I have often asked myself this question. A small attempt to define them has been made here. Even this effort has, I think, has fallen short. As I touched upon it in my Smartphone Thoughts post, I am convinced the MVP is an evil secret society trying to direct the lives of all of us geeky people. Much like Mobius, the other secret society, they use indirect methods to control and fool us. They may not have the black helicopters, but I wouldn’t take the aluminum foil off my head just yet. The robes and hoods are only the beginning. Meeting in caves and other hidden places, they plot out our destiny and fondle devices that the rest of us unwashed have to wait a few more months to see.

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I went to my computer dealer the other day to pick up a $10 CF Card to PCMCIA adaptor and left $300 later. This happens quite often; sometimes I just can’t help myself. I had been thinking about a new case for my PC for quite some time. When I upgraded my motherboard and processor a while back the wires for the front panel USB/Firewire connectors could not reach their mates on the motherboard. In addition the old case was stuffed to capacity with two CD drives and three hard drives that I could barely get to without removing the four memory sticks.

So I happened upon the Thermaltake Armor Jr. case. The case came with 2 large cooling fans, one in front and one in back. My old case had 3 of the smaller fans which were quite noisy. A larger fan can turn slower to move the same amount of air and is thus quieter; this alone cut down the noise by about half.  

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My new Treo 700wx needed the patch for the new Daylight Saving Time disaster. After going through 3 different patches (all of which claimed to be the official Microsoft patch), I finally stumbled on one that worked. Thread after thread on the blogs and boards spoke of the horrors of devices moving one or two hours ahead and appointments being missed after patching.

Now that the original DST date is approaching, or is already here, it will be interesting to see if anyone who has applied the patch experiences more trouble. If Microsoft isn’t embarrassed by this whole fiasco, nothing will embarrass them. Something which should have been a simple fix, that should have been widely published, was neither. So share your stories; in particular post if a new problem arises in the next few weeks.

I guess you could read a lot into that question but as I talk about here on my little blog, after my desktop pc hardware upgrade my Windows Vista Experience Index went from 4.8 to 5.5. This of course is a totally arbitrary and arguably meaningless number. However I thought it might be fun to see what those of you running Vista have. My Fujitsu T4215 gives me a 3.0 rating.

I was afraid of this. I knew it was coming and now the first of what is certain to be a few new Canon DSLR’s is here. Can I resist?

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Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC) is truly pathetic. After beating on it for weeks I have come to the conclusion they have done nothing but dress up the already miserable ActiveSync. Let me just rant about the useless and frustrating error messages. Those of you who have seen 0×8000E0DF know exactly what I’m talking about. Now I just made up that code but what is the difference? The “legit” codes tell you about as much of what is wrong as a made up one. When you Google that code in desperation to find an answer what you get is “recheck your connection” or some other silly diagnosis. Totally useless. Well fear not, WMDC has taken this to a new level:

No need for those annoying error codes anymore. Anyone care to Google this error message that I just got?

Oh it was released you say? No, what we have now is still the beta right? OK a bit of sarcasm here but after 5 years in the making I’m just a tad disappointed. After the initial wow of watching the windows swell open and throb closed, I’m left deactivating annoying security features that seem to get more in my way than the hacker’s way. Now to be fair it takes time for a new operating system to settle in. I know this. I didn’t expect all my software to run and most of it does. I did expect Microsoft’s software to work though. That is why I was surprised when after installing the Fingerprint Reader (by Microsoft and “Vista ready”) software I started getting Internet Explorer errors. Whenever I shut down IE, I get an error that says IE has shut down (duh, that’s why I clicked the X) and is looking for a solution. Sometimes the solution can’t be found, other times IE just restarts. I have made a game of guessing which it will do. Uninstalling the Fingerprint Reader software solves the problem. It’s not just me, I’ve read forums where others are having the same problem and it isn’t just caused by the Fingerprint software.

Did they not test their own software on Vista? What about the Windows Mobile Device Center? So far it is just ActiveSync in a new suit. I have had trouble getting it to work at times and yes, it is out of beta too. People are opening up ports and other things to try and solve problems. This is fine for us geeks here but what about the person who just wants stuff to work and thinks a port is where a ship comes in?

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My purpose here is not so much a review, but some thoughts and observations on what I really like about my new 4215 and what I don’t like. These are the things that as a new Tablet PC owner jumped out at me right away.

I would like to begin by explaining how I came to purchase the Fujitsu 4215 in the first place. After years of owning (I still do, of course) Pocket PC devices I came to very much enjoy writing on my screen. It was and is however, a tiny screen. Much as I love handheld devices as my long presence on Smartphone Thoughts will attest to, I wanted a larger canvas sometimes. Because I travel so much I have owned many laptops over the years, usually cycling through them every year or so. I always had a pretty current device. I shied away from the Tablet PCs for a while, because in the beginning I wasn’t hearing what I wanted to hear about them. They usually lacked in graphic capabilities as well, it seemed.

Then a couple months ago, for no particular reason, I happened upon the Fujitsu P1510 Tablet. I’m not sure if it falls into the category of UMPC (Ultra Mobile Personal Computer). I have seen it referred to as one, but it is certainly a sub notebook. Regardless, I walked into the store, saw it, and knew I had to have it. Being an impulsive buyer has its drawbacks, and as I soon discovered, the 1510 was lacking in a few areas that turned out to be important to me. As I talk about the 4215 and what I like about it, I will mention them.

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