Is a Windows Phone on your radar?

Microsoft’s recent launch of their updated mobile OS WP7 put the spotlight on their renewed effort into the mobile field. But is it enough to lure consumers away from their iPhones, Blackberry’s, and Android phones? There’s no question there is tons of potential here. If there’s anyone willing to throw money into a development pit, it’s certainly Microsoft. Here are a few things I thought were missing that they could have done better.

Flagship. Every launch needs a flagship product. I didn’t see one. The Samsung phone? The HTC phone? I didn’t see anything that made me want to go out and suddenly own another Microsoft product.

Apps. If mobile developers have learned anything it’s that applications drive consumers to buy your product. Again this is one of those things that has potential when you have a company like Microsoft backing development.

The things that I did like. The OS. It looks very good. Smooth, different but familiar. Perhaps resource heavy? Whatever they got running it must be fairly powerful. MS office integration. If it’s a Microsoft product you gotta have integration of MS Office. That’s one thing it has over other mobile OS’s.

It could take off over the holiday shopping season. Perhaps Steve Balmer has something else up his sleeve?

Is Tablet Computing For You?

Microsoft CEO unveiled a tablet during his recent keynote. Steve Balmer showed of the HP Slate (hmm I thought had the iSlate name locked up?) calling it a “little pc” and of course running Windows. Bringing a tablet device to market isn’t a brand new concept, just the way it was implemented and marketed. Perhaps it was originally before it’s time. With the surprising success of the Kindle and netbooks perhaps consumers are ready for tablet computing. Ultraportable computers have always been coveted however technology has now offered up low energy cpu’s with slim form factors making usable tablet devices possible. And of course to cut down on space, touchscreen input is a no brainer.

So is tablet computing for you? For those looking for a more powerful ebook reader this might be a purchase worth making. Power users may want to hold off until Intel comes out with a more powerful Atom processor. The $500 price tag may scare consumers away, however slap a little Apple logo on it and suddenly it’s not that expensive.

Which Malware software is best?

Here’s an interesting post from Arstechnica regarding malware software. Go ahead, check out where your anti malware software ranked. Personally I currently use AVAST and have used AVG, and McAfee in the past. The biggest reason for using the aforementioned software would be … free. I stopped using McAfee in part for the large amount of system resources required to run it. I liked it but it just was a memory hog. AVG was next, it too was good in the beginning, then it slowly started to take over bigger portions of my system. Installing stupid toolbars, changing my default search, forcing me to use their built in firewall program, etc. I got sick of it. Which brings me to AVAST. So far so good. As you can see it’s not the top software on the list but at least it’s on the list.

Free AVG Download
McAfee
AVAST

Wipe phone data remotely

How many times have you left your phone somewhere or just plain had it stolen? Ever worry about all your personal data being accessed by prying eyes? Recently a Windows Mobile prototype was stolen from an executive. Nothing special there right? Except that Microsoft technicians were able to wipe the phone remotely once its theft was brought to their attention. Now that’s cool.

It definitely gives me comfort to know that this technology is on the brink of the consumer market. Probably for a fee, but well worth it if you’re walking around with a company’s customer list, contacts, emails, perhaps even a spreadsheet attachment with some financial info. It’s definitely a technology business travellers need to consider. The same principles applied to laptops need to be applied to mobile phones. More now than ever the data we used to store on computers are now showing up on Blackberries and other smart phones. Have a data shredder feature built in would go a long way to protecting mobile data as well.

SSD’s: it’s all about the money

Seagate Technologies recently reaffirmed that it has no plans to get into the SSD market and produce drives. For them, while interesting, and SSD venture at this time has not proven to be a money maker and Seagate claims that other manufacturers are losing money making and selling the product. Instead of getting into the game (too late) Seagate plans on developing a hybrid SSD drive with elements of current hard drive technology. Sounds like they are trying to make their own market for drives after missing the boat on SSD’s.

Let’s see, greener, faster, and physically smaller drives? Maybe the growth numbers don’t tell the whole story about the financial portion but people are buying them and so are companies. It’s expected that SSD’s will remain a small portion of overall data storage solution but there definitely appears to be an enterprise market for these devices.

Also good news for Windows lovers. Windows 7 is expected to take full advantage of SSD technology and should be optimized for maximum performance. Hmm, wonder if OS X has anything like that planned for the next release?