Jeremy Toeman’s LIVEdigitally

I saw an interesting blog post this week regarding how Apple is immune to the innovator’s dilemma (for those unfamiliar with the term). First, I don’t think the company is immune at all, I think that OS X and MacBooks ARE the innovation relative to Windows Vista and PCs. Second, there’ve been tons of recent articles regarding the company’s climb in market share. Finally, in the interests of full disclosure, I am personally a (small) AAPL stockholder.

Consumers are turning increasingly to their peers, friends, and family for recommendations of products. I’ve personally referred four people to purchase Panasonic plasmas after buying my own (of course, they all got the newer model, but no, I’m not extremely bitter). In each case my friends actually made purchases on nothing but my recommendation. That’s a pretty hefty price tag for a word-of-mouth referral. While there’s constant debate on the “power of influencers” there’s almost no question we all like to have a friendly opinion to back up a purchase decision.

Today, when buying a new notebook, I’ll make the following two statements that I believe are true:

1. Virtually all MacBook owners will recommend most MacBook models when asked
2. Virtually no Vista notebook owners will recommend most models from any given manufacturer when asked

The second point is probably the more debatable one. I’m not saying there’s *no* PC worth recommending. But, even a person happy with, say a Dell, cannot make a blanket statement “all Dell notebooks are worth buying.” Further, this situation worsens, not improves, over time. A year ago I’d have recommended a Vaio hands-down. Today I cannot (despite mine working quite well now - thanks again Ed!), because I simply don’t believe that all configurations are recommendable. So I’d have to say “Get model XX, with the YY screen and the ZZ video card” and even then, still leave a lot to chance. I wouldn’t be able to personally vouch for it, the cornerstone to any recommendation.

MacBooks do not have this issue, despite the occasional glitch here and there. They are almost completely recommendable, all of the time (although I’d never personally imagine buying the SSD version of the Air, but that’s more a budget/performance issue than anything else).

Also, I think there is a bit of a “trickle-down” effect happening. When I decided to make the switch, virtually all of my peers and industry thought leaders I read, know, and respect had moved to Macs. I had lunch with a VC friend of mine today, he confirmed that well over 90% of the startups who pitch him come in with MacBooks.

I truly believe this is a “perfect storm” for the MacBook (regardless of whether or not there are new models coming):

• Vista is just a disaster (I can count on one hand the number of people I know personally who think it’s a step up from XP), and there’s no solution imminently on the horizon.
• The PC manufacturer’s are caught in an Innovator’s Dilemma moment where the thousands of configurable options on a PC are what their customers have asked for, yet don’t truly want.
• The price point of an entry level MacBook is on par with a Windows notebook.
• Finally, and possibly most importantly, the introduction of BootCamp and Parallels have enabled the “tentative” customers to make the leap, knowing they can run Windows for anything they miss (Outlook!)

It’s not about the 3, 4, 6, or 12% market share they may or may not have across all computer sales. That’s almost irrelevant to address, since desktops have so many types of uses. But notebooks are much more telling of the shifting trends. Notebooks are for both personal and professional use, they have their place in the office and the home (and everywhere in between). Notebooks afford us more choice in the computer we choose to purchase and use.

Will I be wrong on the timing? Time will tell. Is this a slam dunk? Not at all! Can the PC guys do anything to stop it? Absolutely. But all the signs on the walls I read point to a very dominant iFuture.

Updated: a point I forgot to mention was production capacity (thanks yoshi).  As was stated there, it’s pretty unrealistic to think that Apple could possibly ramp production up to the capacity that would be necessary to accomplish the feat.  But then again, that’s what my friend Peter calls a “high class” problem to solve…

Overall (with one glaring exception, which I’ll write about tomorrow), it was a great weekend down in San Mateo for the 2008 Maker Faire. As far as events go, it’s almost the anti-CES. Instead of expensive, polished booths, most exhibits were on foldout tables. Instead of a team of well-trained booth staffs, the typical demonstrator was the individual or small group who personally built whatever it is that’s on display. Instead of overpriced, greasy, carnie food, we ate… oh, well, I guess some things are universal.

I spent the bulk of the days at the Bug Labs booth, where we were showing quite a few demos of the BUGbase and modules in action. Our plan was to spend much of the time creating new gadgets, but there were so many visitors that the team only created a small handful of new applications. I really liked the “digital level” application, because it was such a great conceptual explanation for the power of the crowdsource-enabled gadgets. The digital level on its own worked just like any other (although Angel, a Bug Labs engineer, coded it in about 8 minutes using the motion sensor/accelerometer module!), but it’s the future of many “connected digital levels” that is so interesting. Still not making sense? Think of it as a globally connected, yet distributed seismograph. Again, not necessarily important on its own, but its the concept that is so important.

The show was a lot of fun. Much bigger than I was anticipating, I heard over 100,000 tickets were sold! I saw some amazing demos and products, including an open-source version of Rock Band, a digital foosball table (yes, I played, and managed to beat the guys who built it - sweet), a killer room of Lego town, warring battleships, DIY everything, geekdad.com RC airplanes, a homegrownremote control R2D2, and, of course, BBQ chicken on a stick. Check out some pix from Laughing Squid and Scoble’s video too. My pix are all here, but these are some of my favorites:

And, the most important photo of all…

If you haven’t heard of Maker’s Faire before, check out details here (don’t worry, I’ll wait for you before continuing).  I tried describing it on the phone to a friend earlier today, I said “it’s like a big county fair except instead of people throwing small items at smaller targets, you see them building flamethrowers and personal helicopters and solar-powered stuff.”  It really isn’t the easiest thing to describe, but if you have any shred of childhood creativity left, it’s the kinda place you should go for a few hours this weekend.

I say all that, but now, wait for it, the truth is, oh boy, I’ve never been.  As I mentioned on the Bug Labs blog today, I’ve managed to miss it year after year.  I really believe that MAKE magazine and the corresponding event represent the best possibilities of “growing up”.  Yes, I was one of those kids who took apart toys then put them back together again, albeit slightly worse than when I started (and even threw them out my bedroom window, just to see what might happen).  I still have a huge bag of Lego sitting in my closet waiting for my son to get old enough to not eat them.

Tickets are only $25, though Scott Beale’s going to give away a few to some lucky folks.  I’ll be at the Bug Labs “booth” along with others from the team.  We’ll make some gadgets, hack some gear, and try to find a way to hook the BUG up to a flamethrower.  Please join!

Here’s the detailed account of Ed’s journey with the Vaio.

The above video should give you a pretty solid understanding, but if not, here’s the background:

1. Had a Vaio, it was great, it got stolen.
2. Bought a new Vaio ($2500 with insurance check), it ran Vista, it was terrible.
3. Bought a MacBook 10 weeks later ($1100), it’s been great.
4. Mocked the Vaio many many times until Ed Bott approached me, interested in seeing if he could fix its problems
5. He did, it works great.

My thoughts on the matter, in no particular order:

• It’s not Vista per se, it’s the PC manufacturers who are failing to deliver consumer-ready products. If you have either an IT department or an Ed Bott, you can do fine. If you don’t, you’re in a heap of problems.
• PC manufacturers should massively separate the “home/consumer” group from the business groups. Further, there is a huge opportunity for a PC company to make a finely tuned, consumer-ready Vista laptop.
• Making a great laptop requires a minimal quantity of options. For reference, call Apple. If the MacBook had 44,000 possible combinations, it would be just as bad as any off-the-shelf PC notebook.
• This is a very classic Innovator’s Dilemma situation - “the market” is telling PC companies they want options, but the reality is they want easy to use, reliable, affordable computers.

Until a PC company follows any of this advice, Apple will continue to gain market share, and here’s why: Virtually all MacBook users today are happily recommending others to try MacBooks, with a predictable, reliable recommendation. PC users cannot as easily do the same. I had a great Vaio, then a terrible one. I’ve used Toshibas before (great - in the 90s), a Gateway (wasn’t bad), and 3 Dells now (one good, one bad, one ugly). But they are all vastly different.

Thanks and hats off to Mr. Ed Bott for putting in so much time with me. I’ve learned a lot from this process, and I sincerely recommend to any PC company who is listening: go spend some time talking to Ed and take his advice. If you really want to stop the slide (and trust me, the slide is happening even if the numbers you look at today seem like rounding errors), you need to get experts like him to better explain the consumer PC needs of today.

Last December we organized our first “Geeks Doing Good” event at the SF Food Bank.  We had a good time, and more importantly, did a lot of good (especially by inspiring others, such as Robert Scoble). We’ve since set up a Facebook group and my colleague Andrew Kippen has done a phenomenal job pulling together more activities and volunteers.

Not exactly sure why, but compared to things like FriendFeed we aren’t getting nearly the responsiveness we’d originally anticipated.  That said, the word did make it around the world to Cameron Reilly in Australia, who did a 30 minute podcast with me a few weeks ago.  I think a lot of people have a lot of preconceived notions about volunteering.  It certainly doesn’t seem “sexy” or “cool” to spend the day working in the SF Food Bank.  It’s true, it isn’t really “cool” but a quick recollection of the “cool kids” I knew back in high school places them today working at the local TJ Maxx and/or something that involves using packing tape many hours per day (not that there’s anything wrong with either job - but they aren’t quite the expectations those kids probably had back in the day when they were being very cool), so I’m all good with not being cool.

Which brings us back to this weekend.  Andrew & co have organized two more shifts at the Food Bank (morning and afternoon).  I personally won’t be able to join this time around, but maybe I can get one LIVEdigitally reader per shift to sign up and volunteer on my behalf?  I know there’s lots of other things you can do this weekend but I will promise you this - none of them are quite as rewarding.  Knowing you’ve contributed to making the world a better place feels great (yes, even better than calling in a helicopter in COD4!).

When Ed Bott first told me he wanted to get a look (so to speak) under the Sony Vaio’s hood, I have to admit, I sorta snickered. Not because I didn’t think it would be interesting, but because I was pretty sure the situation was so hopeless. He’s had a few days with it now and it turns out he’s making some impressive progress. So impressive that I might not be able to write snarky headlines like this one anymore! Highlights:

• Before shipping the machine off to me, Jeremy noted that he had wiped out Vista and installed Windows XP. Ironically, the machine with XP installed was practically unusable. (jt: yes, this I can attest to!)
• With a clean install of Vista Business and enough custom drivers to enable all installed hardware devices, the system was a rocket. Boot time to the logon screen was 33 seconds. (jt: zomg!)
• With that hardware and a clean copy of Vista, there’s no slowdown to be noted. (jt: wow!)

Ed will go into the nitty gritty of how he waded through the Sony murk and mire to accomplish this in a future post, but I do recommend reading his report so far. Especially the part where he’ll be talking to Sony reps, I’m very curious about their feedback.

Since I’ve never really talked about it, I wanted to clear up one potential misconception of “me vs Sony”. As I blogged about back in 2006, I loved my last Vaio. I told *the world* about my Vaio (literally, as that was the year I notched about 180K miles). I raved and raved. When someone wanted a reco, I said “buy-0 a Vaio” (not really, I’m not quite that corny). So when mine got stolen and I replaced it with the newer model it was as a previously very satisfied customer.

When you go from really loving something to finding its replacement utterly terrible (much like Crissy on Three’s Company), there’s a true feeling of betrayal. I am like a woman scorned, and plan to tell everyone in the world as such until I feel it’s been made right. Ed has very generously offered his time to do this “Vaio Speedup Challenge”, but frankly I feel that Sony “owes” me. Is that a fair feeling, probably not. I feel much of the same angst toward Microsoft right now, as a 15-year Windows veteran I am not happy with the fact that I felt I had no choice but to go Mac. It’s all a little irrational, but spending 8-16 hours a day with a computer over my career pretty much implies I’ve spent more waking hours with Windows than I have with my wife so far! That’s quite a relationship to burn.

Back to the topic at hand. I am very excited to see the new & improved Vaio. The Dell I’ve been checking out has performed very well (we had a minor snafu with a mouse we hooked up, but it turns out it was a negligible error that was fixable in minutes), and it’s refreshing to see a Vista experience that is leaps and bounds above what I’ve experienced so far. And huge thanks to Ed for taking the time to do this!!!

My friend Mark Evans wrote a blog post today entitled “Are MacBooks Just Trendy?” and I thought I’d write a completely unwarranted perspective myself. In his article, Mark ponders the value of the budget laptop buyer, who can pick up a lower-end Windows laptop for ~$500. He continues with…

Before the MacNation starts clamoring about how Macs are more stable, elegant, better designed, etc., the question that should be asked is whether the “regular” computer user needs a Mac to do what they need to do (browsing, e-mail, writing documents). In other words, can you avoid buying a Mac, and still have a satisfying computer experience?

The answer, I think, “Yes”.

First and foremost, while I did convert to the Mac last year (because the Sony Vaio VGN-SZ460 is such a wretched use of silicon it made the Foleo look like a good idea), I don’t consider myself a fanboy just yet (I even chastised them during CES a few months back). That said, however, considering the state of Windows Vista, I simply cannot endorse ANYONE buying a new machine that doesn’t run either XP or OS X.

The real question to me is what are you getting for your money, and I’m going to use the one example I have the most hands-on experience with: my mother. She bought a lower-end Dell last spring for ~1000, it has all the right speeds & feeds (dual core, 1GB RAM, DVD burner, etc). She hates it (possibly more than me and my Vaio!) because everything is slow, she gets alert messages all the time which make no sense to her, and even after I installed Picasa she has trouble managing the photos on her computer.

Again, I’m going to blame this on Vista, not Dell per se, but it doesn’t matter. My dad has a year old PC, his Logitech webcam crashes every third or so time he uses it. My mother-in-law just got a brand new budget PC, her Internet connection is no longer reliable. Even the Dell I was sent by Ed Bott as an example of a “good” Vista installation is unable to recognize two generic USB mice I tried (although it did boot in about 40 seconds, which was very impressive).

Is the MacBook trouble free? Absolutely not. For example, iMovie ‘08 crashes on me everytime I run it unless I manually remove files from my preferences folder - a task my parents would be completely unable to do on a regular basis. MacOffice is still a far cry from Office XP/2003 (I’ll spare the discussion of Office Vista/2008). It isn’t perfect by a long shot.

But, it is reliable, and if you use OS X the way it wants to be used (because the other way around is a no-no), the MacBook is the best bargain computer on the market. For $1000 you get the same specs as a mid-range Windows laptop, except you get a computer than runs better and faster, all the time. It even tends to run Windows about as well as any Dell does, just in case you need to. The extra $500 is well worth it in the long run.

And as to the question of “is it trendy?” and the obvious “yes” response, there’s a reason for it. Look around Silicon Valley and many of the thought leaders you see have switched to a Mac. And they are happy they did. Further, there’s unquestionably a “trickle down” theory of high tech. As fashion starts in New York and moves West, technology starts in San Francisco and moves East.

The only other “trendy” PC I can think of is the eeePC. Oh, wait, and those red Dells. Because there’s nothing I want more than a bright fire engine red laptop sitting demurely on my desk. The real “question” in my eyes is this: what can Microsoft and the PC manufacturing industry do collectively to make a trendy Windows-based computer?

Does anyone have an answer? Bueller?

Ten years ago individuals seeking a form of online self-expression typically ended up at Geocities (or a similar site) and built a “home page”. It was typically gaudy, unreadable, and used some combination of the flash and marquee tag. Many of them linked to a Turkish(?) guy named Mahir. The Home Page fad went on through the 90s, then went fairly underground. Traffic remained high, but universally it seemed clear that home pages were (1) ugly, (2) boring, and (3) a frivolity at best.

But just as the Wii revived a dormant Nintendo, the 2000s rolled around and blogging “appeared” (and I know there are folks such as Dave Winer who’ve been blogging longer than that, but the main trend emerged a few years ago). Wordpress (my blogging technology of choice - open source, extensible, free - what’s not to like?) has dropped the barrier to entry so low that I can start a blog in minutes and yet not have to sacrifice any form or function. Blogging got so big and exciting that Engadget got acquired by AOL, blogging networks such as b5media emerged, and blog tracking from startups like Technorati spread to the giant Google.

At the same time as “us older folks” got really into and excited about blogging, another world was experiencing unbelievable growth: social networks. Popularized by Friendster, then capitalized upon by MySpace and now Facebook (and even good ol bebo), there are hundreds of millions of users of social networks today. In a Geocitiesesque fashion, people again are flocking to the opportunity to create a distinct slice of themselves on the Internet, only this time not only are they creating ugly annoying pages, they are also finding new ways of embarrassing themselves long into the future.

But neither blogging nor social networking was really “enough” to last. 2007 saw massive changes in behaviors in both arenas. As blogging got bigger, our focus drifted. Where we used to read individual blogs to read individuals’ opinions, a massive shift to all-encompassing feed readers occurred. It’s become less about the ‘whose opinion do I want’ and more about ‘what’s an interesting headline?’. Blog aggregators such as TechMeme have also improved our ability to find trends (memes) in blog-to-blog “conversations” but yet have de-emphasized the importance of writing quality articles instead of just linkbaiting headlines.

Also, microblogs like Twitter gained popularity, giving writers the benefit of a limited structure (140 character entries), and again, distributed focus away from the individual and into the crowd. Social networking sites, led by Facebook, implemented platforms for building applications, most of which seem to involve being bitten by zombies and/or having a sheep (or worse, poop) thrown at one’s eye.

Next up are the layers on top of all these building blocks, and 2008 will be a big year for them. FriendFeed launched (as did SocialThing and Plaxo Pulse and others) as an aggregator of all of your online activities (other than social networking sites, which already do this independently). Louis Gray did a phenomenal job recruiting/inviting/involving the “a-list” bloggers (which I most certainly don’t belong in, but others like Scoble and Dave Winer do), though Mark Evans and Brian Solis have a lot more to say on that topic. I’m still not sure why/if I need FriendFeed (nor is Duncan Riley), nor if I plan to use it in the future (although I did sign up here), but at least I’m not judging from afar this time (as opposed to Twitter, which I still refuse to use).

By now I hope it’s clear why I regard this as both evolution and de-evolution. We have more flexibility, more control, more features, more zombies, but we also have less focus, less clarity, more clutter, and much much more confusion. Each new addition brings not just the functionality, but requires basic comprehension of the building block. Adam Ostrow yesterday blogged that FriendFeed “crossed the chasm” (a term implying moving from early adopters to the masses) but I couldn’t disagree more. My parents, as an example of “mass Internet users” are still barely comfortable taking pictures from Flickr and printing them at Shutterly or in a local store. The masses don’t know from Twitter, and are still just finding out that there are a lot of cats who have appetites for cheeseburgers and ride invisible bicycles.

One thing that these technologies seem to expose is humanity’s obsessions with other people. Never before has it been so easy to virtually stalk someone online (and by the way, it’s only a matter of time before some uber-lifestreamer experiences a home robbery by making their personal travel plans so easy to access). Never before has our work/life balance been so ridiculously far out of whack (and I’m not the only one who feels this way). Never before have we seen the individual have the opportunity to have microcircles of fame (or should that be microfame?), nor the obsessive-like compulsions to follow.

I think the part that concerns me the most is the extreme levels of digital divide that are emerging. It’s not just the technology barriers, it’s the inevitable social barriers that come along with it. The divide is growing, even amongst those who have access to the technology. And it’s going to get a lot worse for a lot of people, especially inside families (”mom, I so totally twittered that I was gonna be streaming live from the mall today, u r so lame!”).

There are times when I feel technology evolution is outpacing humanity’s ability to absorb, react, and evolve as a society. We are probably closer to being “one world” than ever before, yet we are also probably closer to being “six billion individuals” than ever before.

The good news: My new Panasonic plasma arrived. It’s really freaking sweet. I think that’s about the only proper description of it, as it’s not exactly “beautiful” since it’s electronics and it’s not artlike in a Macbook Air kind of way. I’d actually say that a nice plasma is the modern equivalent of a “bitchin Camaro”…

The bad news: Despite all my readings, somehow I missed the fact that the next-generation of Panasonic plasmas started shipping oh, say, 3 days after mine did. Augh! How did I miss it? Well, the 50″ units won’t ship until April, and I had stopped looking at 42″ displays already. My bad.

Good: I can return the 77U in the next 28 days for no fee.

Bad: I don’t really know if the 80U or 85U are really worth it. Here is my summary of the differences (or you can see the official comparison at Panasonic’s web site, which is much more impressive than I thought it would be when I first visited!):

• New units have better contrast ratios. This is something which seems undetectable to us mortals, but is supposed to be “better”. Don’t know if I care.
• Next generation panel technology. From some of the discussions I’ve read on AVSforum, there’s a belief that the new tech has more vivid whites and blacks.
• Anti-reflective filter vs anti-glare coating. Panasonic added the anti-glare to the current generation for the first time, then dropped it for the next generation. This implies they either weren’t satisfied with it’s performance or have improved upon it with the new filters.

Am I missing anything obvious? Are these “non-issues” and I should put the topic to bed? I

Good: I feel like this is a no-lose situation. I got a great deal on my unit, and it looks awesome. So I either have a great unit, or a possibly slightly more greater unit.

Ultimately, here’s how I look at it: if I had purchased this unit and the new one wasn’t shipping until this Summer or later, there’d be no debate. But it’s already on display at Best Buy apparently, which is at least a little bit frustrating. Again, had I *known* about both models and made this decision based on price, then there’s no debate. But I can’t help already think I have something out of date on the day it arrived (as opposed to waiting the typical 30 days to feel that way).

For the loyal fans, you know my feelings about Sony Vaios. For the newcomers, suffice it to say I went from loving them (even being quoted in Business 2.0 magazine about it) to loathing in a short 8 weeks last summer (you can read this summary to catch up). It’s become a bit of a running gag for me to mention it every few posts, but the truth is I am outraged at the fact that my $2500 is being used for exactly these purposes:

• Print serving
• Enabling my Drobo to be network-accessible
• Playing some Call of Duty 2
• Beta testing the TuneUp Media software (can’t wait to talk more about this one, and for continued disclosure’s sake, they are a client)

That’s it. That’s my less-than-a-year-old formerly top-of-the-line Vaio. And by the way, I’ve “upgraded” it to run Windows XP in order to perform the above tasks in a satisfactory manner.

When Ed Bott commented a few days offering to inspect the Vaio, I was instantly intrigued. My wife had been trying to put it up on eBay on our behalf (she’s the eBay/craigslister of the family), all we got was interest from a likely scammer (this person, who very cleverly has built some feedback by buying cheap items, then accidentally spilling the beans with us by sending two different emails asking for the same item, with two different addresses - one in the UK, the other in Nigeria - and offering two different prices. oops!). So we’ve taken down the listing, I’m finishing up the scrub on the Vaio today to make sure I didn’t leave any work-sensitive docs there, and I’m shipping it to Ed tomorrow.

Why, you may ask? Well, Ed wants to see it firsthand, see if there’s any saving grace to the “hunk o junk” (as I like to call it). Ed’s going to spend 30 days with the Vaio, during which I’ve told him he’s free to reinstall Vista (as many times as it might take) and try to see if there’s anything to be done with it. In the meantime, he’s going to send me a Dell laptop that he feels performs quite well. In all fairness, my only other Vista experiences are over the shoulders of others, including my mother who has a low-end Dell that I believe is class-action lawsuitable, considering how terrible it performs.

I have an open mind, and frankly I’d love to become impressed by Vista. I’d love to discover my two big experiences were random isolated occurrences, and it’s actually a really stable, fast operating system. Odds aren’t bad I’ll be buying a new notebook 30 days from now. But odds are pretty good right now that it’ll be a MacBook Pro. We’ll see what happens!

Every now and then I like to think about how I could remove different technologies from my life. The sad truth of the matter is most are here to stay, from my cell phone to my flat panel to my digital camera. It just seems like in every category I investigate, the technology makes life easier/better in some way. My digital camera and high definition TV are unquestionably better than older, analog versions. My cell phone certainly lets me keep in touch with my family easier, and also makes work communications better. But what about the laptop?

My laptop (currently a MacBook, formerly a Sony Vaio SZ-VGN460N, until I realized how terrible it was) comes home at night, and travels with me to work in the morning. It’s likely carried along to 80% or so of my meetings, and also travels with me when I go see friends or family. It comes on 100% of business trips. So the $25K question (which these days should be more like the $100K question if you count inflation) is: how could I get rid of it?

First, I’d need a computer at home and at work. The work one would need some type of remote desktop technology. I’d probably need to use gmail or another Web-based email service, although I’ve already adopted Google Calendar so that’s not a big deal. I use Google Docs from time to time, but I don’t believe they are sufficient for the more powerful spreadsheet or presentation forms, and would be concerned there. That said, about 90% of my workday is spent doing email/phone calls/meetings, the rest is working on some form of a document. I think I’d get by without a significant drop in productivity.

However, I’d need some solution for the meetings I go to, and I’d be hesitant to rely on toting a USB key for all documents I might need. I’d also be a little concerned about the appearance of professionalism, but maybe I’d just start wearing a tie or something to get around that. After all, not everyone in technology has to look like a schlub all the time, right?

My flight time would definitely show a drop in productivity, but to be honest, I typically watch reruns of Arrested Development while in air, with a smattering of email sending and inbox clearing between episodes. I’d definitely read more (without a Kindle) on these trips.

As for the personal time, I think it’s safe to say a little less laptop wouldn’t hurt. Yeah, I wouldn’t be able to look something up on IMDB the second I finish the movie anymore, but that’s not the worst thing, eh? If my wife ever gets around to reading my blog again I’m sure she’d be agreeing too (right, hon?).

If I had to give up some major piece of technology in my life, I know that the cell phone and digital camera would both remain. I think just about everything else becomes pretty optional. But since I don’t have to, I think the MacBook lives on in this house. Well, that is until I replace it with a better one this year sometime, because after all, that’s technology.

The more people I talk to, the more I am amazed at the lack of backups people do.  The most common method I’ve heard about is people burning CDs or DVDs on a very erratic/irregular basis.  If this is your personal method, let me take a moment to shout at you:

YOUR COMPUTER’S HARD DRIVE WILL DIE OVER TIME.

THE CDS AND DVDS YOU BURN WILL DIE OVER TIME.

YOU NEED MULTIPLE BACKUPS.

Sorry bout the yelling, but I felt an intervention was in order.  Why?  Well, first I like to think I’m looking out for my fellow man/woman.  Second, I know full well that all my non-techie friends and family, upon the moment where their 7-year-old computer finally kicks the bucket, are gonna call me and ask how they get their beloved pictures back.  Psst - you can’t.

Here’s my personal backup strategy, it’s easy to follow and doesn’t require a massive amount of effort:

1. I own a portable HDD (Seagate Freeagent), a NAS (Maxtor Shared Storage plus - probably replacing soon), and a Drobo. I also have an Infrant ReadyNAS at my office.  This is, in a word, massively excessive.  But not by much.  I recommend TWO different external storage solutions, and I further recommend buying them several months apart.  Hard drives die over time, and if you get two drives simultaneously, you increase the risk that they will die in tandem.
2. I have a monthly calendar appointment (first Sundays) to do a backup.  During this backup I copy everything from my Documents folder into the various drives.  Personally I do not worry about having numerous archives, so I can do all my work in a simple drag and drop.  If you do need multiple versions of things, I recommend picking up some backup software (no specific recommendations on that from me though).
3. Photos are an exception.  I backup photos the moment I’m done downloading them from my digital camera.  I’d rather lose a month of documents than a month of photos.  I also am a Flickr “pro” user, which gives me unlimited online backup at full resolution, and I do a Flickr upload within a day of downloading photos also.

I hope this inspires a few of you to get your act together with a backup solution.  Unfortunately, it probably doesn’t, as it seems to be one of those things that people ignore until it’s too late and they’ve lose data.

To put in other terms.  No backup == FAIL.