Live-blogged stories from the show:

The eSlick will be short on bells and whistles but it will only set you back $229 in January and $259 shortly after that.  It’s a simple device with a built-in MP3 player, 128 MB of memory, SD slot (2 GB card included) and a 600 x 800 screen.  It appears to only read PDF files and Foxit is including software to facilitate creating your own PDF files to put on the eSlick.

Full specs:

Screen:6″ E Ink® Vizplex screen 600 x 800 pixel resolution at 166 dpi, 4-level gray scale
Size: 7.4″ x 4.7″ x 0.4″ (188×118×9.2mm)
Weight: 6.4 ounces (180g) battery included
Color: Black/Gray/White
Connectivity: USB2.0
Operating System: Embedded Linux
Supported Formats:
- eBook Formats: PDF, TXT, Any printable document(after converted to PDF using included software)
- Sound Formats: MP3
Internal Memory: 128MB
Storage Memory: SD Card (2GB included. Supports up to 4GB)

Bye bye MacBook Pro

The office cleanup has continued for the past few weeks with the biggest change so far happening this week.  I sold the 17-inch MacBook Pro which has been my main desktop system for almost two years and have settled on the new aluminum MacBook as both my main “desktop” system and my mobile computer.  It takes up so little space on the desk yet provides a great platform for doing my work each day.

When I need to go mobile I simply unplug the external speakers (Harmon Kardon) and the MagSafe power cord and off I go.  It’s already become much easier with no worries about keeping multiple systems in sync.  Since removing the MacBook Pro from the rotation I am using the Apple wireless keyboard and wireless Mighty Mouse when at the desk.  Both of those are of the Bluetooth variety.

Hello MacBook

I have run into some issues with this Bluetooth usage that research shows others are seeing too.  It seems to have been introduced in the recent OS X update to 10.5.6 and affects MacBooks.  Bluetooth has a tendency to disappear completely requiring a PRAM/ NVRAM reset which restores it.  It may not be very widespread but it’s hit me once already.

I ordered and canceled one of the new Apple 24-inch Cinema Displays since the MacBook’s 13-inch screen is not big enough for extended work sessions at the desk.  I canceled it since it was back ordered and the more I thought about it the harder it was to justify paying almost $1,000 for an external monitor.  Sure it has a lot of other benefits when paired with a MacBook but the timing right before the holidays was not good for that kind of expenditure.

I am going to use just the MacBook for a while and get a feel for how big an external monitor I really need and if I think a third party monitor would make more financial sense.  We’ll see how it goes with just a small screen, so far it’s OK but I’m sure it will grow old quickly.

Spaces- the place to be

Having such a small screen has caused me to experiment with ways to display a lot of information in a small space.  OS X has Spaces which is just a virtual desktop manager with some nice touches so that’s where I started.  I am currently using Spaces with just two desktops or “spaces” defined side by side and it’s working well.

I have been running Vista Ultimate in a Parallels virtual machine every day or two to access Google Chrome, Internet Explorer and OneNote which is working very well on the MacBook.  I have settled on running Vista in a full-screen window since the screen is so small and I’ve been running that by itself in “Space 2″ in Spaces.  I run OS X normally in Space 1 and use Option-right arrow to toggle between the two OSes which happens instantly.  This is a great way to run two different machines on the same system and have the benefit of each having their own full screen.  It blows me away how well this is working.

Multi-touch in Vista, yes you can

Since I have been spending more time in Vista lately I found I missed the ability to use the OS X multi-touch gestures to easily do things.  They work great in the OS X desktop but are gone in Vista as you would expect.  Not one to sit and accept that I have started playing with getting the multi-touch stuff working in Vista with some degree of success.

I shared in a past column about the free utility MultiClutch on the Mac that lets me configure multi-touch gestures for any Mac program.  This has let me streamline Firefox on the Mac to be a wonderful environment and I decided it would be worth a try to use it in Parallels to control Vista.

I have a few basic things working, I can do the pinch zooming in Vista Photo Gallery which is pretty cool to see in action.  The problem I am faced with is how individual Vista applications have their own keystrokes to invoke actions and OS X only sees the Vista environment as one big Parallels program.  I’m still playing with this though and I feel pretty sure I can get a fair bit of multi-touch goodness for Vista this way.  More on this as it unfolds.

eBook of the week

The ebook this week has hero Dirk Pitt continuing his antics of spoiling terrorist activities.  It is Valhalla Rising by Clive Cussler and it has been very entertaining so far.  I am enjoying it and find it amusing in every one of the Dirk Pitt series how Cussler always finds a way to put himself in each book.  Fun stuff.

A bit of fun

Today is the tenth anniversary of our marriage and my bride gave me the coolest present ever.  She commisioned a cartoonist to draw a piece of work based on a photo and description of what I do.  It’s a one-of-a-kind sketch and while this photo is not very good here’s what he came up with:

Thanks babe!

Holidays are coming

That’s it for this week before the holidays are here in full swing.  The time seems so short with holiday planning and events alongside the CES trip looming in just a few weeks.  I’m going to San Francisco a few days after the CES trip so things are popping right now.  Enjoy your week and come back next week and we’ll do this again.

T-Mobile agrees and has distributed a press release announcing that their $18 handset upgrade fee is now a thing of the past.  They will be happy with selling you expensive service and won’t charge you to get that gravy train started.  Let’s hope any other carriers still charging an upgrade fee feel the heat and stops too.   Does your carrier charge a fee and if so how much?

Why would RIM want to do this?  I’m not sure I can answer that although in theory it’s always a good thing to get your product on as many devices as possible.  It might be a good way to expose WinMo owners to the Blackberry way and create future Crackberries.  Whatever the reason it is definitely cool to see the HTC Touch Pro turned into a Blackberry, complete with touch screen.

The Berry Review folks who’ve played with this claim that it is a near full implemtation of the Blackberry OS in a virtual machine which is quite a feat.  The user can toggle between the native Windows Mobile and Blackberry OSes which is awfully nice.  Here’s a complete feature list:

Features:

• BlackBerry Email including attachments
• RIM Instant Message clients work Gtalk, Yahoo IM, AIM, Windows Live
• Can send and receive PIN messages and BlackBerry Messenger
• Supports BES sync of calendar, tasks, address book, & memos
• PIM/Email databases, unlike BB Connect, are separate. Thus you can have two Exchange accounts (one via WM, one via BES) syncing fully.
• Browser works just like BlackBerry browser allowing or intranet access on BES
• Integrates with the phone so you can make calls and all even from links on websites
• Allows for caller ID in the phone application
• You can access your windows mobile files from the BlackBerry OS though the opposite is not possible
• You can easily switch between the BlackBerry and Windows Mobile OS
• Supports easy switching between landscape and portrait view
• It works with BIS 2.4+ or BES or both

Judie of Gear Diary is one of those smart people who just recently discovered OS X and has gone through a couple of MacBook Airs.  When a MSI Wind crossed her path recently she realized she missed OS X so she did what many others are doing, she created a Hackintosh.  She’s detailed how she did it and lets us know how it’s working for her so check it out and see how she did it.  Take that, Apple.

UPDATE: credit where credit is due, just found out this conversion was done by Dan Cohen of Gear Diary.  Sorry folks.

Of course the screen is a lot smaller on the iPhone but LogMeIn squeezes it all to fit but lets you pinch and zoom to your heart’s delight.  I can see this as a boon to the IT professional who frequently needs to log onto someone’s computer to fix a problem.  LogMeIn Ignition also works on the iPod Touch.  You can pick this program up through the App Store but it will set you back a cool $29.99 making it one of the most expensive iPhone apps we’ve seen.

An industry report details a survey done of 578 Internet activists and found that 80% of them believe the mobile phone will be the primary Internet device by 2020.

“The mobile phone – now with significant computing power – [will be] the primary Internet connection and the only one for a majority of the people across the world,” the Pew Internet & American Life Project writes in a new “Future of the Internet” report. “Telephony [will be] offered under a set of universal standards and protocols accepted by most operators internationally, making for reasonably effortless movement from one part of the world to another.”

We’ve seen this coming but any way you look at it is is amazing how fast the phone has been adopted for heavy Internet usage.  No doubt this movement was aided by the introduction of the iPhone and the “real Internet” capabiities but many other phones are being used for web access too.

What does the 1 out of 5 experts think?  Use Crest for maximum whiteness.

(via Network World)

With online services appearing regularly, how do you differentiate between them? Pricing is surely one way, but features and ease of use ought to play into the mix as well. Business Hacks points out Gladinet as a way to make several web services a little easier to use on a Windows machine.

This free utility turns cloud utilities and data into virtual local folders to make it look like everything is right there on your PC. It supports Windows Live SkyDrive, Google Docs, Zoho Docs, Amazon S3 storage, Picasa and more; each service is integrated nicely within Windows Explorer. Since the data is actually stored in the cloud, Gladinet offers an easy way to create a sharable URL to one of your “folders”, but BHacks says that public folders aren’t working for them. Since the application is still in beta, that’s not too surprising but I hope that gets addressed quickly. Most of the other data storage services have the sharing features down pat.

The Intel Classroom notebook certainly qualifies as a netbook due to the small size and relatively low price.  The Classroom is aimed squarely at the education field, young children in particular, as the name implies.  Laptop Magazine reports that Intel will be showing a convertible Classroom at the upcoming CES in January.  The convertible Classroom is a typical 8.9-inch netbook with a twist.  The screen swivels around to tablet form and can be operated by touch.

We are not fans of touch-screen netbooks unless the device can assume a slate configuration so it’s good to see Intel approach this from the swiveling angle.  What remains to be seen is how well the palm rejection works since the touch-screen is meant to be used for handwriting in addition to the touch controls.  Windows XP Tablet Edition, Microsoft’s only version of XP that supports handwriting and touch, is no longer available to OEMs so Laptop reports that a specially developed interface and utilities have been produced to take advantage of the tablet capabilities.  They were impressed with how well this worked which sounds very promising.

The pictures we have seen of the convertible Classroom show a nice slate form with the screen swiveled and while that is nice there is no indication of the weight of the netbook.  This device is designed to be used by small children and since slate mode usually requires handheld operation the weight will be critical to its success.  It looks over 4 pounds heavy in the photos but let’s hope it’s much lighter than that.  We’ll try to get a first-hand look at this new Classmate when we attend the CES in just a few weeks.

Then came the failing economy and accompanying price freefalls that has many memory makers running in the red.  This climate has worsened to the point that Toshiba and SanDisk are cutting back their production of NAND memory, Toshiba by a tremendous 30%.  Both companies are claiming that demand has fallen dramatically resulting in over-supply which has caused memory prices to tank.

”Recession in the global economy and the slowdown in consumer spendingare having a significant impact on demand for semiconductors,”according to Toshiba in a statement. ”This is particularly notable inNAND flash memories, where decreased demand for applications such asmemory cards and MP3 players has generated excess supply.”

What is unclear is how this global flash memory situation will impact Apple.  Apple is one of the largest consumers of NAND flash memory in iPods and iPhones and it’s not clear how they would be impacted if a major consolidation of memory makers were to take place next year as some experts predict.

(eeTimes via engadget)

Consumer Reports

Here’s the top 5 smartphones according to Consumer Reports:

• Samsung Blackjack II
• T-Mobile Wing
• Motorola Q9C
• T-Mobile Shadow
• Blackberry Pearl Flip

These phones are all fine smartphones but it is surprising that only one Blackberry made the cut, and where the heck is the iPhone 3G?  The iPhone 3G was further down the list and actually tied with the T-Mobile G1.  Interesting list to say the least.

The 7210 UMA isn’t just a voice and data chipset though. ST-NXP is packaging it in a "Cellular System Solution" for handset makers, offering the following features:

• ARM926-based GSM/GPRS/EDGE/UMTS platform
• Fully integrated 3 Megapixel camera-sensor interface
• Display sizes up to QVGA resolution and 18-bit color
• Video recording and playback: H.263, MPEG-4 30 fps CIF
• Video playback: H.264 15 fps QCIF
• Audio playback: MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA

Last I checked, T-Mobile’s UMA service (known as Hotspot @Home) only worked with a few handsets like the BlackBerry Curve and Samsung Katalyst, so perhaps the range of devices will be expanded more quickly based on the news.

Palm should have leveraged their vast array of in-house and third-party applications long before this as they had a clear, competitive advantage. Namely, the number of Palm OS titles and smartphones on the market as early as 2002… anyone remember the Treo 180? Now Palm has over 5,000 applications (over 1,000 are free), which Venture Beat notes is half that of the Apple’s iTunes App Store and ten times more than Google’s Android Marketplace.

Numbers and strategies aside, Palm’s store is here now and available for download. The company has partnered with PocketGear, a long-time handheld software vendor; I haven’t yet seen any details if developer terms are modeled after that of Apple and Google.

Update: Mobile Crunch indicates that developers will see 50% of software sale revenues, which is far less than Google, Apple and even RIM are offering.

Do Not Disturb allows you to set which contacts, phone numbers or categories are allowed to disturb you… or not. You can also set profiles for contact groupings as well. It looks handy, but you’ll want to get in now on the beta since the application is due for general release next month and is expected to cost between $5 and $10.

(via Jason Langridge)