Tretakoff Musings

The Minnesota Star Tribune has a clever article on " Time To Ditch These 10 Tech Devices ." On the surface, it seems another one of those "Oh, let's marvel at the way we used to do things" article that media loves to use as a nostalgia point. Point of fact, I usually am the first person to argue that dedicated purpose devices are obsolete when you buy them: I have always consolidated around my handheld device as much as possible. However, this article irked me, as many of the conclusions it drew were wrong, and may of the reasons it cited were flat out bizarre. Allow me to walk through it with you. The Flip Cam.  Agreed, this device is indeed obsolete, as smartphones have subsumed this. However, the simplicity and ease of use is ideal for kids, and given that you no longer need to be concerned with preserving the delicacy of the electronics, it's perfect for budding filmmakers. Extreme sports participants, with their obsession of filming their tri

I've been hearing and reading a lot about this year being the death of the Netbook , and the rise of the Ultrabook and tablet. To say I'm dismayed is an understatement. Why? Several reasons: As we move more of our data and efforts into the cloud, high powered computing devices become even less relevant. Netbooks are slightly underpowered compared to Ultrabooks, so switching to Ultrabooks is counter intuitive. We say "tablets," but we really mean "iPads." Apologies to the dozens of Android tablets, but those are hardly a blip in the market, compared to Apple's purpose built artful device. But the iPad is not quite there: you still need it to talk to a PC for some functions, and it's interface, for all of its ease of use, is still too simple for real business use. A great niche device, surely, but not yet a PC replacement. Once Windows 8 hits, with it's native tablet interface, we may be nearly ready. Case in point: I started this post on