Control4 stinks

Back when my last company sold I was crazy busy flying all over the world and my wife decided to remodel the family room. I knew I wanted a better TV/sound setup so I upgraded from a 32" TV to a 55" but to get the speakers installed and the whole thing cabled with the components hidden I went with the recommendation of her interior decorator to use a local company, Sounds Good Corporation. They did a first class installation job but they made a critical mistake. They recommended a Control4 Home Automation system to control everything. It could handle the hidden components via RF and remote IR as well as handle MP3s etc. The system worked and worked well for a few years but it had one fatal flaw -- you cant manage it yourself.

Recently I finally broke down and bought an AppleTV (more on that an a different post) but when I went to connect it to the system I couldn't since end users are not allowed/able to change settings on it. I called Sounds Good and they said I need an annual contract ($150) and that covers one service call and each service call after that is $50. Thats nuts. My request was to change the input on the TV from input 5 to input 7 and they wanted $150. Mysteriously, right after I got their pricing on this and told them there was no way I was going to pay them $150/year, my system stopped working completely. Thats odd given the 2 years it worked fine up to that point. The timing is suspicious. Either way I was done with them.

Putting something in your home you can't update/manage yourself is a mistake for most people, and especially bad for me. Shame on me for letting it happen but my eyes were not on the ball at that point in my life. Sounds Good also made a terrible customer service mistake for wanting to charge for minor updates (that they can do remotely) as i'll never work with them again. They picked a product not necessarily because it was the best but because it guaranteed revenue in the future. A year ago I wanted an update for the system and they wanted $250 for a software update to it just so the software knew what an iPod was (that price excluded the dock). Thats just nuts.

So I did some research and found a Logitech Harmony 900 with the PS3 adapter that looked like it would do the job:



I ordered it from Amazon and it arrived for last weekend. It took me 3 hours to rip the garbage Control4 system out of my setup and install the remote and get it working with everything and tie wrap up all the cables nice and clean again. Since my devices are inside a cabinet and behind the TV and generally in odd places I got the Logitech Precision IR cables to go with it. Logitech's documentation generally stinks for figuring out how to control multiple devices with RF and how to reach them. The precision IR cables weren't even mentioned anywhere, I heard about them on the forums.

Anyway, now everything is hidden and I can control all the devices I controlled before plus my new AppleTV. The PS3 control is actually better since now I can control power too which I couldn't before. The Wii is the only unmanageable device but since its not my DVD player or multimedia player its not a big deal.

Good riddance to Control4. I'd never recommend that product and you should think twice about working with a company that recommends it.

Fall and leaves

Wow, my last post was August. Where did the time go?

Anyway, yet another weekend of leaves. I have my house and several barns. The one barn is 200' long, and the gutters are 30' up. Needless to say cleaning them is a pain. My mother-in-law gave me one of these last year and I finally had a chance to try it:



I have to admit, I didnt expect much out of it and mileage does vary, but it works. It saved me a ton of ladder moving today and I got the house and one barn done, one left to go (the big one).

I wouldnt advise running it when the horses are nearby though -- it does make a racket.

The big thing to remember is to go slowly and back up and go forward for the tough stuff. Lots of big oak trees near us so there's a ton of stuff in the gutters. It held up and ran for several hours and I ran out of time before it did.

If you have a lot of gutters or are just a gadget freak, give it a shot.

Finally bought another iPhone App

Up until recently the only iPhone App I had purchased was OmniFocus (not a good deal at $20). When iPhone OS came out for my iPhone 3G OmniFocus became useless it was so slow, but after upgrading to the iPhone 4 its a decent app again. It nicely ties into the desktop app (which you also have to pay for). And if you're foolish enough, you can pay yet again $40 for the separate iPad app. I wont be doing that - i'll run the iPhone app on the iPad in 2x mode and save the $40. How many times is the Omni group going to get money out of me for the same thing?

Anyway, i've been doing fitness road biking trying to go every other day. I have a Trek crossover bike:

Not great for pure road work like i've been doing but the roads near me are hard to call roads. I've got a bracket for my iPhone 4 so I can listen to music (over the speaker -- i'm in a dead quiet area and there's no traffic) and watch the GPS. That leads me to EveryTrail. I've been using the free version all summer and I love the way it tracks my pace, the altitude and keeps me from getting lost. Here's a recent ride:


Past Church 8-28-10 at EveryTrail



Since i've been using it every other day I decided to pay the $3.99 for the pro version even though there are NO extra features that I care about in the pro version. I paid to support them. Its a shame they don't have extras in there like something to calculate my performance versus the last time I did the same trip or calculate the maximum inclines and duration of inclines etc. Its a generic application for tracking trails and it does that well.

I've been slowly leveling up on my biking fitness and gear. First a flat kit, then the gloves to avoid sore palms, then the padded bike shorts (I found out why so many people wear them the hard way...). Next summer perhaps i'll break down and get a road bike and see if I can get my distances up. I'm doing 10-12 miles each time in my hilly area. I'll never be a Lance Armstrong but at least i'm not a total couch potato.

Another app i've been loving recently is Waze, a free "social" GPS. Since I spend a lot of time in the car i've been leveling up there.

And finally, Audible came out with their own free app. You may ask why use the Audible app when you can play their audiobooks with iTunes? Its all about the stats to me. I'm a numbers junkie. Total listening time on the audible app since it was released on 7/16: 32 hours. Total audio books in library: 59. I tend to hunt for a good author or series and then wipe it out and move on. If you're looking for a Sci Fi series and have a lot of time I enjoyed the Lost Fleet Series.

Oh and there are some "for pay" apps I have but I got them for free by watching the FreeAppAlert to see if they come up. Always worth a quick look.

If you have any iPhone apps you can't live without let me know, i'm always looking for good ones. Waze was a sleeper I didn't hear about anywhere else. I wonder how many others are out there like that?

Gmail - When SaaS fails

I've mentioned before that we use Google Apps for my work and recently one of my colleagues ran into this problem:

Searching around on the net showed that many others have hit this problem and there doesn't appear to be any fix. There are some rumors that Apple's Snow Leopard is causing it to crop up more, and the conspiracy theories that Google is doing this to hurt Apple, but either way its an issue.


What made this problem worse is that once the lockout period expired, what ever triggered the problem re-triggered the problem. The result? He was locked out for 6 days. He is no longer using Gmail except for routing.


If your SaaS vendor can decide on some arbitrary undocumented rule that will cause them to lock you out of their product for 24 hours then there's a problem. Combine that the inability to get any real support from Google other than posting in the littered groups or paying for their "premium" support to get a support answer within 48 hours and you have a disaster. Businesses can't live with vendors that behave this way.


I mentioned previously how I use Google Voice for routing my home phone calls, and it seems that Gmail may only be suited for routing too unless Google wakes up and fixes things like this.


The problem didn't hit me, but I fear the day it does and I have no idea what triggers it. I have at least as much mail as he does, but something about his usage pattern set them off. Who will they hit next?

White iPhone 4G appears in Apple Case Selector - oh the irony

Call me jaded but I think its ironic that Apple's magic fix to the antenna problem is the iPhone 4 Case Program app which shows pictures of the ever-elusive white iPhone 4 in the Apple black bumper case as your make your case selection. Are they trying to irritate people further? Perhaps the contrast from black to black wasn't good for the pictures, but since anyone who gets the black bumper will be putting it on a black iPhone they may as well show reality, contrast or not.

Frankly I think the band-aids that some enterprising people are selling are a better idea than the cases and are only $5. I hate wrapping the beautiful iPhone with plastic and rubber. If Apple had thought of this perhaps they could have saved themselves a few million dollars.

Free GPS for the iPhone and Android

I have no idea why I haven't seen this in reviews, press etc, but there is a totally free GPS for the iPhone and Android called Waze. They call it a "Social GPS" which means that its learning from all the users streets, direction of traffic, speed of traffic etc from the users, but in the US it has a good map to start. It speaks directions (even in the background on devices that support it), does the routing. You can flag traffic areas for other people to know about, report speed traps etc. So its a decent GPS with a social feature. I've been using it for a week and its good. 

Some notes: 

1) When in the foreground it eats a lot of battery updating maps etc. In the background it doesnt consume much

2) Whether you're routing or not if you run the app and quit it it keeps running and learning streets etc. They should have an option whether you want this to run this way or not. They do have some logic in there to shut it down if you're not moving for some period of time. I dont know if thats apple's task manager killing it or if its doing it itself, but either way I think the default setting should be to not run when you exit unless you're routing. Fortunately you can kill the process if you want: Double click to bring up the task switcher, hold your finger on the app you want to kill and press the x.

3) You earn points for driving new roads, miles driven, reporting incidents etc. Something to track for the daily commute.

I haven't tried any of the paid apps, but to me this is a decent enough GPS to travel with and the price is right :)

Apples password management on mobile devices is thoughtless

Good security dictates a decent password, but Apple has a problem with that when it comes to mobile devices. Entering the long passwords repeatedly on mobile devices is frustrating at best. They're riding a dangerous line with caching these passwords as crazy things can happen. My suggestion? Allow a shorter password to be created on the mobile device which essentially protects the longer password. The longer password is still the correct password for the account but the shorter password is used on the device. Sure you're essentially weakening the longer password -- but only on your device. The long password is still in effect on the web account which is the real one that matters as its subject to more attacks. The 1Password guys got this right and use a short password for basic access and a longer one for the more secure stuff. Why can't Apple figure this out?

MobileMe Beta - Skip it

Apple recently came out with an improved MobileMe Calendar in beta. I gave it a shot and it still falls short. The motivation for even trying it was that only one of my Google Apps calendars was getting sync'd to my iPad and iPhone so I was missing my other calendars (I split out my home from my work calendars etc). The problem with MobileMe calendar is that it requires iCal which just plain stinks and has all sorts of notification and scheduling issues I wrote about previously. The issue with MobileMe service is that you can't export it to other services like Google Calendar -- although this is a Google calendar issue since they don't have the true concept of adding a WebDav account into Google calendar. 

After failing with MobileMe Beta, and after suffering through their crazy sync lags with no indication of whats going on etc, I searched around for a better solution and found a help page at google showing how to sync you other google calendars with my mobile devices. I tried that and it works great.

Now just use Fluid to make it an app for your desktop and you can keep ignoring iCal and have everything you need. It also handles Outlook invites well.

Apple's forgotten media

Sometimes Apple adds support for certain media types and then forgets about them. Audiobooks are an example of this. Looking in my iTunes library I have 162 items representing 28.6 days of listening amounting to 12.73GB (all mostly from Audible on the point system plan that saves a ton of money, the iTunes store can't compete price-wise in this category). Unlike Podcasts and Videos there is no "sync all unplayed books" option. When picking audiobooks to sync to your device you get the "all" or "selected audiobooks" option. The selected audiobooks option doesn't scale to handle a library of the size I have and you end up scrolling forever through an oddly sorted list. The reality is unless the guys close to the technology have a passion for the things you care about your particular tastes may get ignored.

The workaround for now is to make and sync a smart playlist with Media kind is Audiobook and Plays count of 0 (or for me an empty rating since I rate all my media and I can directly control rating while playcount can be quirky).

Hey Steve, will you start listening to audiobooks so people will pay attention to the interface?

iPhone 4 -- first impressions

I'm still amazed by the speed next to my iPhone 3G and now understand why some people have tolerated applications that took forever to load like Omnifocus. On the iPhone 4 (and perhaps the older iPhone 3GS) it loads quickly -- blindingly fast next to the 3G. It could still be better optimized etc but its definitely tolerable as an application now whereas before it was so slow I rarely used it.

There's a ton of news on the net about the iPhone 4 antenna concerns but the jury is mostly still out on that. For my own limited testing, within my home office I no longer get reliable coverage with the iPhone 4 where I did reliably with the 3G. Thats a concern. Full disclosure, i'm a righty.

Other than that, with the faster phone i'm enjoying the new folders and overall phone a lot more. One thing i've noticed missing in Apple's advertising is that with about 77% of people buying the new iPhone 4 being upgraders, i'm sure a large percentage of them are like me, iPhone 3G users. They've been touting the new iPhone 4/iOS features over what the 3GS had but they're missing the fact that many of us never experienced those. There's all sorts of new stuff in there not covered by recent press thats new and wonderful to me like voice dialing, compass, etc. Some of the apps also use this like AroundMe where if you use it in landscape mode uses the compass to do a virtual reality like thing showing how far away places are which is really cool:

Its unlike Apple to miss a marketing opportunity and with this antenna business they could use some extra help.

Meanwhile I got my phone back and i'm in love again. I just hope they don't break it once more when iOS5 comes out...

Cloud vs Desktop

Very apropos to where I work, the discussion about phones has turned into one of cloud vs desktop. This is what it ultimately came down to to me and in today's world, cloud doesn't win when it comes to multimedia. Sure, a lot of the time you have good (well, with AT&T reasonable) access to the network most of the time and could stream music, view pictures/videos etc. But there are times when you don't have access like when you're on an airplane. Plus there's still the performance of accessing those large files remotely and more recently the move to cap bandwidth. I believe the cloud makes a lot of sense for many applications and solutions but I also believe you need an offline model that can handle local performance needs and the times when the cloud is momentarily disrupted. While the droid type phones don't implement a pure cloud model, their lack of multimedia management and desktop support shows a real lack of understanding of the times when cloud versus local make sense. 

Anyway, if you're following along you've realized I came to a conclusion that the iPhone is currently the only phone that fits my needs despite wishful thinking there was another choice (and that it would be on Verizon if there was one). If you know me, you'll know once I reach a conclusion i'm quick to move, so it should come to no surprise that i'm now an iPhone 4 (32G) owner. 

The buying experience was great for me. I bought it today (6-25) after yesterday's launch. Yesterday it was a total mob scene from what i've heard and the longest lines for any of the iPhones. Today I called over to the business unit (my company having purchased a lot of macs from them) and, despite the fact that they had officially sold out, they put a phone aside for me (evidently there's some secret inventory they can pull on in a pinch...). I walked over and had 2 people work with me through the buying process which took all of 10 minutes including activation and walked out with a working phone. Apples business unit and support for Macs in the business world needs some help, but I was impressed with the experience.

The desktop won this war. I wonder if Google or whatever new phone OS vendor appears in the future will figure out that cloud alone is not sufficient and will wage a better battle when its time for me to do my next upgrade?

Meanwhile, the iPhone 4 is to the iPhone 3G as a Ferrari is to a Yugo (yes i've spent time in both so I understand what i'm saying!)

iOS4

Since my iPhone 3G has been terrible anyway I figured there was no harm in updating to the latest OS, iOS4 when it came out on Monday. After the (long) upgrade, it completely hung and was non-responsive. I did a hard reset to reboot it (power off wasn't working) and it came back up and has been running since. Its not more or less responsive than the prior OS version so I didn't lose ground with the upgrade. The iPhone 3G with OS 3 or iOS4 remains a terrible device due to the sluggishness of it.

Meanwhile, I found a little (very little) value in iOS4. The only thing that has been useful to me has been the folders and I could have lived without them. Other things I could make use of in the (limited) iPhone 3G implementation of iOS4, like the unified mailbox, I don't want or need. I don't use a unified mailbox at my desk and like to keep my context in work or in personal stuff and not mix those two contexts. 

Other things I got on the 3G but find useless:

* 5x digital zoom - the camera on the iPhone 3G is terrible, so adding zoom to that is silly.

* iBooks/PDF/Games - since the phone is so slow these are useless.

And even if they had delivered multi-tasking in the 3G, I assume it would have been terrible on the 3G due to the overall sluggishness of the phone. 

Since the iPod piece of the phone is a major asset to me (and a piece that actually does work well even on my 3G except for the odd outages during bluetooth streaming) and the fact that all other phones have poor support for multimedia i'm left thinking about upgrading to iPhone 4 now (once the lines/noise settles) or holding off until the fall hoping Verizon gets lucky. We'll see how patient I am :)

iPhone 4, any competition out there?

There's lots of buzz about how the various phones and carriers match up to Apple's new iPhone 4. The real issue is perhaps something other than the number of pixels, screen size, battery life, weight, or even carrier and coverage, I think they're missing something fundamental which is where I get stuck on the decision. Usability. Products are about ease of use, especially a multi-function live-with-it sort of device like a smart phone. On the phone itself Apple has shown a lot of polish in the software (we well as some silly mistakes, late deliveries etc) that is still lacking, even on the latest droid based phones like the HTC Incredible.

But, when it comes to a smart phone, it also comes down to getting your content on and off the phone and surprisingly the reviews are all skipping this topic . Email, calendar and contacts are a place to look to start (and even there I worry for non-iPhones). But what about music, movies, pictures, audiobooks, e-books? How well does the phone connect with your desktop and take care of all this for you? As far as I can tell without iTunes this is all a huge mess regardless of what phone you have. And Apple has effectively blocked non-iPhones from connecting to iTunes. 

Specifically for the hot HTC phones their documentation says this:

"HTC Sync is not compatible with Macintosh computers. While you will be unable to use HTC Sync to synchronize your PIM information, you can transfer files such as music, movies, photos, etc. to your DROID ERIS by HTC by mounting the device as a disk drive."

So I have to manually manage my multi-media? What about remembering playback positions in audiobooks? Rating changes on my music? Automatic syncing of unwatched movies/shows? We're supposed to give that all up?

Can anyone really stand up and say that life without iTunes is easy and things just work, and then describe how? Then try doing that for an OSX-based desktop environment. I'm sure there are techno-geek ways to solve the challenges, but for someone who wants it to just work, is there a way? So far my research says no.

iPhone 4

So the new iPhone 4 was announced. It's an impressive phone. Unfortunately the big news was the video chat. Since nobody else in my family is crazy enough to go to AT&T (including my wife), and many of my friends are too poor to pay for the expensive smart phone plans, few I would talk to could take advantage of this. Now, if the phone was distributed on more carriers, then there'd be a better chance of using this new functionality, but, sadly, Apple didn't announce anything with Verizon.

One option i've been thinking about is picking up someone's 3GS (after they upgrade to the 4 since I wouldn't want to pay $99 to end up with a 2 year contract renewal). Apple has a good 3GS vs 4 comparison here. That choice gets me a reportedly more-stable phone than the 3G, multi-tasking on the new iOS4, a much better camera (but without flash), video recording (but not HD). Essentially its a very good upgrade from my current 3G phone. With people upgrading perhaps I can get a 3GS for free/cheap without renewing my contract. That buys more time until something more appealing comes along.

Of course, there's always the need to have the latest and greatest NOW. Perhaps some time with the 3GS on AT&T will make me hate AT&T less and i'll be ready to lock in for longer.

AT&T and new data plans

At first I was pretty upset about the new AT&T data plans thinking it was going to really cost me a lot more, but my current unlimited data plan is $30. The new data plans are $25 for 2GB/month and $15 for 200MB/month. AT&T reports 98% of people are <200MB/month. I went back over the last 2 years of bills and there was only 1 month where I crossed over 200MB (hit 300MB that month). Looks like if you cross over you can buy another 200MB for $15 which would put you up to the cost of the current plan. So it doesn't look to me like this move will cost me more, in fact i'd go for the 200MB plan and save $15/month most months. But, of course, thats only if I stick with AT&T when my contract comes up on 7/11. We'll see.

iPhone dilemma

Buried in my AT&T subscription page (why make it easy to find such a thing?) is the information that my 2 year AT&T contract expires on 7/11/2010.

I wrote in the past about issues with iPhone OS 3.0 on my iPhone 3G and it has been really bad since then. Apple seems to have designed iPhone OS 3.0 for the iPhone 3GS and they have done nothing to help those that didn't upgrade to the 3GS. I never upgraded to the 3GS because of their poor upgrade policy and my 3G iPhone has made me miserable.

There's plenty of news out about Apple's upcoming iPhone 4 release this summer. The big question to me is whether it will be on the AT&T network only, or if Verizon will be added either this summer or a bit later in the fall. Re-upping with AT&T for another 2 years doesn't excite me, especially with their poor network and all the dropped calls during my 45 minute commute on the Mass Turnpike. The news on Verizon support changes daily, but today's news is depressing. So it seems i'll be faced with the choice of iPhone 4 with AT&T OR some other phone on Verizon (current best alternative appears to be the HTC Incredible).

Will the Apple fan leave Apple in disgust of AT&T and Apple's own support of the iPhone? Are the alternatives any better with Verizon restricting features on their network and with the poor desktop integration other vendors have? Stay tuned.

iPad Charging Issues

Really, I don't go looking for these things, but I found another issue with the iPad recently. This looks like some kind of hardware flaw. There are documented stories out there on the net about the iPad being plugged into a USB source and not charging and sure enough I hit that issue. Evidently Apple knows about this problem too and they mention this problem:

“When charging, make sure you’re using the 10W USB power adapter that came with iPad (fastest) or the USB port on a recent Mac.”
They also say that USB hubs may not work:

"iPad may not charge when connected to the USB port on an older Mac, a PC, a keyboard, or to a USB hub.”

I don't know about you, but I have 8 USB things plugged into the MacPro that I was trying to charge the iPad on. Some just aren't a good fit for a hub (USB TV Tuner). If Apple made a device that can't work on a USB Hub well then they made a serious design mistake.

Meanwhile I found a use for the iPad. My wife found it can do Sodoku and the games on it are reasonable. So she's been clocking hours on that. I'm not sure of the economics of a $800 Sodoku device, but at lest its getting used...

The wrong response and a correction

While I was away recently I got a letter from Terminix (pest control) with the text below:

Regardless of what you may think of the economy etc this is the wrong thing to do for your customers. If the times are bad, they're bad for your customers too, don't make it worse for them.

So naturally I called them to cancel my account. I was paying $110 3 times a year with the proposed hike to $114 3 times a year. After a chat about the right way to treat customers i'm now on the $98 3 times a year plan. Yes, rather than making an extra $12 from a customer this year, they managed to anger a customer and have instead lost $36 per year from the customer. Sometimes doing nothing is better.

We can only change bad behaviors like this by making the right decisions as consumers.

iPad for Media

Well from this string of posts you're going to think I hate the iPad, but lets just say i'm calling it as I see it and i'm not blinded by the light of Apple.

On the way out on my vacation I watched a movie (X-Men Wolverine) on the iPad. The screen size and weight are perfect for video on the airplane. But there were a few problems. First, since its a touch device the large screen is littered with fingerprints, smudges etc. Its a pain to clean such a large screen and whole sites and products are springing up discussing this issue. They claim the iPad has a fingerprint resisting oleophobic coating on the screen, but mine is quickly littered with fingerprints and smudges. So when you go to read a book or watch a movie it must first start with a cleaning session. I never had to do that with the old DVD players I carried on the plane or my laptop (whose screen I had no reason to touch). The second, is since Apple chose a glossy glass screen, all light is reflected back at you. On a plane, during daylight hours, this makes it hard to see stuff on the screen. For these two reasons, the iPad is not great as a video device unless you have oil free hands (they have cures for that) and only watch movies in the dark. 

On the way home I wanted to try an eBook. My had had been reading Lee Child's Gone Tomorrow, currently #7 on the NY Times bestseller list and I figured i'd give that a try. I started with Apple's iBook's application and looked in the store. Gone Tomorrow is episode #13 of some character (never read any of the others). iBooks had 4 of the 14 books in that line and Gone Tomorrow was not one of them. Then I went to the Kindle store. They had all 14. With content, its either there or it isn't. The iBook store, missing current bestsellers, is currently a nonstarter. This wasnt the first book i've looked for to find missing there.

Next I read the first 6 chapters on the iPad with the Kindle sample. That went well and was enjoyable enough. But with the smudges (mentioned above), the limited portability of an iPad (I wouldnt dare take it to a beach or have it next to me at the pool while the kid splashes), and the inability to share a good book with a friend I find that eBooks have less value than real books, yet cost more. My Dad had given me his paper copy so after chapter 6 I switched to the "real" book and i'm back on track.

I love gadgets, but they have to be built for a purpose. My experience so far is that the iPad was built with no conceived purpose, but with the hopes that others would figure one out. Thats a sad thing to do to your customers. Build products with a purpose, if you find your customers use it for something different then adapt and do it quickly. 

Traveling with the iPad

Well I made it through a week's vacation without turning on my MacBookPro. That was partially because vacation came at a good point, but also because the iPad filled the gap well enough. In using the iPad more over the last week i've had some additional observations. My main conclusion is that its a great platform that has a lot of promise but most of the promise has yet to be fulfilled. In a year or so perhaps it will really become what it should be.

One thing that shocked me on the iPad when I went looking for things I assumed were there because they're on the iPhone was that they arent there. There's no alarm clock on the iPad and there are no free ones yet that I saw. The iPhone has it, the iPod Touch has it but the iPad doesnt. What was Apple thinking there?

Also, in this highly visual touch device, the iPod app has no Coverflow support. Whats that about? Even the iPod nano has coverflow.

Then originally I had my email (google apps based) setup using the Active Sync approach. I found for email accounts setup this way you cant do anything at all when offline. I switched mail over to IMAP and it seemed to let me do some offline mail etc while I was on the plane. 

For all that Apple has stripped functionality from the iPods and iPhone in delivering the iPad they've delivered little new other than using the larger screen space. In addition they've opted for up selling you on features that make sense for the platform like their iWork products. 

It almost seems like the iPad is an experiment on how big a fan base they have rather than delivering a product that really is well rounded and meets market needs.

So yes, I skipped powering on my MacBookPro and it was a great video device on the plane but I still had to carry my MacBookPro with me because I the iPad isnt a computer, its an oversized, but stripped down, iPod.