Palm Foleo: DOA

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By Dan Mosqueda
31 May 07

Palm recently introduced the Foleo as a new "companion." They announce the product on their website with the headline "Palm Advances Mobile Computing with Its First Mobile Companion Product." Hmmm.

"Foleo is the most exciting product I have ever worked on," said Jeff Hawkins, founder of Palm, Inc. and the visionary behind the Foleo's concept and definition. "Smartphones will be the most prevalent personal computers on the planet, ultimately able to do everything that desktop computers can do. However, there are times when people need a large screen and full-size keyboard. As smartphones get smaller, this need increases. The Foleo completes the picture, creating a mobile-computing system that sets a new standard in simplicity."

In May of 2005, just a bit over 2 years ago, Palm made this announcement: "Venturing beyond its well-known focus on the handheld and smartphone markets, palmOne, Inc. today introduced the LifeDrive(TM) mobile manager, an innovative product that fuses business productivity tools and entertainment applications. Designed for people with a significant volume of digital information, the LifeDrive mobile manager offers 4GB of hard-drive storage (3.85GB user available), a large 320x480 high-resolution color screen, and wireless access through built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth(R) wireless technologies."

The company's announcement continues: "LifeDrive mobile manager comes at an inflection point in the market, when people are ready for more advanced devices that meet their growing mobile-computing needs," said Ken Wirt, senior vice president of worldwide marketing for palmOne. "LifeDrive is versatile. For the business executive, it's a personal mobile briefcase; for the photo enthusiast, it's a camera companion."

In both cases Palm revels in its new product's ability to meet mobile computing needs.

I am sitting right now astounded that the LifeDrive is only two years old. I bought one last year ($399) while I was deployed to the Middle East. It was fantastic for keeping track of my incredibly busy schedule, it stored documents I needed frequently, and when I went running it served as my MP3 player. Now, it's defunct--less than one year later. Oh, and I also bought TomTom's Navigator 5 for Palm. It's a fantastic product and really made my LifeDrive have that little bit of extra value. In fact, it's probably how I get the biggest use out of my LifeDrive to this very day, even more than as an MP3 player as I travel to and from Washington DC, Texas, and other parts of the US. TomTom, following Palm's lead, doesn't support the LifeDrive any longer and I have no way of buying new maps. I'm stuck with what I have.

Palm is grasping at straws putting out a device that is even less useful than the LifeDrive. Who needs an additional electronic device to drag through TSA's checkpoints? I have a nice, thin and relatively lightweight laptop already. So I guess a new laptop, excuse me, mobile companion with little or no storage capacity, a non-standard OS (like the Palm OS itself, not many of use Linux, let's be honest), that can't even give you a glimpse of your calendar isn't really revolutionary and certainly not an "advance in mobile computing." Not a smart product for your smart phone or anything else.

My solution: Revive the LifeDrive. Redesign it into a slimmer package with a better compact keyboard with many of the Foleo's capabilities. Also, drop the microdrive in favor of a larger CompactFlash drive (8 GB or bigger). The benefits to Palm would be a re-energized Palm Pilot following. I'd probably even E-bay my current LifeDrive for such a device.

Like other writers, many of us don't even have smart phones. We have tiny little phones that slip into our pockets. So a mobile companion isn't even a thought. But an improved LifeDrive could serve both markets. You know, mass marketing, lots of profit, not niche products for executives with boundless expense accounts.

The moral of the story: In two years, and that's being generous, Palm will be discontinuing the Foleo leaving behind a bunch of cheap products being auctioned off on E-Bay. The mass market and the executive with money to burn should buy a really great laptop and forget this future paperweight.

Compassion International - Changing the Course of History

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A Registered Child in Bolivia Escapes a Life of Abuse
Djanira Blanco in Bolivia, with Brandy Campbell
May 24, 2007

Violence filled Kabir Miranda's childhood. His earliest memories are of an abusive father who, when Kabir was just 4 years old, threatened to kill the little boy, his younger brother and his mother. The three escaped into the night, fleeing to his grandmother's home just down the street in Santa Fe de Yapacani. But they couldn't hide from the emotional damage Kabir's father inflicted on the family with his drunken rages.

Sadly, Kabir and his family represent one of many families who face domestic violence in Bolivia. Incidents of child abuse and violence are high in Bolivia but are difficult to track because they are rarely reported. Kabir didn't need statistics to understand the widespread abuse in Santa Fe de Yapacani. Some of his friends at school tried to hide bruises and black eyes. Kabir recognized their pain because he felt it too.

The Love of a Father
Most of the men in the small community of Santa Fe are bored and restless. Sixty percent are unemployed, while wages of just U.S.$2 a day make many other men feel powerless to provide for their families.

Kabir's mother worried for her sons. She did not want them to learn the ways of their drunken father, and the streets around her home were filled with crude language and violent brawls — not the male role models she wanted for her boys. Rosa wanted Kabir and his brother to go to school, to occupy their minds. But most of all, she wanted them to know the love of Jesus — the love of a real Father.

When Rosa discovered the Compassion-assisted Santa Fe Student Center, she praised God for answering her prayers. Both of her sons registered in the program. But for young Kabir, the emotional and physical abuse of his father had taught the boy fear and shame. He knew little of healthy relationships and nothing of a Father he could open up to.
"I was so embarrassed by what my father did," remembers Kabir. "I did not want to go to the store, to school or to the student center. I was even embarrassed to go to church because of the scene my dad would make."

"I could tell them everything."
Project workers grieved with young Kabir and tried to gain his trust. Their kind words, paired with letters from his sponsors, made the boy feel peace in the midst of the violence. As Kabir wrote to his sponsors, he realized he found freedom in communicating with someone who hadn't heard his father's slurred shouts or seen him stumble drunkenly into town. There was no judgment. Only gentle prayers and words of support and love.

"It was easy to talk to my sponsors, because they didn't see what my father was doing," says Kabir. "I could tell them everything. God blessed my life through my sponsors' love."
Kabir began to blossom under the attention of his sponsors and project workers. As a child he accepted Jesus as his Savior — an event that Kabir describes as life-changing. He now prays that his father will one day know the love of Jesus.

Breaking the Cycle
Now a college student studying chemistry through Compassion's Leadership Development Program, Kabir dreams of one day marrying and raising his own family. While he is saddened by the life his father has chosen to lead, Kabir is thankful that his mother found a way to break that cycle of abuse.

"There is a saying in my town, 'From that stick, a splinter,' but I say that is not true, because I have God in my heart," says Kabir. "Compassion helped me cultivate values and Christian habits, making me a good man. … Accepting Christ changed the course of my history."

Vista Upgrade 2 - Averatec 4100

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Updating my laptop was a little more complicated. I ran the Windows Vista advisor and it said I could run Vista Basic. However, there were some issues with drivers (big surprise). As part of the process I upgraded my hard drive with an Hitachi Travelstar Upgrade Kit which was fantastic because I bumped up from 80 GB to 100 GB (not that much) and from 5400 rpms to 7200 rpms (tremendous) for $109 at the local Air Force BX.

The Acorn software with the kit is great. It uses Linux to image your drive to its drive. I've done this more than once. On my laptop it performed flawlessly but on my friend's laptop it didn't work. I think it was due to issues with her hard drive. This gave me ease of mind because I knew I could install Vista Basic clean and not worry about whether it worked. I figured if it bombed, I could put the old hard drive back in with XP and continue on as before. Well, the process worked fine. Averatec's gloom and doom about the laptop not being compatible turned out to be wrong. I did have to update the sound driver with Vista driver from Realtek, but that easy.

The big hang-up I faced was my broadband card. I spent hours with tech support from Sprint PCS on the phone. They had work-arounds for Vista, but it only locked up my Averatec 4100 (at the right). So, I contacted customer service and gave them the opportunity to give a Vista-compatible broadband card and they tried to sell me one with a two-year contract to which I declined their offer and cancelled my service with them. For now, I'm without a broadband card. I figure that out later. I rarely used it and I can think of better ways to spend $60 each month.

So, it's up and running. I decided to see what I could do to improve the performance. A simple buy of a Turion MT-37 CPU for $60 helped out quite a bit. It runs very nicely. I don't have the slick Aero environment, but at least I have a more stable platform from which to run my Office 2007 Enterprise from.

Speaking of Office 2007. It is great. If your firm has Microsoft Home Use, you need to utilize it. It is a fantastic suite.

Moral of the story: don't listen to the Microsoft naysayers. Do the upgrade. My understanding is that the entire Air Force will be upgraded to Vista by summer's end. It's selling like hot cakes and it does work.

Cops: 2 teens planned massacre at Harrison in Colorado Springs

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Thanks to some fairly sharp school employees, a tragedy beyond Virgina Tech was averted. Read on from the local paper's report:

Cops: 2 teens planned massacre at Harrison
Boy charged with conspiracy to commit murder
By DEEDEE CORRELL from the 15 May 07 issue of THE GAZETTE (Colorado Springs)
A Harrison High School student arrested earlier this month after police say he planned a massacre of classmates at a pep rally has been charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. The 17-year-old boy is accused of plotting with a 16-year-old girl to shoot as many students as possible in the gymnasium, with the boy attacking from the right side of the gym and the girl from the left.

The two 11th-graders had blueprints of the south-central Colorado Springs school, and the boy had instructions for making pipe bombs, which they intended to set underneath bleachers, according to a 31-page police report. Their goal, police said, was to kill more than the 32 killed by a gunman April 16 at Virginia Tech before he committed suicide.

The two were arrested several days before a pep rally that was to be attended by the entire student body. “It was chilling,” Colorado Springs school resource officer Brian Strickland said Monday of the details that emerged during his investigation. “There was no doubt something was in the planning stages.” The 4th Judicial District Attorney’s Office said the boy has been released and is not being charged as an adult.

The Gazette isn’t naming him because he’s a juvenile. The girl’s name was withheld. For prosecutors to charge someone as an adult, the case must fit several criteria that take into account the type of charge, age and criminal history, said district attorney spokeswoman Denise Minish. She said she couldn’t comment on the boy’s history. The boy and the girl were initially taken to a juvenile detention facility. It was unclear Monday if the girl was still in custody. Both have been expelled from school.

Colorado Springs police Sgt. Tommy Thompson, who heads the neighborhood policing unit, praised Strickland. “This was a serious one, and we tried to act quickly,” Thompson said. The boy — who was out “to prove that kids are not safe in school,” according to Strickland’s report — also is charged with interference with staff, faculty or students of an educational institution, a misdemeanor. The girl also was charged with interference. “She said their plan was to kill more than 33 students so it would be the biggest in history and so she would be famous,” Strickland wrote in his report. “She gave no specific reason as to why she wanted to kill numerous students, other than she just doesn’t like people in general.”

The girl said the pair hadn’t settled on the time or date of their attack, Strickland wrote, adding that the boy “had mentioned he wanted to wait until he was 18 so that he could buy weapons more easily.” Under Colorado law, no one under 18 can buy a handgun. The boy turns 18 late next month. The girl intended to use her father’s handgun, the report said. Although police said the boy wrote to his girlfriend that he had access to weapons, police didn’t find any. Three students told police the boy tried to recruit them to help, but none reported that to authorities at the time.

Harrison School District 2 Superintendent Mike Miles said school officials encourage students to report threats. Miles said the district sent letters to parents informing them of the arrests. It also canceled the pep rally and brought in bomb-sniffing dogs. Authorities said the plan surfaced April 30, when the boy told his teacher he was having trouble with his girlfriend and wanted to kill people. A school security officer searched the boy’s belongings and found a notebook the boy was using to correspond with his girlfriend — not the girl who was arrested. One entry said he wanted to kill “everyone.” “Why?” the girlfriend wrote back. “Because people piss me off,” he responded. At one point, the girlfriend asked what a massacre would accomplish. “Well, if I do it at a pep assembly, it will be a bigger score than 33. And to prove schools don’t do enough to protect students,” he wrote. “I’ve been planning this since sixth grade.” He later wrote that he was just writing an English paper and was trying to get into the “mindset” of a killer — a claim he repeated to Strickland.

In the boy’s backpack, authorities also found instructions for building a pipe bomb. Asked why he had them, he said he was just curious. Strickland also found a blueprint of the school, which the boy said he needed “to find the exits in case there is a fire drill.” The boy’s mother said “her son would never do anything like that to other people,” according to the police report. Concerned that the next pep rally was scheduled for four days later — May 4 — Strickland arrested the boy.

That night, the Crime Stoppers tip line received an anonymous tip that something bad was going to happen at Harrison and gave the first name of a girl, Strickland said. The next morning, an assistant principal called Strickland to say she had the girl in her office. Strickland said she was “much more forthcoming” than the boy. She said she and the boy had discussed several plans, including attacking during a lockdown drill, according to police. The girl had a copy of the same blueprint the boy had, with the exits and security office marked, police said.

Miles said school officials deserve credit for recognizing the potential threat. “It’s obviously not just a school issue. It’s a social issue; it’s a legislative issue; it’s a police issue,” he said. “I think you’ll find in future years kids who are lost and place a low value on both life and death. I think we’ll see that in our society. I think the Virginia Tech incident brings it into stark relief.” Monday, students’ reactions ranged from frightened to blasé. “Some are scared. Some are just, ‘eh,’” 10th-grader Ariel Piper said.

CONTACT THE WRITER: 719- 636-0285 or deedee.correll@gazette.com

Windows Vista Upgrade

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I decided to take the plunge and upgrade my computers from Windows XP to Vista. First, I started out with my desktop computer which is an HP a1330n Media Center that I purchased about 18 months ago.

First step: run Windows Vista Advisor. Result: my machine could run Vista Home Premium with a few recommended upgrades, mainly increasing the RAM.

So I upgraded from 1 GB to 3 GB (2 banks of 512MB and 2 of 1 GB RAM). Cost: about $150

So, I buy Vista Home Premium Upgrade version at a local Air Force Base BX (no sales tax) for around $149. I drove home and started the upgrade.

First fork in the road: A clean install or upgrade. After hearing of the problems others had, I went for the clean install after backing up my drive.

No problem - it installed like a champ. Voila - a clean install of Vista and I actually notice a slight performance increase probably as a result of getting rid of the last 18 months' worth of add-ons and doodads.

I did have to go to ATI's site to update the integrated video driver and to Realtek to update the on-board audio. Both had good Vista drivers and it all works.

Vista is up and working fine. Next step: Office 2007. I had a previous version of Office 2003 through the Home Use Program, where an employee can get Office for about $20. It's a great deal. However, this time around I didn't want to install my new Office 2007 Enterprise Edition on my desktop because I use my laptop at work everyday and saved it for that computer (more on that later). I went back to my local AAFES BX (Army Air Force Exchance Service Base Exchange - think Target/Wal-Mart for the military) and bought the "Military Appreciation Edition" of Office 2007 for $79. It loaded up nicely without any issues.

Hmmm. It runs good. What could make it faster, better, and scream? How about a GEForce 8600 GTS video card for my PCI-Express slot ($249 at BestBuy)? Sure. Ooops, that's gonna cost you more because it's a powerhog - a new power supply for $75. OK, now that went in easy with a quick visit to NVidia's web site for the latest drivers and I have a smokin hot video system that can even decode HD-DVD and Blu-Ray (for me only HD-DVD since I have an XBOX 360 HD-DVD player that does work with my computer). Windows Experience rating: 5.4!!!

Another hmmm. A guy at work who is a successful IT entrepreneur said "You need a dual-core CPU." Geez. A quick look on AMD's website to see what might work with my box (a Socket 939 config) revealed I could do an Athlon X2 3800+ to replace my Athlon 3800+ single core. Should I do it? Why not? I found it at NewEgg.com for $80. It came in the mail a few days later and I was like a kid running downstairs and tearing open my box. Than it hit me - what if the BIOS can recognize it or Vista coughs because it's a different CPU. Ah, who cares, I have this backed up anyway - go for it. I did and it worked on the first try with no problems since. And wow, does the dual-core work. The CPU meter used to routinely peg at 100% usage, but now the dual meter gadget I have shows neither core hitting that king wall. It's great. I'm giving the old CPU to buddy with a similar HP.

Hmmm number 3. What a waste to not use both DVI outputs. Back to BestBuy and to the display model shelf for a second 19" LCD monitor ($199), which I probably could have found for that price brand new on NewEgg, but no waiting around. Shazam - I have a fantastic desktop system that should keep happy for at least a few months!

Vista - do it. Forget the Microsoft naysayers - they have an agenda. I just want a reliable box for me and my kids to play 0n.