What Women Want
Good looking. Powerful. Smart. Good personality. Instant on. Endurance.
OK, the stupid headline is a ruse. Sue me. We have serious issues to discuss today. I expect you to sit up straight and pay attention.
That list of traits is what women and men want in connected mobile computing devices.
Out of that list, the one I most lust after is INSTANT ON.
I use an IBM ThinkPad T42. Even when I use Standby or Hibernate, it still takes way way too long to wake up and get something done. This is especially true if I have moved from one spot to another and it has to figure out my connectivity.
That is just plain ugly. IBM tries to determine if I’m on a wired or wireless or no LAN. At the same time ea Verizon application is searching for WiFi as well as the 3G 1X-RTT (or EV-DO, in some geographic areas). It eventually all gets sorted out, but it is quite slow and this delay is frustrating.
If I buy a smaller than laptop connected device, I want instant on, period. I tap a key to open the keyboard or what ever incantation it requires and I want to be up and running on an unsecured WiFi network almost immediately. If there’s no WiFi, I want it to make my 3G connection available (it’s OK for it to ask “Connect to 3G?” or some such).
When I open my two year old (and still a fine machine) Palm Tungsten C, it is just there and I can do stuff. Unfortunately, the Tungsten C has a lousy WiFi, which I no longer use.