Why am I saying these things? Recently, our amazingly cool, smart, educated, and well spoken President cancelled “Drug War” operations against medical marijuana stores. Los Angeles superstar Police Chief William Bratton who famously cleaned up New York City crime and was brought to LA to do the same, has stated that Obama’s actions are stupid. Bratton loudly proclaimed that Marijuana is a “gateway” drug. You, sir, are an ass.

I’ve never seen a single study or any statistical information indicating that everyone who smokes pot (ever, mind you) always does harder drugs. The concept is ludicrous. The idea that some dude who has never smoked pot before then takes a drag of a joint is instantly transformed into a hardcore drug addict, shooting heroine into his veins in some dank, rundown ghetto (back and to the left… back and to the left… back and to the left…) is simply mind boggling naive.

This is merely anecdotal information, but I know dozens of people who still smoke and have never touched anything aside from alcohol. A number of them won’t even smoke cigarettes! This isn’t an anomaly. This doesn’t represent a small segment of society. This is the reality of what marijuana is. To see pot as a so-called “gateway” drug is to say that every single person who uses marijuana for medical purposes is going to become a government sanctioned junkie. Feh.

The pot, also known in organic product circles as Hemp, is a hugely useful plant. It can be used to make clothing, ropes, and other fiber-based products and a huge range of other things which I don’t know about. My daughter, who can’t have any dairy of any kind drinks Hemp milk! Why are these things possible if pot is so bad? Hemp is extremely easy to grow, will grow in most climates and conditions, and can be sewn and reaped numerous times a year, making it a plentiful source of renewable goods.

Yet now, down in Mexico, we see the fruits of our drug war labors. Thousands of people have been murdered by drug cartels fighting with the Mexican army just over our border, with some of the ultra violence spilling over into US border communities. Many billions of dollars worth of drugs seized by drug war zealots every year is pot. Not heroine, cocaine, or any other hard core drug. DEA officials spend millions of our tax dollars every year to find and eradicate pot farms throughout the US.

Why do we do this? There’s the far left answer which says that the Religious Right coerced the Republicans, through Mrs. Reagan (remember Just Say No?) to push a complete, unfiltered war on drugs on her husband in order to satisfy a faith-driven agenda. The far right leaning answer is likely that drugs erode the moral fabric of our society, driving us ever closer to the brink of the hellish abyss from whence satan spat his bile which morphed into drugs, but I don’t know for sure since I’m a Democrat.

Regardless of the reasons, we blow billions of tax payer dollars every year on this ridculous war on drugs to mostly combat a weed which makes people silly and get the munchies. Now, come to think of it, that would be a fantastic stimulus package. Just allow everyone to go to a medical marijuana facility and purchase up to 12 oz. of pot. Once they smoke some of it, they’ll get the munchies which will cause them to go out and seek food, thereby stimulating the economy by spending!

So, my personal challenge to you, Bill Bratton, is to prove to me with real data that pot is a gateway drug and that people can’t help but seek out hard drugs once they’ve tasted the pots. Deal?

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When Vista was announced, it was reveled that Microsoft’s Windows team was yanking features (including WinFS, their new filesystem baby), and then its system requirements, I knew we were in for a rocky road with Microsoft’s obsession with making Windows more Mac-like. I was far from wrong. Vista has turned out to be Microsoft’s least liked OS ever (even less popular than Windows Me, though not nearly as hated as BOB).

Microsoft even stooped to tricking people into liking Vista by showing them Mojave, a tweaked version of Vista. Now, if they’re willing to modify the system to make all references to Vista become Mojave instead, what else were they willing to change… but I digress. I reported here that I would not be upgrading, and for some time I didn’t, but since Microsoft had sent me a press kit with a copy of Vista Ultimate, I couldn’t resist for long.

My fears, however, were well founded, and even on my powerhouse MacBook Pro, the best rated laptop (not Mac laptop, but laptop overall. If you don’t believe me, check it out in PC World Magazine) for running Windows Vista, I was disappointed. I had stability issues, speed problems, application crashes, random errors, and just general lack of cohesiveness, even after upgrading to Vista SP1. So, I removed Vista and reinstalled XP with SP2 back into my Boot Camp partition. I was done with Windows Vista.

But then… along came Windows 7. Microsoft had been telling us that it had been working on Windows 7. Now, my conspiracy theory explanation is that Microsoft determined that they were not going to finish Windows 7 in time to release anywhere near their announced date and so they were going to have a hard time getting rid of Windows XP the longer people used it. Its at the time, I believe, that they plucked a few concepts from their target OS and crafted a version of Windows Server 2008 with the UI elements from the upcoming Windows 7 to cobble together Vista.

Of course, I could be completely wrong. Interestingly, Vista’s release did quell the dissent which was pelting the intarwebs. It didn’t take long, though, for the issues to start cropping up and people to begin complaning. The complaints from all corners of the computing world that it seemingly pushed Microsoft to announce Windows 7 early. They opened beta testing to more developers, and word started leaking out that, while it looked like Vista, it didn’t work like it. The errors were gone, the UI pains were gone or modified to work better, the underlying core was far more efficient, and it all took less resources to do the same thing Vista had so much trouble with.

When Microsoft released Windows 7 to general beta, I hopped on over to my resource and got a copy. I did not, however, want to install it on my MacBook Pro. I already have a nearly year old install of XP SP2 over there, keep it up to date, and play my Windows games over there. Sure, I use Steam, but I’d had to back everything up and it would be a hassle. My wife just stepped on the Averatec AIO, de-tailing the mouse and gouging the screen, so that was out, so my eyes fell to the Averatec Buddy netbook which came with the AIO. I burned the installer DVD (x86, if you’re interested) image to a disc, plugged in my LG external USB DVD burner, and fired it up.

Total install was absolutely painless. It even archived the XP install into the ../windows.old directory and created a boot loader entry for it. I had previously installed Wubi’s Xubuntu, and that boot entry was retained as well. I should note for details sake that I’ve not booted either, removed them from the boot.ini file and deleted them. I wanted to focus on Windows 7 and nothing else. For posterity, Xubuntu 8.10 worked fantastically well, though I was unable to get the wireless module to compile correctly and was unable to test the webcam. Of course, XFce is a fantastic window manager, but its not resource intensive.

That’s good, too, since the Averatec Buddy netbook sports a 1.6GHz Atom CPU, 1GB of RAM, a 160GB drive, a 10″ 1024×600 display, an integrated webcam, wi-fi and Ethernet connectivity, and SD card slot and an anemic 3-cell 2200 mAh battery pack. Its really no different than just about any other netbook out there and its a repro of the MSI Wind series. From what I can tell, it can even take the replacement batteries designed for the MSI Wind. With less than two hours of battery life, getting a large 9 or 12 cell pack should be a priority. I also wish it had integrated Bluetooth, but you get what you get.

Installation of Windows 7 took approximately one hour, maybe a little less. The process is generally the same as installing Vista, but is cleaner. That may be my imagination. Setup was straightforward, though it wouldn’t accept my key until I entered it correctly (yeah, I’m a dork). W7 intalled drivers for video (Intel GMA950), audio, and Ethernet (everything else is Realtek except the webcam) but was unable to install drivers for the wi-fi adapter, SD card reader, and Buffalo webcam. Installation of drivers spec’ed for Vista was easy, though.

There are a number of improvements to the entire system. I’m not going to get into details in this article. I’ll save that for a full review when it actually ships. I’ve experienced it when Microsoft makes last minute changes to a product after the Beta phase has been passed, so I don’t want to miss anything here. RIght off the bat, though, Microsoft makes it clear that they knew they made mistakes with the Vista interface, so they’ve made nice changes which make it more usable. The first thing you will notice is the intergration of the Quicklaunch buttons, the Start Menu pinning feature, and the list of running tasks all into one neat, clean, tidy, and functional icon.

The taskbar also works slightly differently. You’ll note that the entire Start button fits all the way into the taskbar. This makes the pinned icons or icons from active applications larger and, therefore, easier to see. You can change this behavior by making the icons small (then the Start button protrudes again), add the title, or show all buttons for all windows, just like the old system. The new visual identification system, however, just works better. Its amazing that its taken so many years for Microsoft to get this. Apple finally got it when Mac OS X 10.0 shipped in 2000 and introduced the dock. Linux got it years earlier with various window managers.

The second thing you notice is that everything seems to run faster and more efficiently. One drawback is having to use Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft’s unfortunate choice for a direction for their web browser. IE7 was bad enough, but it could be tolerated. IE8 is just crap. Like most products Microsoft created based on the successes of others (like Firefox), they have taken what is good from them and created overly complicated and unecessarily obtuse versions. Don’t look to IE8′s add-ons to be anything even vaguely like Firefox’s plugins. I installed one for Skype into both Firefox and IE8, and where the former works just fine, the latter still won’t start, and there’s no clear way to get add-ons to start. Feh.

The third thing I noticed was how theming and interface tweaking has changed. Its mostly the same way as it was in Vista, but they’ve added some important changes. For one, you can now select any number of wallpaper images and arbitrarily decide when they change. Aero also apparently requires far less resources to work right. Linux distributions have proven that transparencies can be done easily on low power systems for years (I don’t count it when the console app shows the wallpaper but not the windows which are underneath… That’s just silly). Aero would not run on a MacBook (pre-unibody) in Vista, but will run on an underpowered netbook in Windows 7. Aero isn’t just some silly eye candy, either. There are subtle little behaviors which Aero can perform which improve readability and object identification.

For software, I promptly installed Firefox for web, Thunderbird for email, OpenOffice 3.0 for productivity, and, for the first time ever, Digsby for IM and social networking. All installations worked perfectly and there were no hiccups. Since I was getting the latest versions of them for installation I didn’t need to do any patching. I also went into Windows Update out of habit and gave that a shot, only to get an error. Oddly, two days later it started getting updates on its own. I don’t know why it happened, but it did. There’s been a long history of Windows fixing itself while giving no indications as to how or why. Maybe it was because I rebooted. Overall, everything I installed works just fine. I also installed Skype 4.0 beta and it works perfectly as well.

SIDEBAR: I’m disappointed and pleased with Digsby at the same time. While its very functional and has a lot of great features, it tries to trick you into installing no less than SIX freaking spyware/cashware/crapware titles onto your machine. You can opt out of each one, but its not a no-brainer. TIP: click the Decline button for everything after the first page where its deactivated (you have to install Digsby). I’d rather donate money to the project. -TCR

Working on a small 1024×600 display isn’t hard, either. Windows 7 has some new features which deal with this (or I didn’t notice them in Vista since I never installed it on a netbook). When you drag a window to the top of the display, it automatically fullscreens it. It will also move dialogs so that the buttons are exposed. They also added a permanent Show Desktop button to the far right of the taskbar. Once I had sussed all of that out, I then installed a few widgets. At first, I thought that they just made the widget bar invisible, but then I added more widgets than will fit, and it showed up in the middle of the screen. That’s when I realized you can place widgets anywhere on the display.

I haven’t tested enterprise networking, directory integration, VPN connectivity, or any of the other elements which made working with Vista a pain in the ass, but most of the crap that Vista dished out seems to have been rectified in Windows 7. Of course, its still running on NTFS and there was no sign on WinFS. I think that Microsoft may be on track to fix the problems they created from whole cloth with Vista, but I don’t think there will be a way to fix the growth Apple has made into their territory, and that’s a good thing. Microsoft needs to do a lot of growing up. It will have to innovate in order to remain relevant. Windows 7 is just a start.

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Apple has reached a point where they are now the defacto name of cool in the technical space. Apple has a cachet which Microsoft never had and it looks like Apple is now trying to capitalize on that. The simple truth is that cool doesn’t carry, and Apple will have to fundamentally modify its strategy to continue to grow. Its become clear that Steve may have figured out that no matter how many moves of the chess pieces he orchestrates, there is no longer anything new Apple can do that will have the Zing Factor of the iPhone.

They’ve captured the laptop market, the mobile media player market, the music market, the mobile phone market, and enough of the desktop market to make them very happy, and they’re watching that marketshare grow consistently. Anything they do now will be a derivation of something they’ve already done and people will necessarily be disappointed. This, I believe, is why Apple has been migrating away from the event-driven announcements over the past few years. Apple also had to have noticed that shares of Apple stock drop after every keynote.

I’m pretty sure that Steve knows that Apple rises and falls on his perceived failings and fortunes, and that’s not good to the ongoing fortunes of a huge multinational. Apple needs to become a brand again and right now its Apple is Steve Jobs. Mr. Jobs own mortality had to play a role in his views on how Apple should appear to the world. Apple is now distancing itself from its fanbase and will, in the next year or so, become something akin to Microsoft.

This will actually help Apple to grow as the lifestyle brand it has been forging itself into, something Microsoft has never been able to get a handle on. The people who purchase Apple goods now don’t do so out of brand loyalty or because they are phanboiz. They buy because it is popular and it works. This was the image Steve Jobs has been crafting over the last decade. He started with the iMac then the new PowerBooks then Mac OS X then the iPod and so on.

If Apple is going to move forward, gain more marketshare, and be a powerhouse from this point on it needs to behave differently. Will this piss off the phanboiz? Sure. Will it upset the loyalists? Some. Will it cement Apple’s role in the future of lifestyle computing? Without a single doubt. Apple has created a brand image for itself which works on all levels of a persons needs from the technological standpoint. They have made themselves as necessary as shoes, and unlike Microsoft’s lumpy pennyloafers these shoes are nice and comfortable.

That brand image doesn’t have a picture of Steve Jobs in it. Think back and try to find any piece of advertising material aimed at the general consumer in the last decade which has included Steve Jobs in it. My bet is you won’t find any. I’m also going to bet that Apple will return to MacWorld soon, maybe even next year, but they won’t do the keynote.

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• iBclean – a complete set of toiletries including the iFoof, iBrush, iPit, iPick, and iWipe systems. All devices feature a specialized version of Mac OS X and have accelerometers for position and action detection functions.
• AppleVHS – a special version of the AppleTV deck which supports playback and upcoding of VHS video cassettes.
• iPlunge – This bathroom tool sports an ergonomic handle, a 4200 mAh LiIon battery pack, and the optional iScrub toilet brush. The iPlunge can root out 150 gallons a minute and store 4,000 songs.
• iChair – There is little known about this product as Apple refuses to comment on unannounced products, but from what The Dojo iTeam can tell, it emits a Jobs Field which causes people within range to have absolute faith in Apple products. It also has adjustable height and lumbar support.
• iGuy/iGal – These complementary products offer companionship, download support, Apple’s new iHug technology, storage for 25,000 to 100,000 songs, and can operate for 12 hours before requiring a charge. You can add the optional iPerambulate system which was developed in conjunction with iRobot and adds Roomba functionality.
• iGuess – This Apple-shaped device predicts the future. Just pick it up, give it a shake to activate the accelerometer driven start function, and ask it a question. Turn it over for the answer and be in the know at any time.

That should do it. If any of these products are actually announced, I can easily say I didn’t have any insider information. I just used my iGuess. <WINK>

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This is not your standard desktop PC. It is, in reality, a netbook’s guts stuffed into a creative and attractive desktop display stand. Here, then, are the specs: Intel Atom 1.6GHz CPU, 1GB of RAM (upgradeable to 2GB in one slot), Intel GMA video with shared memory, 160GB hard drive, dual-layer CD/DVD-R/RW drive, integrated B/G wireless, 10/100 Ethernet, 5 USB 2.0 ports, an MS/MSPRO/MMC/SD card slot, a 1.3MP webcam in the display frame, and it all runs on Windows XP Home Edition.

So, if you haven’t figured out this systems place in the world yet, I’ll make it clear. This is not a gaming machine or one designed for use by graphics professionals, or anyone who needs a beefy machine. This is a webtop. This is a tight, clean, efficient, low-cost DVD player, email checker, webpage reader, and word processor. Its the perfect desktop for the luddite parents, the college or boarding school student, or as a second computer. Its compact, tidy and wireless.

The screen is clearly the largest and most visible component of the AIO. The strut behind the display allows you to position the screen as you like. The built-in microphone is oddly placed on the base of the unit instead of on the display frame. Another odd choice for Averatec was to not include a recovery partition on the large disk. They do include a USB mouse and keyboard. The keyboard is a love/hate kind of thing. If you like the new style flat keyboards, you might like this one. One thing I flat out did not like was the crappy in-built speakers. There was no reason to skimp there and decent in-case speakers don’t cost all that much.

Speed wise, the AIO is rather quick. Using the pre-installed Windows XP Home, I ran all Windows Update installs and then started using it. I installed FireFox and the complete iTunes/QuickTime/Safari package. The downloads were quick, but the installations took a while to process. Once installed, though, loading and using applications were reasonably quick. General use is nearly indistinguishable from faster machines. I did not, however, try to install anything which I knew would tax the system beyond its capabilities… Well…

After I’d had enough of Windows XP, I tried installing Windows Vista on it. As you may know from having read The Dojo for a while, I’m no fan of Vista. Despite Microsoft’s propaganda-like Mojave Project adverts trying to show people that they don’t really know how cool Vista really is, Vista is a landmine of difficulties, driver incompatibilities, and broken applications. Knowing this full well, I ventured there anyway. I’ll sum it up by saying that its on there, but I can’t install any drivers.

I’m going to try working on it some more and see what I can get out of it. The way it is now, with no network access and only being able to display 1024×768 its actually working pretty fast. I suspect, however, that its fast like the surprise we get when putting XP back on an old 750MHz lappy. It works and it goes but it just doesn’t have the headroom much faster systems do. My guess is that the next generation dual-core Atom processors from Intel will prove to be the real turning point for low cost, low power, compact desktop systems.

In the end, the AIO is quite a nice machine. Its very attractive. Its has 100mm VESA-spec screw holes on the back so it can mounted like a display. It weighs in a slight 9 pounds. Contrary to what detractors might say, the AIO is a quality machine which delivers exactly what it promises to deliver; modestly priced performance. Its not a kick ass gaming machine or a powerful video or film editing workstation. If you think you’re going to get a hi-end workstations for under six Benjamins you either don’t value your talent as an artist or you’re smoking something.

As such, I roundly endorse the Averatec 18.4″ AIO as long as you’re comfortable with its limitations.

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That’s where Wacom comes in, and they’ve been doing it very well for a very long time. A couple of years ago I reviewed their first Bluetooth wireless tablet. Let’s just say that, even though I liked it, I didn’t like the Bluetooth component. It was difficult to keep it charged and it would drop connections on occasion. Accuracy was also not so great. Wacom has come a long way on their low-cost tablets, though. Their new Bamboo tablets, while not wireless, are fantastically portable and work really, really well.

I received two of the tablets, the entry level Bamboo and the art-oriented Bamboo Fun which comes with Adobe’s Photoshop Elements 3.0 and Corel’s Painter Essentials 4.0 bundled in. The basic Bamboo comes in black and comes with a power supply, pen, and pen stand. Pricing is set at US$79 and its designed for basic pen input, text entry, annotation, and art. It does not come with a Wacom tablet mouse or any bundled software, but it works quite well with PhotoShop CS3. I also tried it with the software bundled with the Bamboo Fun and it works very nicely.

The Bamboo Fun comes in white, silver, blue, and black and comes in Small and Medium sizes. The small tablet priced at US$99 has an active area or 5.8″ x 3.7″ and the Medium priced at US$199, the one I received, has a 8.5″ x 5.3″ active area. I’ve mentioned that it comes with Photoshop Elements and Painter Essentials, but it also comes with a copy of Nik Color Effects Pro 2.0. All of the software installs on both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs. Installation tests were performed on a Power Macintosh G4 (known as Mirrored Drive Door) and a MacBook Pro.

The tablets themselves are very nicely styled and quite thin. One of the nicest touches Wacom added was to thicken the included pens signifncantly. This achieves two things. First, it makes it easier to hold the pne comfortably. Second, it makes it far easier to hold the pen and actuate the button. On earlier, thinner pens it was hard to hold the pen in a way which you could easily push the button. As usual, the pen is magnetic, so it doesn’t require batteries or a leash. You can also swap out the nibs to get a different tactile feel depending on what you need. The Bamboo Fun also has an eraser at the end, and the tablet can tell which end is being used. The Bamboo pen has an eraser, but it doesn’t erase.

Overall, the tablets are fantastic and work as expected. Being artistic with them is quite easy, and anyone interested in or skilled at traditional art forms who want to get into computer-based art will find either of these two tablets a pleasant addition to your pallete. If you simply need to annotate documents or make digital signatures, the Bamboo is perfect and well priced.

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Kensington seems to be quite good at making keyboards, too. I’ve had a number of them through the years. My daughter uses a wireless set on her Mac (the SlimBlade Media set) and won’t do without it. I believe the reason Kensington has done so well is because they make good gear. The Ci70 is a clear case in point. Sure, it has a rather ridiculous, bulbous back end which seems too large for the stuff it holds, but its not an eyesore. In fact, it does have some little secret bits which are very clever and useful. The keyboard, a wired USB type, sports two additional USB ports (sadly, not powered) and an integrated USB 4-pin mini jack. Take a look at the image below. I know its a tad dark, but I’ve added tags to show the important bits.

This next image shows the slider covering the buttons to the left and revealing the integrated 4-pin mini USB cable. Its unfortunate that Kensington didn’t add a second USB cable for power and then offered a number of additional USB ports. Who knows, maybe they’ll add one like that soon.

I’ve inserted a 4GB thumb drive and it popped up immediately on my MacBook Pro. This should work with just about any USB device which has its own power supply or doesn’t require the hi-power mode from USB. Now on to the keyboard itself.

Kensington has really latched onto the benefits of the low profile keyboard format. The idea is to lay the keyboard very flat on the desktop instead of canting it up at a steep angle. One of the problems with a steep cant is that you overflex your wrists to meet the keys, and this seems to exacerbate repetitive motion injuries. I’m a big fan of the lowpro keyboard (I mostly use an Apple Bluetooth Keyboard as much as I can) and this one works on that ethic well.

Key design is nice, though I’d rather they adopt the Apple MacBook style of key design. Instead, the Ci70 has low height key caps, but they are still splayed at the edges. I’m not exactly sure why I no longer like this, but I don’t. Regardless, the Ci70′s key action is clean, crisp, and reactive. There’s a nice, subtle little resistive “pop” feeling when you press they keys. The spacing and positioning of the keys is also very inducive to speedy, accurate typing.

Interestingly, the box does not include software, but its an easy download from the Kensington site. There are Windows and Mac OS X drivers for the keyboard, and I quickly downloaded and installed it for the Mac. Honestly, the only thing that the software seems to do is activate the Quick Launch keys. Eject and the media control buttons work out of the box. The software enables you to use the Search, Email, Web, and Media buttons. Everything works quite well and and there are no surprises.

For US$49.95, the Kensington Ci70 Keyboard with USB Ports (that’s the official name) is an excellent replacement keyboard. Its well built, has great key action, offers plenty of features without being overly complicated, is platform agnostic, and sports neat USB connectivity options. I can deal with the fact that its kinda ugly.

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