Everyone has probably seen photos of if, so I won’t worry about posting any photos. Just search Google for CR-48 and you’ll find a lot of photos.

Where does one start on a review like this? I guess I’ll start with the bad things. First off, the trackpad downright sucks. But I have always felt that way about trackpads. You can be moving your finger down the trackpad and the cursor just stops, then it will jump down 2-3″ all of a sudden. And my other pet peeve about trackpads is having it active awhile typing. You are bound to tap it with the palm of your hand and there goes your cursor off to some other part of the screen. But I fixed that by turning off “tap to click”. The other “bad” that, at least for me, is that I can’t activate the Verizon 3G. It shows I have signal, but never just sets on the “waiting for activation” screen and never actually activates. I have an email in with a “Google Ninja” for help with that. Hopefully I’ll hear back from them soon and can get it fixed. And then start using 3G when I am not in WiFi coverage.

Otherwise? I think this unit rocks. It has limited uses, that is for sure. You won’t be playing Left For Dead on it or editing your home videos. But anything web-related is game for this machine. There are the basics such as Gmail, Documents and Spreadsheets using Google Docs. Reading news with Google Reader. Keeping track of your notes with Evernote. The list goes on and on. Flash does work on the CR-48 and it doesn’t seem as bad as he initial reports said it was. But Adobe did confirm the problem and they are “working on it”. You can even read books with Google’s new book reader. I am hoping for a Kindle app to soon appear in the Web Store

Some things I have not been able to do yet include accessing my files in my dropbox. That is not a big deal as most of my important files are in Google Docs, but it would still be nice to be able to open a document or spreadsheet from Dropbox into Google Docs or something. So really, all the “usefulness” of the CR-48 really depends on if you are in the cloud or not. If you already make use of Gmail, Google Docs, Google Reader, Google Notebook, etc. Then this type of cloudtop would be great. If not, then it would only really be useful for browsing the web.

Hardware wise, this seems like a fairly capable machine. It’s a 1.66 Atom processor I think. It has a 16GB SSD drive in it. Wifi and 3G support (I hope I get get 3G working). It has 1 USB port, and the only thing I have tried in it is a mouse and the mouse worked fine, although it was a bit sensitive. There is a VGA port that, as I have read, is an “or” only port. If you plug in an external monitor, the internal monitor shuts off. The keyboard is fantastic! I really like this mac like keyboard (and the all lower case letters on the keys is nice too), but there is not END or HOME key, bummer.

So far I have not really run into many “bugs”. I have made a few reports on usability, but it has been pretty stable since I started using it. I have not seen it crash once. But I might not be working it as hard as others have. I am going to try to start using Google Talk more instead of Yahoo so that I can “chat” on this machine.

Google plans are to keep improving the OS and software in this machine (which is automagically updated whenever they do release an update). So I can only see things getting better. I think I heard that this type of laptop would be available early next year, but I doubt it will be similar to this machine. It’ll be branded with fancy colors and screens and graphics. But I really like the flat black matte finished machine. It’s not a “look at me” type of machine, it’s a “get down to work” type of machine,

7:00 am – Bought tickets for Area Marching Band Competition at the McHi Stadium. Then went to Vote. Met Dad at the house and visited for a bit. Post Office run. Now going to enjoy a Whataburger Breakfast (BOB). Then off to te stadium to watch a few bands, McHi at 9:30, Edinburg at 10:15. Lots of other bands throughout the day from all over South Texas.

I’ve wanted to do this for awhile and I haven’t been using my secondary PC much lately, so I figured I’d set it up. I am going to hook it up directly to our 37″ Sharp Aquos Flat Panel and also to our stereo in the living room. I won’t be using it for “TV Tuning/PVR” as we have DirecTV DVR already for that. And we can watch Youtube and Netflex on our BlueRay DVD (a bit slow, but it works). So, I mainly want to setup the PC for Hulu and Music. Plus we will be able to have a PC in the living room to surf the internet or play some simple games on the TV.

One other nice thing will be remote control. I’ll have several different versions of VNC installed. One will be for the iPad to have full remote control of the desktop. And I’ll have other versions to just mimic keyboard keys, so I can use my iPhone as a remote as well.

It’ll be a fun project and then once it is finished, we’ll see if we actually use it. Although I have been using Hulu on my laptop to watch old shows like “Lost in Space” or “The Adams Family”. It’ll be good for that, as watching it on my laptop kinda sucks.

Somewhere down the road I might add a huge hard drive to it so we can rip some of the family videos and keep them on the PC ready to go at any time. And what ever other stuff we want to store on it.

I’ll have another update when we are complete.

What’s next? Well having a beer for one, but I digress . What is next with the project? There are 3 more aspects to the kitchen project as a whole. One aspect is another project we will do ourselves. That will be removing the wallpaper and painting the walls (white). There is not a lot of wall space in the kitchen, so that won’t be a big deal. The other two aspects are going to be done by someone else! That is the new flooring and the new counter tops. Those will come as the cash flow allows.

Many moons ago, I had my own early concept of cloud storage, it was called a floppy diskette. Back then I had a single floppy disk that I kept several text files on. My todos, my schedule, any notes on projects I was working on, etc. This floppy followed me everywhere and when I was at a computer at home or at work, the floppy was in the the floppy drive on that computer. So I had access to my files mostly anywhere (anyplace there was a computer).

Soon after that I graduated to PDAs. I started with a Palm III and that easily kept track of my schedule and my todos. It was good for keeping notes and such, but it was awhile before I could edit/view spreadsheets and documents. Later on, as the color models came out, you could carry around pictures and later even really crappy looking videos! The iPhone and the iPad has improved all those mobile aspects tremendously, but home and office computers have been kinda left out of the loop

Enter Dropbox. I started using Dropbox just for simple file sharing between the office and home. If I had a file at the office I wanted at home, I would copy it to my Dropbox and then when I got home, the file was on my computer at home, very convenient. Then one day I was thinking about how I could use Dropbox better. What if I could put “My Documents” from my home PC in Dropbox so I could have access to those files from work, excellent idea! Wait! Then I could put my Data-Com and Pizza Hut “My Documents” in the Dropbox as well! What else could I do with it! I paid the $99.99/year for 50GB of storage and started moving stuff around. And, if I need a file when I am not at my own computer, I can use the web to get to my Dropbox and get any file I need. Oh and there is an app for the iPhone and iPad that will allow me to access my Dropbox from my mobile devices!

Currently I have all my three different “My Documents” folders in my dropbox, accessible on all my computers. I have also mapped the “My Documents” folder on each machine to it’s appropriate “My Documents” folder in my Dropbox. So if I open My Documents at home, I get my personal documents, if I open it at work I get my Pizza Hut documents. And they are all stored (and backed up!) in Dropbox.

Another use for it is to keep data files for applications stored in the Dropbox. You can edit the program settings to use the path to the Dropbox folder and your are in business. My OneNote notebooks are all “based” in my Dropbox, so all my computers access the same OneNote data files. This could be used for any program that stores data in the same area. Quicken, Quickbooks, etc.

Since I was still not near using all the space in my Dropbox, I started copying the “Shared” folders that I have on my machine at home. These folders consist of anything that is shared on our home network. Photos, music, all our church related files and media. Pretty much anything that me or Laura would want to access is in the “shared” folder. So I moved that into the Dropbox as well. Now it is still available on our home network, but i also have access to it from work, from my iPhone and from my iPad. All my MP3s, Photos, documents, notes, etc are all accessible from virtually anywhere. And if I happen to change a Word document on my iPad this afternoon, within minutes it will be updated on all my desktop machines and it will update my laptop when I turn it on and connect it to the internet.

What about my Schedule and Todos? They are still “cloud” based as well. I use the default iPhone/iPad calendar application, but it is synced up with Google Calendar where I keep multitudes of different calendars for different things. For Todo’s I use an application on the iPhone/Ipad called “Todo” (wow!) which syncs with toodledo.com so I have access to my Todo’s on the go and on my computers (web browser). As for my “notes”, I have started using Evernote to keep track of notes. Using either the web to access notes or the Evernote application on my computers, and then the Evernote app for the iPad/iPhone while I am on the go. Again, if I need to access my Calendar, Todos or notes when I am on someone else’s computer that is possible too, via the web interfaces.

What is the next step! I am trying to figure out what to do with my Photos. They are stored in my Dropbox, but there are better services for storing photos such as PicasaWeb or Flickr. Both seem to be great places to store and share your photos, but I can’t decide which one to use. I do like the fact that Picasa is Google, which I already use a lot. My idea is to upload all our photos to one of these services. This would give us even nicer access to our all photos when we are mobile and it would give us a backup of the photos as well. And both sites offer “private” folders so not all our photos would be accessible to the public, only the folders we want public.

The other “cloud” service I am debating on is for live updating of my documents and spreadsheets. Google Docs is good and I put a good amount of stuff on there. But is it ready for me to use exclusively? I am not sure on that part yet. There is some things I still like to use Office for. But what about the upcoming “Office Online“? Will it be enough to urge me totally into the cloud for my documents and spreadsheets? Only time will tell. I am slowly using Google Docs for all my basic needs. Any complicated project (document with embedded spreadsheets, etc) I still do in Office. But maybe soon that will be available online as well.

In summary, I think the best thing about using the cloud for things like this is the backup. If all my computers break and all the data is lost, I still have it in the cloud. But what about if the cloud crashes? That is another dilemma. My Dropbox, Calendars, and Todos are also stored in my other machines, so those will be recoverable. But if I put all my documents and spreadsheets online, would I lose them all if the cloud crashes? Google Docs offers a way to download all your docs, zipped up as either Open Office or MS Office file types. That is good as long as you remember to do it occasionally.

So, I hope this has maybe provided you with some insight on “the Cloud” and maybe gave you some ideas yourself on how to streamline your computing needs. I know I am loving Dropbox and it’s many uses, along with the other cloud based apps I am using. If the internet is destroyed, I would be severely crippled

Weekend one is complete, we got off to a roaring start fizzled out in the middle, but had a fairly good finish. Saturday morning, we took a trip to Lowe’s to get a few supplies for the project, and then started removing all the cabinet doors and draws from the kitchen. Once they were in the garage with all the hardware removed, we proceeded to clean them all off with a TSP substitute. We have some real TSP, but all the primers said to use a substitute (environment I guess). We managed to get all the door and drawers done and then kinda petered out the rest of the day. We did manage to clean out 3 sets of cabinets, but we could have done more.

On Sunday, Laura ended up with a migraine, so she just rested most of the day. I finished up cleaning out the cabinets and prepping the outer part of the cabinets for priming. We also got rid of a good amount of stuff that we don’t use anymore, which gave us a lot more room in our cabinets.

Next weekend we will sand down any rough spots or other trouble spots and then apply some Killz primer to prep the surface for painting. This week we will be going to Lowe’s to pick out some new hardware (hinges and handles). More loads of fun next weekend. But we know our limits now and the rest of work probably won’t be as hard (except for the sanding).

The picture at left is how the kitchen is currently. We are still using the cabinets, just without doors for now. Probably another 3 weekends and we’ll be done (we hope). Then we can start looking at tile and counter tops.

Snipping Tool is the first little gem. Before Windows 7 I used Paint Shop Pro for my screen capturing, or in a pinch I would use “Prt Scrn” and then paste into an image editing program. But, with Snipping Tool it makes it all too easy.

When I first ran Snipping Tool, I did a search and when Windows showed it, I right clicked and “Pinned” to start menu. I knew it would be a handy program and it is nice to have it ready on the start menu at all times. To find it, just go to your start menu, and search for Snipping Tool. It should show up. To Pin it to your start menu, right click on it and select “Pin to Start Menu” (you can also pin it to the taskbar).

When you are in need of a screen shot, just start it up, press on the down arrow next to “New” and you will be presented with the type of screen shot you want. You can select from Free from, Rectangular, Window and Full Screen. Then it can easily be saved as a JPG, GIF or PNG.

The next nifty little program is called “Problem Steps Recorder”. Have you ever needed to show someone how to do something on a computer, but due to distance or time schedules, that wasn’t the easiest thing to do? What if you could record your steps, and then send them a zip file that contains all the info they need to do the processes, step by step? Nice huh?

It is not easily found in Windows 7, but the easiest way to launch it is to type ‘PSR’ in the search box and press enter. Then you can “Start Record”, when you are done press “Stop Record” and it will ask you for the name of the zip file you wish to save everything too. Contained in that zip file is a “MHT” file, which I don’t really know what it is, but Internet Explorer opens it up. And you have a time line with screen shots of what all was done, like the image below (click on image for larger version).

This could be handy for reporting problems, showing others how to do something, or just a way to remind yourself how to do something for tasks you only do occasionally.

The team this year definitely deserved a high ranking in the state. I am not sure if they were #1, like they stayed for the last few months of the season. But they were definitely in the top ten. And I think they would have continued after this weekend if a few of the choices were different, but I won’t play backseat baseball coach. Coach Pompa lead this team to an amazing season and without his guidance they would not have made it this far.

Last year they only made it to the Bi-District playoffs and lost there to Eagle Pass. This year they made it to the Regional Semifinals – the Sweet Sixteen. They started off the post season taking two games from Laredo Alexander (5-3, 4-1) in the Bi-District game. Next up they played Weslaco, for the Area title,  taking both early games there as well (12-1, 7-0). In the Regional Quarterfinals they played Brownsville Lopez, showing no mercy and taking it in 2 games (7-1, 2-0). And in the Regional Semi’s, it looked like it was going to be another good showing. Alexis Garza threw a 2-hitter shutout in the first game to win 6-0 over San Antonio Churchill. But day two would be a different story. After two very exciting games (which was very welcome to some of us McHi fans, as some games were starting to get a bit boring) SA Churchill took the Region Semi title beating the Bulldogs 5-3 and 5-4 with the last game going into extra innings after a 4-4 tie in the 7th.

We had a great time following their season this year a well as going to the JV games for Zachary. Matthew is graduating Saturday, so he is done with High School Baseball. We still have two years of watching Zach play ball, and maybe some college after that for both of them. Time to put the foldup chairs in storage until next year.