Walter Hutchens’ Blog

The 3,000 member National People’s Congress—China’s putative legislature—has been conducting its brief annual meeting. Today they wrapped things up, ratifying the “work report” of the NPC Standing Committee (the much smaller body that meets in the long stretches between NPC meetings and approves many important pieces of legislation).

I translated the resolution in which the NPC blesses the NPC Standing Committee’s work for the prior year and sends them off to continue the good work, fortified with plenty of slogans.

I’ll paste the original Chinese after the break.

Some people specialize in parsing PRC political speak. I wonder if any of these phrases reflect the reported tensions over development policy?

Decision Concerning the Work Report of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress by the Fourth Assembly of the Tenth National People’s Congress

March 14, 2006

Passed in the fourth assembly of the tenth National People’s Congress

At the fourth assembly of the tenth National People’s Congress the work report of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress offered by Chairman Wu Bangguo was heard and considered. The past year’s work of the Standing Committee is wholeheartedly affirmed by the National People’s Congress, and the main tasks set forth in the report for the coming year are agreed to; the report is hereby approved.

The NPC charges the NPC Standing Committee to: comprehensively implement scientific development under the guidance of Deng Xiaoping Theory and the important “three represents” thought; stick unwaveringly to the political path of developing socialism with Chinese characteristics; organically integrate insistence on the Party’s leadership with people being masters of their own affairs and ruling the country in accordance with law; tightly integrate Party and national work; diligently create a new era in NPC work; strengthen socialist law in order to develop socialist democracy; and contribute even more to comprehensive socialist market economy construction, political construction and cultural construction.

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After lots of teasing, leaks and speculation, official news has now been released concerning the ultra-mobile PC (UMPC) project that Intel, Microsoft and assorted hardware vendors have been working on (codenamed Origami by Microsoft).

My trusted tech adviser James Kendrick posts on the news here, and gadget fetish site Engadget covers the news here (both sites have multiple Origami posts).

I think it will be great if more people own take-virtually-everywhere PCs. I also think it will be great if the Tablet PC flavor of Windows becomes more widely adopted. Either development will bring lots of positive spill-over effects, including increased demand for ubiquitous broadband and 3G networks, more software and accessories for Tablet PCs, and a general stimulus to the trend of people working wherever they want (in coffee shops, on their couches, virtually anywhere).

But I must confess that my overall reaction to UMPCs is: ho-hum.

There are promises of great improvements in battery life and processor speed in future models (not that any of that will be restricted to UMPCs), and there is talk that prices may be well below $1,000. All that sounds great, but the devices that will ship soon are basically little slate-style Tablet PCs.

Thus I’m not sure what the big deal is. In terms of what will ship soon, where is the innovation? There are already some diminutive slate-style Tablet PCs on the market. For example, Motion Computing sells a tiny slate called the LS800. I bought a Sony U over a year ago; it ran the Tablet PC version of Windows.

Some UMPCs will have built-in cameras. That may be great for video conferencing, but as a camera, wouldn’t using a UMPC be like holding a dinner plate up to your face to take what will I imagine be a relatively low res photo? I think I’d prefer to carry a pocket camera or digital SLR.

I’d like a UMPC with a brilliant screen and an enormous hard drive (or EVDO) for looking at photos and perhaps video, but for mobile music or telephony, won’t the iPod and typical mobile phones continue to be more compelling because of their size? To me, these first Origami devices look too big to take everywhere without hesitation in the way I carry a cellphone. If I’d carry a device with a 7″ screen somewhere I’d probably also be willing to carry a laptop there (certainly my Fujitsu P1510).

If I could buy a DualCor cPC (phone, Tablet PC and Windows Mobile device in a single brick), I’d rather have that than a UMPC of the type being shown now at the German CeBIT trade show. If you don’t have a keyboard, why not make the screen even smaller, add a phone and get instant-on capability?

In terms of form factor, I wonder if something the size of a Play Station Portable isn’t preferable to the bigger UMPCs being shown.

Also, from using the Sony U and another slate I found that I strongly prefer a keyboard for virtually all text entry. I’ve also learned that I want my keyboard attached to the CPU and screen, not a separate component that I have to attach, detach and remember to pack. Thus, I think for myself a tiny convertible Tablet PC like the Fujitsu P1510D remains preferable. I’d like a faster 1510 with day-long battery life, EVDO and an even more brilliant screen. But I don’t want a tiny slate with specs similar to the 1510’s.

Ten years ago I had an Apple Newton. It was not as powerful as as these UMPCs will be. It lacked a color screen and built-in wireless networking. But its form factor is reminiscent of these new UMPCs, and the general idea of the Newton was to have a carry-everywhere computer that relied mainly on pen input. For various reasons the Newton didn’t take off. I wonder if UMPCs will be more successful, or if consumers will prefer smart phones as their satellite devices to a main PC. Palm devices outsold Newtons, I recall.

Perhaps students will go for UMPCs. Note-taking is one quintessential student activity. If UMPCs prove handy for note-taking while also being good for email, web surfing and instant messaging, the “vertical” market of students may be where UMPCs are a runaway hit.

Physicians, too. Many of them walk around and scribble a good bit of the day. UMPCs seem ideal for them.

One marketing challenge will be that most people haven’t tried the Tablet version of Windows. When people look at a conventional clamshell style notebook, they know it’s something they can use. It looks like a desktop computer (which resembled a typewriter, easing its adoption). But UMPCs like other Tablet PCs will require some new learning. Tech enthusiasts will relish that, but for many consumers—certainly for many older ones—pen input may not be immediately appealing. When they look at a slate Tablet PC they don’t feel immediately at ease, which is probably one reason convertible Tablet PCs are more common. UMPCs will have to overcome consumer skepticism in ways clamshell style notebooks do not.

I think a ruggedized UMPC would be desirable. Dropping one looks almost inevitable.

Will any UMPC have a PCMCIA card slot? I doubt it, meaning sharing an EVDO card between a UMPC and another laptop probably won’t work.

Price will be critical here. My sense is that prices close to $500 will trigger lots of purchases; prices set at close to $1,000 will trigger lots of passes.

China today issued its annual “report” on human rights in the United States, a retaliatory action to annual US government reports about human rights in China (the US report was released yesterday, as described here on the website of the US Department of State).

China’s 2005 report accuses the US of pursuing international “unilateralism,” disregarding international norms, violating human rights and other nations’ sovereignty. The report claims US military actions routinely slaughter innocent civilians, citing reports in the Lancet that 100,000 Iraqis have been killed since the war began in 2003, mostly women and children. Of course they also inveigh about US soldiers abusing prisoners of war. It also trumpets America’s failings in terms of racial equality and problems with violent crime, pointing out the large number of murders and gun-related crimes in the US.

The headline I’ve highlighted above is from the PRC government news agency Xinhua. It blares, “China Issues Report on US Human Rights, Points Out ‘Democracy’ is a Rich Person’s Game.”

The evidenced used to “show” that US democracy is just a rich man’s game includes the staggering cost of the New York City mayoral race and the New Jersey governor’s race and the scandal involving lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

I’m no fan of George Bush’s foreign policy. I agree that the US has an unconscionable problem with violent crime. Although we tend to conceptualize human rights as freedom from government abuse (not as freedom from abuse by other citizens), I think it would be good for Americans to understand safety from violence as a human right that their government has a positive duty to assure.

In other words, China’s report is not wholly without merit. They make some good points, and much of it is factually correct.

However, some nice things about being a US rather than PRC citizen are that 1) I can read media not subject to government censorship and make up my own mind about the actions of my country and other nations (where, pray tell, are China’s crime statistics?), and 2) if I object to my government’s actions I can take a range of steps to try to stop them. I can exercise my not-just-on-paper free speech rights, vote, organize an opposition political party—all kinds of things that Chinese citizens are not permitted to do.

An irony of the report is that it cites lots of American government statistics and media sources to buttress its claims. This may “prove” that the accusations aren’t made up from whole cloth, but it also shows that the US political systems, like many political systems outside of China, has the kind of open discourse and government accountability that remains verboten in China, despite China’s efforts to become a modern nation.

A typical Chinese response to another nation’s criticisms is that such criticisms amount to “interference in China’s internal affairs” and “hurt the feelings of the Chinese people.” My reaction to China’s report on US human rights is, Huanying, huanying—”Welcome to the arena of open political discourse; we dare you to take it seriously.” China has every right to comment critically on US failings.

However, despite our many failings, the US will win a battle of dueling human rights reports.

But of course China’s one-party government fears a free press and open political competition. China’s leaders haven’t been popularly elected. The PRC government will promote its views, censor contrary ones and therefore not be an example to anybody in the free world of what kind of government they want, despite China’s developmental success over recent decades.

The full text of China’s report, titled 《２００５年美国的人权纪录》 (2005 Nian Meiguo de Renquan Jilu), is available in Chinese here and translated into English here. China has now been issuing these retaliatory reports for seven years. The 2004 version is here in Chinese. The 2004 version (about 2003) is here in English.

The full text of the China portion of the annual US report on human rights is available here.

This guy’s tech addiction is even worse than mine—he’s had 18 different Tablet PCs over the last three years.

Wow.

Many addicts who used to be constrained by hard budget limitations are now rampaging; eBay’s secondary market in electronics substantially mitigates the cost of tech addiction. After a few months of using a new gadget, you can sell it and buy the next latest, greatest thing. Sure, there will be some depreciation, but some tech addicts find it to be a tolerable amount.

Still, 18. That’s extreme. Just imagine the enormous cost in time of buying, setting up and later selling 18 PCs.

. . . Wait a minute, if he did 18 PCs over three years and I’ve done 9 over 16 months . . .

I learned about the 18 Tablets guy from JK On the Run, the blog of James Kendrick, another tech addict.

Recently I got a new computer. That got me thinking about all the other PCs I’ve had, which prompted me to think it would be nice to have a timeline showing them.

Then it occurred to me that I could use MindManager to gather the info and create the page.

So I made this:

And this:

To go along with these graphics, I’ve written a series of posts about my personal history with personal technology. I’ve included entries on my experience with:

Plus I’ve written:

The timeline is a very large clickable image map—a single, wide graphic. No doubt it won’t look good (or probably display at all) on a Treo screen. It barely fits on my 17″ HP laptop screen. It may look bad on any monitor that’s not widescreen. I may tinker with the layout later. I plan to add links to bigger versions of the images, and I’d like to add the specs on each device pictured. I may put each category on a separate page.

Can you remember the first time you used a computer? Surfed the web? Took a digital photo?

When I was a kid I heard some elderly people recall the first time they watched television, rode in a car, got running water and had electricity connected to their homes.

For my generation the equivalent of getting “running water” is getting broadband internet access.

My own life bridges the digital revolution; I’ve lived BN and AN (before Net and after Net).

I do remember the first time I used a computer, saw a web page and took a digital photo. I recall a time when almost no phones were mobile.

Contrast my experience to my daughter’s. She’s five and often asks to go to “Disney dot com.” The video games she plays have astounding graphical richness (I had an Atari with Pong and Pacman). She’s never seen a camera that isn’t digital. It doesn’t surprise her that our music library is in the computer. The idea that television shows or movies can only be seen at fixed times and in fixed locations isn’t part of her life. It’s not remarkable to her that I can write (and she can “color”) on the screen of my Tablet PC. She uses the stylus to solve jigsaw puzzles (made from digital family photos). She plays tic tac toe and practices her own writing on it.

The first time I used a computer was 1986. I was a freshman in college. Some Apple IIs were in a “lab” students could use in the bottom floor of the library. A friend taught me not to hit return at the end of every line I typed. Word wrap and the notion of an endless page actually made me feel awkward and a bit disconcerted, not empowered.

Later I discovered the Macintosh. I remember sitting in the offices of the student newspaper where I was an editor, trying every available typeface. Watching the pages emerge from the laser printer felt like magic. That was empowering.

Macs revolutionized print publishing. It was a pre-cursor to the Internet revolution. I got drawn into desktop publishing.

Partly because I learned QuarkXpress I became editor of a small magazine in my early 20s. The previous editor was in his 50s and wasn’t able to make the transition to computer-based layout.

Using computers to design publications more quickly and cheaply drove adoption of personal computers in that organization, so those of us in the communications department became the firm’s leading-edge geeks.

I led the charge to overthrow an old IBM mainframe system and get computers on every desk. After that I was called the “director of communications and information systems.” The title was grander than the salary; I managed only a few people (and a lot of problems). But it exemplifies how technology’s creative destruction provides opportunities. I was riding the wave.

My next job was at Apple Computer. I edited their worldwide employee newsletter (then still a print publication).

I loved working at Apple. They gave me a Newton, sent me to China and Japan on business trips and paid me to follow technology and business developments in a company I cared about. I loved living in the Bay Area—Silicon Valley’s business environment was exciting, San Francisco’s culture rich, and after five years in Chicago the weather was sublime.

But I left after just a year to go to law school. There were several reasons. Silicon Valley housing prices were exploding. I wasn’t going to be able to buy one any time soon. Plus, I was skeptical about being a mar-comm or PR professional for life. Apple’s public visibility exceeded its market share, but the PR staff wasn’t driving decisions. They had to defer to the lawyers who advised on what a public company can or must disclose. The PR staff also had to scurry around to put the best possible spin on bad decisions executives had already made. I didn’t like that subordinate status.

Plus, I’d been interested in China for a long time. China’s transformation, like the Internet, was clearly a mega-trend. I decided to convert my China interest into a career direction. I went to Washington University in St. Louis to get a JD and MA in Asian Studies.

I took my PowerBook and Newton to school with me. But in general my IT enthusiasm slipped into the background for several years. I didn’t have time for it as I pursued those degrees then ground my way through a couple of years in a large law firm.

But several key things did happen in my personal technology experience in 2000, the year I graduated and started working as a lawyer in New York. I got my first PC, digital camera and mobile phone that year (I was comparatively late on all these). One reason was that I finally had a salary again. Another was that my wife was pregnant; I of course wanted her to be able to reach me at all times. When the baby came I got a camera, computer and printer. I wanted to take pictures, print them send them to far-flung relatives.

The principal reason I broke with my Mac tradition was that I thought having a PC at home would help me learn to use one at work. The firm was purely a “Wintel” shop. I had always been a go-to guy for technology questions, but in a PC environment I knew I’d be almost useless. I didn’t want to feel unfamiliar with a device I’d use every day.

So I bought a tiny Sony Vaio laptop (the first of many to follow). I think it cost about $2,000.

At the same time I got my first Windows-based PC I also bought my first digital camera. It was a three megapixel Nikon Coolpix 990. It took brilliant photos. I treasure many of the shots I got with it (including the first images of my daughter, pictures of family visiting New York City). Equipped with the new camera and computer, I sent friends and family pictures at the excessive pace typical of smitten parents. I cropped and retouched photos and selected some for layout in album pages that I printed at home. I designed a card to announce my daughter’s birth. However, after my two weeks of paternity leave ended, I had less time to experiment with my new computer and camera.

I bought a Palm device but never integrated it into my life. Compared to my Newton it seemed anemic, and I was mostly chained to my desk or in some conference room going through boxes of documents. If I needed a phone number I could call my secretary.

I didn’t excel at being a corporate law drone. I was happier after the firm moved me from New York to Beijing, but even in China I loathed being a low-level lawyer in a big firm. It just wasn’t the life I wanted.

Next I got a teaching job in the business school of the University of Maryland. They were expanding under the slogan “leaders for the digital economy.” I assume my IT background helped me get the job, along with my China expertise.

As a professor I’ve had more time to play with gadgets. It’s probably fair to say it’s become a fetish. Every day I read tech blogs and other online material about IT. Buying tech magazines eats a surprising amount of my household budget. Then there’s the hardware . . .

In the last 16 months I’ve had nine computers and four different smartphones or PDAs.

That’s grossly excessive—I know, I know. (I couldn’t afford my technology addiction without the vast secondary market for electronics on eBay—selling stuff there substantially mitigates the financial cost of my compulsive gadget buying).

Elsewhere I’ll detail the rationalizations that drove each specific purchase. Basically I was on a terribly expensive and time consuming quest to find a device that would help me write. I am a tenure-track professor at a research university. I have to write for publication to keep my job. I love my job but hate writing the kind of stuff I need to produce to keep my job. I have tired a succession of devices to help punch through my resistance—Pocket PCs, Tablet PCs, conventional laptops, ultra-portable PCs and smartphones.

Unfortunately no gadget can do much to solve writer’s block. It’s a psychological, not technical, issue. But hope springs eternal—I truly thought every device might help me become more productive in terms of formal academic writing. Also, gorging on technology provides great distraction from the stress of what one should be doing.

Another lesson of my quest is that there is no perfect computer. This is a simple and, for most people I imagine, rather obvious point. But I spent a huge amount of time and money coming to appreciate this in a visceral way.

There is no perfect notebook computer for two main reasons.

The solution for me is to have two computers. This is an admittedly extravagant approach. But I find having two quite different devices provides something close to equilibrium. It addresses my alternating dissatisfaction with either single device (or dissatisfaction with a single device that tries to compromise between the best attributes of multiple devices).

I have a big 17″ laptop that serves as a “desktop replacement” (or desktop substitute, since I have no desktop to replace).

Another tiny laptop provides 1) ultra-portability and 2) Tablet PC functionality, two things that are sometimes (but not always) critical to me.

I’m quite happy, at least for now, with my combination of an HP dv8040us and a tiny Fujitsu P1510.

Despite my recent burst of computer and gadget buying madness, I consider myself a second-wave adopter of technology. I tend to be the first among my peers to try some new device or software, but I’m almost never among the first-wave adopters who create or adopt things on the “bleeding edge.”

For example, I started a blog in 2003—far from early, but a bit before “blog” became a common part of the lingua franca.

I started with Blogger, initially hosting my site on Blogspot. Then I moved the blog to a server at the university where I’m employed (because Blogspot, though not Blogger, is blocked in China). Later I tried TypePad. Then I registered my own domain and migrated to WordPress which I’m still happily using.

I’ve had only four digital cameras. I still use two of them—a tiny Pentax Option 5si that fits in my shirt pocket and a bulky Nikon D70s. The Nikon is a digital SLR; it shoots fast enough to let me capture, sometimes, those priceless things my daughter does. I use Picasa to catalog and retouch my shots and create web pages with them. Sometimes I’ve used PhotoStory to make videos (slideshows with fancy transitions and voice-overs), but that is incredibly time consuming if you try to do it well.

Most of my life is now spent online. Most every day I use a computer to handle email, read material on the web and create some content of my own. I bank and increasingly shop online. Living in China I stream NPR over the internet to get my news fix. I download and listen to podcasts with increasing frequency. I still buy lots of books (way too many, actually), but increasingly I find that “dead tree” resources are disappearing from my life. Students often give me research papers written without any visits to a physical library. This isn’t all good, but it’s an inexorable trend.

Once you’ve used a 1) mobile phone 2) laptop computer 3) email account 4) high-speed internet connection 5) digital camera (paired with a computer, color printer and internet connection) and 5) smartphone or other device that lets you handle email and get on the Internet anywhere—you never want to revert to life without those things.

The fist digital camera I owned was a Nikon CoolPix 990. It was a 3-megapixel camera and cost about $900. I adored it. Or, rather, I adored the things it let me do. I bought it at a store called the Whiz in Jersey City, New Jersey right after my daughter was born in August 2000. My brother David accompanied me on the shopping spree (I bought my first Windows-based computer then, too—a small Sony notebook).

I used that camera to take the first pictures of my daughter. I also took pictures of my parents and brother visiting when she was born, their first trips to New York City.

That year I lived on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River in a development called Newport. I took many pictures of family and friends along the river, the twin towers of the World Trade Center dominating the background. None of us imagined the horror that would erase those buildings on 9-11. Those pictures trigger memories and emotions far different from any I expected to capture. Photography’s power can manifest itself in unexpected, disturbing ways.

Five years later an equivalent camera (at least in terms of megapixels) costs less than $200. But I’ve never regretted getting that Nikon. I only regret that I didn’t immediately buy a high-capacity memory card to replace the low-capacity one that came with the camera.

Besides expense, that camera’s main drawback was its slowness. It was sluggish to start up then slow to recover between pictures. It was also a bit bulky by today’s standards, but at the time pocket cameras weren’t common and the size didn’t bother me.

I fell in love with digital photography. The experience is profoundly different than shooting with film. It feels like a radically different activity, not merely a different means to accomplish the same task.

With film I shot rarely. Now I love taking pictures and consider photography a hobby.

With film I paid to develop hundreds of bad images (because of course you cannot know they are bad until they are printed).

Also, with film I almost never got around to enlarging or duplicating my few lucky good shots. Now I routinely share pictures with others. With film you had to go to a shop to develop photos, then go back to the store to pick up the prints, then make another round trip for enlargements or reprints, then mail those to people. There’s nothing hard about any of that, but those steps taxed my time and attention just enough so that I rarely actually did it. With digital photography I can instantly see the images, retouch, re-size, reprint and electronically distribute them.

Since discovering digital photography the number of shots I take has exploded, and now I routinely share pictures with others by email (or in some cases by printing and mailing them).

I’m keeping online photo albums as my daughter grows up.

Next in 2002 I bought a very similar camera—a Nikon CoolPix 4500. I got it because I irreparably damaged the CoolPix 990 attempting a DIY repair of some little problem. By then the price had dropped—$700 for four megapixels. I chronicled more of my daughter’s growth with that camera.

Then in 2004 I bought a tiny Pentax Optio 5si. By then five megapixels cost only $300! And the camera could fit in my shirt pocket. Partly because of the portability of that tiny Pentax, partly because I found some tools like Picasa and PhotoStory that make it very easy to share pictures (via email, the web and slideshows), partly because of some travel I did in 2005 and partly because I am a creative and a sentimental sap, after I got that camera the number of pictures I took again exploded.

Next in 2005 I bought a Nikon D70s, my first digital SLR (actually, my first SLR of any kind, film or digital). It’s fantastic. It costs somewhat more than my first digital camera in 2000, but it does much, much more. It’s fast, which is important when you have a restless child to photograph. All the previous digital cameras I owned were sluggish—slow to start, slow to recover between shots. DSLRs don’t have that problem. The D70s isn’t tiny, but I’ve found new joy in photography with it.

Last year I got my first phones with built-in cameras. I also tried adding a camera to a PDA. None of these devices offered great image quality, but it’s nice to have even a low-end camera with you at all times. A camera phone is sometimes a handy way to take “notes” or capture something unexpected.

In action movies you sometimes see a character pull out a hidden gun after a weapon is knocked away. I sometimes chuckle at myself for being similarly equipped. Like a tourist from hell, I’m armed with multiple backup cameras—if the DSLR fails I’ll go to the pocket camera; if that one is kaput I’ll fall back to the camera phone.

I cannot recall all the computers I’ve ever owned. (I do remember all the Windows-based PCs I’ve had. That list didn’t begin until August 2000, in conjunction with my first digital camera purchase as described above. But the much longer list of Macs I’ve used is lost in the mists of time.) My experience with digital photography is shorter, the memories fresher. Recording the succession of cameras I’ve had will allow me to keep from losing the thread as I have with computers. Plus, it’s just nice to reflect on these devices and my experiences with them. I have good memories—and some treasured photos—from each of them.

Here I chronicle my experience with PDAs and smartphones, a dimension of my adventures with personal technology.

In 1995 I got a Newton Message Pad while I was working at Apple Computer. I loved it. To this day it remains a favorite among all the mobile devices I’ve had. It lacked things now common—a color screen and built-in WI-FI, for instance. But it was great for simple spreadsheets and word processing, handling email, note-taking and keeping a calendar, to-do list and contacts database.

In fact, a main reason I was receptive to the Tablet PC platform in 2004 was that nearly a decade earlier I’d used pen input on the Newton and liked it.

The Doonesbury comic strip mocked the handwriting recognition on the original Newton, but in later models it was dramatically improved and became quite usable. I used the Newton’s HRW to write hundreds of entires in a personal journal. Most of them ran for several paragraphs, some for pages. In truth I found that inputting text with the stylus wasn’t as fast as keyboard input (and there was an external keyboard available for the Newton), but the novelty of HRW and the portability gained through the small device made me willing to use HRW often.

I also took lots of “ink notes” with my Newton, jotting down assignments, directions and all kinds of daily flotsam that required temporary retention. I found paper better for taking lengthy notes in class, but I used a Newton actively until 2000 and tracked my all-important first year law school grades on a Newton spreadsheet. I remember later jotting things on my Newton as I moved around New York City battling to find an apartment.

Once I started working in the law firm I set my Newton aside. I was too busy to indulge my interest in personal technology, and I didn’t really need a mobile PIM anyway; I was chained to my desk or in some conference room going through boxes of documents for due diligence. My calendar was in LotusNotes, and if I needed to check a phone number or calendar item when away from my desk I called my secretary.

I bought a Palm device but never really used it. Compared to the Newton it left me uninspired. It was smaller and less expensive than the Newton and added a color screen, but it had small ambitions—it was intended to be mainly a PIM, not a powerful mobile computer.

I didn’t use any PDA from 2000 till 2004. I had a series of mobile phones over those years, but they were just for voice telephony, not data. I suppose the phone numbers I stored on them were as close as I got to having a mobile PIM. I never synced any of those mobile phones with a desktop or laptop computer, though.

In October 2004 my tech addiction began to rage again, I bought an HP iPAQ 4705, then the top-of-the-line Pocket PC. The 4705 was impressive in many ways. It had a lot of capability but could be cradled in the palm of one hand or tucked into a shirt pocket. It had built-in WI-FI, so I could use it to surf the web and handle email. The screen was gorgeous—bright, sharp and saturated with rich colors.

However, depending on WI-FI meant I had to be near a hotspot. I wanted uninterrupted, ubiquitous coverage. So I bought a device from Sprint that allowed me to access their CDMA wireless network. It fit into the CF card slot on the iPAQ. It worked, though it required an ugly external battery.

Unfortunately, it turns out “Pocket PC” and “Pocket Word” are clever but misleading marketing names—those terms suggest smaller (more portable) versions of the operating system and word processing applications with which one is familiar. Actually, the functionality—not just the size—is dramatically reduced, too. With Pocket Word, for example, you lose a great deal of formatting capability. Pocket Word doesn’t support tables and footnotes. I bought an alternative Pocket PC word processor, but even with it I was unable to open the file containing a law review article I’d published—it was just too much for the Pocket PC to handle.

Another problem is that with a Pocket PC you can’t keep a lot of programs open at once and bounce between them. Typically I want to keep open an email program, several web browser windows, some software for reading and writing Chinese and perhaps a media player. That didn’t work.

Also, in trying to use my iPAQ with Sprint’s CF-format CDMA wireless networking card, I seem to have toasted something in the unit’s electrical workings, starting a series of rounds of sending it in for repair.

I spent huge amounts of time loading my iPAQ with software, trying to make it work as a laptop substitute. I added software so that it could display Chinese. I added software to convert currency and metric measurements. I added software so that it could show PowerPoint files. I installed an alternative word processor and web browser.

My conclusion is that if you need a laptop, get a laptop—a Pocket PC is not a PC in your pocket, and Windows Mobile is not a mobile version of Windows—to get the small size they’ve created anemic devices (in comparison to full-blown PCs), and trying to make one work as a laptop substitute will for most people (and certainly for me) not be worth the hassle.

Plus, nowadays most everybody carries a mobile phone. Adding a PDA means you are going to carry two devices. That seems silly.

I tried a Blackberry. The business school where I work gave me one. With it I learned that a thumb QWERTY keyboard is surprisingly useful—it’s one of these things you don’t really appreciate until you try it for yourself. Unlike my iPAQ it didn’t need any extra hardware to access email virtually anywhere (not just near hotspots), and like millions of others I found that to be a “killer app.”

In Hong Kong in January I bought a Pocket PC mobile phone, thinking I’d sell the iPAQ and not carry both a PDA and phone. I got the O2 xda II mini (also sold as an iMate JAM). It was much smaller than my iPAQ even though it added in phone capability. But the screen wasn’t as brilliant as the iPAQ’s, and it lacked WI-FI. I abandon it after a few months because 1) its screen was just too small for web surfing and 2) as a phone it wasn’t well designed for one-hand use, which I found to be a significant problem—that made it unusable when driving and generally inconvenient at other times.

While being dissatisfied with the O2 mini, I read glowing reviews of the Palm Treo 650. From prior experience I knew that I wanted something I can carry with me everywhere that can be a phone, handle email, and in a pinch let me surf the web. My brother is a Treo fan, and I thought it’d be nice to use the same gadget as him so we could trade tips.

I was already expecting to move back to China, so I didn’t want a long-term contract or a phone locked to a US carrier.

On eBay I bought an unlocked Treo 650, saving about $100 from the cost of buying an unlocked phone directly from Palm.

I adored it in many ways. I found the thumb keyboard even better than the one I’d liked on the Blackberry.

I got GPRS service from Cingular. It was too slow for surfing, but I loved having mobile email.

Alas, I dropped my Treo and had to send it in for repairs. Here the $100 I had saved by buying it on eBay came back to haunt me. Apparently, the vendor I bought it from on eBay had originally gotten it from Cingular—it arrived with Cingular branding, though it was described as brand new and appeared to be when I received it. The serial number linked it back to Cingular when I sent it in for repairs, so the bastards took my unlocked phone and returned it to me locked! Arggggh!

Calls to Cingular were useless; they gave me a long run around but never gave me an unlock code. I cancelled my service with them in frustration.

A variety of vendors sell a service that unlocks your phone, but to use them you need the USB sync cable. Because I used the 650’s Bluetooth capability to sync with my laptop, I hadn’t remembered to pack the sync cable when I came to China. I couldn’t find anybody selling a Treo 650 USB cable. Thus I had no way to unlock my 650 until my next trip back to the US.

Our office had not been opened, and I needed to be in touch with staff as they ran around the city trying to get things set up. So I went to the Hai Long computer bazaar (in Haidian’s Zhongguancun high-tech zone) to get a temporary phone. I found that an unlocked Palm Treo 600 cost about what I’d have to pay for other mobiles I’d want, so I bought a 600 (the model that preceded my 650). I used it quite happily until I was finally able to re-un-lock my 650.

For most purposes the 600 works as well as the 650. The screen on the 600 is inferior—lower resolution and much less bright, and the camera on the 600 is abysmal whereas the one on the 650 is merely awful. The 650 has some interface improvements, too. But I am sometimes tempted to sell the 650 and just keep the 600 . While I mull this issue I’m keeping the 600 as my backup phone.

Here’s my conclusion from my experience with PDAs and smartphones:

Mobile voice telephony (a mobile phone) and mobile email are each incredibly compelling. Once you get either you don’t want to live without it. But to become truly “untethered” you need more, including 1) ubiquitous access to the web, 2) any applications you routinely use (typically MS Office, but everyone’s list varies—for me the list of important apps includes some photo software and Wenlin) and 3) an input method that’s sufficiently “transparent,” which for me means a QWERTY keyboard, and if I’m going to write “pages” (not just sentences or maybe a few paragraphs), I want a keyboard for all my fingers, not just my thumbs.

This year will be an interesting one for the evolution of mobile devices. Several new QWERTY keypad smartphones will come to market, including the Nokia E61, Motorola Q and Palm’s newest devices. Plus, there’s the DualCor cPC. Apparently it will resolve the problem of a phone or Pocket PC not being a full-blown Windows device. And Microsoft’s Origami project is stirring everyone’s interest.

Thus there will be lots of temptations ahead for us gadget addicts. But I plan to stick with my Treo 650 (or backup 600) and Fujitsu P1510 as my “mobile kit” for the time being.

Over the last year and half, in what we may fairly term my period of “computer madness,” I’ve tried nine different PCs and five smartphones or PDAs. I thought I’d chronicle here the series of ideas and rationalizations that helped animate this adventure.

My over-arching rationalization for this technology binge was that I was trying to get the right tools to help me write. Given the importance to my career of producing articles for publication, almost any cost could be justified (or so I told myself, repeatedly).

I wanted a 1) mobile device that would 2) allow me to access the Internet most anywhere and 3) be useful for inputting text.

Operating under this general approach, a series of specific rationalizations propelled me from product to product.

My period of computer madness began when problems developed with the Sony Vaio notebook computer that I’d bought upon moving to Maryland to become a professor in 2002.

It was only the second “Wintel” machine I’d ever owned. I’d bought the first when my daughter was born in August 2000.

I did write one law review article with my second Vaio, but then it developed a series of problems. I sent it in for repairs multiple times. During one iteration of that process, I began to think it might be time for a new computer. I began reading about products currently on the market. I thought having something small that I could carry with me all the time would help me write.

As I read computer magazines, I learned that Service Pack 2, an update for Microsoft Windows, included some key improvements for the Tablet PC version of Windows. Reviews indicated the handwriting recognition had been dramatically improved.

I also read about the HP iPAQ 4705, a “Pocket PC” with a high-resolution color screen and the ability to run something called “PocketWord” and other “Pocket” versions of familiar applications.

I’d had a Newton and enjoyed it, so I knew that 1) pen input and 2) a highly portable computer were things I’d like. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to get a Pocket PC or a Tablet PC. I solved the problem by buying both.

Initially I was just going to order a Pocket PC, but in searching Amazon for one I saw an advertisement (sinisterly delivered at just the right time) for an NEC slate-style Tablet PC. It was offered at just over $1,000. I rationalized that the $650 iPAQ and the $1,000 Tablet PC together would cost less than the approximately $2,000 I’d spent on my previous laptop.

I was initially awed by the Pocket PC. The screen was stunning, and I was able to do a lot with it. But, regrettably, I soon discovered the “Pocket-” marketing campaign is misleading; my iPAQ was not as powerful as I’d hoped. I’ve written separately about my PDA/smartphone experience , but my basic conclusion was that, despite great effort to outfit the device with helpful software and accessories, a Pocket PC simply wasn’t going to serve me well as substitute for a full-blown laptop.

The NEC slate was a delight in many ways. It was a full-blown Windows computer (unlike the iPAQ) yet it was about the size of a typical notepad in a leather case.

The Tablet PC version of Windows XP delighted me, too. The handwriting recognition is quite impressive. It seemed about as good as what the Newton provided.

Pen input offered some other wonderful capabilities, including the ability to annotate electronic documents:

This is very helpful for grading papers and editing.

Though the NEC was outstanding in many ways, it had some problems, too. Sometimes it couldn’t be roused from sleep without rebooting, which made it too unreliable for meetings. The battery life was too short. And even though it was the smallest PC I’d ever owned, I felt it was too big to carry everywhere the way you’d carry a mobile phone without hesitation (it wasn’t too heavy but rather too big—obtrusive in a non-business setting).

So in round one of this period of computer madness, I found that a Pocket PC isn’t really powerful enough (isn’t really a PC) and that my slate-style Tablet PC was a bit under-powered and too big to keep with me all the time. I was, however, convinced that the Tablet PC platform is great for some things (mainly, using “ink” for taking notes and marking up “documents” that I need to edit).

Just as I was feeling disillusioned with the iPAQ and NEC slate, I stumbled across JK on the Run, a blog subtitled “using mobile devices since they weighed 30 pounds.” It’s a great information source. Its author James Kendrick has a profound mobile tech/gadget fetish, and he writes without the oh-so-hip sarcasm typical of some other gadget sites. James’ blog had several posts about how he’d installed the Table PC operating system on a Sony U, a tiny “ultra-portable” computer.

As soon as I read James’ entries, I knew I wanted a Sony U. It seemed like the perfect merger of the NEC slate and my Pocket PC—a small device whose portability would almost equal a Pocket PC but one that would, like my NEC slate, be a fully-functional Windows XP Tablet PC. I quickly ordered one.

At the time I learned about it, the U series was a still sold only in Japan. So I ordered mine from Dynamism, a firm that specializes in importing fancy gadgets to the US. I paid extra to get a U FedX’ed to me, and I enthusiastically unpacked it in my office in College Park. It booted up and started running through the registration process. I was awed by the screen quality and size. But suddenly the screen went black. The unit just died. Bad luck again!

I sent it back to Dynamism (they were very nice about it—I got a full refund) and ordered a U750 directly from Sony (they announced they’d be selling a US version of the U just about the time I ordered the U70 from Dynamism).

My U750 arrived while I was home in Alabama for Christmas. I was giddy about it. I even made a little video about my U.

Because the U was a Windows XP computer, I could use on it all the programs I normally relied on—Picasa, a web browser, Microsoft Office and Wenlin (which doesn’t exist for any PDA).

I paid about $750 to join the Microsoft Developer’s Network in order to get the Tablet version of Windows (I failed to find a viable alternative—consumers cannot buy the Tablet PC version of windows (only OEMs can), and I couldn’t extract it from the CDs that came with my NEC). When my MSDN membership code finally arrived, I successfully converted my U into a Tablet PC.

The display was brilliant; Sony calls their premium laptop screens “Xbrite,” and I adore the glossy, sharp, rich colors they offer.

Though the screen was tiny, this didn’t seem like a problem—you held the computer near your face for surfing, using both hands. The well-designed controls were placed around the edges next to the screen.

I surfed, emailed, blogged, managed photos and generally reveled in the tiny, capable device.

I took the U to Hong Kong in January 2005. I was leading a travel course on doing business in China. I used the U during some class meetings—presenters gave me USB thumb drives and I loaded their PowerPoint presentations on the U, giving them a wireless controller to advance the slides. I took a lot of photos and saved them to the U’s hard drive.

But, alas, the U developed problems. It started running slowly. The problem worsened until the computer was almost unusable. This may have been due to to a “memory leak” in the Tablet version of Windows, a bug that became widely recognized later (but perhaps not, because I restarted the computer several time, which would I think have reset the memory problem). Perhaps I had accidentally banged the computer around, damaging the hard drive. Whatever the source of the problem, the U’s slow performance became crippling and caused me to be unable to complete and share with the students a slideshow that I’d planned to show to cap off the class. (I finished it later, using a different computer while the U was repaired by Sony). That began to break the spell of enchantment.

Also, I discovered that while I adored the U’s size, I didn’t like having the keyboard and optical drive as external components. I didn’t like having to remember to keep up with them. Also, toting around external components meant the U was not really as small as it seemed.

If the device had worked reliably I wouldn’t have been as irritated by the U’s expense, but once problems emerged the cost of the U became another factor weighing against keeping it. Sony charged an extortionate amount for an higher-capacity battery and bootable optical drive, both of which I’d bought. The MSDN subscription had been unconscionably expensive (as a means to acquire an operating system). I’d also ordered a leather case and some other accessories. Adding all that to the cost of the U itself, I’d spent a staggering amount.

Another critical issue was that I found that writing with a stylus wasn’t a very fast way for me to input text. As good as Windows’ handwriting recognition has become, I find a keyboard is still better for rapid, accurate input of substantial amounts of text.

A critical issue with a tool is its “transparency,” meaning do you “see” through the tool, forgetting it is there, so that you concentrate on the work, not the tool. Keyboards are highly transparent. Pen input is not yet transparent enough, at least for me. The U, like the NEC slate and the iPAQ, was not going to be the device I wanted.

Feeling frustrated by my expensive and time-consuming attempts to use “unusual” devices, I decided to sell the U and take my wife’s suggestion to buy a “normal” computer.

I looked at a few different models. The list of finalists included: a Sony T, a Sony FS and a Toshiba M45. The T was a tiny but conventional clamshell-design notebook computer. The FS and M45 were both full-size notebooks, each offering a big, brilliant display.

I decided 1) to go for a bigger computer with no “weird” functions and 2) choose the Toshiba M45 over the Sony FS. I went for a full-size computer because I was still frustrated by the U and my experience with the NEC slate and iPAQ. I chose the Toshiba over the Sony model because I’d had some bad luck with Sony–I’d had problems with the U and was still annoyed with the repair problems I’d experienced with the Sony Vaio whose break-down helped trigger this whole period of computer madness.

I adored the Toshiba M45. The keyboard felt silky (and after the U I was delighted to have one!). Its “TruBrite” screen was lush—it had sharp, vivid, saturated colors. It was a joy to look at photos on that screen–I recall drinking in the glossy blacks. The M45’s 100GB hard drive was also luxurious. I’d never had a computer with such a large hard drive. For the first time I gathered all my digital photos in one place. I loved the ability to do that.

But the M45 had weaknesses that were the converse of its strengths. It was big—not a computer I could comfortably carry with me everywhere. Also, the battery life was short.

I still imagined that having a device that I could keep with me virtually all the time would help me write.

This led me to think again about a Sony T. I test drove one several times in different computer stores. The keyboard though small seemed quite viable. The battery life was much longer than what I was getting from the Toshiba. I longed for something that portable.

Finally I succumbed and got one. It was a T250 (I think the T150 was the latest model available when I bought the M45, but the T250 was out by the time I went back to get one).

For a while, the M45 and T250 provided a kind of equilibrium—one computer was big and luxurious and served as a desktop substitute while the other one was ultra-small and well-suited to travel.

Somewhere along the way in this period of computer madness I started using eBay to sell the devices I’d found unsatisfactory. The existence of a secondary market for electronics had been a critical factor enabling my technology addiction; I could recover a good bit of the value of products I’d used a few months.

But I also found stuff to buy on eBay.

On eBay I learned about the Sony Picturebook series. They are tiny notebook computers Sony sold a few years ago. They have built-in keyboards but lack optical drives.

With both the M45 and the T, I didn’t need, obviously, another computer, but the Picturebooks were seductive—so small. Also, I thought I’d like to experiments with Linux, and I didn’t want to use one of my expensive new computers as a guinea pig.

I read about the different Picturebook models and began to conservatively bid on some. Over several weeks I bid on many Picturebooks on eBay before finally getting one at a bargain price. When it arrived I blogged enthusiastically about it.

The Picturebook was too slow to be my main laptop, and the hard drive was too small to hold my photo collection, but it was a great size. I could carry it virtually everywhere. I liked its unusually wide screen. It was an excellent device for email and writing in a word processor.

I did try installing Linux on it. But that hit some hurdles because I didn’t initially have a bootable optical drive (Sony practices an insidious vendor lock-in, making their computers boot only with Sony external CD drives).

But, alas, my Picturebook was stolen. I put it in a bag that I placed on the floor at a public meeting in the Smith School. Someone made off with it. Damn bastard.

I considered replacing the Picturebook but never found the one I wanted at a cheap enough price. Plus, while I loved the form factor, Picturebooks were not made to run Windows XP with a lot of open programs. And as I noted their hard drives are rather small. Plus, with older computers there is a greater risk of break-down. So I haven’t replaced my stolen Picturebook, though I remain a fan of the design.

I was generally quite happy with my T250/M45 equilibrium, but in time I missed having a Tablet PC. I wanted one so that I could put ink annotations on student papers I had to grade. I also wanted one for taking notes. Also, I knocked the M45 off the coffee table one day, after which its hard drive began making a faint whirring sound. Might be a good time to move on, I began to think.

I knew that my next Tablet PC would have to be a convertible one, not a slate design like the NEC or U.

It was difficult to shop for Tablet PCs, though. I am picky about screens and keyboard, and these are subjective things. You need direct, personal experience with a device to make a judgement about its screen quality and keyboard feel. However, even the largest US computer chain stores don’t typically carry more than one or two Tablets—if that many.

I saw the Toshiba R15, a “consumer”-oriented model, in some stores. Initially I rejected it, thinking its screen appeared washed out. But one night at an Office Depot I took another look. I decided the screen wasn’t that bad, and the keyboard felt nice, too. Moreover the R15 was not, comparatively, that expensive. I was supposed to leave for a conference the next day and wanted a Tablet for note-taking. After inquiring about the return policy, I bought one.

The R15 was the first “convertible” Tablet PC I’d owned (a conventional clamshell style notebook whose screen can be converted for use as a Tablet). Immediately it was clear that for me a convertible is the right form factor. I liked having the keyboard and optical drive built-in, not as separate components that I’d have to remember to carry.

A keyboard remains for me the best tool for rapid, “transparent” text input. For those occasions when I want to use pen input, I could swivel the R15’s screen around and have a slate, albeit a thick, heavy one.

My wife left for an extended overseas trip and took our Sony T250, so I got a Sony T350 to use as my travel laptop.

The Sony T’s and Toshiba R15 offered a pretty good equilibrium for a while. I had a convertible Tablet PC with a fairly large screen, and when I need something smaller with longer battery life I could use one of the T’s.

But eventually I developed an itch to have a really, really big screen. I was using MindManager more and more, and a big screen helps when you are creating sprawling maps. I began looking at “desktop replacement” laptops.

I bought an HP Pavilion dv8040us. It’s the most powerful mobile computer I’ve ever owned. It has a 17″ screen, 160 GB of hard drive storage and a fast AMD Turion 64 processor running at 1.8 GHz. I adore it.

But the HP weighs eight pounds. It’s too big and heavy to carry casually. I sold the Sony T350 and T250 to pay for it, wanting to keep the Toshiba R15 since it was a Tablet PC. But the R15 is bulky and weighs more than six pounds, not that much less than the HP.

I wanted something 1) ultra-portable like the Sony T’s but 2) a Tablet PC like the Toshiba R15.

I found that merger in the Fujitsu P1510. It’s ultra-portable, even smaller than a Sony T, but it’s also a Tablet PC.

With the battleship HP and the tiny Fujitsu I’ve again established a good equilibrium in my computing life. My itch to find a new device is, for now, in remission.

My terribly expensive and time-consuming quest to find a device to help me write has been fun in many ways, but unfortunately no gadget can do much to solve writer’s block. It’s a psychological issue, not a technical one.

Another lesson of my quest is that there is no perfect computer. There is no perfect notebook computer for two main reasons:

The solution for me is to have two computers. This is an admittedly extravagant approach. But I find having two quite different devices provides something close to equilibrium. It addresses my alternating dissatisfaction with either single device (or dissatisfaction with a single device that tries to compromise between the best attributes of multiple devices).

Anybody currently in Beijing want to buy a slightly used Toshiba R15 Tablet PC?

Today I am releasing a number of posts and some additional pages I’ve created about my personal history with computers, digital cameras and PDAs/smartphones.

This prompts me to think a bit about my blog’s focus.

Originally my blog was almost exclusively about the regulation of financial markets in China. I continue to follow that area and write about it. It’s the dominant theme of my blog—at least a major theme of it. I expect that to continue.

But my interests are broader. For example, I’ve recently been looking into China’s regulation of foreign participation in higher education. I’m also interested in media in China and the development of the Internet here. More generally, I’ve been passionately interested in information technology for at least 16 years, since I began using computers in college.

So the question arises: what topics should I write about for my blog?

One approach would be to keep this blog narrowly focused on PRC stock market regulation. That’s an attractive approach for several reasons. It gives the blog a clear niche. Having a tight focus would help readers know what to expect. Probably that is the best strategy for building and maintaining readership (however small). Plus, PRC sec reg is something I’ve chosen to work on as an academic; relentless focus could benefit me professionally.

Although the discipline of covering a single area would be good in some ways, this is a blog. Why should I artificially narrow my interests?

I started this whimsically and for myself—as a place to keep up with links to the online material that I read every day. Only writing about one dimension of my life means the blog is less interesting or useful to me, even though writing about more areas may dilute the blog’s interest for (some) other people.

I think the best approach is to give myself permission to write about whatever the hell I want. Imposing a duty on myself to write about only one thing is actually counter-productive. Literally: I produce less when I try to limit myself to one topic.

From October 2004 to July 2005 I posted almost nothing. During that time my attention was wandering “off topic.” I felt fatigued with keeping up with PRC stock market regulation. It was a duty I wanted to escape from, and I did. I simply neglected the blog.

A dead blog doesn’t seem preferably to a topically promiscuous one.

Categories and the magic of search engines and permalinks (specific URIs for each post) will alleviate some of the harm of my going off message.

Perhaps later I’ll publish separate blogs for subsets of posts (first I’ll have to assign posts to categories, something I’ve not done heretofore).

Right now I’m in fact working on a site about PRC education law; maybe later I will create a stand-alone site on PRC securities regulation.

Most personal interests wax and wane over time. One’s personal blog should allow for that.

So, I’m releasing this series of posts about my personal history with personal technology. Apologies to those who could care less. Writing this stuff has helped me maintain my interest in blogging, which over time will I think help me produce more that others (who don’t like this stuff) may care about.