Tech Stuff and Travel

[daveon]

One of the perks of the business is we get to have lots of cool toys to play with.  We get given a lot of stuff, and we get to buy a lot of things and write them off.  

Phones:  I've been getting tired of iPhone and frankly, the only thing keeping me on iPhone at the moment is the fact that M has one and it simplifies things.  OTOH I've been double fisting phones for the last few months carrying a Lumia 800 and an iPhone 4S.  I'm seriously contemplating switching to a Lumia 920 as my primary phone shortly.

Tablets:  We've a couple of iPads and an Android tablet.  The Android Tablet is just plain nasty.  I don't like it at all.  The iPads are much better and I'm contemplating getting M an iPad for her birthday.  I'm starting to consider getting the company a Surface too as we've a bunch of work related stuff we need to build out for Windows 8 - which, while it has a 'share' feature built in, we've got a better solution for brands and I want to make sure we have a seamless browser, OS and mobile play across all the platforms.

Travel:  I've got meetings coming up in the Bay Area, and I'll probably try to get to the East Coast too because of where some of our new customers are.  I've also got to plan travel for Vegas in January for the AT&T Developer Event and CES.  Then it's MWC in late Feb, which involves an almost 2 week trip, including a few days in the UK and then Barcelona.  If I can swing the money, we should book shortly and get an apartment to avoid paying through the nose 6 months from now.

Anyway, back to wrangling marketing copy.

Comments

[t--m--i.livejournal.com]

Oddly (I probably said this before) we just both got Playbooks - because they are marked down bigtime now at PC World and you can side-load converted Android apps onto them - i.e. I was in a work-related snit, bought one as an e-reader, and after 2 days celestialweasel had ordered his own. Could be lighter but otherwise good value. Obv. rather a dead end of course!!! Though my cousin in SA is still mourning the demise of HP's WebOS (true).

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

I'd say yes to getting M an iPad, but I love my iPad with white-hot passion o I may not be the most unbiased of advisors!
MKK

[cobrabay.livejournal.com]

I've just gone the other way on tablets. Had an iPad 2, bought an Android tablet (a Fujitsu Stylistic M532) to replace it. It is both better and worse. Better in ways which were driving me potty with the iPad, such as decent file system access, not being forced to use crap bits of the OS (i.e on-screen keyboard), and not having to use that fetid piece of crap iTunes. Worse in respect of the tactile usability, power usage, and availability of a few specific apps. Both of them benefit from using a proper hardware keyboard, and I've finally found a use for my old iGo Stowaway bluetooth keyboard, which I could not get to work with the iPad, but which works like a charm with the Stylistic. The new Surfaces look nice, though I would personally be keener on the pukka Windows 8 pro ones when they eventually come out, as a laptop replacement.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

I'm looking forward to getting my hands on a Surface for a lot of these reasons. My new Ultrabook has restored my faith in MS kit, plus I like the xBox, Lumia and Zune... however, M has several game/apps she likes on her iPhone and I'd rather not break that. What's likely to happen is I'll have 2 phones on the go moving forward but my day to day phone will be the Lumia.