By Jeffrey the Barak

I should begin by stating that today is April 8th, 2009. This is important whenever writing about technology, or as in this case, ranting about technology, because by the time you read this, things may well have changed.

I am not a computer journalist, I don’t take advertising revenue from Microsoft or Apple or Norton, and I am no programmer. But I do use computers and I know what I like and do not like.

So this rant is partly an observation, partly a wish list, and partly about 1973 Buick Electra converted to run on battery power. (More on that later).

Ranting about computers, the big kind.

I wrestled with Windows from early 3.0 until late in the XP era, before I became so busy with actual work that I decided it was high time to stop messing around with dialog boxes and virus scans and abandon Microsoft so I could get some bloody work done.

My solution was to switch to Mac. Now I’m not one of these guys who says Apples are perfect and all other fruits are rubbish, because that is an exaggeration, but I will say that I no longer work for the computer. The computer now works for me.

I remain open-minded about where computing may go in the future, but as people who have downgraded to “netbooks” will tell you, there is a future in online application use and assuming being connected continues to become more ubiquitous, that may be our direction.

Ranting about computers, the small kind.

I got into palm-top or handheld computing in the 1990s with a Palm III and dabbled in Windows tablets and then gave it all up when my eyesight deteriorated, only to jump back in when my wife bought me the first iPhone.

I still find Internet use to be a pain in the eye on the iPhone, but I think that on one’s palm is the best place to work in many situations.

But I always wanted to fill the gap between a notebook / laptop computer and a handheld device such as a smart phone. My first attempt at doing so was to buy an Acer tablet computer, but I found the operating system, the hardware and the screen to be very close to completely unusable. It was slow enough to make you scream, awkward to use, and hard to see in almost any light, but only for an hour then the batteries ran down.

I held out hope for Palm’s “Folio Mobile Companion” invention in 2007 only to see them backtrack and cancel the release. And rumors continue to abound about Apple’s plans for something bigger than an iPhone and smaller than a Macbook, with an alternative operating system.

And this is the key, and why the tablet failed for me, something roughly the same size and weight might succeed if it does not try to be a computer. That is: no Windows, no OS X, no full blown Linux, but something more like the iPhone operating system. We have to recognize that a small whatever-you-call-it is not a computer. This is why tablets were awful and also why these new “netbooks” don’t really work well with the Windows OS installed. They come with XP because it’s only about $25 now, but it’s not right for a little ten inch thing.

People who run simple Linux shells to get them online to do stuff get much more satisfaction from their netbooks, without the squinting. It was the same when Palm had two versions of the Trio smart phone, one with Windows Mobile, the big seller, and one with the last version of the Palm OS. The Windows one was terrible because you really need a big screen to work well in Windows. The Palm OS one was less terrible. The little tiny keyboard was never as efficient as Graffiti, if you took the time to learn Graffiti.

The iPhone reminded me that even someone with bad eyes and big fingers can still work in the hand if the OS and also the input method are clever enough, (they are). And as long as there’s an Internet connection, then there is room for a lightweight device that is larger than a pocketable mobile telephone.

Another thing netbooks have done is throw the escalation of processing power and application complication into reverse. This has coincided with the end of the megapixel arms race in digital cameras, and the end of the economic boom, that never should have been a boom in the first place, due to it’s source in hype and debt.

If applications can be usable over the wi-fi, then they will be better if they are less complicated, not more so, so this new small way of thinking can potentially move Microsoft’s fortunes into the hands of Google, Yahoo! etc. Anyone who develops good web-based applications.

Revolutions still to come in display and input technology will add strength to this movement. The tortoise may beat the hare in computing.

So about that electric Buick Electra, oh sorry, I’m out of time.