Brian Jarvis, UMPC Geek

It looks like my geek mentor Josh is enjoying discovering new stuff off of FM radio, but for the most part, I’ve given up listening to the radio.  On my commute (about 20 minutes each way), I prefer to listen to podcasts or my own music collection.  Maybe it’s the control freak in me, but I just don’t like being stuck listening to the DJ commentary or flipping through all the presets multiple times in search for something I want to listen to.

There is so much awesome content hidden in podcasts that I feel like I have an endless supply of material that interests me.  Today I’m looking forward to the next episode of MobileTechRoundup on my way home!  After that, I need to catch up on Tips From The Top Floor (digital photography) and Leo Laporte’s Tech Guy Podcast (one day I hope to be able to explain things as simply as he can to the techno-phobes). 

I’ve recently rediscovered the joy of watching video podcasts on my UMPC.  I’ve learned a ton about photo editing from Meet The Gimp and the Photo Walkthrough video podcasts.

I LOVE having access to all this information!

After a really embarrassing session at church a couple of weeks ago, I’ve removed the Windows startup sound from my sound schema.  I powered up my UMPC just before the invocation so that I could take some notes later and to my horror found that the system was booting instead of resuming from standby.  Just after the prayer was finished (and the room was silent) my UMPC filled the silence with the default Windows startup sound.  It felt so loud that I thought the clock would be shaken off the wall!

I was mortified as I felt like every eye in the entire congregation turned to learn the answer to “What in the world was that?!?!”  The good news is that most of those eyes gave an understanding, “Oh, that’s just Brian…he’s such a geek” glance in return to my sheepish grin.

So now I’ve made sure that will never happen again…just a tip that you may consider. 

…so when I heard about Amazon’s new DRM free music, I jumped right onto their site and downloaded a song to test it out (and vote with my wallet). My music choice was Coldplay’s Speed of Sound. Shopping was a breeze, the download was pretty quick, and the music played on both my laptop in Windows Media Player and on my UMPC in iTunes - AWESOME!

One problem: The file size of the download was 9.26 MB since the file was encoded at 266 Kbps. My music collection consists of 829 songs for 3.68 GB making the average song 4.44 MB. I might decide to downsample my new purchase to save disk space (because heaven knows I can’t hear the difference between 192 kbps and 266 kbps).

First of all, I love mobile computing! I have had the chance to use a number of different mobile PC’s that I have owned or used for work. With processing capability for mobile platforms making huge leaps in the last few years, we are at the point where we give up very little when we move from a desktop to a mobile PC. People around the world are voting with their wallets when it comes to PC purchases and laptops now constitute more than half of PC sales. I expect this trend to continue until desktop PC’s are only commonplace in stories we tell grandkids about “When I was a kid…”

I absolutely love my Samsung Q1 UMPC. I tell people quite regularly that it is the best mobile PC I have ever owned. I love how it has changed my PC usage to a more ubiquitous solution through its flexibility and portability. I do not intend for this site to be completely focused on Ultra Mobile Personal Computers, but on Ultra Mobile Personal Computing. I’m passionate about mobile technology that enhances life and will capture my outlook on the hardware and software that does that here at UMPCGeek!

Thanks for reading and please share your voice!

Here’s a little undocumented tip for you Samsung Q1 owners out there: if you hold down the menu button while rocking the volume switch, it adjusts the screen brightness. It’s a quick, easy way to adjust the backlight without using the menu (which I have found to be slower and a bit buggy).