Small, Medium, and Large Tablets

In 2007 I called the first generation iPhone a mini tablet. Since then I have had every iPhone generation (iPhone, 3G, 3GS, 4), and switched my personal phone a year ago to a Samsung Captivate (My office phone is the iPhone 4 now, replacing the much disliked-by-me Blackberry line).

All of them are small Tablet Computers. Not the Blackberries, the other ones. Apparently the Blackberries are "smartphones".  Maybe when QNX comes out they will be tablet computers, or at least some of them will be, like whatever the QNX version of the Storm is. I like RIM, and I hope that they can get it together. At the time of this writing they are still not getting it and getting beaten to death by Android and Apple. But I digress.

I had an iPad 1, but that has moved to a Motorola Xoom. Now, another tablet has entered the scene: A Nook Color.

The means I while I am still a slacker in this department relative to some, I now have 4 tablet computers: The iPhone4, the Captivate, the Nook, and the Xoom. All rest on my nightstand when they need to eat:

Hungry Computers

I should say that I was a bit leary of the idea of a 7 inch tablet. It seemed too fine a split between the 4 inch Captivate and the 10.1 inch Xoom. My wife got one, and while she mostly uses hers as B&N intended, I.E. a reader, I was interested in the way the the little Nook pushed her iPad out of the way for most things. It was more portable. It was lighter to hold for long periods of time. It had a very nice, very readable screen, with good 169 DPI across its 7 inch, 1024x600 screen. Not as good as the iPhones 326, or the Samsungs 233 DPI... but better than the iPads 132 and slight better than the Xooms 160. DPI (or PPI if you prefer) are not all there is to a screen of course, as I have noted here that I prefer the saturated colors / viewing experience of the Captivates AMOLED technology screen over the higher DPI, less saturated, yellower iPhone. It is an interesting comparison point, and I am nearly certain that the iPad3 will answer the current iPad critic's with a higher DPI display. It pretty much has to. I am guessing they'll double it, like they did the iPhone, for about 264 DPI. But I digress....

(side note: Nifty DPI page on Wikipedia)

• Small: Captivate: CyanogenMod Nightly build, Android 2.3.4 (Gingerbread). As of this writing its build 48, but that changes every night of course...
• Medium: Nook Color (AKA Encore): CyanogenMod 7.1 RC1, Android 2.3.4. Nightlies for the Nook are actually higher than the Captivate, at Build 122 at the time of this writing, however as easy as the Nook is to install CM7 on, it takes almost that same process to update it everynight, so I settled in on just installing the release candidates for now. The problem is that the way the internal partitions are set up, there is not enough room in /mnt/sdcard to hold even one nightly build. But this works...
• Large: Motorola Xoom, Android 3.1 stock.

Medium Tablet

Like my wife, I find I use the 7 inch NookDroid quite a bit. I prefer it for reading books over the Captivate or the Xoom for example, although the Nook app on Android is not as good as it was in the native B&N 1.2 OS release. That is a bit odd, since that was just 2.2/Froyo under the covers, so clearly B&N does not release the latest/best/most optimized version of the Nook reader to the Android Market. This compensated for by the fact that:

• I can run any reader I want now: I like to shop all the eBook shops to get the best deals. I do buy from B&N when they have the best price.
• The web browser options are much better (I mostly use Dolphin HD on it)
• Most all the 'droid apps work on it, and most work better than they do on the Xoom for some reason: You would not think there was that big a difference for an app between managing the screen real estate of 1024x600 and 1280x800 but there is.
• Gingerbread is rocking fast on this unit: Hardly any lag anywhere. The Nook 1.2 software was OK, but it stopped to go think about things all the time, for no apparent reason. My wife, who still runs the stock version most of the time is often frustrated by its lagginess.
• I have the overclock kernel on it (The Nooks TI OMAP processor is amazingly flexible about speed) , and can watch video, although I prefer that on the Xoom (screen size) or the Captivate (color saturation). It's nice to have the option if it is all I have with me at the moment.

The things holding back the NookDroid are:

• It really needs 3.1's tablet optimizations. I guess that really means it will get Ice Cream Sandwich when it comes out, since that will have source for the CyanogenMod folks to use.
• I miss the GPS: The Xoom has an awesome GPS chipset, and the Captivates GPS works like a champ now with CM7. It's amazing how many things, like maps and navigation and whatnot, are used without thinking of their reliance of GPS.
• It would be cool if the FM radio worked. As shipped from B&N, the radio chipset only enables Wifi, but it has Bluetooth and FM radio on it too, and the CM7 crew has the bluetooth going.

Still: It has convinced me that there is value in the 7 inch form factor, and at half the price of anything else out there, it is an amazing little unit.

Small Tablet

I have not talked here very much about the Captivate since I got it. I replaced the tiny 1500 MAh battery with a 3200 MAh unit (almost as big as the Nooks 4000 MAh battery), which has been a lifesaver, if looking slightly like a humpback whale. No heavier than the iPhone in its Mophie skin though.

I have been through quite a number of ROM's on the SC. The Captivate must be one of the more ROM'ed phones around. That is probably due, at least in part, to the hardware being great, and the OS, as shipped by Samsung... not so much. In addition to the stock 2.1 and later 2.2 releases, I have run all sorts of versions of Andromeda, Cognition, and Serendipity. Now CM7. Originally it was to get the AT&T apps off the phone, and get it to 2.2 fast than AT&T/Samsung were doing. Later it was to just replace the much slower version of the OS that ships stock. 

After messing around for the better part of the year in custom ROM space, last month I went from a botched CM7 nightly back to stock AT&T Froyo (2.2). I wanted to know how much better 2.2 was over 2.1. When the battery started lasting 1/4 the time it was before, and the phone lagged and generally acted like there was sand in its bearings, I realized that I had no idea just how much better the custom ROM world, with its occasional hiccups, was to the stock world. It's like Samsung has no idea what to do with their own hardware. I read on and on in the forums, as I suffered through the long week on stock 2.2, about how bad the device drivers were, and why the aftermarket had created the "Lagfix" and so forth.

The minute I got back from that trip, CM7 went back onto the phone and in the 20 or so builds since has not had any major issues. Right now, on build 48, I have to remember to turn back on the phone ringtone because it is defaulting to vibrate for some reason. Nothing major though.

That being said, I am watching for what the next phone will be. Front runner right now is the Galaxy II S once it hits AT&T... and I see a CM7 build for it.

Large Tablet

The main thing to say about the Xoom at this point is that I wish Google / Motorola would get the lead out, and get the update that supports the SD card into place. As a "Google Experience" unit (and the reason I went with it instead of the A500 or a Samsung 10.1) it is weird to not be having the full experience. The forums go back and forth about why there is no SD card support, and in truth the reason no longer matters. It is just silly now. The ROM market has hacked a version that does have SD card support. There is SD card support outside the US in the stock OS. Why does not matter. It just needs to be fixed.

Ice Cream Sandwich can not come soon enough, except to get the merge between the 2.x and 3.x lines right. Seeing the seams around the edges of 2.3.4 on the Nook, it is clear that running a tablet benefits fro having an OS that "gets" the screen size. 3.1 is nice, but in small and medium spaces, I have seen the advantages of letting the community have the code and fixing the problems. The Captivate and the Nook are far better for the AOSP (Android Open Source) version for the code. The Xoom needs that too, because it is clear that Google / Motorola are not able to deliver feature / function in a timely manner.

None of this is to say I am ready to run back to the iPad. I'd be interested in seeing one with a high resolution screen, and the Android feature functions of iOS5 like notifications, but as I have said here before I am tired of the jailbreak cat and mouse in that space. I don't care about jailbreak for my iPhone 4 because it is really my employers and so it is bone stock. I use it for work things only, not most of my daily life. At this point every app I was using on the iPhone is either on the 'droid, or has an alternative that is as good or better.

Cables and Power

One thing that is interesting to note is the different ways that the phone/tablets go about solving their battery charging needs. The Captivate comes with its own charger that seems to talk to the Captivate differently. The phone does not report being on a USB cord when plugged into it It also seems to charge more quickly with it, probably because the Samsung Charger is 700 MA (Milli Amp) rather than a standard USB ports 500 MA. Still, to charge the 3200 MAh battery takes a while. The nice thing is that the cables can be standard, OTC, MicroUSB. Nothing special required cable wise. It will charge more quickly if I hook it to the Nook charger, or the 2000 MA iPad charger (I still have the charger), but I usually avoid fast charging it for fear of not knowing how well the internal parts can deal with the higher wattages.

The Nook has a standard looking MicroUSB cable, but closer inspection reveals it is longer: The shank goes more deeply into the socket. it turns out the cable is not standard (at least not currently standard), and has extra wires at a second depth. The charger is 1900 MA (1.9 amps) and that charges the Nook even while in use. If you hook a standard cable to it, it will charge slowly while turned off, or extend battery life while on, but the Nook uses more than 500 MA cables provide while on, so the battery does drain if it is, for example, hooked to your laptop USB port. I have no qualms about putting the Nook on the iPad USB charger, as there is not that much difference between them in terms of milliamps.

The Xoom has a MicroUSB port on it, so it can use the same cord as well... but only for data. The power comes in via a tiny barrel connector (or a couple pins on the docking station), The Xoom charges faster than either the Samsung or the B&N unit though. The special power cord means that they did not have to play USB voltage games, so the 6500 MAh battery of the Xoom, despite being the largest in the group, is the fastest to fill up. The advantage of 12 volts at 1.5 amps (19 volts at 1.58 amps for the docking station with speakers). That also makes the car charger for the Xoom pretty small, since nothing much has to be done with the voltage coming out of the cars accessories port.

I like that the Xoom charges so fast, but I would like a USB port option. As USB evolves to charge more and more things, I am wondering if the Nook USB design might go wider. I can see nothing in the standards about such a thing though. I am guessing that once the market is as full of MicroUSB devices as there once where MiniUSB devices, and the people that make cords need to make some more cords that we might see another standard emerge. If it does, at least it will solve the needing 2000 or more MA@5v on the USB cord problem...

Hopefully.

iPad 2 Release Day

... and no plans for me to get one. Weird. In my last post, "Tablet Future" I said this:

"The killer feature will be when a tablet has better than 300 DPI in a 10 inch or larger form factor. FWIW: I seriously doubt that iPad 2 will have a Retina display, at least not in 2011. "

If you are just here from your trip to Mars, you may not know that the iPad2 (hereafter just "2") in fact has no better screen resolution than the first generation unit (hereafter the "1").

Various wags have said that the 2 is really the iPad 1.5, and I have to admit that, as I watched the iPad 2 reveal, I was thinking the same thing. Since it would not be original to call it the 1.5 at this point, I won't. Nope. Never hear that from me.

The 2 is a nice unit. Just not compelling enough to make me want to trade in my 1. I already chaff at the restrictions placed on me by Apple: enough so that my next tablet is not likely to be an iPad at all. I admit: I was waiting. The killer feature would have been a high DPI screen, and I would have handed down my 1 and gotten a 2 if it had one. Oddly, it looks like they got the video hardware ready to handle a, with a 9x improvement in performance. I have to guess that they just could not source a "Retina" display in quantity for the price they wanted to pay at wholesale.

The Android tablets really have no better DPI to speak of. Different / better aspect ratios, but not DPI. So why go there? Why not just stay with the iPad?

The Xoom has all the same more or less speeds and feeds (dual core processor, good video card, big RAM), but also has SD card coming in an update (the slot is already there), has a better screen aspect ratio, and is not locked. Really: That one thing alone requires being supported.

Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 is near, and Samsung does *nice* screens as well. Also has the better aspect ratio like the Xoom. The announced Toshiba unit looks nice, and we'll no doubt see a Dell Streak come along in the 10 inch range.

In every Android case, there will be tons of updates and 3rd party ROMS (Android mis-use of the term ROM is pretty standard: They are not really Read-Only Memory, but software stacks that replace the kernel, apps, and other supporting bits that run the tablet. When I get a chance, I'll post about my ROM adventures on my Samsung Captivate).

In the Apple case there will just be whatever Apple supplies, and there will be the usual tug of 'ware between the jailbreakers and Apple. Kind of like a tug of war, but in software.

When I do not have an iPad anymore I will miss exactly one application that has not moved over to Android yet: BLASTR. Instead, I will have to read the SyFy website with the built in browser. Not sure why SyFy has not created an Android version of that. I wish they would....

Thin is In

The 2 will be thinner than anything in Android space for a while. The aluminum case clearly nicer. The price point competitive. If you don't care about variety of apps / rooting / jailbreaking then there is most likely no reason to consider leaving the iPad fold. The 2 will have more accessories. You'll be able to buy your 2 all sorts of little gifts over the next year. It is going to be the most portable / lightest for a while.

I have Flash on the Captivate now, and I have to say that Apple is not totally wrong about it. Its nice to be able to have the choice of flash or not, but so far the upside has not been all that great. More ads play now for sure. Forgot how annoying those were.

I am sure the 2 will do well without me. And I may even get a 3 or 4 or 7 someday. If Android tablets eat at enough share, maybe Apple will add in the missing features to try and compete a bit. Right up until now, they did not have to. For the last year they were running well ahead of the pack.

Funny: A year ago it was a one company show. It took only a year before the field was full of valid competitors. Not just Android, but the new WebOS unit from HP looks pretty nice too. With HP's announcement that all of its PC's will have WebOS built in, that OS might have a rebirth as well.

Its iPad release day. Time to fire up Pulse on the Captivate and see what is going on outside the Apple world.

iPhoneless

The thing that surprised me the most about getting a Samsung Captivate running Android 2.1 was just how apprehensive I was about it. After a bit of introspection, I realized I was actually worried about "leaving the nest": that the new experience would not be the match for what had come before it.

I was not expecting it to be the same: Just that I would somehow lose some functionality I had come to expect or depend on from the iPhone ecosystem. Further, the iPhone 4 is a beautiful piece of work. I have held one in every death grip I could think of, and got pretty much nothing. The same can not be said of my Blackberry which drops bars when held. But it is Verizon, and I get lousy signal at my house for Verizon, even though I get 5 bars on ATT.

I really wanted a Droid X, or an EVO, but neither of those phones was available on AT&T, and unlike the many that love bashing AT&T, my experience with them has been mostly positive. With a family plan and 5 phones on it, moving to another carrier was not financially feasible, and I also will not get anything but a GSM phone, and that let out the main units I was looking at.

Enter the Samsung Captivate.

ATT now has to really nice Android based phones: The HTC Aria, and the Captivate, which is the ATT version of the Galaxy S world phone. I was sorely tempted by the Aria: I have never seen a more pocketable phone, and it just felt really nice in the hand. But I wanted a big screen: Bigger than the iPhone if possible, and on AT&T, that is the Captivate right now.

Pushed from the Nest

Oddly, it was three things that Apple did that made me make the jump:

1. The constant cat-and-mouse games between the jailbreak community and Apple. Apple really wants to control what I put on my phone, and I really want to control that instead.
2. Related to point 1 is Apples policies around their App store. 
1. I don't dig censorship, and I really hated that, for example, they had not allowed Google Voice onto the phone. 
2. The Zinio magazine app was defanged and largely useless.
3. Then they went and bought a map company, clearly so that they could move away from Google even further. 
4. Then there is the whole Flash thing. I am an adult: I can choose to eat my battery up with flash if I like. I totally agree that Flash has problems, but it is not for Apple to tell me how to deal with them.
3. The iPad. With it, I have access to all the things I care about. I like the iTunes store. I like the rental system. I like being able to grab TV shows when I miss them and forgot to set the DVR. I like Audible, and the new iPad Audible apps is very very nice. But with an iPad, I do not need and iPhone to consume these things.

Features

Even though I am a Linux guy, and Android was the premiere Linux based phone OS, I had waited, reading the trades, till appeared to me (as much as you can tell by reading) that ANdroid was more or less on feature parity with iOS4. Clearly it has always done multitasking, and such. I was more concerned around speed, stability, and size of the Android marketplace: Could I get things like Pandora there? My iPhone was ladden with apps, and I loved messing with them. I wanted that on my Android.

Another thing I have been waiting for is AMOLED screens to be feasible. The concept behind them is just too logical, and makes way more sense than LCD: Direct light generation, and no power used when a pixel is not on. The Galaxy S class of phones was the first that had the combination of size, maturity of execution, etc, to make me ready to switch. It is not the iPhone 4's retina display, but it is probably the second best display out there right now.

The camera has EV settings! I have wanted that forever on a cellCam. And it has a cool feature letting me tap on the screen for it to pick where to meter. All told, it is probably not as good an automatic camera as the iPhone 4, but it is a far better manual one.

Issues

There have been two problems of note so far:

1. The MicroUSB charge port
   
2. Syncing to my Mac

The charge port has a nifty sliding cover, but it also has the same issue as the first generation iPhone had with headphone: If your cord has a fat rubber grip near the microUSB connector, it will not easily slide in, and stay in. And there is no way to charge and talk at the same time, even with the provided MicroUSB cord. It just won't stay put.

In my MS Windowsless world, I never even thought to ask about sync to a smartphone. Everyone supports Mac these days... not. The Captivate / Galaxy S has no native way to sync to my Mac. To get media on Captivate, I have to put it into media mode, and turn on USB debugging. Then it appears to the Mac (or Linux) as a flash drive, and I can just drag content onto it. Its fast, and gives me ultimate content control, but I do miss iTunes.

Also, I would like a bigger battery option. The 1500 mAh is OK, and does better than my iPhone 3GS ever did, but that is damning with faint praise. I could not pass a charging cable with that phone, especially once it had iOS4 on it. But the 30 pin dock ecosystem is a rich place, and there is nothing like that on the Captivate. I would kill for a Mophie JuicePack. Barring that, a 2500-3000 mAh battery would be just the thing.

Probably more as this goes on: This is only day 4. But so far I do not, by and large, miss the iPhone, and I do enjoy having access to the Google world in a very high fidelity way. I set up Google Voice yesterday...

Worst Top 10 list of 2010 I Have Seen

I am used to hyperbole. I am used to the idea that people run out of ideas, but just keep talking. Or that writers get assignments and their heart is just not in it. Or the people with a point of view write as if their POV was delivered wisdom.

I don't like it when such things are presented in absolutes and in places of influence such that people might think there is something to it. The eWeek article titled "IT Infrastructure: 10 Products That Must Be Killed in 2010" is the worst example of this I have seen this year. I have not seen them all: admittedly I peruse technical forums. There may be worse out there. Yes. Sadly, there may be worse depths to plumb. But this one goes deep enough for me. At best it is about 20% accurate.

First of all, it is not an article per-se, but a slide show, and there is no comment section so this is unopposed blather rather than just blather. Sure, comment forums can become pure snark fests, but this post is just flame bait, pure and simple. eWeek, and the articles author, Don Reisinger are either gleefully running because they love the commotion, or hanging their heads in shame, but I have no way to tell which.

Here are some of the gems from this bottom 10 list:

Palm Pre: "... Today, it's an also-ran on a network that no one cares about. It has to go."

You know: It may just go, and it may just take Palm down with it, but the absolutes here are amazing. The phone is not hurting anyone by staying. It is a great phone, and it is the only chance Palm has of coming back, even if the headwinds it faces are fierce. It is head and shoulders better than a WinMo based unit IMHO: Why must it die? Why must it go? Where is the urgency? If someone wants one, why should they not have it? Who is it hurting?

The statement about the network is absurd as well: Clearly *someone* cares about the network. The people the own the company. the people that work for the company. The people that use it, which can not be zero, or there would be no network in the first place, The people that make the phones that the network sells. Maybe Don does not care, but Don is not everyone, even if Don is unaware of that.

I have an iPhone, and I admit that one reason I would not want the Pre is that it does not run on AT&T (a network I like, unlike many). That is just me, and I know it. If Pre ran on AT&T, I would look at it. The unit itself is beautiful, even if it does have those chiclet keys rather than a real full function touchscreen.

Blackberry Storm 2: "... when the company released the BlackBerry Storm2 this year, it promised bigger and better things. It didn't happen. Get rid of the Storm, RIM."

World class dumb advice. I have an iPhone. I have a Storm. The iPhone beats the pants off the Storm as far as I am concerned. But I had another Blackberry before the Storm, and it was *worse*. Far worse. In essence, Don is saying to get rid of the only touch screen offering RIM has *before* they have something better! Completely cede the touchscreen phone market and hope that there are enough chiclet-key fans out there. Replace the Storm with something better? You bet. But don't drop it till you actually *have* something better.

Premise restated: RIM's touchscreen device is third rate relative to the competition, so no one stuck using a BlackBerry (say, for work) should have a one, but instead should use the more prehistoric units. Oh. yeah. That'll help RIM.

The Storm is, for a touch screen person like me, nearly as much better than an 8830 or an 9700 than the iPhone, Pre, or Droid is than the Storm. It. Is. Better. Than. Nothing.

Further: maybe the Storm is actually a profitable unit? Who knows? Don does not say. If it is, then why drop it? If it isn't, then it is a finger in the dam till something better arrives. Either way, terrible advice.

The iPod Classic: "... finds itself decidedly in the middle with a limited amount of value."

Just when you think the advice can't get any worse... So, again, not mentioned whether or not the Classic is profitable, or fills a useful niche still. Don would have Apple drop the Classic, I guess because he does not want one. Following that line of thought,: I do not want a touch because I have an iPhone. I guess the Touch should be killed too. I have a shuffle for working out, so I guess the Nano should also be killed. Because, well, as you know, if one person does not like the category, or must be invalid for all other people.

By the way, Blue is the best color, so all other colors should be removed. Not of iPods, but from everything.

The Classic unit that holds more music and video than any other in the line. The unit that has all its R&D fully paid for and it probably the most profitable per unit. Don says it must die. Doh.

I have a Classic. I love it. I had a wall full of CD's (now a box full of CD's), and they are all on the Classic, but they won't fit on *any* other iPod. If I ever lose or break the Classic, I want to be able to replace it! Don would deny that option because it does not match some preconceived notion he has about where music players are used. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

Windows Vista

Sigh. I use Linux and Macs mostly, but I have used Vista and Windows 7, and I have to say that Vista with all its service on is not that much worse that Windows 7, and is actually more compatible with some software. Win7 is just Vista evolved a bit, and not much more than Vista Service pack W7.

Vista has a bad rap out there, and it is undeserved. It was no worse than XP was when it was first released, and is less prone to infections... the reason I dropped XP all those years ago! But eWeek appears to be on the "Bash Vista" bandwagon, and they are hardly alone there. Other popular causes they might want to join are the AT&T is worse than Verizon bandwagon, since it is irrelevant that Verizon uses the archaic CDMA protocol, and a Verizon world phone has to have both a CDMA and a GSM radio in it if you want to travel with it. Or that AT&T may have less 3G coverage, but where they have coverage they are faster.

None of that matters because the cause celebs do not require much in the way of actual facts, and just need bandwagons. "Vista Bad" is a nice safe bandwagon to be on, even if you thought that maybe a technical publication would be fact based (or at least label their puff pieces correctly)

The really funny part here is that they think they have to tell Microsoft to try and get people to migrate. What a hoot. By any measure, MS is its own worst enemy when it comes to new releases of things, trying to get people who are happy where they are to move. Or at least comfortably miserable. Look at how hard they are trying to get people of XP and how slowly that is going....

Google Wave: ".. It still has a modicum of promise, but Google should focus on Chrome OS and forget about Wave."

Contradicts itself inside the sentence even! If it has promise, why drop it? Is Google in danger of going out of business because they are experimenting with something new? Can they not afford to fund the Wave?

I have a Wave account, and I'll admit that it is not ready for prime time, and it may never be... but it just got started! Look how many years MS funded the Xbox at a total loss before it even broke even!

Windows 7 Starter Edition: "... it doesn't even make sense for users to want it."

I agree, except that if users do want it, and it is the only product MS has that will run on a Netbook, why would MS cede that market to Linux? Is this advice that MS should just forget Netbooks, or is it that MS should drop the price of a more fully featured version of Win7, and also slim it down enough to run on a Netbook?

Ain't gonna happen. MS made some really bad choices in how they went about doing the video compositing: they are utterly dependent on higher end graphic hardware than what the current Netbooks have. The choice here is leave the half-ass Win7 in place, extend XP's life even more (and this clown wants to advise them to work hard to get people off Vista), or just let Linux have Netbooks. I think I know what MS will do. It won't start with taking this advice, but it might start with removing some of the restrictions on RAM and hard drive size that Starter Edition has, as those are utterly arbitrary.

Google Nexus One

Kill the Nexus because other Android using phone manufacturers might be unhappy about the competition. Yep. They might be. Seems like Google's problem to me.

The smart phone market is changing so quickly that however it is stacked up now will not be how it is one year from now. Right now, Motorola, a company that was on the brink of exiting the phone market has used Android as a lifeline to return from 1% market share to 13%. they are supposed to just get all huffy because Google is entering the market? They may not like it, but they are not likely to drop Android they they have something better. Ditto all the other Android using Manufacturers. It is not like they would suddenly all switch to WinMo, and it is not like Apple is going to license OS.X Mobile.

From Google's point of view, they may want a pure Android version out there. One that no one has messed with because it was open source and they could! Either way, I think Google is a big kid now, and history says they might even know what they are doing. History of this top 10 list also says Don doesn't.

JooJoo: " .. If you ask me, it should be killed before it's even released. Let's wait for the lawsuits to be hashed out before either company moves forward."

I have watched the Crunchpad / JooJoo thing with interest, and I think that it is probably true that the JooJoo is going to implode. It feels a lot like one of those stores that opens in a "location of doom": you just know it is not going to make it.

But it might, and that was the palace intrigue around the device that led to the people that at least co-created the JooJoo-when-it-was-CrunchPad getting screwed.

The thing is that the Apple device is coming, and not getting out there now means letting Apple define the category for years to come. That will probably happen anyway.

This is the least bad of the "Must be Killed's" though, to be sure. The moral issues here are strong enough that I would be comfortable saying it should not be released. Just because Apple is going to crush the market segment does not mean you get to crush the people you were working with, which is what we are being told happened with the JooJoo.

The Ultraportable Notebook

Coming strong off the JooJoo win, the list is dropped right back into the ditch from whence it came.

Just because the category is sandwiched between two other categories, it must die? Again, nothing about profit is alleged: We are told to assume that the people making these things don't apparently know that they are losing money making them.

What about Tablets? what happens when there is a market switch again, and say tablets eat a category, like say Netbooks. What if there are left people that want small computers with real keyboards? Seems like the Don-ster does not look around at trends much, and is not comfortable with others placing bets that he has no skin in.

Here is mine: Acer. Eee PC, and the other Ultra-Portable manufacturers are trying to be sure that if this market takes off, they are the one that is there first, with the name recognition. No one wants to be the last to enter the market segment again, and be left out in the cold when the shipments are counted. See Netbooks for details.

Blackberry OS (In its current form)

OK: 2 for 10. As long as it is stipulated that they actually have to have something better before they just go kill BBOS. BBOS (or whatever it is called under the covers) is a mess. It really does need to be tossed for something like Android with the email bits that make the MS Exchange and remote management stuff work ported / rewritten / modernized.

The funny thing is that Don appears to think this will be his least popular recommendation. Weird.