Palm Treo 700p for Verizon
[+] Enlarge photo

Permalink | 2 comments

• See product information for Palm Treo 700p (Verizon Wireless)
• Read also: smart phones, cell phones, PDAs
• Email to a friend | Print this post

Google Spreadsheets: just like Microsoft used to make
[+] Enlarge photo

You get decent tools for formatting text and numbers.
[+] Enlarge photo

Functions galore. You won't be missing many ways to crunch data.
[+] Enlarge photo

The killer feature: live collaboration.
[+] Enlarge photo

I got access to Google Spreadsheets this morning, shortly after I wrote up my quick take based on the screenshots on Google's site. After actually using this product, some pros and cons stand out.

Pros:
Google Spreadsheets is easy to use and free, and it works much like every other spreadsheet you've ever worked with. It takes very little time to learn to use it.

You can't lose your work. Once you name the spreadsheet you're working on or right after you import an XLS file from your computer, Google Spreadsheets saves your file. From that point, every change you make is immediately saved.

The sharing function lets you collaborate with other users (Google account holders only so far). Alternatively, you can invite people to view, but not edit, your work. All changes are live, so you can be talking on the phone and editing the same work at the same time. This is very useful, and it's something yout can't easily do with Excel.

There's a good list of mathematical, financial, statistical, and other function types. You won't find many calculations that you can't perform.

The service imports your existing Excel (and CSV) files pretty well. It's not 100 percent, however: I found that some text formatting (colors, in particular) and date formatting did not import.

Google Spreadsheets does support multisheet spreadsheets, just like Excel (I was mistaken in my earlier blog post, where I said it didn't). And here's a nice thing: it doesn't automatically make each file three pages deep, as Excel does, although if you want the extra sheets, it's easy to add them.

Cons:
There's no print function. But you can export your spreadsheet as a static HTML file.

There are no visualization tools. You can't graph or chart your data. And there's none of the conditional formatting that we'll get with Excel 2007.

Aside from the good collection of formulas, statistical and analysis tools are missing. There are no pivot tables.

If you're accustomed to using the right mouse button in Excel to access cell-specific options, you might not be as productive in Google Spreadsheets, since it has no right-mouse options.

I couldn't find a way to zoom in or out of a spreadsheet. You can change the size of numbers and letters, but not the grid itself. That's frustrating when you're trying to grok a large table.

While the real-time collaboration and chat feature is very cool, it could get confusing with more than two people, because changes made to the spreadsheet are not marked with the person making them.

The lowdown:
I'd recommend this service for the new spreadsheet user or the person who just wants to work with numbers or small data tables from time to time. It has functionality most people need, except the critical graphing and printing functions. The collaboration features are just dynamite.

However, Google Spreadsheets takes you only part of the way if you want to use it for serious analysis or as a tool to create graphics for presentations.

Google PR reps were clear to note that this product is a beta, and an early one at that, so we might see many of the shortcomings addressed soon. Hopefully, they'll be fixed before the product is released into open beta. Google would not give a time frame for that, though.

While you wait, if you are sold or you're just curious about online spreadsheets, you owe it to yourself to also check out suites from ThinkFree, and Zoho, and the stand-alone online spreadsheets EditGrid, iRows, and Num Sum.

Permalink | 6 comments

• See product information for Google Spreadsheets
• Read also: Web 2.0
• Email to a friend | Print this post

U2 iPod Special Edition
[+] Enlarge photo

Permalink | 18 comments

• Read also: MP3, Buzz
• Email to a friend | Print this post

Gas Station TV figures that your average time of 4 minutes at the gas pump can be spent watching news and commercials. Reuters reports that the company will embed 20-inch LCD screens in gas pumps and air a mix of local news, weather, traffic, clips from Good Morning America, and, of course, commercials. The networked gas pumps should appear at 100 locations by September and 400 locations by the end of the year. I guess we can expect that advertisers will try to fill all of our ostensibly free or wasted time trying to sell us their products. I just hope people won't stop washing their windshields or checking tire pressure because they were watching a really interesting news segment about a lost puppy.

Permalink | 1 comment

• Read also: Car Tech
• Email to a friend | Print this post

Google Spreadsheets in action
[+] Enlarge photo

CNET reader Jon Henshaw has posted an early impression of Google Spreadsheets, including real screenshots and a video screencast, on his site, Sitening.

Thanks, Jon!

Permalink | 5 comments

• Read also: Web 2.0, Buzz
• Email to a friend | Print this post

HP announced a new business laptop today, the HP Compaq nx6325. It's a thin-and-light model that gives you a choice between AMD's dual-core Turion 64 X2 CPUs and single-core Mobile Sempron chips. Security features include a biometric fingerprint reader, an integrated TPM 1.2 security chip, and an optional smart card reader. It's also built to last, with HP's Mobile Data Protection System (protects against shock and vibration), a scratch-resistant lamination, and a spill-resistant keyboard. The Compaq nx6325 hasn't popped up on HP's site just yet, but pricing is expected to start at $1,049.

And from the "Dock it like it's hot" department, HP also introduced today the 3-in-1 NAS Docking Station for its business laptops. The $399 dock features a 160GB hard drive for data backup and provides secure file sharing and print server capabilities.

Permalink | 5 comments

• Read also: Laptops, computers, work
• Email to a friend | Print this post

These are disconcerting days for math nerds. The Internet is surprisingly abuzz this morning about Google announcing a Web-based spreadsheet. And by "surprisingly abuzz," I mean, "behaving as though the Eagle has landed." For one thing, Google has not actually released a Web-based spreadsheet. It has only promised one, with a sneak peek and an invitation to sign up for a first-come, first-served look at the (inevitably beta) release itself--the timing of which is unannounced. Now, as for the spreadsheet itself: interesting. Its biggest draw is that it's shareable and can be edited by multiple people in real time, via integration with Google's IM client. And OK, I admit that I signed up for a look at the trial. It looks pretty cool. But still, people. We all knew Google was going to do a Web-based office suite of some sort, right? So I know it's exciting to find out we were right. But at some point you really have to ask yourself just how psyched you can humanly get about sums, budgeting, finances, and term-delimiting, no matter how well color-coded.

Permalink | 5 comments

• Read also: Buzz
• Email to a friend | Print this post

Aspire 8200: big screen, HD-DVD.
[+] Enlarge photo

The IDG article mentions that the new Acer laptop will be in the "high-end Aspire 8200 range" and projects an estimated price of $3,000--about $500 less than the XPS M2010's starting point. Acer doesn't sell an Aspire 8200 model that we know of; it's possible that the reporter confused it with the TravelMate 8200, which we reviewed back in January.

Other specs reported in the article: "twin 120GB hard-disk drives, Nvidia GeForce 7600 graphics, a TV tuner, and support for various audio technologies including Dolby Digital Live and DTS Connect." The reported measurements of the Acer HD-DVD laptop would make it slightly smaller than the XPS M2010, though the two would fall in the same 18-to-20-pound weight class.

We're still waiting to hear back from our contact at Acer. We'll let you know...

Source: IDG: Computex: Acer to Launch HD DVD Laptop.

UPDATE: Confirmed. The new model will indeed be called the Aspire 8200, and will be available in July. (It will be a totally new model, not based on the existing TravelMate 8200 platform.) Pricing, though not finalized, should be "under $2,800." Get the straight dirt from Acer's own Website.

Permalink | 1 comment

• Read also: Computers, laptops, notebooks, HD-DVD
• Email to a friend | Print this post

Lord knows how Yahoo News managed to find it buried on HP's site, but this morning, HP issued a recall notice for the Photosmart R707's firmware. It seems that in at least one case, the camera (and apparently its owner) didn't realize that if you try to recharge disposable batteries, inflammatory hijinks are inevitable. Of course, you can't really recall firmware; you update it. So if you have an R707, we suggest you visit HP's firmware update page to smarten up the camera.

Permalink | Post a comment

• See product information for HP Photosmart R707
• Read also: Digital cameras, digital imaging
• Email to a friend | Print this post

Google Spreadsheets: simple but useful
[+] Enlarge photo

It has collaboration tools unlike anything in a stand-alone app.
[+] Enlarge photo

Spreadsheets can read and write to your Excel files.
[+] Enlarge photo

Google's online spreadsheet is going into limited beta today. As of this writing, nobody I know has actually used with the service, however screenshots are up on Google's site, and we can tell a few things.

For one, this is no competitor to Excel, neither to the current version nor to the Excel we'll see in Office 2007. The simple interface reminds me more of a very early Excel, or Lotus 1-2-3, than a modern spreadsheet. For people who occasionally need to compute a grid of results, it looks like it will be extremely useful, but for spreadsheet jockeys who need Excel's multiple-page calculations, cross-tab features, and programmability, it looks like Google will come up short.

However, as a tool for collaboration, Google Spreadsheets is going to walk all over Excel. Google will have a built-in chat client and allow simultaneous editing of a sheet. This will allow two (or more) people to put their heads together on numbers even if they are not sitting next to each other. Also, since Google Spreadsheets will save your work on its own servers, you won't have to worry about sending your file around to other people--any authorized user will be able to pull it up online. The online storage may dissuade people who want to use the product to work on sensitive financial data, though.

Google Spreadsheets is much like Writely, Google's online word processor. Functionally, it's simple and does not compete with the rich feature set of existing traditional software. However, it uses the Web to offer something that software cannot: great collaboration features and Web-based file storage. Also, it's free. So while neither Writely nor Google Spreadsheets are likely to woo professional users of Microsoft Office, more casual users may find the tools very useful, and certainly more cost effective.

We will update this opinion as we learn more.

Screenshot credit: Google

Permalink | 8 comments

• Read also: Web 2.0
• Email to a friend | Print this post