Finally! Toshiba is the first to build a good, mobile laptop!!!

I don't typically write about laptops, but this one had me smiling! For years I've been looking for a portable laptop with enough juice to be a desktop replacement without weighing 8.5 lbs or being so small that typing an e-mail gave me writers cramps.

I've always been a fan of Toshiba laptops. Now they've solidified me as a fan!

The Toshiba Protege R500 finally got it right! It's only 3/4" thick.....WITH THE DVD DRIVE IN IT!!!!! Others have gone this thin but then you have to carry your optical drive separately. It weights only 2.4 lbs and the battery adds only .4 lbs! Oh, and here's the real kicker.......The batter life is 12.5 HOURS!!! That means that I don't have to carry an extra 1lb battery to watch movies and work on the plane when I travel to NY!

It's also got a 12.1" widescreen, transreflective screen that won't wash out when you're poolside at the hotel working and is LED backlit. It's also built durable in case you drop it and it has built in wi-fi.

The downside? No stereo speakers and no dial-up modem. But, if you dont have an aircard, Bose headphones and an i-Pod, then you ain't a member of the road warrior's club anyway!!!

If you dig jets.....

When Boeing launched the 787, they lined up every 7 series model end to end for the first time in history. I'll let the picture speak for itself.

You bought the phone, now protect your kids!

I ran across a great software for parents the other day called Radar.

Here's the concept:

Kids won't report random phone calls, even if they're repetetive. Radar monitors incoming numbers and sends parents a text alert for any call received on the phone which comes from a number which is NOT on the call list approved by the parents. The parents can then go online and look at a record of calls, their number and duration and full text messages. Soon, it will also be able to show picture messages as well. The service costs $10 per month.

Unfortunately, the service is only available on Blackberries and other smart phones (which a kid will NOT usually have), but they say that soon it will be available on the Motorola RAZR and through Verizon.

I'm rooting for this company. This is a big problem and I regularly check my kids' phones to look at their incoming numbers and text messages. We parents need help to keep our kids safe!

One of my favorite applications for my cell phone used to be a local traffic map that I used on my Palm Treo. Unfortunately, I upgraded my phone to the Motorola Q and couldn't find the application for that phone.

However, TrafficGuage is back. They've recently announced a wider device support, service in 16 major U.S. cities and widgets that allow you go see traffic on your desktop or to integrate with Google Maps.

The service is a little clunky still, but they should work that out quickly. Check it out at http://www.trafficguage.com and give it a try.

Should I look at Clearwire?

Clearwire made a big bang a few months ago, raising $1B in their IPO. The stock has been hovering around the offering price since then, but made a little jump today when they announced that they raised another $1B in debt. So, should you use Clearwire?

The commercials on Clearwire are extremely misleading. They talk as if the service is similar to a Verizon or Sprint aircard, but with the throughput of cable or DSL. The truth is that they have not yet had the FCC approve their laptop card, so in order to take the service anywhere the user must take their notebook-sized modem and it's power cord with them.

The network coverage is spotty (the Billions raised are going to building out towers just like any other cellular company has to do) and so it'll work ok in major metropolitan areas, but not everywhere and there will be dead spots. Also, the throughput maxes out at 1.5 mbps. Both DSL and cable operate at higher speeds (the slowest at 2-3 times faster). One of the biggest giveaways is that when you look at their website they always compare themselves to dial-up.

I don't think that the company stands a chance of going bankrupt any time soon, so you don't need to worry about that. If you've ever read "Into Thin Air" which is the story of the building of McCaw Cellular (which became AT&T Wirelss-then Cingular-then AT&T Wireless AGAIN) you'll realize that Craig McCaw is a master of taking a company that's held together by bandaids, making it look like Atlantis and selling it to a deep pocketed savior for billions. I'm not sure if I'd buy the stock right now due to the revenue vs. debt ratios and the cash flow numbers, but this company will be around for a while.

One thing I would NOT do is put your voice service on it. This is not just Clearwire, but any IP voice provider including cable. Maybe it's the survivalist in me, but in addition to IP voice quality not being up to my standards, the immunity of regular old telco voice service to power outages is a big plus for me.

Why haven't Seattle Real Estate values depreciated??

According to a real estate trade group, pending home sales droped 3.5% in May, compared to the revious month. This places the National Association of Realtors' Index at its lowest point since September 2001 ( which was the start of the current real estate boom). But in Seattle, home values continue to rise. How can that be?

First, let's define a market. People look at the stock market and assume that when they want to sell, they can. This is true for large caps, but not for small stocks and microcaps. Even with large caps, the prices dymanically adjust as sellers MUST sell and buyers adjust their prices down in lots. (ok, I'll take 20k shares at this price, 10k at this lower price, etc.) Prices quickly adjust down to the market value.

In a real estate market, prices are not that dynamic. Few sellers MUST sell, so if they don't get the price they want they just pull their houses off of the market. Summer is typically when the people who MUST sell put their houses on the market. They use the comparables to price it and when they don't get the price they want, they slowly lower the price. Then some buyer comes in and "low-balls" them and they have to take it. Now, the home that the owner thought was worth $800k gets sold for $700k and that new comparable now becomes the market price for comparable homes.

Voila! NOW we have a down market.

Due to the population growth Seattle is an anomoly as far as real estate markets go. The population is growing and there is almost nowhere left to build, so almost everything sells. The area is also flush with cash, so rather than selling property in a land-locked area for less than the owners perceived value they just keep the house as an investment property until such time as the market improves. This creates artificial price support for the market.

It will be interesting to see the median sale values for Seattle at the end of the summer.

AT&T vs. Verizon

So, one of the knocks in my earlier post on the iPhone was network speeds on AT&T. I know that many of you don't use data on your phones, but I live and die by it. I'm on the road a ton and I need to read and respond to e-mail, read attached contracts on my phone, read other blogs and (most importantly) demonstrate video applications on my phone. So, I'm pretty sensitive to network speeds.

Verizon just announced a wholesale upgrade of their EV-DO (Evolution Data Optimize) network to 600k bps (600 thousand bits per second) to 1.4m bps (1.5 thousand bits per second) downstream (downloaded) and 500k bps to 800 bps upstream (uploading). (Downloading is always faster because 90% of the traffic is being downloaded from the network. Uploading is usually only for e-mail attachments)

Compare that to AT&T who's EDGE network (Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution) only operates at 70k bps to 135k bps downstream.

Although AT&T just announced a deal to acquire Dobson Communications (owner of the Cellular One brand, which old McCaw Cellular users are familiar with) to give it better rural coverage, I spend my time in major markets and have never suffered from connectivity, even when I went out to call on Dobson in Oklahoma City! In fact, I just drove to Spokane, WA from Seattle for Hoopfest over the weekend and (while another parent drove) I was using my Verizon aircard and working on the Internet for more than half of the drive!

iPhone review of an antagonist

Everyone who knows that I'm in the wireless industry asks me, "So, are you going to get an iPhone?" To which I respond resoundingly, "Hell, NO!!!"

My reasons are basic. First, I don't like Cingular's (excuse me, the new AT&T)network. I travel to NY, LA and Las Vegas too much and they drop tons of calls in those markets. Plus, if you're there for a technology show it can be hard to get a connection. But, more importantly, I've learned not to buy version 1.0 of ANYTHING! This phone was a month from launch and all I heard was what was going to be in the first software upgrade. And lastly, I've had a touch screen phone before. They're very challenging to use, you can't use them if you're driving and if you stuff your phone in your pocket (like me) there's all kinds of things that go on.

But, my engineer got one and I had a chance to play with it. It's got some pretty cool features and it's smaller than I thought it would be, although it's pretty heavy and the battery runs hot. It's a great novelty, but I wouldn't want it for my every day phone. However, I'll mute some of my criticism of the phone. It's extremely versatile and some of the things I hate about touch screens were addressed in the user interface design.

If you want a feature list of all of the things it does, I'll let you look at the other million reviews on the net. But, I will say this: every device does something really well. The ones that try to do everything do nothing really well. This phone brings Apple ingenuity to your palm. That means a huge "wow" factor. However, much of what this phone does will drive you nuts in time. But, if you have a tolerance for cerain limitations in order to get something cool and versatile, this phone will make you happy.

I give Apple and A- for the phone. If this were version two, it would be a B, but for a rev 1.0 device, this is a solid A-!