Intermittent, Mysterious Laptop Problems Due to Overheating

Our Acer laptop, an Extensa 4420, was exhibiting strange behavior. It would spontaneously shut off, almost as if it was out of power (but it wasn't). Then when I would try to re-start it, it would begin boot sequence, but then shut off. I could repeat this a dozen times, and finally, it would boot, and after that it would be fine.

It took quite a while, but I finally diagnosed the problem--overheating. The unit runs pretty darn hot, and the cooling vents are on the bottom. That works okay if it is on a table, but my family members tend to use it on their laps, and worse, to lay it on the soft couch.

Quite coincidentally, a co-worker was mentioning similar laptop problems. She thought her machine might have a virus, because it shut off in the middle of running her virus scan program. I mentioned our over-heating experience, and sure enough, when she tried making sure it had enough ventiliation, the problem disappeared.

What I wonder is--what are the chances tech support or the Geek Squad would troubleshoot that problem successfully? I have a feeling Geek Squad would happily default to the "Occam's Razor" solution of replacing the cooling fan.

Random Idea for iPad Functionality

I have my doubts about the iPad, and I generally agree with the various concerns about the non-opennes of the device. As to its niche, I do kind of think the "living room" device is a possibility. That is, a lightweight, readily accessible device that is within easy reach in the living room, to look something up quick while watching TV. Very quick, very casual usage, that doesn't require much body movement.

In that regard, I think a great function would be universal remote control. I actually have wished this function would be accomplished by an ordinary smartphone. And I still think that is the ideal platform. However, from a pure strategy point of view, if Apple could have made that happen and made in an iPad capability, that might have been a compelling usage.

The price is too high under all circumstances.

Apple iPad Tablet - Medical Charting

10 years ago, I had a consulting assignment at a hospital, to write a white paper on the feasibility of electronic medical charting. My general conclusion was that what was required was a hand-held that was qualitatively bigger than the Palm Pilot (the hand-held standard of the time), but far smaller than the smallest laptop. It seems like the iPad might be about that size.

Electical Outlets should have USB connections

...for charging only, I mean. USB chargers for cell phones are wonderful. If electrical outlets accomodated USB, that would even more cut down on the number of chargers one needs to carry. Definitely a feature for a place like Starbucks to implement. (Actually, the shorcut would just be to provision the newer power strips, that have USB hubs included.)

Netbook Tablet PC Form Factor

Instead of making every netbook as mini-notebook, why not try a different form factor? I am thinking a tablet PC, with a capacitive touchscreen and virtual keyboard, like the iPhone and myTouch smartphones? Maybe the cost of the display would be excessive?

Laptop Keyboards--No Two Alike

I am visiting my parents and using my mother's laptop. It is a full-sized machine, so the keyboard is not particularly cramped, but it is always a discomforting adjustment to use an unfamiliar laptop, since the layout of certain crucial keys always differs. Since I am a fairly aggressive user of standard Windows keyboard shortcuts (End, Home, Alt-Tab, Esc), this probably affects me a bit more than the average user.

How Phonebooks treat SIM cards

I really don't understand. Having replaced a couple of phones under warranty, the SIM card is really the core of "your" phone, much more than the rest of the handset. So why the heck is the default to store contacts on the phone, not on the SIM card? You can move them, but as far as I can tell, only one at a time. Makes zero sense to me.

Postscript: this thread gives some clues. It seems that you need the contacts on the handset to have pictures or ringtones associated with the contact. Okay, that is presumably a hardware constraint, but it still strikes me as exposing WAAAYY too much implementation to the user. Why not just duplicate the contact in both places, if the user chooses to associate a ringtone to it? Why make them have to think about this stuff?

Paying Best Buy to "Optimize" Your Computer

The excellent price I got from Best Buy on our new laptop was the happy part. During the brief sales process, I was prepared for the sales guy to try to upsell me. I politely declined the offer to install anti-virus software for me. But when he asked me if I wanted them to optimize remove the pre-installed crapware for me, it was almost too much. He literally said "we will remove all the junk they pre-install on it"!

I know I am not the first person to make this observation, but how ridiculous is that--I'm supposed to pay them to remove the junk that comes on the product they sell to me?! As I've said before, it just completely undermines the user experience, unlike when you buy Apple. Needless to say, I curtly dismissed this pitch.

I think a big part of the problem is that margins are so thin in the PC hardware business, that the OEMs are just desperate for incremental revenue. It's almost like spam--even if only one person in 500 upgrades their pre-installed trialware to the payeware version, the comission on the pre-install still represents a desperately needed revenue stream for the OEMs.

I still say that a better user experience is an opportunity for a niche player in the Windows PC market.


PS What did surprise me was that the salesman never bothered to pitch two of the usual favorites--expensive cables and extended warranties. I guess my profile--cheapest laptop in the store, no time of day for the virus protection--told him I was a lost cause.

Buy Cheap When It Comes to Laptops

I just bought a laptop at Best Buy. My philosophy of computers, especially laptops, is--buy the cheapest one that meets your basic requirements. The expected life of a laptop, before it is lost/stolen/broken/obsolete, is somewhere under 3 years. I used to be anti-laptop, for casual home use where portability is merely nice, not essential, because the laptop cost substantially more, carried much higher risk of breakage, and was prohibitive to repair. However, laptop prices have plummeted so much, that I have changed my view. Just plan to buy cheap and replace as needed.

On that score, I think I did pretty well. I went in, looking for the $499 Dell Inspiron that was advertised. While I was waiting for them to fetch me that, though, I saw an almost-equivalent Acer, clearance-priced for $375. That is about as low as I can possibly imagine getting a Windows laptop; or, for that matter, any PC. And it even came with Vista Home Premium. I believe Micro$oft has given up on trying to extract a premium for VHP over Vista Home Basic--even the very cheapest laptops now come with VHP.

Telephone Call Volume

I find it very tiring and stressful to engage in a telephone conversation in which it is difficult to hear the other party, for whatever reason (more often than not, because they are habitually speaking too softly). It would be a very, very nice feature if phones could dynamically adjust for loudness--amplifying quite voices, and muting loud ones. That would be some fairly sophisticated signal-processing, but in this day and age, it seems possible.

Windows Battery Remaining Readout

35:17 hours?! What algorithm are they using? More often, it goes from half-to-nothing almost instantly. Windows power management in general leaves a whole lot to be desired, in my experience.

Differentiation Opportunity: Photos on HDTV

Growing up, my father was a big fan of slides. He took a lot of pretty-good photos, using an 35mm SLR camera, and had them all converted to slides. Once a month or so, we would have family slde night and look at the pictures on the big screen. It was a great way to look at them, and to collectively re-live family memories. MUCH more participative than leafing through a photo album.

I see the big, brilliant HDTVs that have been populating America's living rooms in the last few years as the obvious, and much more accessible, succesor to the home slide show. RSS inventor and inveterate software tinkerer Dave Winer is pushing this concept with FlickrFan (Mac-only, unfortunately). It is just such a great way to see your pictures--think of your HDTV as a really big monitor, and your rolling slideshow of pictures as the photo-screensaver, that plays whenever you aren't using your TV for something else.

I have been doing this, sporadically, with our HDTV. Unfortunately, our HDTV does not have an SD slot, so my easiest means of getting photos to TV is using the SD slot in my son's Wii. That works pretty well, but the built-in slide show functionality on the Wii is pretty limited.

So given the very fevered competition in the HDTV world, I think the top-tier manufacturers (e.g., Sony) could create some differentiation and value-add if they worked really hard at positioning and marketing their displays as platforms for displaying digital photos.

I think key ingredients would be:

1. Ease of use.
2. SD slot built in (more slots would be better, but SD at a minimum).
3. USB port (so you can hook up a card reader, or a USB drive, of a laptop).
4. Good built-in slideshow software.
5. Screensaver mode option--show photos automagically, when the TV is not being used.
   
6. Ease of use.
   

Other more advanced offerings might include;

1. Internet connectivity and downloding from Flickr, etc (basically what Dave Winer is doing.
2. Pre-integrated bundling with a streaming media device. Have to be careful, because without exquisite execution, this could trash ease of use. This is where Apple will probably make inroads.

Light notebooks over-rated?

I think lightness is over-rates in notebook computers, for many home and business users. The reviewers tend to emphasize this factor heavily, I imagine because they are big travelers. And I agree--if you are carrying your notebook a lot, weight would really matter.

But for the typical, non-traveling business user, like myself, toting a 6-7 lb. notebook is not a big deal. For most business users, the notebook stays docked through much of the day. Even if you un-dock frequently to bring it to meetings, as I do, the distance you are traveling is so short that weight doesn't matter too much.

I un-dock at the end of the day, put it in my backpack, and walk the few hundred feet to my car. (The backpack may be a differentiator right there--I could see how a small woman, using a crummy, shoulde-slung laptop bag, might find the weight burdensome.) Drive home, park in the gargage, carry the laptop into my home office. Done. Reverse in morning.

Again, if a significant part of your commute involved walking, then weight would matter more. Including perhaps walking up flights of stairs to get to your domicile (for those few buildings left that don't have elevators). Still, I think that is a minority of laptop-equipped office workers.

Study Gives High Marks to U.S. Internet

I have been skeptical of the steady parade of articles discussing how far behind the U.S. lags in internet infrastructure and speeds.

USB Kills PCMCIA?

It just occured to me that my new laptop doesn't have a PCMCIA slot. The previous laptops I have had, for years, have equipped with two slots. I assume that USB has pretty much eliminated the market and need for PCMCIA.