Now, CNN is reporting that the TSA has cleared the new MacBook Air so you don’t have to take it out of your bag for screening:

Apple may wish to avoid comparisons of the MacBook Air to similarly compact but underpowered netbooks. However, like netbooks, Apple’s new laptop is “smaller than a standard-size laptop,” meaning it can stay in a bag, said TSA spokesman Nicholas Kimball.

When I still had my Eee PCs I always had to remove them from my bag when going through security and they were a lot smaller than the new Macbook Air. Granted, they were thicker and that probably affected the x-ray photos, but it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out at the airport checkpoints.

Slick.

I’m not going to bother with the specs, or a general overview of the iPad here. It’s been out for about 8 months and you can certainly read/find all the technical details you want fairly easily (just typing ‘ipad’ into Google yields “about 123,000,000 results”). Instead, I’ll talk about how I’ve been using it, the apps I’ve installed, and my overall impressions.

We (the IT department) got iPads at work since we’re evaluating it as a business tool and we’ll also need to support it once we start rolling it out to our end users. We’ve been using the iPhone for access to corporate e-mail, calendar, and contacts, since late last year so the form factor of the iPad seems like the next logical step for our travelling users, eliminating the need for them to carry a laptop, power brick, etc.

The battery life is pretty amazing … I guess the lack of a power-hogging 3G radio really helps. Unfortunately the iPad requires more power to charge, so you can’t really charge it via a USB connection. Well, it will charge (very slowly) over USB, but only when the screen is off. That being said, I don’t have to charge this thing daily like I do with my iPhone … it can go a few days without plugging in, which is good news for the traveller trying to find a power outlet in a crowded airport because their laptop is dead or dying.

Of course, these Wi-Fi only models also mean you can’t access the internet everywhere like you can with the iPhone. But with Wi-Fi as ubiquitous as it is now-a-days (airports, coffee shops, malls, restaurants, etc.) this really hasn’t been a big issue for me. If I’m in the car and need a data connection for some reason, I still have my iPhone.

The larger screen means a larger keyboard which is much easier to type on than the iPhone, especially in landscape mode. I’m not talking touch-typing here, but I’m definitely faster (and more accurate) on the iPad keyboard.

The iPad is still running the older iOS 3.2.2 which lacks some of the features I have grown used to on my iPhone (like multi-tasking and folders), but iOS 4.2 is supposed to be released next month and will bring those features to the iPad for the first time.

So … after one month with the iPad, which apps am I (still) using?

Work

Citrix Receiver (free) – using Citrix I can connect to our published corporate apps (like Microsoft Office). Using Windows apps on an iOS device takes some getting used to since you don’t have a mouse to work with (how do you click and drag?). I wouldn’t want to have to do any serious work in these apps for a long period of time, but in a pinch, they work. This is one place where a Windows laptop still holds the advantage.

Wyse PocketCloud ($14.99) – there are a lot of free remote desktop apps out there, but most of them have the same problem as I described above: poor (or confusing) mouse support. Wyse’s solution has a really slick virtual mouse interface that makes it easy to click on what you meant to click on, right-click, scroll, etc. It’s on the high-end of the pricing scale for an iPad app at $15 but so far well worth it for being able to manage my servers without having to worry I’m accidentally going to tap on something I didn’t mean to.

iSSH ($9.99) – I had already purchased this app when I first got my iPhone and luckily it’s a universal one designed for both devices so I didn’t have to purchase a separate ”HD” version. I use iSSH to connect to my Linux server at home. PocketCloud supports VNC connections, but not tunneled over SSH so I still need iSSH. It doesn’t have the cool virtual mouse of PocketCloud either, but normally when I’m working with my Ubuntu box I’m using the command-line anyway.

Note Taker HD ($4.99) – I wanted to try going paperless at work, using my iPad instead of my traditional composition notebooks for notes, so I purchased a capacative stylus and started looking at note-taking apps. After trying a few free ones and reading about others like Penultimate and smartNote, I tried the lite iPhone version of  Note Taker. I really liked what I saw so I purchased the iPad version, Note Taker HD. Using your finger (or stylus) you can easily write notes and draw diagrams with multiple pen sizes, and colors, including highlighters. The “zoom edit” feature allows you to write in a larger window and have your handwriting shrunk down to look better. It’s remarkably easy to use and I’ve already used it to take notes in a few meetings. You can export your notes as an image or PDF and then e-mail them if you want. You can tag your notes for categorization, but I wish there was a better search function and I wish you could organize the individual pages into virtual notebooks.

Evernote (free) – I’ve been using Evernote since I switched to the iPhone from my Treo and needed a place to store the random stuff I used to keep in ListPro on my old Treo. With clients for just about every platform, Evernote is a great way to be able to access various documents from my iPhone, iPad, or PC. One cool feature that I’ve started trying to use more is the automatic text recognition for images you add to Evernote: it will scan images and index any text it finds so you can search on it later. Take a photo of a document with your phone, for example, and Evernote will index it. I’ve tried exporting my handwritten notes from Note Taker HD into Evernote with limited success, but that’s mostly due to my poor handwriting (exacerbated by trying to write with a stylus on the iPad).

Goodreader ($1.99) – I picked this app up during a sale for 99 cents. Goodreader is basically a souped up file viewer mainly for large PDF and text files, although it can also view MS Office documents, photos and videos, HTML docs, etc. In addition to viewing locally stored documents on the iPad (through iTunes file sharing or a WiFi connection), Goodreader also supports Dropbox, MobileMe, Google Docs, and other online file storage services. I was unable to get it to connect to my Jungledisk share, however (probably because it’s encrypted).

Play

Ok, so I don’t use my iPad exclusively for work!

Yes, almost all iPhone games will work on the iPad in zoomed (2x) mode but they just don’t look as good. Thus, I had to repurchase the HD versions of my favorite iPhone games, Angry Birds HD ($4.99) and Azkend HD ($4.99). I also put a few of my other favorite iPhone games on my iPad, like Words with Friends (free or $2.99), Chess with Friends (free or $2.99), Sword & Poker 2 ($3.99), and Frotz (free).

“TRON Legacy” is only two months away, so why not indulge in some multi-player light cycle action with Lightbike 2? There’s also Disney’s official TRON Legacy app, but it’s really a big advertisement for the movie (although with a decent multi-player tank game in it) and is not HD.

Last month as I was taking fuzzy photos of Jupiter through my telescope, I purchased Star Walk ($2.99), as seen on the iPad TV commercials. This amazing and beautiful app lets you literally point your iPad at the sky to identify heavenly bodies. Or, use the search feature to look up a star, constellation, etc. and it will guide you which way to look. I particularly like the all-red mode so it doesn’t ruin your night-vision.

Reading

I do a lot of reading on my iPhone, so I immediately put Stanza (free) on my iPad along with my e-book library. I definitely don’t need a Kindle now! Yes, the screen is a bit reflective and hard to see in bright sunlight but reading e-books in Stanza is great (I haven’t even bothered with iBooks). I just wish there was a way to synchronize my place in the book between my iPhone and iPad (similar to what the Kindle app (free) does).

Occasionally I will also like to catch up on my RSS feeds or the latest news. For those purposes I am using Feeddler (free) which synchronizes with my Google Reader account, and USA Today (free), complete with the crossword puzzle! There is clearly no shortage of news-gathering apps in the App Store but these two are all I need for now.

Media

Since my iPad only has 16gb of storage I don’t even bother synchronizing my iTunes music library with it (I still have my 32gb iPhone for that) but I did install Pandora Radio (free) in case I do have a need for music (although I haven’t used it yet). But why bother with audio at all? The iPad has a gorgeous 9.7″ screen … it’s the perfect portable video device!

You can obviously sync all the same iTunes video content (video podcasts, purchases/rentals, etc.) to the iPad that you can with the iPhone, but what if you want to play those other formats like AVI, DivX, or MKV? Enter the iPad version of VLC (free). Just use iTunes file sharing to copy your video files to your iPad for playback. The app can’t take advantage (yet) of the iPad’s hardware acceleration, so some playback could be choppy, but it’s a good first effort at playing non-iTunes video content on your device.

I use my Netflix subscription primarily for the Watch Instantly feature on my TiVos, but you can also use the Netflix app (free) to watch shows in your Instant Queue on your iPad. Of course, this is streaming so you need an active internet connection for it to work … no watching Netflix on the plane (unless your flight has WiFi).

In Conclusion

Wow, the iPad is a really cool device and after using it for a month I can see why it’s the fastest selling electronics device ever. That being said, can it really replace my work laptop? I think I can do almost everything I would need to do remotely on the iPad but I haven’t had one of those “emergency” situations yet to really put that to the test. Time will tell for me but not everyone thinks the iPad can replace the notebook in corporate situations.

I will say, though, that the iPad has me wondering if I still want/need my EeePC 900A netbook. Other than using the Eee to try out the latest netbook Linux distros and the fact that it has a physical keyboard (which I’m not great typing on anyway), the iPad has a larger screen (9.7″ vs. 8.9″), more storage (16gb vs 4gb), is thinner (but weighs about the same) and pretty much does everything I use the Eee for. I have a feeling I might not own the Eee for much longer.

So that’s my initial iPad wrap-up. Got any other must-have/must-try apps for me, or other iPad advice, tips, or tricks? Leave me a comment!

In addition to my little sister celebrating her 30th birthday (10 + 10 + 10 = 30, much cooler than my binary birthdays!) lots of other stuff is going on today, mainly:

• the answer to life, the universe, and everything!
• the new GreenPois0n jailbreak for iOS 4.1 was supposed to come out but was delayed due to the release of LimeRa1n yesterday (which apparently works on all iOS devices, including the iPad and Apple TV)
• the Tampa Bay Rays won Game 4 of the ALDS against the Texas Rangers, staying alive and forcing a Game 5 back here in St. Pete on Tuesday
• the release of Ubuntu Linux 10.10, Maverick Meerkat (I’ve already got the netbook edition running on my EeePC 900A but haven’t really played with it much yet. I’ll be upgrading my server later today or tomorrow).

I call this box a server because it hosts this blog, a small Gallery site, some home media applications for my TiVos, and is running all the time, but I don’t need a server-class machine. My past Linux machines have traditionally been older desktops, even a laptop! So the latest crop of nettops seemed like an ideal solution.

After researching products like the Asus EeeBox, the MSI WindBox, and even the Dell Studio Hybrid I decided on the Acer Aspire Revo 3610. This little box packs in Intel’s dual-core Atom N330  CPU (1.60GHz), 2gb of RAM, nVidia’s ION graphics chipset, and a 160gb hard drive. Peripherals and storage can be connected via the 6 USB ports (one of which is used for the included wireless keyboard a mouse), the eSATA connector, and the SD card reader, and network connectivity includes a gigabit network connection and B/G/N wireless. The Revo has no optical drive, but experience with my EeePCs has made me comfortable with booting/installing from other removable media like USB thumb drives, so no biggie there. Also, since I’m not using the Revo as an HTPC I won’t be using the HDMI or digital audio (SPDIF) connections, but they’re there. The Revo comes with Windows 7 Home Premium pre-installed (although I wish Acer sold a cheaper version without it). If you’re going to use it as an HTPC it comes with a mounting plate so you can attach it right to the back of your HDTV.

My plan was always to put the latest version of Ubuntu on the box. Warranties be damned! After unpacking my new Revo, before even turning it on, I immediately cracked it open, thinking I would make an image backup of Windows 7 just in case (since it comes without a rescue disc). Unfortunately, even with my lack of fear for warranty-voiding, removing the hard drive involved more steps than I was willing to take. So rather than wiping the drive and starting clean, I booted Windows 7, did some initial setup, and then shrunk the primary partition so I could dual-boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu. Considering the current server only had a 30gb hard drive in it (and most of my media is on external NASes), having a 60gb partition for Ubuntu was acceptable to me.

Installing Lucid Lynx didn’t go as smoothly as I anticipated, however. The 64-bit version (imaged onto a 2gb USB stick) wouldn’t even boot correctly and the 32-bit version would start and then complain it couldn’t find the CD-ROM. After figuring out how to manually boot the installer from the command-line, I found this blog post that helped me get through the rest of my installation issues. Shortly, I had my Revo set up as a 64-bit Linux server!

It took me a few days to get everything transferred from the old server to the Revo and then get everything set up and configured the way I wanted. So far I am very impressed with the Revo. It’s very quiet, even when both cores are busy (i.e., folding a work unit and transcoding a video file), and my UPS utilization dropped from 29% to 10%! That’s a serious cut in power consumption. I have noticed a slight performance decrease over the old Pentium 4 Dell, but nothing major and it was expected. It’s well worth the trade-off for the reduced noise and power usage, though!

Out with the old, in with the new!

I did a clean install (from a USB thumb drive) onto my sandbox EeePC 4G Surf that was running an older build of Chrome. Ubuntu now calls this smaller build the UNE (netbook edition) instead of the UNR (netbook remix). It looks basically the same as before, except for the new purplish color scheme.

On my EeePC 900A, I did an in-place upgrade install via the Update Manager:

I had to free up about 200mb on the 900A in order to download the upgrade since the 4gb SSD in that netbook was too full, but once I did that, the rest of the upgrade was smooth and painless.

On my server, I did the normal command-line upgrade I’ve used for the past few releases. Having done this quite a few times now I have excellent notes (if I do say so myself) so it’s relatively easy to put back my customizations and settings where necessary. I did run into two post-upgrade problems, however. First, I was getting blank pages from Gallery and seeing segmentation faults in the Apache error log. I was able to work around this by switching from the ‘mysqli’ driver to the ‘mysqlt’ setting. Next, nut would no longer recognize my USB-connected UPS but I found this bug on Launchpad and was able to download a patch to get it working again.

You login using your Google/Gmail credentials, since this is an OS for the cloud (of course, I had to login with the default ‘facepunch’ from Hexxeh’s FAQ first so I could join the netbook to my wireless network before it could authenticate my Google login).

As you can see from the login screen in my video above, it’s not well suited for the smaller 7″ screen on my EeePC. The settings dialog, for instance, goes off the bottom of the screen and the usual Alt+mouse to drag a window doesn’t seem to work. Also, since this was installed as an image, the SSD drive looks like just a 1gb drive so I’m missing out on the other 3gb for storage. Graphics performance isn’t that great either.

Other than that, I’ve successfully turned my netbook into a almost fully functional Ubuntu machine into a device that only runs a browser. Hmmm. I guess this is the simplicity Google is shooting for, but it’s almost too simple for me.

Oh, and while I’m talking about Google … why won’t they let me put my iGoogle tabs back on top of the page instead of on the left? It’s a ridiculous waste of space, and it’s even worse on the smaller screen of my EeePC.

I also grabbed the release version of the Netbook Remix since I had installed the beta on my EeePC earlier last month. I wasn’t able to get it to install, however: the system booted just fine from the USB drive where I extracted the ISO, but the installer would crash almost immediately with the following error: “Cannot mount /dev/loop1 on /cow.” I found this thread on the EeeUser Forums that seemed to think it was a problem using Ubuntu’s own USB creator utility to “burn” the image onto the thumb drive. So I used unetbootin to re-image the drive and that fixed the problem! Strange that Ubuntu’s own utility would have a problem like that.

I haven’t had a lot of time to play/tweak, but so far all the important stuff (wireless, Fn keys, sound, etc.) is working.

Jolicloud transforms your netbook into a sophisticated web device that taps into the cloud to expand your computing possibilities. The web already hosts a significant part of our lives: mails, photos, videos, and friends are already somewhere online. Jolicloud was built to make the computer and web part of the same experience.

I’ve been playing around with Jolicloud, which touts itself as an “internet operating system,” on my EeePC 4G Surf for the past few days. Here’s a brief review.

Installing Jolicloud on your netbook is pretty straightforward: you download the ISO image and then use their USB Creator tool to “burn” that image onto the install media of your choice (ex., a USB thumb drive or SD card). I did have some issues with the USB Creator not recognizing my 1gb thumb drive (running under Windows 7) so I ended up using unetbootin instead (it looks like a newer version of the USB Creator has since been released which might address that problem, plus there are the older manual instructions). Next, you boot your netbook from that thumb drive, click through a few setup screens, and before you know it you’re logging into your fresh new Linux distro. There’s a good overview of the installation process (including screenshots) here.

Jolicloud is based on Ubuntu 9.04 and uses the default Netbook Remix interface:

Fire up the Jolicloud application, however, and the “internet operating system” portion kicks in:

From here you can easily install other applications, most of which are “web apps” like Gmail, Google Reader, Twitter, Facebook, etc. What’s a little strange to me is that when you “install” one of these apps (like Gmail), you get an icon back on the netbook remix desktop to launch it (notice the xkcd icon on my first screenshot above). All it’s really doing is opening a web browser directly to that particular site, but Jolicloud (via Mozilla’s Prism) makes it look like an actual app instead of a web page. Thus, you won’t see the normal Firefox menu or toolbars, no browser favorites, etc. I’d rather just use Firefox directly with multiple tabs open, but I can see how this approach might make a netbook more user-friendly for the non-techie type (not to mention freeing up some valuable screen real estate on smaller netbooks).

I even managed to get Hulu running, which was impressive considering the problems I’ve had with Flash-based video on my Eee in the past. To be honest, though, I had never tried the Hulu site on my Eee before. At any rate, I watched the pilot episode of “Alf” on my tiny 7″ screen without any problems. Not exactly a 10-foot interface.

Jolicloud has a big focus on social networking, so you can “follow” other Jolicloud users and see updates on what they’ve installed or are doing with OS:

Personally, I’m not into the whole social networking culture (i.e., I don’t have a Facebook page and don’t use Twitter) so this part of Jolicloud’s interface doesn’t really appeal to me. I don’t want people “following” me or seeing what apps I’ve installed, but I can’t find any privacy settings that allow me to turn that stuff off, either.

Which brings me to documentation: Jolicloud is still in private alpha testing but there seems to be a lack of any documentation, and there’s no depth to the wiki (which seems to only be one page). For support you’re just directed to Twitter, Facebook, IRC, or their GetSatisfaction page. That being said, when I sent an e-mail to feedback@jolicloud.com about my trouble with the USB Creator, I did get an actual response relatively quickly.

So it still has a little ways to go, but Jolicloud is shaping up to be a great alternative cloud operating system for your netbook.

Tonight I got an invite to the alpha test of Jolicloud, another Ubuntu-based operating system targeted for netbooks. It’s pretty slick looking so I’m looking forward to trying it out. I’ve got the ISO downloaded and will post again once I have the chance to install it on my Eee and play around a bit.

Also, I haven’t watched it yet, but today’s episode of Tekzilla (#101) has a segment on Jolicloud.