Quick review: Lenovo ThinkPad Helix

If you think the MacBook Air is the pinnacle of ultrabook design and that the iPad is likewise for tablets, then my friend, you surely have been sucked into the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field.

At the end of April I wrote a brief review of the Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet 2, which is a good Windows 8 based tablet, and something any buyer should look at before buying any other tablet they intend for serious work purposes. Now I get to take a look at the ThinkPad Helix.

Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet 2: First Impressions (updated 3-May)

Although it had been rumoured for some time beforehand, the first real details about the Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet 2 came last August when detailed specs were leaked. Having the device in hand, I can say that for what it is, it doesn’t disappoint (on the whole). That said, there are some minor disappointments with the unit that I’ve been supplied. Firstly let me say that the unit has been supplied to me as a loan from a supplier for evaluation within a corporate environment, not a review unit directly from Lenovo. Although I requested all the extras, the unit I’ve been loaned is the base model: no stylus/digitiser, no docking station, no Bluetooth keyboard.

Why you should respond to Windows 8

Over on his Clear & Simple blog, my buddy Steve Fogg has a great post, “7 Great Church Websites That Have Responsive Design.” It’s a great post with some good examples of some church websites, both local and overseas, that use responsive design to great effect.

How I Instagram on Windows Phone

As an ex-iPhone user one of the things I miss on my Lumia 800 is Instagram. But this doesn’t mean I’m completely blocked from using the service.

There are a number of Instagram viewing apps available in the Windows Phone Store. My top three would probably be:

1. Metro.am
2. Metrogram
3. InstaCam

The main problem with all of these is that the Instagram API doesn’t allow for uploading, only viewing. Bummer. Uploading is only available via the official Instagram app, and there isn’t one for Windows Phone (yet). There have long been rumours of it happening (especially since the Android app was released), but now that Windows Phone 8 is out, they’ll probably skip Windows Phone 7 leaving all of us gen 1 and gen 2 device owners in the dark.

So, what to do?

2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The new Boeing 787 Dreamliner can carry about 250 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,500 times in 2012. If it were a Dreamliner, it would take about 6 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Australian Surface Pricing

In the early hours of this morning (Australian time), Microsoft announced it much anticipated Surface pricing and opened pre-orders. There has been a lot of excitement around Surface since Microsoft announced it back in June, so when there was news that pricing would be released, many of us techos waited with baited breath.

One thing that we’ve (begrudgingly) gotten used to here in Australia, is what we’ve come to know as the “Australia Tax”. That being, despite a very strong Australian Dollar, tech companies love to charge us more for our gadgets (surely it costs about the same, or even less, to ship containers from China to Australian as it does to the US). As of writing, 1AUD can buy 1.0266USD, so surely that should mean that we should pay less (in dollar for dollar terms) for a Surface in Australia than in the US? Well, no apparently.

Here’s a quick price breakdown for the base unit
(Surface for Windows RT, 32GB, no Touch Cover)

Store	Local Price	Converted Price
US	499USD	486.07AUD
Australia	559AUD	573.87USD

So, by my reckoning we’re paying $72.93 more just because we live in Australia.

Anyway, it’s not all bad news. Back in June, Microsoft said that the surface would be competitively priced against other tablets on the market (no second guess for what “other tablets” they were talking about). In fact it stacks up quite nicely. Take a look… http://sdrv.ms/SZc6qm

Healer

About 12 years ago, I left my old church. The church where I had grown up. There church where I had served as a Sunday School teacher (briefly). The church where I served as the audio guy (for close to an eternity). The church where I had edited our weekly new bulletin. There church where I had been a youth leader. The church where I had been a deacon. I left. I needed a change. So I left.

I had good intentions of finding a new church. I had even worked out a methodology as to how I would go about it. Visiting and revisiting a number of churches and ranking them according to a number of factors. Well that was the intention anyway. Sundays came and went, and week after week I didn’t go anywhere. My problem is that I hadn’t researched the start times so I had no idea what time to go (these were before the day of every church having a website).

One Sunday I woke up with a cold. A proper cold, not a bit of runny nose. I felt terrible. Truly truly terrible. Every cell in my body was under siege and, as any man with a man-cold will tell you, I just wanted my body to quickly succumb to the virus so that I could eternally rest-in-peace. It was that Sunday, when I woke, that I said to myself “today is the day, I must go to church”. There was one church who’s starting time I knew, they were about 15mins drive away and I had about 15mins to get there. I didn’t receive miraculous healing from my man-cold that day, but something deep inside me felt right. That was 12 years ago, and aside from holidays (and other special circumstances), I’ve been there pretty much every Sunday since.

This week I have the flu, along with my wife. So today (Sunday) with various body parts aching and sore, I was there at church. As we sung our worship songs, something happened. No, not miraculous healing, but as I focused on God, I no longer felt the effects of my disease. It was very appropriate that one of todays songs was Healer (Hillsong)