Today I have done techies things

I did techie things, as is my want, the cursing was phenomenal, M$ has a lot to answer for, as do some software companies who live in the tech dark ages of the 1990's

This day and age you would think that they would cater for at the very least XP, but Noooo! I have had the privilege of installing an application into a student computing lab, an application which they tell you needs to be installed and run as Administrator, even have the UAC disabled, and they class this as a Windows 7 compatible application.. Oh and when they say administrator they mean the Administrator account not the group or a user with admin privileges... grrrr!

Still, all in all I'm off for three days now. Next week I'll probably go insane, but then to anyone who knows me on Twitter that's not news :-)

I must now RDP into a server at work to set some permissions on a labs computers so that the lackeys can get on with some work while I'm way :-)

Bliss...

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

iPad the unwrapping.

When I got back home with the iPad after chomping at the bit all afternoon as I was at work, I had to make dinner and eat before unpacking the new baby in my life. So first thing I did was make the wife guilty by just arranging on the coffee table the neatly packaged bits :-)



After dinner was served, in which I made a pig of myself trying to stuff all three courses into my mouth at once to get it over with in record time, I moved over to the coffee table where the "iPad" awaited in it's box.
It stood there like a monolith from 2001, beckoning me.



The unpacking began.



Nicely was it wrapped in plastic it was...



Of course the rest of the items in the packaging is minimal, data sync cable and plug for charging.



The usual instruction stuff, not that there are many useful things in there, mainly pointers to the Apple site for various add ons like mobile me. Oh and the usual Apple stickers. (I once put one of those on a shredder :)



Ooh it's so sleek :-D



Let's get ready to connect the little beauty...



The only place to connect anything on the iPad, except the earphone Jack at the top of the unit.



The first screen at switch on. Sorry about the flash.



Okay, I was given a microsim to try out with the iPad at the store, so I proceeded tp go through the instructions for installing it using the supplied tool to release the microsim receptacle.



Unfortunately as you can see from this, the sim was not a microsim. It had no hope in hell of fitting.



But here we are now, two weeks on and and a very useful tool it has become, a last snapshot of the screen as it is of this moment :)




Hope you've enjoyed this unwrapping of a 21st Century iconic technology which I'm sure will be as every bit as successful as the iPhone.

I will give a list and comments on the useful apps I have found so far, most of them freebies, in the next blog, be patient ; D

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

iPad

I have just recently purchased an iPad, very stupidly I was of the assumption that I could just stroll into an Apple Store on a Saturday and just pick one up. Of course this was not the case, I was very gently told “no sir, you will have to put in an order". It would appear that the iPad is still a hot little number for Apple.

Well I duly put my name down and waited. Not too long though to my delight, for on the Tuesday, there it was, a little e-mail from Apple telling me my iPad was in stock and awaiting my collection, with the added line that it would only be kept for me till the next day. Well I must say, come lunchtime that day i was out of work and on the underground winging my way to the Apple store and nobody was going to get between me and my iPad.

I entered the store rushed to one of the counters and said “I believe you have an iPad reserved for me?”, though in all honesty I was thinking “you boy! get my iPad pronto, I’ll have no dilly dallying you hear?”

While the young gentleman went in search of the haloed iPad i was about to purchase, I was directed upstairs, the accessories section of the store, the place where you very quickly add around another £110 worth to the already pricey item your about to pay for, you think to yourself, “I’d better get a cover for this shiny new thing in my life, Oh and what's that? this Mobile me thingy here is £15 off it you buy it with the iPad” well its all good after all, it’ll be a useful thing to have, forgetting of course that this will be a yearly subscription.

So, you hand over the credit card and pay full whack, hoping that the credit card company are not going to stop the transaction or query it because you never use it for that amount of dosh.it all go’s smoothly thank god, until of course your on your way back down stairs to the ground floor of the store and your mobile phone go’s off. This is the credit card company getting in touch with you to confirm the transaction you just did for the overly large amount. Of course your not using an iPhone but its a touch screen phone, the automated voice on the other end asks you to press any key to continue… But you know how it is, can you find the combination to release the touch keypad? No of course not, so you the stairs fighting with your phone in the middle of the Apple Store looking like a right idiot, and the young man who served you has rushed off, especially as he now knows you work in in IT but seem incapable of using a phone.

Well I am the proud owner of WiFi/3g 65Gb model (top of the range to you lackeys out there) and I’m just going through the features and really exploring its potential.

One other thing, I was given an O2 package with a PAYG microsim, but in opening it up I found a normal sim which had absolutely no chance of fitting, so currently I have no 3g access, but the WiFi is great both at home and at work, at home I’m taking advantage of may wireless N access point and getting super fast connection.

I’ll sign off now and follow up with some pics soon I promise :)