Extract From Byte Magazine - June 11

[Steve Bildermann]

As BYTE is now a subscription service I thought some people might enjoy reading some extracts.

Lisabetta, My Love

I love my Tablet, but I will admit that until I got the new morphing code I was muttering that if I get a chance to get a Tablet PC with the same features and a faster CPU, I'll take it. Lisabetta was great for everything but online work, but the combination of the slower CPU, Windows XP, Tablet PC software, and Office XP was enough to try one's patience.

The new morphing code doesn't entirely fix that problem, but it sure makes a lot of it go away.

Oddly enough Compaq was warned about the Transmeta Crusoe chip, and the engineering samples sent to Compaq, Sony, Fujitsu, and other companies were slow; but Transmeta assured everyone those were first samples, and the production chips would be faster. A number of companies, including Compaq, built Tablet PCs with those chips, because they certainly do have good battery life, low power consumption, and low waste heat. Alas, while the production chips were a bit faster than the samples, they are still slow, and it took a long time to get the new morphing code to make them faster. The Pentium M is not only faster but more energy efficient than the Crusoe. Of course, the Pentium M wasn't available when they were designing and building the Compaq Tablet PC.

Once again, slow is a relative term, but you can judge for yourself: Play FreeCell, win, and watch how long it takes for the cards to stack themselves. On anything but your slowest desktop this happens almost instantaneously. On the Crusoe driven Tablet PC you can see the cards move one by one.

And for all that, I like Lisabetta a lot. The keyboard is small, but I can write on it just fine, as well as I have been able to write on any portable keyboard. The pen interface works splendidly.

The bottom line here is that for many years it has been my practice to set up one heavy duty portable in my hotel room and leave it there, while I carry another with me to meetings and for work in the press room. This year King Armadillo, the Compaq 550 laptop I have used for years I may have written half a million words on that machine has stayed in his case. I find it is simple enough to set up Lisabetta to write in the hotel room, and she's light enough to carry to meetings. The pen interface is perfect for taking notes while people are talking I used it while Bill Gates was speaking and ended up with 11 pages of handwritten notes and the keyboard works just fine for production typing.

I found that out today: I sat down to make some notes, switched to a project, and an hour later found I had written quite a lot, without any feeling of being cramped by the keyboard or the machine's speed. I was actually surprised to learn that, but it's all true. I can do real production work on this tiny little portable.

She's more than fast enough for everything that doesn't involve Microsoft Outlook, a notorious cycle hog, and actually, once I let Outlook come up and initialize and do all the things it seems to do on startup, even that works.

Lisabetta, I love you.

Mousing Around

I have never got used to "eraser" pointer controls, or "j key." I can use a mushpad, but when I want to do production work on a computer, I generally try to plug in a real mouse. The mouse I prefer is the Microsoft "redeye" Optical Intellimouse, which works with both PS/2 and USB systems (provided you remember to carry the converter; it's natively for USB only).

Early optical mice needed a precise mousepad, but modern redeye mice work on almost any surface, and I have stopped carrying a mouse pad of any kind: which turns out to be a minor error. The desk here in the Queen and Crescent Hotel has a glass top over dark wood. The mouse hates that, and doesn't work. The remedy is to put anything with texture on the surface. It's not the transparency, it's the lack of any detail for the little camera inside the mouse to use for reference. A magazine, a sheet of paper, almost anything at all; but if you use a magazine for a makeshift mousepad, be sure it's flat. If it's not, you can get interesting mouse motions.

More Good News

The good news is that Microsoft is well aware that Outlook is awful, and much of that seems to be fixed in the new version that's available in Beta now. Moreover, there are a number of wonderful new features and changes in Outlook: I find the beta very useful, so much so that I decided to stay with Outlook despite past problems. Of course I wasn't quite courageous enough to put the beta on Lisabetta and bring that to this conference, but I wish I had.

Front Page XP

I use Microsoft FrontPage for my web site (http://www.jerrypournelle.com) and I like it. It keeps track of my rather large and rambling site with its complicated interconnections, it handles large objects like The Strategy of Technology and other complete books, and it works just fine for dealing with mail, my daily log (I refuse to use the ugly word "blog" that seems to be popular) and is flexible enough to let me insert photographs and drawings.

I use FrontPage 2000. I have FrontPage XP, and that's what is installed on Lisabetta and thus what I am using while I am on the road; but when I get back home I do not think I will be changing over from FrontPage 2000 on my main machine.

There are two reasons for this. First, while there are some incremental improvements in FrontPage XP (AKA FrontPage 2003) over 2000, they are mostly cosmetic.

Paste special doesn't work properly. My usual practice with posting mail on my web site is to select it and, in Outlook 2000, use "paste special" option "normal paragraphs." That strips out the line ends that are often included in mail, and puts a paragraph ending wherever it finds a double carriage return. It doesn't work that way in FrontPage XP, and I have to run mail through a special macro program in Word to accomplish the job. That's one more step I would rather not take.

So far I am perfectly happy with Office 2000, and I note that many of the demonstrations at WinHEC have Office 2000 rather than Office XP. I suspect this is to avoid activation; for whatever reason, FrontPage 2000 is plenty good enough. On the other hand, I am not so angry with FrontPage XP that I am going to remove it from Lisabetta.

Good Reading

If you have any interest in Windows drivers, you need to know about http://www.wd 3.com, The Independent Newsletter of Windows Driver Programming. This is a labor of love by people who write Windows drivers, and for those in this special field there is nothing like it. If you write drivers or worry about them, go have a look.

User Groups used to be really big in the computer community, and they still have a role to play. Auri Rahimzadeh (http://www.aurigroup.com) is President of the Indianapolis Computer Society, and a contributor to its newsletter. Their Indy PC News is obviously of special interest to those who live around Indianapolis, but there is also considerable stuff of general interest at http://www.icssite.org.

A Travel Tip

Label your power bricks, preferably with something permanent. Label them specifically: not just "Intel Ethernet Hub" or the like, because they may change with model numbers. You will be glad you did.

In theory the output voltage must be on each brick, and many companies do put the input voltages on the systems, but not all do. It's easy to label them when you get them, and a lot less frustrating than trying to figure it out when you are on the road.

Winding Down

The Game of the Month is Battlefield 1942 by Digital Illusions. I do not usually care for first person shooters, but this one is different. It's more realistic, sort of, and mostly it has been designed to be fun. I got involved at the NVIDIA booth at WinHEC, where a dozen of us on two teams, Russians and Germans, fought in the ruins of Stalingrad, or Leningrad, or Minsk, or someplace; it's hardly important. There weren't any civilians, so anyone you see is either a friend or an enemy. Learning the game takes time, but each time you are killed you are reborn at a spawning point distant enough from the battle to be annoying but not so far as to be boring. You can play any of several kinds of trooper, including medic and combat engineer, but the most popular are a submachinegunner or a bazooka anti tank infantryman. (Well, the Germans have a Panzerfaust rather than a bazooka.) You can also jump into tanks and use them, although driving a tank is not intuitive, and will probably get you dumped into the canal.

This can be played on a local LAN as we were, or on an Internet hookup. I wouldn't advise playing on line without a reliable high speed connection. I also wouldn't advise trying this without a screaming fast gamer PC with a top video board. NVIDIA was using this to showcase their newest boards, and with what they were showing the games were seamless. You can turn and look and everything is instant, including the enemies popping up to shoot at you. I found myself addicted to this game and playing long after I was tired enough that I ought to have left the exhibits area. I am a bit afraid of getting a copy to run at home.

The Movie of the Month is X MEN 2. If you liked the first X MEN you'll like this; but it is a very busy movie, with lots of characters to keep track of. The special effects are well done, the action is good, and if you like that kind of movie you'll like this one a lot. Of course it is definitely not a chick flick.

The Book of the Month is Higher Education by Charles Sheffield and Jerry Pournelle (Tor Books, Jupiter imprint, 1997; ISBN 0 812 53890 0). It has been out for a while, and Charles died last year, so it's hardly new; but I have been looking through it since I discovered that it is being taught in a few college classes, and I may write a sequel to it. If you have read that (and I hope you have) you might then turn to James Fenton, The Strength of Poetry, (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2002; ISBN 0 374 52848 9). I recommended Fenton's An Introduction to English Poetry (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2002; ISBN 0 374 10464 6) in the February column. This book is readable for fun, and you might be surprised at how learning how others write can help your own writing.

The computer books of the month are Mark L. Chambers, Creating Your Own DVDs and CDs (Prentice Hall PTR, 2002; ISBN 0 131 00105 1), and Jan S. Smith, Printing Projects Made Fun and Easy (Prentice Hall PTR, 2002; ISBN 0 131 40411 3). Both of these are labeled as "the official hp guide," both have CDs included, and both are very good introductions as well as handbooks. Every now and then I am astonished at just how far along the state of the art has moved since I last looked. These books will get you sort of up to date on what desktop computer users can do easily and inexpensively.

[Taro Toporific]

Lisabetta, My Love
...I use Microsoft FrontPage for my web site (http://www.jerrypournelle.com) and I like it...

Jerry Pournelle uses "FrontPage"!$%*?
Oh, the humanity. My opinion of him has crashed and burned.

[Steve Bildermann]

A few years back he invited me to his house in LA. What a mess!

His son opened the door and Jerry was standing behind what can only be described as a pile of computer junk. He had about thirty thick co-axial cables around his neck and a big toolbelt around his waist. Four open computer cases surrounded him.

There were computer parts wall to wall. He certainly knows his stuff but man does he ever make life difficult for himself with so much hardware and software to maintain. Uber Geek

He's a damn good writer.

[Taro Toporific]

A few years back he invited me to his house in LA. What a mess!...There were computer parts wall to wall. He certainly knows his stuff but man does he ever make life difficult for himself with so much hardware and software to maintain...

I can just imagine the mess. Arrrg. I use color-coded cable ties, spiral conduit, cable racks, etc religously. But I have to say his idea about labeling those damn power bricks is a great idea. I just lost the key power transformer to my printer which seems impossible in a 5 mat Japanese room but I did it anyway.

A Travel Tip
Label your power bricks, preferably with something permanent. Label them specifically: not just "Intel Ethernet Hub" or the like, because they may change with model numbers. You will be glad you did.
In theory the output voltage must be on each brick, and many companies do put the input voltages on the systems, but not all do. It's easy to label them when you get them, and a lot less frustrating than trying to figure it out when you are on the road.