As often happens, I was recently asked what is the compelling argument for Tablet PCs over traditional notebook computers. That this came from a trustee at the quarterly meaning added a significant importance to the question and to getting the answer right.
The problem is, I'm not sure there is a right answer to that question for most of us. But the question is the problem, not the lack of an answer.
You see, I don’t think that there is a single big argument in favor of Tablets that makes them compelling. There are, however, many, many little ones and even these are variously compelling to different individuals. In an age where everyone thinks and talks about The Killer Application and The Next Big Thing, small subtle arguments can get lost. I think it's time to bring them front and center.
So, in no particular order, here is a list of some of the arguments that I think combine to make a compelling case for Tablet PCs:
First is that they are light enough and flexible enough to be a truly ubiquitous computer. While we have had portable computers for some time, many are still heavy enough that you don't want to carry them everywhere. My TC1100, sans keyboard, weighs in at a svelte 3 pounds. It is less than an inch thick and slightly smaller than a sheet of paper in its other two dimensions. I traded my 2+" thick Franklin Day Planner for it years ago and have never looked back. I always have it with me because it is so easy to do so.
Some would argue that ultra-portable notebooks offer this same weight and size advantage. Fair enough, but the form of the computers differ greatly. This is a second argument for the Tablet. Have you ever tried to work on a notebook while walking or standing? How about when curled up in an over-stuffed chair? What about lying against a tree? Open the keyboard and you can use the Tablet any way you can use the ultra-portable, but it doesn't work the other way.
Closely joined to this argument is the ease of reading on the Tablet. I have a good-size library of Reader and Acrobat books on my Tablet. I can read them comfortably in bed, in a car, with my feet up at my desk, or wherever I can read a book. (Actually, I can even read it in places I can't read a book, since I don't have to have a light source.) Emphasis, by the way, is on comfortably. I never could stand trying to read on a notebook computer screen. Unlike with a book, you have to adapt your position to the computer to be able to read. With the Tablet, I can hold it just as I always have with a book, regardless of my position. I often read while walking around campus. Can't do that easily with a notebook.
Let me jump back to my Day Planner for a second. With it (or with Outlook, with which it synchronizes) I have my contacts always with me, available in a matter of seconds. Again, I don't need to find a table or desk to look someone's number up or make a note of a commitment or jot down something. I can do it as easily as I could in my Franklin book. Easier, actually, since it was somewhat more awkward to hold the book in my hand while writing.
Not to mention that it is fully searchable, even when the notes and tasks are hand-written. Any day planner user who has ever had to find notesthat are a year or two old will understand this argument immediately. And, again, it is the ease of using it in any position that is a plus for a Tablet over a notebook.
Well, that and the fact that one can even write notes in the first place. Anywhere I can hold my Tablet, I can write notes—I've even jotted down a quote heard on the radio while driving. (Kids, don't try this at home.) I would have had to trust my too-frequently addled memory if I had only a keyboard to use. I can at least write one-handed without looking down.
While on the subject of note-taking, have you been in meetings or classes where people had notebooks open and were taking notes, at least ostensibly? Not only is it quite unclear what is really going on behind that screen, the very fact that you have to look at the back of it raises a social barrier that I, for one, find quite unpleasant. No one bats an eye when I have my Tablet down on the table or in my lap while taking notes. At church, I don't think most people even notice that I am using a computer (which has both my Bible and my notes on it). The social barrier is pretty much non-existent in this case.
I'll end this first bit on this topic here. There is a lot more and I will follow up on it as time allows. In the meantime, I would love to hear what other Tablet users find compelling. Let me know in a comment here or at markp(at)together.net.
Monday, February 20, 2006
Friday, January 6, 2006
Spaces - The Final Frontier...
One of the faculty members on our Tablet program advisory group has a real thing about power. The kind that computers require to operate, that is. He is (rightly) very concerned that we make sure that there are adequate sources of power available in classrooms so that students don't run out of juice in the middle of class. (Our suspicion is that this will be the new "my dog ate my homework" excuse.)
His comments got me to thinking about the impact that Tablets will have on the environment around us, and especially on the kinds and style of spaces that we have and the furnishings in them. Mostly I just have musings about this, not answers of any kind, but then I have to start somewhere so please bear with me. My hope is that a discussion on this will ensue to everybody's benefit. If nothing else, at least writing it forces me to organize my thoughts somewhat.
Some of these issues, such as the need for power, wide provision of wireless networking, or secure places to stow the computer when at lunch or whatever are common to any kind of portable computers in schools, but others I think are unique to the Tablet PC. I'll limit my thoughts here to the latter.
My biggest concern is that many of our spaces encourage students (and faculty) to use the Tablet simply as a notebook. The work surfaces and seating in these places are set up to facilitate typing on a computer. My experience is that most users need all the encouragement they can get to spend the needed time getting used to the Tablet as a tablet. These spaces don't encourage that. In fact they actively discourage it by making it difficult to use the Tablet in writing mode.
Consider, for example, what a study carrel might look like if designed for a Tablet user. Would there necessarily be a rigid, flat rectangular surface? When used as a notebook, this would be a very beneficial, especially with a top-heavy unit like the TC1100. But what about when it is used like a Tablet? For me at least, the desktop is in the way most of the time. When I work at a surface like that, I often end up turning sideways so that I can hold the Tablet in my lap and write. The best writing angle I've found is achieved when the Tablet is balanced on my crossed legs. Any books or other materials are then on the tabletop at my left. But being the easily distractible sort, this doesn't work well in an environment where there is much traffic. There has to be a way to improve this work space. Making the space deeper to better block distractions would help a lot, at least for someone like me. Perhaps a solution is a flexible work surface, on where part of the desktop can be moved out of the way to make space for crossed legs with a Tablet on them.
In the same public-area vein, docking stations in study areas, particularly carrels, would be a huge improvement of the workspace, albeit one that seems at odds with what I just said since they would require the flat rectangular surface. Whenever I am at my desk, I use the extended desktop if I am not actually writing. (When I am, I sit in that same half-turned position I just described. It gives me a crick in my neck after too long, so I guess my office could stand some ergonomic improvements, too.)
Classroom furniture could also use some reconsidering. Flexibility is again going to be key—some want a desktop even when writing, others want nothing in the way of their arms and legs when the Tablet is in their laps. In a public area, one might have different kinds of surfaces or work areas to address the different needs, but in a classroom the same desk or table will need to service the needs of many individuals in rapid succession.
Student lounge areas and common sitting areas are other places where I see a need for alternatives, although I think these are generally better than the more formal study or academic spaces. At Vermont Academy, our lounge furniture tends to be low with deep seats (i.e., long front-to-back). From what I've seen this encourages bad posture to begin with, but it also makes it hard to hold the Tablet in one's lap and use it. I think even bean bag chairs would be an improvement.
One other area that I've thought of so far is the question of lighting. Glare, whether from overhead lights or from windows has always been a problem for computer use. We have invested in anti-glare fixtures for a lot of our computer spaces and that has worked quite well for the vertical screens of desktops. Now, however, we have screens that are more horizontal. Even with the non-glare fixtures in my office, I am looking directly at a reflection of the lights overhead if I don't hold the Tablet at a certain angle or facing a certain direction. I don't know what the answer is here (ambient floor lighting?), just the question.
I'm sure that there is much more in this area to consider. I'm equally sure that a lot of these concerns won't be addressed before next year when we fully roll out Tablets to all students. But at least the discussions will begin and maybe we can address things over time. I would love to hear from others who have thought about this and especially from others who have found good ways of addressing it. I would love to hear as well from anyone who thinks I'm making a mountain out of a molehill...
His comments got me to thinking about the impact that Tablets will have on the environment around us, and especially on the kinds and style of spaces that we have and the furnishings in them. Mostly I just have musings about this, not answers of any kind, but then I have to start somewhere so please bear with me. My hope is that a discussion on this will ensue to everybody's benefit. If nothing else, at least writing it forces me to organize my thoughts somewhat.
Some of these issues, such as the need for power, wide provision of wireless networking, or secure places to stow the computer when at lunch or whatever are common to any kind of portable computers in schools, but others I think are unique to the Tablet PC. I'll limit my thoughts here to the latter.
My biggest concern is that many of our spaces encourage students (and faculty) to use the Tablet simply as a notebook. The work surfaces and seating in these places are set up to facilitate typing on a computer. My experience is that most users need all the encouragement they can get to spend the needed time getting used to the Tablet as a tablet. These spaces don't encourage that. In fact they actively discourage it by making it difficult to use the Tablet in writing mode.
Consider, for example, what a study carrel might look like if designed for a Tablet user. Would there necessarily be a rigid, flat rectangular surface? When used as a notebook, this would be a very beneficial, especially with a top-heavy unit like the TC1100. But what about when it is used like a Tablet? For me at least, the desktop is in the way most of the time. When I work at a surface like that, I often end up turning sideways so that I can hold the Tablet in my lap and write. The best writing angle I've found is achieved when the Tablet is balanced on my crossed legs. Any books or other materials are then on the tabletop at my left. But being the easily distractible sort, this doesn't work well in an environment where there is much traffic. There has to be a way to improve this work space. Making the space deeper to better block distractions would help a lot, at least for someone like me. Perhaps a solution is a flexible work surface, on where part of the desktop can be moved out of the way to make space for crossed legs with a Tablet on them.
In the same public-area vein, docking stations in study areas, particularly carrels, would be a huge improvement of the workspace, albeit one that seems at odds with what I just said since they would require the flat rectangular surface. Whenever I am at my desk, I use the extended desktop if I am not actually writing. (When I am, I sit in that same half-turned position I just described. It gives me a crick in my neck after too long, so I guess my office could stand some ergonomic improvements, too.)
Classroom furniture could also use some reconsidering. Flexibility is again going to be key—some want a desktop even when writing, others want nothing in the way of their arms and legs when the Tablet is in their laps. In a public area, one might have different kinds of surfaces or work areas to address the different needs, but in a classroom the same desk or table will need to service the needs of many individuals in rapid succession.
Student lounge areas and common sitting areas are other places where I see a need for alternatives, although I think these are generally better than the more formal study or academic spaces. At Vermont Academy, our lounge furniture tends to be low with deep seats (i.e., long front-to-back). From what I've seen this encourages bad posture to begin with, but it also makes it hard to hold the Tablet in one's lap and use it. I think even bean bag chairs would be an improvement.
One other area that I've thought of so far is the question of lighting. Glare, whether from overhead lights or from windows has always been a problem for computer use. We have invested in anti-glare fixtures for a lot of our computer spaces and that has worked quite well for the vertical screens of desktops. Now, however, we have screens that are more horizontal. Even with the non-glare fixtures in my office, I am looking directly at a reflection of the lights overhead if I don't hold the Tablet at a certain angle or facing a certain direction. I don't know what the answer is here (ambient floor lighting?), just the question.
I'm sure that there is much more in this area to consider. I'm equally sure that a lot of these concerns won't be addressed before next year when we fully roll out Tablets to all students. But at least the discussions will begin and maybe we can address things over time. I would love to hear from others who have thought about this and especially from others who have found good ways of addressing it. I would love to hear as well from anyone who thinks I'm making a mountain out of a molehill...
Monday, November 7, 2005
What is HP Thinking?
Imagine for a moment that you had a product that was innovative and unique in a market comprised largely of products that were all essentially timid me-too offerings. Imagine that your product had garnered a substantial share of the market because of its these qualities, and that it had a user base that bordered on the fanatic in their support and enthusiasm for your product. Would you throw that product away in favor of yet another me-too product line?
Most of us would laugh at the suggestion, yet it appears that this is precisely what HP is doing with the TC1100. While originally the word was that the TC1100 would cease production at the end of 2005, apparently production has already ceased and the channel is drying up. Their other offering, the TC4200 is a fine machine, no question. But it is also just another convertible notebook with a digitizer in the screen. Cheap? Sure. Nice keyboard? No doubt. (Though Thinkpads still rule this area.) Great screen? Yep. Flexible? Not very. Exciting? No way.
This is a move that I simply don't understand.
But not only is HP making this huge mistake, they have compounded it with poor communication. For a long time, there was no more than a rumor that this was going to happen. Now I admit that I am not very well connected at HP, but no one I could reach there would make a clear statement on the subject until recently. (I have been dogging this since mid-summer.) When I asked one HP representative whether the TC1100 was going to be discontinued, the only response I got was that "HP remains committed to the Tablet PC platform." A pretty non-committal non-answer. Which, I guess, was telling in itself if I had been willing to see it.
Since that time, HP has confirmed that the TC1100 is history. But in addition, my sources tell me that there is a new model coming out around the start of Q2 2006. It looks as if it will weigh about 3 pounds and have a 12" screen. There is no more information available than that. They can't even say if it is a slate, a convertible or, we can only hope, a hybrid. If so, I'll gladly wear egg on my face for this posting. (Well, part of it. They still screwed up in the way they handled it.)
I don't want this posting to become a rant or, worse, a whine so I won't go on with it. But Mr. Hurd, if you are listening, this is one decision that HP needs to reconsider. The TC1100 is not perfect, but it is terrific. Tweak it, don't kill it. I'll be glad to give you suggestions on what is needed. Better yet, ask in the Tablet PC Buzz HP forum, the most active forum on the most active Tablet PC site--all because of the TC1100.
Most of us would laugh at the suggestion, yet it appears that this is precisely what HP is doing with the TC1100. While originally the word was that the TC1100 would cease production at the end of 2005, apparently production has already ceased and the channel is drying up. Their other offering, the TC4200 is a fine machine, no question. But it is also just another convertible notebook with a digitizer in the screen. Cheap? Sure. Nice keyboard? No doubt. (Though Thinkpads still rule this area.) Great screen? Yep. Flexible? Not very. Exciting? No way.
This is a move that I simply don't understand.
But not only is HP making this huge mistake, they have compounded it with poor communication. For a long time, there was no more than a rumor that this was going to happen. Now I admit that I am not very well connected at HP, but no one I could reach there would make a clear statement on the subject until recently. (I have been dogging this since mid-summer.) When I asked one HP representative whether the TC1100 was going to be discontinued, the only response I got was that "HP remains committed to the Tablet PC platform." A pretty non-committal non-answer. Which, I guess, was telling in itself if I had been willing to see it.
Since that time, HP has confirmed that the TC1100 is history. But in addition, my sources tell me that there is a new model coming out around the start of Q2 2006. It looks as if it will weigh about 3 pounds and have a 12" screen. There is no more information available than that. They can't even say if it is a slate, a convertible or, we can only hope, a hybrid. If so, I'll gladly wear egg on my face for this posting. (Well, part of it. They still screwed up in the way they handled it.)
I don't want this posting to become a rant or, worse, a whine so I won't go on with it. But Mr. Hurd, if you are listening, this is one decision that HP needs to reconsider. The TC1100 is not perfect, but it is terrific. Tweak it, don't kill it. I'll be glad to give you suggestions on what is needed. Better yet, ask in the Tablet PC Buzz HP forum, the most active forum on the most active Tablet PC site--all because of the TC1100.
Friday, October 21, 2005
Comments are back
Blogger has a means of thwarting the bots that post comment spam so I am re-enabling comments for this blog. I hope that I can get back on track and actually post some new content, too.
Monday, October 10, 2005
Comment Spam
Owing to the sudden appearance of lots of comment spam, I am disabling comments on my blogs for the time being. This saddens me as the few comments I have received have had good things to say and this could be a good medium for discussion. But, owing to the self-centeredness of a few, the many lose out. Again.
If Blogger.com can get it together to stop this kind of behavior, then I will reinstate comments. In the meantime, please feel free to send me comments at markp(at)together.net. I will post the comments (non-spam!) if appropriate.
If Blogger.com can get it together to stop this kind of behavior, then I will reinstate comments. In the meantime, please feel free to send me comments at markp(at)together.net. I will post the comments (non-spam!) if appropriate.
Saturday, September 17, 2005
Eggs and Baskets
I've long been a believer in the adage, generally attributed to Mark Twain's Puddin' Head Wilson, "Put all your eggs in one basket and -- WATCH THAT BASKET." For example, given limited technical resources and great technical demands, we opt for a single supported standard desktop OS and a single standard server OS. Sure Linux is a great OS, and I've run it on both servers and desktops (and even continue to financially support Mandriva ), but we just don't have the resources to adequately support and reliably secure two or more OSes on our machines. We can, and have, done that with a Windows-only system.
Now I am not interested in fueling the religious OS war, and the OS is not the point of this posting, but it is an example of how I have chosen to operate. For the most part, that mode of operation has been pretty successful. I have recently had to reconsider exactly what is meant by "WATCH THAT BASKET", however.
The last few months at Vermont Academy have been terribly grueling owing largely to the failure of two other companies on whom we have depended heavily to perform in what I consider a satisfactory fashion. In both cases, they were a partner on whom we have counted to work with us and for us but who failed to do so. We are still trying to recover from the impact of these failures. (This is also the explanation for the lengthy dry spell in postings here.)
The first situation that caused us problems was with the vendor on whom we depended for our wireless network. They helped us design the network and were a vital partner in ongoing security work and extensions of the network. Their work had always been first-rate and was consistently done in a timely fashion. Late in the spring we requested their assistance with a significant change in the security settings and policies of our wireless system, one which required a good deal of planning and the reconfiguration of much of our networking equipment and all of our Tablet PCs. We planned the work to begin in June and to be completed mid-summer to give us ample time to work out any bugs in the system before the start of school.
At about this time, the company with whom we worked was acquired by a larger regionally well-known company with a good reputation. While some things about this acquisition and the policy changes that we saw implemented gave us concern, by and large we felt (and were assured) that business would generally continue as usual.
However, when June rolled around, we found that our project was to be somewhat delayed. Here is where I made my first mistake in not watching this basket carefully enough. I accepted this delay and didn't begin to think about finding an alternate vendor for this project. After all, I had worked with some members of this company for nearly 20 years and had never been let down. Plus we had ample time still to complete the project. So I waited for them.
By the time July came, we still had not seen any progress and were in fact not even receiving timely returns of phone calls. I did begin to be concerned at this time and we began to do some of the work on this project ourselves, spending precious time doing research and planning that we had expected to be doing in concert with the more knowledgeable folks from our vendor. We did in fact come up with a good plan for the project and one of my staff was doing good research on what would be required to make it happen.
Still, I would have been wiser to find another vendor to come in and work with us. The thought of paying someone to come in and learn our existing system and network before they would be able to help us deterred me and I still held out hope that this vendor would come through in the end.
They did not.
We ended up doing the lion's share of the work ourselves--at great cost of attention to other important jobs. In addition, the work, while completed, was completed too late to analyze all of the points of impact that were unforeseen. We spent the latter part of August finalizing the implementation and the first two weeks of September (after students had arrived) eliminating most of the bugs. We are still dealing with a few of them. We have had more than a few dissatisfied students and faculty when they had the inevitable connection difficulties.
One lesson I learned from this is that watching the basket may actually mean having a second basket handy in case the first one breaks. Or maybe this is a case where putting all the eggs in one basket doesn't work. Going forward, I hope to have at least two vendors on whom I can depend for such critical parts of our business. I don't know yet how I can do this, or who those vendors will be. (One disadvantage of being so rural is that our choices are limited.) I hope to find vendors any of whom could do all of what we need, but to use them in a more limited fashion so that we don't rely exclusively on any one of them for everything. Then if one lets us down, we will have another to whom we can turn on short notice.
The other major situation is a bit more problematic to resolve. We have a vendor to whom we don't have a realistic alternative--Microsoft.
Our plan for the start of the school year was to create a master image of our Tablet PCs and ghost that image onto both new and returning Tablets. We did this last year and the process worked flawlessly.
We usually go through a couple of iterations of the master image, to give us time to build it and test the process and to test the image itself and see what refinements we need to make. We started this process at the beginning of August, which left ample time for the iterative process to work and for us to then put that image on all of the new machines. Immediately after the first image was built we hit a wall.
As best I can determine, back in February of this year Microsoft made a change to the Windows Product Activation process that made it so that images made from OEM CDs could not be activated over the Internet. Since we built the image from the HP CDs that came with the Tablets, we ran into this problem.
Activating by phone was an option left open to us, but that is a time-intensive operation and we had in the vicinity of 150 machines that we would need to reimage and then activate by phone.
I spent much of my time over a two week period trying to find an adequate resolution to this. I suppose if we had been a bigger company, or perhaps a more prestigious school, we could have had more assistance from Microsoft, but we got precious little. The information offered online is sketchy at best and difficult to find. The best assistance we got was from the man at HP who has been so helpful with our hardware problems. He went above and beyond the call of his responsibility to us to help with the resolution of this problem.
From what I have been able to find out so far, MS appears to expect those in this situation to purchase a volume license for the machines and use the VL media to create the image. Images made in this fashion are exempt from the WPA process. Since we have already purchased a license for Windows for these machines, this is a less-than-satisfactory answer.
Without going into great detail, we did manage to resolve the problem and got the machines reimaged. We paid a price, however, in that we didn't have the time to test and refine the image as much as we would have liked and have seen the consequences of that omission. (The fact that this all occurred at the same time as the previous problem made matters worse still.)
I don't know what the long term answer to this one is. We can't drop Microsoft for someone else. There is no one else. Besides, their product is the one we want. The Tablet PC OS is one of the best operating systems around and does exactly what we want.
The real solution, I think, is for Microsoft to trust their customers and eliminate product activation from their whole product line. The only ones affected by it are those of us who try to do things legitimately. If I had been a bootlegger, this would have been an easy problem to resolve. But I'm not, and it wasn't, and we and our students are paying for it.
I'll continue to watch this basket as best I can and keep looking for a better solution for next year. I wish Puddin' Head Wilson had some counsel on this one.
Now I am not interested in fueling the religious OS war, and the OS is not the point of this posting, but it is an example of how I have chosen to operate. For the most part, that mode of operation has been pretty successful. I have recently had to reconsider exactly what is meant by "WATCH THAT BASKET", however.
The last few months at Vermont Academy have been terribly grueling owing largely to the failure of two other companies on whom we have depended heavily to perform in what I consider a satisfactory fashion. In both cases, they were a partner on whom we have counted to work with us and for us but who failed to do so. We are still trying to recover from the impact of these failures. (This is also the explanation for the lengthy dry spell in postings here.)
The first situation that caused us problems was with the vendor on whom we depended for our wireless network. They helped us design the network and were a vital partner in ongoing security work and extensions of the network. Their work had always been first-rate and was consistently done in a timely fashion. Late in the spring we requested their assistance with a significant change in the security settings and policies of our wireless system, one which required a good deal of planning and the reconfiguration of much of our networking equipment and all of our Tablet PCs. We planned the work to begin in June and to be completed mid-summer to give us ample time to work out any bugs in the system before the start of school.
At about this time, the company with whom we worked was acquired by a larger regionally well-known company with a good reputation. While some things about this acquisition and the policy changes that we saw implemented gave us concern, by and large we felt (and were assured) that business would generally continue as usual.
However, when June rolled around, we found that our project was to be somewhat delayed. Here is where I made my first mistake in not watching this basket carefully enough. I accepted this delay and didn't begin to think about finding an alternate vendor for this project. After all, I had worked with some members of this company for nearly 20 years and had never been let down. Plus we had ample time still to complete the project. So I waited for them.
By the time July came, we still had not seen any progress and were in fact not even receiving timely returns of phone calls. I did begin to be concerned at this time and we began to do some of the work on this project ourselves, spending precious time doing research and planning that we had expected to be doing in concert with the more knowledgeable folks from our vendor. We did in fact come up with a good plan for the project and one of my staff was doing good research on what would be required to make it happen.
Still, I would have been wiser to find another vendor to come in and work with us. The thought of paying someone to come in and learn our existing system and network before they would be able to help us deterred me and I still held out hope that this vendor would come through in the end.
They did not.
We ended up doing the lion's share of the work ourselves--at great cost of attention to other important jobs. In addition, the work, while completed, was completed too late to analyze all of the points of impact that were unforeseen. We spent the latter part of August finalizing the implementation and the first two weeks of September (after students had arrived) eliminating most of the bugs. We are still dealing with a few of them. We have had more than a few dissatisfied students and faculty when they had the inevitable connection difficulties.
One lesson I learned from this is that watching the basket may actually mean having a second basket handy in case the first one breaks. Or maybe this is a case where putting all the eggs in one basket doesn't work. Going forward, I hope to have at least two vendors on whom I can depend for such critical parts of our business. I don't know yet how I can do this, or who those vendors will be. (One disadvantage of being so rural is that our choices are limited.) I hope to find vendors any of whom could do all of what we need, but to use them in a more limited fashion so that we don't rely exclusively on any one of them for everything. Then if one lets us down, we will have another to whom we can turn on short notice.
The other major situation is a bit more problematic to resolve. We have a vendor to whom we don't have a realistic alternative--Microsoft.
Our plan for the start of the school year was to create a master image of our Tablet PCs and ghost that image onto both new and returning Tablets. We did this last year and the process worked flawlessly.
We usually go through a couple of iterations of the master image, to give us time to build it and test the process and to test the image itself and see what refinements we need to make. We started this process at the beginning of August, which left ample time for the iterative process to work and for us to then put that image on all of the new machines. Immediately after the first image was built we hit a wall.
As best I can determine, back in February of this year Microsoft made a change to the Windows Product Activation process that made it so that images made from OEM CDs could not be activated over the Internet. Since we built the image from the HP CDs that came with the Tablets, we ran into this problem.
Activating by phone was an option left open to us, but that is a time-intensive operation and we had in the vicinity of 150 machines that we would need to reimage and then activate by phone.
I spent much of my time over a two week period trying to find an adequate resolution to this. I suppose if we had been a bigger company, or perhaps a more prestigious school, we could have had more assistance from Microsoft, but we got precious little. The information offered online is sketchy at best and difficult to find. The best assistance we got was from the man at HP who has been so helpful with our hardware problems. He went above and beyond the call of his responsibility to us to help with the resolution of this problem.
From what I have been able to find out so far, MS appears to expect those in this situation to purchase a volume license for the machines and use the VL media to create the image. Images made in this fashion are exempt from the WPA process. Since we have already purchased a license for Windows for these machines, this is a less-than-satisfactory answer.
Without going into great detail, we did manage to resolve the problem and got the machines reimaged. We paid a price, however, in that we didn't have the time to test and refine the image as much as we would have liked and have seen the consequences of that omission. (The fact that this all occurred at the same time as the previous problem made matters worse still.)
I don't know what the long term answer to this one is. We can't drop Microsoft for someone else. There is no one else. Besides, their product is the one we want. The Tablet PC OS is one of the best operating systems around and does exactly what we want.
The real solution, I think, is for Microsoft to trust their customers and eliminate product activation from their whole product line. The only ones affected by it are those of us who try to do things legitimately. If I had been a bootlegger, this would have been an easy problem to resolve. But I'm not, and it wasn't, and we and our students are paying for it.
I'll continue to watch this basket as best I can and keep looking for a better solution for next year. I wish Puddin' Head Wilson had some counsel on this one.
Thursday, July 28, 2005
The Importance of Partners
No matter how good your technical staff might be, supportive partners are critical to the success of a Tablet PC program. I have long thought that "partner" is an overused term as every salesman or manufacturer wants to "partner" with you, when too often all they really want to do is sell you stuff and then forget about you until your next order. What I mean by partner is someone who goes out of their way to make sure that you have what you need, that it works as expected, and is proactive in getting it made right when it doesn't work as expected. Sometimes these people will even go so far as to tell you that what they have isn't what you need.
I prefer to do business with people like this. I will even pay a somewhat higher price for products if it means I can work with someone I know I can count on to work for me and with whom I can develop a trusting relationship. (I understand that we deal with organizations, but it is the individuals that make or break the working relationship, though I do think institutional policies are critical in consistently getting the right people.)
In our Tablet program, we have several organizations that have worked with us to make this program a success. Two outstanding examples are The Top Floor, the vendor through whom we are buying our Tablets, and HP itself, the manufacturer of the Vermont Slate, better known as the TC1100.
Marcus, our rep at The Top Floor, has been the main force behind the exceptional pricing we've been able to get for our students, as well as the one who bird dogs our orders and shipments for us. He has gotten us demos even when he was aware up front that we likely might not end up purchasing the products we demo and even when the product was a hot commodity and hard to get.
HP has been outstanding in all of our dealings with them, as well. Their delivery times have been prompt (though they could be a bit more informative about ETAs). Their warranty support (handled locally by PC Connection, another important partner in this project) has been excellent with no hassles. Driver updates are appropriately frequent. Online support is decent-- as long as you know where to look.
We recently had an incident that tested these two companies and proved their value to us as business partners, reaffirming to me that we made good choices in choosing to work with them.
During the last year, we ordered several batches of TC1100s. Some earlier models of this computer were plagued with a fairly serious problem that would crop up from time to time. A large percentage of our systems had this problem and it was one for which we sent out a number of machines for repair, as it was not serviceable by end users. After tracking this, we realized that close to 40% of certain batches exhibited this problem.
I took my concerns about this problem first to Marcus. We had a spreadsheet showing the warranty repairs (as opposed to all repairs, which included the accidental damage covered work) which showed pretty clearly the prevalence of this one problem. Marcus took it from there, communicating with HP, setting up conference calls, and once again dogging this problem admirably. He sacrificed a lot of time on this issue, with no direct remuneration.
HP, while understandably initially reluctant to agree to my initial request (demand might be a better term) for satisfaction, kept a healthy dialogue going on it until we reached an agreeable solution. My request was that they come on site and replace all of the potentially defective parts on all of our machines, whether they had exhibited this problem or not. I knew that the program could not brook such a high failure rate and I was unwilling to risk another year with it. Especially not at this point, as we are now putting machines in the hands of all faculty, many of whom are much more tentative about this whole Tablet PC business than the students are.
I say that HP's initial reaction is understandable, because this is costing them a lot of money. So far, in any given day, a tech has been able to deal with about 7 machines. We have around 80. This is 11 days of a technician, sitting at our site doing nothing else. Each machine has expensive components to be replaced. HP is eating all of these costs. Not many companies would willingly bear all these costs, especially since we aren't ever going to be buying thousands of computers. At peak, we'll probably have slightly more than 300 at any given time.
But this has served to affirm for me that they stand behind their products and that they are committed to the Tablet PC. (In fact, I have enough confidence in them as a company that we are going to replace our Dell servers with HP.)
These are the kind of partners that I want to do business with. They work with and for me, even when they don't always stand to profit in a given instance. By these actions, they will be contributing to the success of our program in real, tangible ways.
As a last aside, some might argue that a problem affecting so many machines should make us look elsewhere, but I don't agree. The TC1100 is a bold and innovative design, unique among Tablet PCs. As if manufacturing problems didn't happen often enough anyway, this model had some new issues to worry about because of its unique design. The machines have been rock-solid otherwise. This particular problem has been fixed in newer systems and I am confident that we won't see issues like that again this year.
I prefer to do business with people like this. I will even pay a somewhat higher price for products if it means I can work with someone I know I can count on to work for me and with whom I can develop a trusting relationship. (I understand that we deal with organizations, but it is the individuals that make or break the working relationship, though I do think institutional policies are critical in consistently getting the right people.)
In our Tablet program, we have several organizations that have worked with us to make this program a success. Two outstanding examples are The Top Floor, the vendor through whom we are buying our Tablets, and HP itself, the manufacturer of the Vermont Slate, better known as the TC1100.
Marcus, our rep at The Top Floor, has been the main force behind the exceptional pricing we've been able to get for our students, as well as the one who bird dogs our orders and shipments for us. He has gotten us demos even when he was aware up front that we likely might not end up purchasing the products we demo and even when the product was a hot commodity and hard to get.
HP has been outstanding in all of our dealings with them, as well. Their delivery times have been prompt (though they could be a bit more informative about ETAs). Their warranty support (handled locally by PC Connection, another important partner in this project) has been excellent with no hassles. Driver updates are appropriately frequent. Online support is decent-- as long as you know where to look.
We recently had an incident that tested these two companies and proved their value to us as business partners, reaffirming to me that we made good choices in choosing to work with them.
During the last year, we ordered several batches of TC1100s. Some earlier models of this computer were plagued with a fairly serious problem that would crop up from time to time. A large percentage of our systems had this problem and it was one for which we sent out a number of machines for repair, as it was not serviceable by end users. After tracking this, we realized that close to 40% of certain batches exhibited this problem.
I took my concerns about this problem first to Marcus. We had a spreadsheet showing the warranty repairs (as opposed to all repairs, which included the accidental damage covered work) which showed pretty clearly the prevalence of this one problem. Marcus took it from there, communicating with HP, setting up conference calls, and once again dogging this problem admirably. He sacrificed a lot of time on this issue, with no direct remuneration.
HP, while understandably initially reluctant to agree to my initial request (demand might be a better term) for satisfaction, kept a healthy dialogue going on it until we reached an agreeable solution. My request was that they come on site and replace all of the potentially defective parts on all of our machines, whether they had exhibited this problem or not. I knew that the program could not brook such a high failure rate and I was unwilling to risk another year with it. Especially not at this point, as we are now putting machines in the hands of all faculty, many of whom are much more tentative about this whole Tablet PC business than the students are.
I say that HP's initial reaction is understandable, because this is costing them a lot of money. So far, in any given day, a tech has been able to deal with about 7 machines. We have around 80. This is 11 days of a technician, sitting at our site doing nothing else. Each machine has expensive components to be replaced. HP is eating all of these costs. Not many companies would willingly bear all these costs, especially since we aren't ever going to be buying thousands of computers. At peak, we'll probably have slightly more than 300 at any given time.
But this has served to affirm for me that they stand behind their products and that they are committed to the Tablet PC. (In fact, I have enough confidence in them as a company that we are going to replace our Dell servers with HP.)
These are the kind of partners that I want to do business with. They work with and for me, even when they don't always stand to profit in a given instance. By these actions, they will be contributing to the success of our program in real, tangible ways.
As a last aside, some might argue that a problem affecting so many machines should make us look elsewhere, but I don't agree. The TC1100 is a bold and innovative design, unique among Tablet PCs. As if manufacturing problems didn't happen often enough anyway, this model had some new issues to worry about because of its unique design. The machines have been rock-solid otherwise. This particular problem has been fixed in newer systems and I am confident that we won't see issues like that again this year.
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