. Also, by uploading all my music into my Gmail account, my wife needs access to my account in order to listen to it, thereby signing out of her own gmail/apps/etc until she’s finished listening. Not the case with a home server or simple network music access.

IN CLOSING

So in summary, Google Music serves a great purpose, but I look for more features in the future. Especially as we get closer to the Chromium-based PC era and people will want that “home network” feel from a cloud-based device. In the meantime I’ll probably still make good use of the service as a mobile or office-based media player. All in all, good job Google!

According to the design, all the secondary domain controllers should be pulling their time from my PDC, so whether the PDC’s clock is set by its own internal clock or from an external source is irrelevant. That’s not happening though. When I check the 3 domain controllers, the two secondary DCs (running Server 2003r2 and 2008r2, by the way) are exactly the same, and they’ve strayed away from the PDC’s time by several minutes. Every morning. And not by the same amount. Sometimes it’s 1 minute, sometimes it’s 5 minutes, sometimes 10 minutes. It makes absolutely no sense to me!

My plan of attack is to move our PDC emulator role to the 2008 DC, then set that server to rely on an external time source to stay accurate. The only thing I can think is that there’s something weird about having a 2008r2 server relying on a 2003 box for its time, but I can’t find any evidence to back that theory up. There could also be something going on with the virtual host –> virtual server hierarchy, but I also have not found evidence about that. If anyone has any ideas for me, please feel free to shout out!