On improving the daily slog through better technology….

Now, Apple has apparently been doing some work around a water-cooled laptop. This is hopefully going somewhere interesting.

I don’t really see the need or have the capacity to install another large box in my office – so I suspect that most new purchases for me and many other people will be laptops.  Problem is, as my main workhorse at the moment is a Dell XPS M1710. Loaded with 4GB of RAM, it’s almost sufficient for my needs.  It’s relatively fast, and has enough RAM to run a VPC if I have to. Mostly, I use the new ‘boot from VHD’ functionality in Windows 7 to choose which OS to run, and have a number of images sitting on VHD.  This allows me to work on any number of OS’s at native performance, while keeping all my docs etc on a separate partition.

The 2 things I would improve in this machine is:

1. An SSD (native PCI-express type like OCZ makes for PCs) which I assume will eventually be available on Expresscard for some ridiculous amount.
2. And a decent cooling solution.

The machine runs hot – way too hot.  Having it on the whole day means I don’t need to have central heating in my office.  Having two of these in an office turns it into a boiler room.  And the noise is just terrible.

So, if Apple (or anyone) actually makes a decent water-cooled laptop that runs cool and silent, I’ll be first in line.

And those Expresscard SSDs – I’ll take 2 !

I keep thinking I complain too much...

I buy a new laptop roughly every two years.  As we don't get a new OS release every two years, there tends to be only one thing that drives me to do this - PERFORMANCE!

I get fundamentally frustrated when applications and OSses don't behave the way they should.  Having to wait a few several seconds on my blazing fast brand new Dell XPS with 2GB of RAM, seems stupid - what did I spend all that money for?

Obviously, there are a number of key culprits to this - primarily  things like Outlook.  But I'm not convinced I can or should blame Outlook for all my problems.  While Outlook may be a resource hog, it's by no means the only culprit.  And I refuse to take the line blaming Microsoft for all the world's software ills, because

1. I run some EXCELLENT Microsoft software on a daily basis.  I'm typing this using Live Writer, and I can honestly say it's one of the frostiest bit of code I've used recently.
2. Most companies make software that annoy me, with Adobe very high on the list :)  Acrobat Reader is like a crash waiting to happen... 
(see the comments in this scoble post)

I spent last night looking at a bit of demo code from Microsoft, showing developers how to implement a WPF client for RSS feeds.  What I found interesting frustrating is that while the layout is really cool, and the app looks beautiful, the behaviour is just plain BAD!  Using the system is non-intuitive, and doesn't lend itself to a great user experience.

This is disappointing as the goal of the demo starter kit is specifically to show how you can create user experiences using WPF that are incrementally better than those you experience in a browser.

The sample does a great job of showing off the excellent layout and screen reading system in WPF, but at the same time does a horrible job of making it usable.

So the question is:

"Does this happen because Microsoft and developers in general doesn't care about user experiences enough?  Is Apple the only company that focuses on this?"

One of the fantastic things about the iPhone is that amazing responsiveness of the touch interface.  Now, how is it wrong of me to expect a more responsiveness from a computer with at least 10 times the processing power and memory?

How can we force developers to take responsiveness into account when developing apps?  Have they all become so used to a massive amount of available memory and processing power that they assume the hardware should solve there performance issues?

That may have turned into a bit of a rant but it truly annoys me.  I'll call this part 1, and follow up examining performance in more detail in a future post.