Even as an eBook reader there are problems, particularly for students. How do you take notes on section? How do you mark a section so you know to come back to it from your laptop? Can you use these books on your Mac? Your PC? How is this device better than the recently announced HP slate? How is it better than my old HP TC1100? Yes, I would rather read a book on an iPad as opposed to my Palm Pre, but I can’t fathom how the minimum $500 cost can be justified for something that is a little bit of everything that I already have. The befuddling lack of Flash support reduces the value proposition even further. The iPad doesn’t seem like a good deal, financially or otherwise. Maybe version two will have more to offer, but I’m not holding my breath for version two to ever arrive.

What I think is happening is that Apple is looking to create a tool that operates as another point of consumption for their various stores, particularly this new iBookstore that I’m very curious to read more about. Looking at the ecosystem of Apple products, Mac Pro exists only to foster the creation of content that can then be packaged and sold owners of the rest of the product lines. I can’t fathom how the iPad can be successful when all it can really do is buy other apple products. It’s a glorified iPod Touch that can’t fit in your pocket.

Some of the applications I’ve been using and like: Tweed, Accuweather, Sprint Navigation, Where, and Flixster. The camera app and camera itself are quite good. Web browsing is pretty much perfect. Some things I don’t like: battery life, wildly inconsistent signal strength, inability to customize any sounds other than ring. I also miss my Wall Street Journal application. These issues are particularly hard to stomach coming from a Blackberry with much better battery life and the ability to customize any alert, any time. The notification system on the Pre is clunky and archaic at best. I’m lucky to get a day out of the Pre thus far on an overnight charge, hopefully some software will come along and fix this.

For work purposes, our enterprise Groupwise system has been the bane of my existence and this continues here with no decent way to synchronize calendar, tasks and contacts with the Pre. There’s a third party app called Companionlink that will do this via gmail, but seriously, every enterprise PIM should have solved this issue by now. The only thing that might save me is Novell’s licensing of Activesync, or a switch to Exchange.

I’ve had some students ask me about using the Pre instead of the Windows Mobile devices I’m requiring (Treo Pro, Touch Pro or Touch Diamond), but thus far none have complained after being regaled by my tales of bad battery life and no Epocrates. Really, as a version one product the Pre is great, but just a little more enterprise friendliness would go a long way.

So far, we’ve come to rely on Hulu.com to catch up on shows with very few commercials and XBMC to watch movies and listen to music. XBMC is awesome, I use it with the Mediastream skin which I think is very polished looking and has excellent navigational features. Really, the only thing I wish XBMC had would be Hulu integration and perhaps Flickr and Youtube as well. I’ve tried using Fox.com and NBC.com to watch their shows directly, but they tend to put craplets in the way that really make viewing less than pleasant. It would be awesome if Hulu went up to 720p from 480p, but hey, it’s free.

The other very important applications I use are DVDFab, DVDShrink and Handbrake for Windows. I’m actually using DVDShrink a lot less these days because it doesn’t seem to be able to handle newer discs very well, DVDFab does a very good job of putting the entire DVD on the hard drive. I use Handbrake to convert my DVDs to mp4 files if I want them to live in XBMC or take them on the road and watch them on my laptop. Since this system is dedicated to media I don’t mind letting it encode all day long, it isn’t getting in the way of anything.

The only piece I’m missing so far is a wireless keyboard with a trackpad or trackball. I think the system will pretty much be complete once I get one of those in. Other items of note, this system is running 32-bit Vista with no problems. I use Microsoft Remote desktop to control it, or if I’m somewhere else or need to see the screen on the TV I use Logmein to administer the machine. I guess the only negative aspect of this is that we watched far less TV before this system, and if we ever watch regular over the air stuff we get irritated very quickly by anything more than a 30 second commercial. I think the only thing I watch live anymore is the local news and football.

KT spent the first part of the evening setting up her phone while we waited for MGMT to start. We both got new phones on Sunday, and apparently that was the best time to move all her numbers. I had my phone set up with new themes and ringtones by late Sunday night. KT got the Samsung SGH-a737 and I got the Sony Ericsson w350. I also have another device I’m trying out for work, which might be one of the nicer PocketPC devices I’ve ever used, the Sprint Touch Diamond. I don’t have a picture of KT’s new phone, but I figured I’d take a picture of my two new ones. Blackberry Pearl not pictured, since it was taking the picture.

So far I’m pleased with the Diamond from a usage perspective, but totally underwhelmed by battery life. We’ll see how it goes after I tweak some of the possibly offensive settings. The screen on this device is awesome. Best I’ve ever seen on a Windows Mobile handset.  The W350 appears to be worth the $30 it cost so far. I went into the store wanting the smallest phone they had and this looks pretty much like it. My new phone reminds my greatly of the second cel phone I ever bought, it was some kind of Ericsson model from before the Sony merger. It might have been this one, but I’ll be damned if I can remember exactly. That phone ended up being KT’s first phone, though somewhere during her ownership it lost the flip piece and ended up with a bolt glued in place of the original antenna. That bolt did get great reception.

The other fun part of our new phones is that we hopped on a family plan with my in-laws, so now we have unlimited text messaging and a cheaper plan. Anything that is “cheaper” appeals to KT greatly, so all are happy now. Thanks Sarah! I also like dragging KT into the age of texting, although her first messages to me were spelled very creatively.