So more and more business folks are doing the smart thing, which is to permanently set their phones on silent/vibrate mode.

That means always keeping your phone on your person and just feeling the calls and text messages as they come in, so to speak. Not just when in a meeting, but practically throughout your entire working day.

The people behind the ring tones business may not like this trend, but if it gathers steam, then it will make for more peaceful offices and public places. There will be less of those horrifying boy band tunes popping up while you’re absorbed in a particularly intense moment in the movie house. No, wait, it’s the kids who do that, so don’t expect this trend to catch on with them.

It ain’t foolproof though. Vibrate works best if you’re wearing tight jeans and your phone’s pressed right against your thigh. Or if you’re wearing a fit shirt with a pocket. Unfortunately, vibrate won’t be your thing if you still wear hip-hop baggy pants or your flab’s just way too thick too feel anything anymore (Adel, how’s vibrate working for ya? –DUCK!).

I’m all for this though. After all, I and the people around me have all grown tired of listening to the same old R2D2 tweet that my phone does whenever a text message comes in.

And he’s holding a USB 3.5G modem.

Moks says that he has been testing the modem for a couple of weeks now, and he was able to get Internet speeds of 1.7Mbps while waiting at Davao’s airport. Wow.

Not unusual for people who have already been using WeRoam and who have access to a high-speed HSDPA modem. But what makes this different is that finally, we are seeing a USB-based modem. Plug this into your laptop’s USB port and away you go. And since it’s a small USB device, it’s much cheaper than current HSDPA modems out there.

The USB HSDPA modem will be released by PLDT in a couple of weeks. For all you laptop-toting racketeers out there, this should make 3.5G all the more attractive as a broadband option.

(slight pause for dramatic effect)

I must say that for the longest time now, I have always been antagonistic to the idea of the Tablet PC (much to the consternation of tablet evangelist Carlo Guerrero). But I had my reasons. Mostly it had to do with the fact that tablet PCs have always been too bulky for what they were supposed to do. Okay, that, plus the fact that tablets seem to hate my handwriting.

But Microsoft’s “Origami” tablet specs may very well change my mind, if it hasn’t already. I’ve gotten hold of the Ubiquio 701… and I instantly fell in love with the darn thing!

The 701 is incredibly light for an XP-running machine, weighing less than a kilogram and with dimensions just north of a Playstation Portable. It’s not the fastest thing in the world (it uses a VIA C7 1.0GHz CPU), but I don’t care because I’m basically an Office- and web- kind of guy. And for these purposes, the 701 is more than enough. It comes with 512MB of memory, a 7″ screen (good enough for word processing), and a 40GB hard drive. Add to that Bluetooth 2.0 (!), Wi-Fi and two USB 2.0 ports.

Pros

1. This thing is so light that I could actually carry it with me anywhere I go. I mean, I have always deluded myself into thinking that my current Lifebook laptop is light enough to bring anywhere, but the truth is that it’s still too laptoppy to lug around everywhere. But the 701 is so bag-friendly that you literally can! It’s even lighter than those old Transmeta-powered Lifebooks.

2. It was designed for the vast majority of people who want to be mobile in order to surf and connect and do basic office chores. No gamers allowed (you’ll get bored quickly). But for people who are prone to impulses of Must-Use-Computer-Now, this is perfect.

3. Mouse around via its stylus or via a thumb pad. The pad was surprisingly easy enough to get used to for a touchpad-habitue like me. Of course you can snap on a mouse, but that will eat up your USB ports. Better get a hub… but that will be one more thing to clutter up your bag.

Cons

1. No keyboard? Well, it IS a tablet PC! Still, it would have been great if the 701 came with a keyboard that was styled to fit its look. As such, you will have to get your own USB keyboard (the dealer offers a free keyboard as a promo). Better yet, get one of those tiny-form-factor A4Tech USB keyboards so you can stuff it into your bag as well.

2. The stand is a separate item. And since it’s separate, this means that you can end up losing it sooner or later. I would have preferred to see the 701 come with the stand built in. After all, even if it’s a tablet, chances are that for most of the time, you’d still prefer to work on it like a laptop.

3. The screen ain’t got the best picture in the world, so don’t expect glossy images to stick out. In fact, for me, its picture quality is just a couple of notches above passive TFT. But then, you’re getting this unit for its portability and not for its image quality.

I didn’t get to test battery life, unfortunately, since the unit was the last one in stock at the dealer’s. I also didn’t care to test my handwriting because the training time would be hell.

Bottom line, however, is that with the Origami specs in place, I think I am now ready to fall in love with tablet PCs (After all, you get to conveniently watch DivX videos on a 7″ screen while commuting to work!). And at just 60++ grand, it’s not that expensive. In fact, I am seriously considering replacing my trusty, time-tested Lifebook with an Origami-based PC when the time comes. Once an Origami-based unit comes out with ultra-long battery life, a vibrant screen, complementary keyboard accessory and a couple more more USB ports.

Once upon a time, a week before the Asian Crisis set in, I bought a black, Singapore-made IPC laptop. It was a pretty good unit for its time, save for the fact that the plastic casing seemed flimsy. It was a Pentium unit with 32MB of RAM, 4GB of hard disk space, an RCA Video Out port (a novelty, even today), and Windows 95.

After a couple of years of usefulness, the unit got stashed away in some dark nook. Unfortunately, it turns out that it was a rather humid nook. Almost a decade later, I uncovered the laptop and, to my horror, was faced with crumbling plastic and a moisture-savaged LCD screen.

I had this poor thing revived at SST Laptop n PC Shop at the Cyberzone of SM Megamall, and they did what they can to salvage the thing. Including replacing the dead LCD lid with one from a Toshiba Satellite. A dull gray one. It was the closest fit, I suppose.

That, plus the putty-work that was done to salvage the disintegrating plastic, led to the monstrosity seen here. Note how the lid is much larger than the body.

But amazingly, it works! My old Windows 95 booted up without a hitch, and memories flooded back as I saw old files and programs come to life.

The shop did its best to make the unit look a tad presentable, eventually covering the horridly drab lid in black tape. Total cost: just a thousand pesos, which was a steal considering that they patiently puttied the thing together and gave me a replacement lid.

After ten minutes playing with my Frankenstein laptop, however, I shut it down, tucked it away in lots of silica gel, and forgot about it. There simply isn’t much that one can do on a computer that ran Windows 95, had no USB ports, and only had a floppy drive to let you extract its files.

I know, I know, there’s Linux. I’ll get to it sometime…

ZDNet news here.

My thoughts? Forget the virus. Apple’s  Vice President is named Joswiak? Now why do I get the feeling that he was hired primarily because it was cute to have someone onboard whose name was a contraction of Jobs and Wozniak? Heheh…

It’s almost always cheaper to just get a SIM card in the country you’re visiting and use it for your outgoing calls and text messages. Unfortunately, this defeats the purpose of putting your primary SIM card on roaming status. Case in point: at the moment, I am swapping SIM cards like crazy, plugging my primary SIM into my phone to check for incoming messages, and then plugging the Vietnam SIM card in for communications with my contacts here and elsewhere.

Which is why I have decided that, before going on my next trip abroad, I should first buy myself another mobile phone. Even just a cheap tri-band one. That way, I don’t have to wear my phone’s SIM receptacle out with my constant swapping.

Next time you decide to put your SIM card on roam, think about getting an extra phone to host your foreign SIM card. At the very least, it gives you a valid reason to shop, heheh.

The exhibit runs until October 1 and features works by Manolo Abaya, Khavn dela Cruz, Pepe Diokno, Raul Jorolan, Mark Meily, Raul Ona and Mark Querubin.

You can also still catch Pepe Diokno talk about the craft on Sept. 30, 3:00pm.

Oh, and if you happen to own an N-series phone, you may get to have free photo prints as well.

Problem: my mom’s pushing 70. And the entire concept of navigable graphics menus befuddles her no end.

“Here’s how you use it,” I explained in my slowest, preschool teacher voice. “You push this button up to move the highlight up, down to push it down, left to move it left… and center to click.”

She just stared blankly at the phone’s screen.

I was contemplating the use of hand puppets to get my message across, but I just had to give up. The entire concept of using a set of keys that can move a cursor around a graphical menu in two dimensions is just too much for her to absorb for now.

Us younger folks are the gaming generations, so we’ve taken it for granted that graphical user interfaces, whether for PCs or for phones, are so intuitive that any pedestrian can start using them on the fly. Like that scene in Star Trek IV when Scotty sees a 1980s-era Macintosh for the first time and starts clicking away at lightning speed to produce a chemical model for transparent aluminum in less than a minute. We (including Scotty) grew up with joysticks, gamepads and other interface devices, so a phone’s navipad is second nature to us.

For those who do not even know what a joystick is, however, the graphical user interface isn’t necessarily as friendly as we assume it to be. And it may take some time before these genteel folks get to understand the feedback process that goes into moving a controller and seeing something moving on a screen in response.

But I’m sure that my mom will hack it. Eventually. She did, after all, somehow manage to learn how to send text messages — after sending out several hundred pesos worth of text to the wrong people and to total strangers. So I’m sure that after a few thousand pesos worth of accidentally using GPRS, inadvertently downloading unwanted wallpapers, and calling up total strangers by mistake, she’ll eventually figure out the Nokia 3650’s navipad.

Eventually.

NEXT DAY UPDATE:

My mom switched back to her old phone.

The big deal about Core 2 Duo is that these dual-core chips are priced surprisingly low while offering greater performance/power dynamics. New Core 2 Duo processors for laptops offer 20 percent more performance versus current Core Duo machines, while Core 2 Duo processors for desktops promise 40 percent more performance AND 40 percent less power consumption!

All this means that dealers have to unload current inventory, and fast. Which is why we are now seeing brand new laptops at the unheard-of P25,000-peso price point!

And AMD has to react to this onslaught too, so AMD processors are already set for really drastic price cuts as well. So get ready to do some serious bargain hunting, folks, if you are out to get a new laptop or PC. Now’s the time to shop around.

For those of you who have just recently bought a Core Duo laptop (like a certain Geekette who frequents this site), don’t worry, the first generation of Core 2 Duo processors for laptops (”Merom” for you geeks) will be compatible with current Core Duo laptops, so if in case you feel like getting an added 20 percent or so performance kick, you can upgrade.

And for those of you who’d rather wait for the next generation, sit around til the end of the year. Coming soon: quad core. Core 2 Quad perhaps?

I decided that it was high time that I gave my overworked tool a decent tidying up.

There are a number of high-end, expensive laptop cleaners out there, but nothing beats good old-fashioned (and very cheap) MC Multi-Purpose Cleaning Cream, available at your local groceries and hardware stores. It’s non-reactive, which means that it’s very safe on your equipment’s surfaces, and it instantly lifts off all sorts of grime. Its carnauba wax component should also give a microscopic layer of protection for your device. What’s more, it’s so safe that you could even use it on your LCD screens.

Also needed: a soft cleaning rag (available via your favorite street vendor… or much, much cheaper bought by the bolt at Divisoria), and possibly cotton buds.


Here’s a step-by-step of the cleaning process: (more…)