The kiss of death
- Peter Blasina
- 2 April 2009
Technology is weird. Gadgets and gizmos breed a passion and allegiance to brands like no other category. I’ve yet to witness a heated dinner party disagreement over the performance of a Dyson Radix Cyclonic vacuum cleaner vs an Electrolux Cyclone XL. But put an iPhone user and a ‘CrackBerry’ fan at the same table and you can almost guarantee a stoush.
Tech reviewers are guilty of the same partisan behaviours. They often take a very narrow view of new products and compare technologies from a limited perspective. At launch, the Apple iPhone was continually compared to the BlackBerry Curve and Bold, when they are, in my opinion, intended for markedly different types of users.
BlackBerry and iPhone are both smartphones, but not all smartphone users are looking for the same thing. Commentators and reviewers often overlook the differences between users, which makes for unfair comparisons.
The respected New York Times tech journalist David Pogue, for example, said the BlackBerry Storm should be called the ‘BlackBerry Dud’.
“How did this thing ever reach the market?” he wondered. “Didn’t anyone at RIM actually try it? Or was everyone involved just too terrified to pull the emergency brake on this train?
Pogue goes on to call it “head-bangingly frustrating” because the buttons are too close together and the phone takes too long to interpret how the user touched the screen. And, as a final knock, “... maybe Storm isn’t such a bad name for this phone. After all, it’s dark, sodden and unpredictable”.
I found the Storm a reasonable, although certainly not perfect, attempt by RIM to provide many of the features that characterise the BlackBerry, but in a handset intended to appeal to a different type of business user. Corporate users accustomed to a QWERT WERTY keypad and BlackBerry’s feature set would find little appeal in the Storm. But for the average small business owner wanting a well-featured smartphone with a touchscreen interface, the handset offers excellent functionality.
In terms of performance, the Storm is, indeed, slow. But only initially. Turning off many of the default applications improves things dramatically.
Like the Storm, the HP Mini-Note has come into a great deal of comparative criticism. The new netbook category has grown rapidly, with the Asus Eee PC leading the charge about 18 months ago. Many other manufacturers have quickly followed with their own versions. These compact, scaled-down notebooks provide access to the web, email and a limited range of applications. They are directed towards consumer-‘lite’ users and students.
I found the HP Mini an excellent execution of the netbook; its bright, clear 26cm screen and 33mm thickness make it a perfect travel companion. Performance-wise it’s well ahead of most other netbooks, yet it copped fire for costing more. Most netbooks cost around $500, but at $899 this HP is not intended for the conventional netbook user. Rather, it’s a premium example of the breed and ideal for the mobile warrior, or business user after an alternative to a traditional large-screen notebook. Another case of comparing apples with bananas.
If professional commentators are missing the mark, then blogs and forums are a valuable destination for information from real-word technology users. I’ll certainly be checking in to see what they make of the Storm and Mini-Note in the coming months, even it it’s only to see how wrong I was.
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