Multitasking is, odd as it seems, one of the largest debates in the tech industry in 2010. Apple’s new iPad, along with the iPhone and iPod Touch, do not support multitasking except for some select bundled apps. On a phone, this is much less of a limitation, but with the iPad being considered as a computer/laptop/netbook replacement, multitasking is much more of a concern.
Multitasking has been dismissed as a power-user feature that regular consumers would seldom need, but consider my situation today. I’m typing up homework (in Word 2010) from my college website (in Chrome). To do my homework, I’m referring to my textbook ebook (a PDF file open in Adobe Reader) and have needed to look up references online (again, in Chrome). I’ve also got Media Player running in the background shuffling Classical music. Then, to write this post, I fired up Windows Live Writer while everything else was still running. By anyone’s definition, this is multitasking, but is it such an odd scenario? Wouldn’t this be something many students would need to do on a daily basis?
I’m doing all of this on my netbook, which is running Windows 7 Starter with 1Gb of ram and an Atom N450 processor; it cost about 2/3 of an iPad’s entry level price. The performance is perfectly acceptable for all of this. Yet on an iPad, I wouldn’t be able to efficiently do my homework in this way. In fact, the easiest way on the iPad would be to print out my ebook (or have it on another reader device like the Kindle) while typing up my homework in Pages. Sure, I could still play music in the background, but forget shuffling between a word processor, a web browser, and a PDF reader.
Sure, netbooks are underpowered. But they are more capable than most people give them credit for. Intel’s website about Atom processors and netbooks seems to insinuate that they cannot multitask, which is definitely not true. You won’t want to have a 720p video playing at the same time that you’re running Photoshop on a netbook, but for the level of multitasking that most consumers want and need to do, netbooks are definitely up to the job. And the iPad isn’t.
Apple has to see this, so the question is, will the next generation of iPad/iPhone software add multitasking, or will people be forced to simply live with the limitation? Or will the public see this, and stick with netbooks/notebooks for general computing? Only time will tell. But misinformation and claiming that multitasking is only important to prosumers is simply unacceptable.
What situations do you find multitasking important in? Or do you think running only one program at a time is sufficient? Sound off in the comments, and let’s discuss it!
Update: And what a difference 12 hours can make! Apple held its iPhone OS 4 unveiling hours after I wrote this article, with one of the major new features being multitasking support on iPhone 3G, 3GS, and iPad. A couple points here: This update is not coming out until summer for iPhone and fall for iPad, so any early iPad adopters will still have to wait quite a while to utilize this on their device. Additionally, this is still not full multitasking. Only some services will be kept running, and everything else will be paused, so to me it sounds just like the limited multitasking that Windows Phone 7 was announced with (although Microsoft is still promising full multitasking via an update within the next year). I still think my concerns here are valid; the iPad is still not as powerful of a multitasking computer as a netbook. Thoughts?
Time flies when you’re having fun, but it has this bad habit of flying no matter what’s happening. 2010 is already fleeting by, and although I haven’t been writing much here I definitely haven’t stopped writing :). I’ve been writing almost every day at How-to Geek, and here are my latest articles there for Techinch readers (oldest articles first … if you want the absolute latest articles, read on ;) ):
Mobile devices have become the most interesting sector of computing in recent years. The iPhone has brought smartphones to the masses, and now everyone around the world expects their phone to be as fast and capable. Microsoft was an early leader in the mobile devices market with Windows Mobile, which has powered millions of PDAs and phones from numerous manufacturers around the globe. However, innovation lagged in recent years, and newer devices and mobile operating systems made Windows Mobile look stale in comparison. Last year Microsoft released Windows Mobile 6.5 to address some of the problems and update the user interface, but even this was not enough to keep even their own employees from switching to competing mobile platforms, usually the iPhone.
The past two months, however, have entirely turned around the tech industry’s perspective of Microsoft’s mobile platform. In February during the Mobile World Congress, Microsoft unveiled their new Windows Phone 7. Borrowing heavily from the Zune HD’s UI, Windows Phone 7 offers a simple and elegant way to compute and communicate on the go. Then, during the recent Mix’10 conference, Microsoft unveiled more information about Windows Phone 7 and its development ecosystem. This includes a free development kit containing Visual Studio Express for Windows Phone, XNA Game Studio, and a Windows Phone 7 emulator. This means you can run a pre-release version of Windows Phone 7 on your PC right now!
Want to try it out for yourself? Check out my article at How-to Geek about the free Development tools for Windows 7 at:
But, unfortunately, the default emulator doesn’t include all of the features of Windows Phone 7; in fact, it only contains the Internet Explorer Mobile browser, and can run any apps you develop for it. Enterprising developers discovered, however, that the emulator did contain all of the features, but they simply weren’t unlocked. Thanks to developer Dan Ardelean, now we can all try out all of the pre-release features in Windows Phone 7 today! Check it out, and my How-to Geek article about it at:
Playing around with the emulator is fun, but if you’d like to actually get a head-start on developing for the new platform, Microsoft’s got lots of resources for you. Not only the developer tools we just looked at, but how about a free ebook? Microsoft Press is offering a free draft edition of their upcoming “Programming Windows Phone 7 Series” book for download on their blog today! So what are you waiting for? Head over to the blog post and check it out, or just download it directly in PDF or XPS versions along with code samples.
Also, check out the Windows Phone 7 Training Kit from MSDN's Channel 9. It contains step-by-step tutorials on how to get started with your first Windows Phone 7 app. Check it out at the link below:
During this week’s MIX ‘10 conference, Microsoft unveiled a preview version of Internet Explorer 9, the latest in a long line of IE versions dating back to 1995. Although this test version wouldn’t work as your standard main browser, it is still an exciting look at the future of web browsing on Windows. Keep reading for more information and a quick overview of installing and running the Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview.
[box type="note"]Update: Office 2010 is now released, and students can purchase and download it directly from the new Microsoft Store Student Discount page! You can get Office Professional Academic 2010 or Office 2011 for Mac for $99.95, or upgrade to Windows 7 Professional for only $29.99! Check out our new article on how students can Upgrade to Office 2010 and Windows 7 the Cheap and Easy Way.
Sometimes we’ve entered data in a column in Excel, only to realize later that it would be better to have this data in a row, or vise-versa. Here’s a simple trick to convert any row or set of rows into a column, or vise-versa, in Excel.
Do you regularly need to type in multiple languages in Windows? Here we’ll show you the easy way to add and change input languages to your keyboard in XP, Vista, and Windows 7.
Want to try out mobile websites designed for the iPhone and other mobile devices on your PC? Safari 4 for Windows lets you do this easily with their developer tools.
…and staying in touch
Facebook is the most popular way to keep up with your friends and family today, so what better way to stay in touch than to be accessible on Facebook chat throughout the day? Warning: this may not help your productivity ;)
Want to keep in touch with your Facebook friends throughout the day? Here we’ll show you how to easily add Facebook chat to the popular multi-protocol chat client Pidgin.
Just for Fun
All work and no play... Check these out when you’ve got a few minutes to spare :)
Want to take a trip down memory lane with old school DOS games? Check out how to easily run DOS games in modern versions of Windows with D-Fend Reloaded!
Last week we enjoyed looking at Windows 3.1 running in VMware Player on Windows 7. Today, let’s upgrade our 3.1 to 95, and get a look at how most of us remember Windows from the 90’s.
Update: I just noticed that the links I posted were entirely unusable. Sorry about that; they should all be corrected now!
We regularly edit and create documents, images, videos, and more on our computers, but PDFs are the one file format that many people still cannot easily edit or create. Adobe Acrobat, the industry leading PDF solution, is expensive, and most people simply have the free Adobe Reader so they can view, but not edit or create, PDF files. With PDFs being one of the most used files for professional documents, a simple and affordable PDF editor is an increasingly needed thing. Nitro PDF Professional offers such a solution, and at $99 it is much more affordable than Adobe Acrobat Pro.
Last year I reviewed a wide range of free tools from Nitro to create and convert PDF files, ranging from their PrimoPDF creator to the excellent PDF to Word online conversion service. These products are all excellent and highly recommended, and a recent update to PrimoPDF made it an even more valuable PDF creator. But if you want to edit PDF files directly, or create your own rich PDF documents and forms, Nitro PDF may be the best solution for you.
It’s been a busy week between finals at Florida Tech and a major problem with an article I wrote on running XP Mode in Virtual Box, so here’s your chance to catch up my How-to Geek articles if you’ve been waiting for me to post them here.
Outlook:
I wrote two articles about my favorite plugins for Outlook: Forgotten Attachment Detector and the Drop.io plugin.
And then, to continue my series on running XP Mode in extreme and unusual ways, I wrote an article on how to run XP Mode in VirtualBox. Windows XP didn’t appear to activate correctly when users started trying to follow my directions, so we quickly went back to the drawing board. Thankfully, MysticGeek at How-to Geek dug up a great way to still get XP Mode to work in Virtual Box via the VMLite plugin. This integrates XP Mode with Windows 7 very nicely, including showing XP programs directly in your Windows 7 Start menu just like the official XP Mode. Check this method out at Install XP Mode with VirtualBox Using the VMLite Plugin, and you can even still see my original infamous article if you’d like at How To Run XP Mode in VirtualBox on Windows 7 (though remember, you won’t actually be able to activate XP Mode this way).
Books, books, and more books!
Microsoft press has the good habit of giving away free ebooks periodically, and they recently released a new on on their blog for free. This book, Own Your Future: Update Your Skills with Resources and Career Ideas from Microsoft, offers some unique and interesting pointers to make your career more successful in any field. Check out their blog post for more info, and download the book for free in PDF or XPS formats.
One more thing!
The neatest new download of the week was the new Opera 10.50. It brings a sleek Aero UI and great Windows 7 integration to the most popular browser that no one uses (on the desktop anyhow). This new version should help change that; it’s fast, pretty, and easy to use with streamlined menus. But this wasn’t Opera’s only new release of the week; they also released a beta version of Opera Mini 5 for Windows Mobile. Unlike previous versions that ran in Java, this version is a native Windows Mobile browser, includes tabbed browsing, and is amazingly fast. Opera Mini was already my favorite browser on Windows Mobile (Chrome and IE8 tie on the desktop for me :) ), and this just made it even better. Check them both out when you have a chance; you’ll enjoy it!
In between all of my new writing at How-to Geek, I have still been writing some articles for Digital Inspiration. I recently reviewed Manymoon, an exciting project management system that is fully integrated with Google Apps. It works both with the free standard Google accounts, as well as pro Google Apps accounts. Find out more here: Manymoon, an Online Project Management Software for Google Users
Then, I personally started out blogging at WordPress.com, but then recently moved to a self-hosted WordPress.org install with MochaHost. The great thing is, I was able to move all of my old content to this site, and also redirect all of the traffic from my old theoldestof8.wordpress.com domain directly here to www.techinch.com. Check out the article I contributed to at Digital Inspiration for exactly how to do this: How to Migrate your Blog from WordPress.com to a Personal Domain
Would you like to try out Ubuntu (or any other popular distribution of Linux) from the comfort of your Windows 7 (or Vista or XP) desktop? With a quick download of the Ubuntu ISO and VMware Player, you can do this easily. And, you can even run Linux apps side by side with your Windows Apps, and even see their icons in your taskbar! This article is my latest on Virtualization, so check it out on How-To Geek to see how easy it is to run Ubuntu right inside Windows!
