The BigLig Thinks

Not a bad little machine: we've adopted it as out standard issue so I've switched to one to make sure I'm working with the same sort of machine I can expect one of my customers to have.

I've found splitting off work and personal into two different machines has turned out to be a great idea. My home office has a KVM fitted, so I hit a switch and change mode from "at work" to "at home". For anyone not needing to run mountains of Windows software then a Mac is the best possible choice.

Well, I bought this out of curiosity really but it's constantly impressing me. I did a whole day working offsite with it and found it more than up to the task. It does web, email, text documents, instant messaging, and even skype phone calls, and is so tiny I can carry it anywhere.

Perfect for music; acceptable for video (and being able to watch iPlayer streams on it over WiFi is fabulous). The new apps I mostly use for Games so far: when a ebook reader I can load with -free texts is available it will take another step to perfection.

Now, this is usually a Blackberry curve, but for dull technical reasons to do with work I need to use something that supports Microsoft ActiveSync for a while. I have an HTC TyTN II that I normally use for this sort of thing, and it's a nice device, but it's the size of a house brick. So, finding a tiny Belgian smartphone in my spares cupboard I thought "why not?".

As usual, an absolute pig to get the certificates working for OWA and CWA, but once I got it going, it turns out not to be so bad. It's very small, it does push email, it has bluetooth so I can sync it. belgian keyboard though, but between the Mac and the PC I'm confused enough.

Probably a bad sign that they ship it with a spare battery and external charger?

How could this be improved? I'm very tempted to switch the D630 out. I'd replace it with a huge, noisy, and insanely powerful PowerEdge server, that would sit in my comms room, that I would connect to using a terminal services client running on any old crappy hardware in my office, the Mac when at home, and the eeePC when traveling.

And of course constantly hanging over me is the specter of consolidating the iPod and smartphone into one device. Although consolidation is exactly what I want, more important to me is that my music player to be an iPod, because all my workflow is set up for that. Oh, if only there was some sort of smartphone, supporting push email, that had an iPod in it...