my feelings on tablets

Friday I had the combination annoying and gratifying experience of helping a coworker out and then utterly killing my faint thoughts toward looking into an iPad or work (currently my Kindle is doing double duty to hold the design documents when I script tests; even having two monitors no longer cuts it when I have to be able to script on one screen, use the second screen to hold my original plan for a script, and need a third to look the original requirements. Dude, we need like, four screens at this point; there are so many changes in workflow that I have to actually create entire cases from scratch so I can see how the hell this is supposed to work.

Note: if you live in Texas and may be applying for benefits or know someone who is, I will be posting a tutorial on how to use this way of submitting your application. As a tester, it's driving me nuts, but for clients, I think this will eventually turn out to be a hugely good thing. What I don't know is how to do that without the upping the risk of someone eventually noticing via google that seperis sounds like Certain Employee With Opinions. I'll get back to that after this release, along with some further updates on welfare policy and what you need to know. Keep in mind when I do post, the information is Texas specific, but policy is federally mandated, so there is crossover in different states.

Anyway, one of my coworkers has an iPad and a Toshiba both, and wanted to transfer her music to the Toshiba and was getting absolutely nowhere. She brought them to work for me to do after some coaxing, because like most people who have to deal with competing OS's, in her heart she thought the entire thing was because she was just, you know, tech challenged in a bad way. This is a program tester by the way; I always want to coax my coworkers into a seminar titled "It Really Isn't You; It Is That Fucked Up" with a side of "No, Really, This Is Because They Designed It to Make It Harder for You to Do This So You Will Buy Their Products and All Companies Do This". I am still working on this seminar.

Teh only Apple product I use is iTunes, for various lazy-related reasons, so I'd almost forgotten that iTunes purpose when combined with objects (iPod, iPad, iPhone) is to drive me nuts. I explained about computer authorization and DRM and did a search to see what she had that was locked (nothing, thank God) and the waited patiently while iTunes took an hour to complete a synch operation that takes me ten minutes with a direct sd card move, and while doing that, I stared at the gorgeous iPad and realized that there was no possible way that it wouldn't send me into conniptions trying to use it with my spreadsheets and docs that I need to update now; when I want to move a song, I want to just move it.

I'm not any happier with my experience with the Toshiba tablet; my Kindle and my phone both use android and I broke them to my will as far as getting root access and setting my organization up even if the limits can be--frustrating, but working with someone else's tech means I can't spend ten minutes getting the apps I want to make life simple, and it was a revelation all over again that dealing with my server's ubuntu in various forms comes in stupidly handy at the weirdest times, and how much I depend, literally, on workarounds I don't even think about anymore. Moving music of all things--legally goddamn bought in the iTunes store music free of DRM--should not have been this kind of production that took a computer authorization, a full synch that took forever, and then finally the sd card transfer.

I really want a tablet now after using my Kindle to hold my work docs and finding it a lifesaver to be able to flip through the pages and search and even edit directly there and carry it around with me to meetings--it's hitting me how stupidly useful this would be for reading design documents and screenshots and being able to make notes directly during meetings instead of having to jot things down and hope to God I can read my own handwriting later--but the iPad and the Toshiba both did not encourage me to think this will be a painless process on par with using my home laptop regularly. The only one that seems like it might meet my requirements is the Motorola Galaxy, but now I'm suspicious that the ability to do more complex work--and what I want to eventually do is use it so when our design documents update, I can add te revisions in without losing my notes--also means it will be more stupidly complex work to make them do something that should be very simple.

I am feeling technologically cynical, I think.