Everything is mobile nowadays

I am pretty much at the cutting edge generally with technology. I was one of the first people in Bicester to get the internet back circa 1994 when most people thought it was only for sad geeks wanking over porn. I saw the potential back then! I was also the first person in Bicester to get an Andrew James meat slicer for my highly advanced and technological ham production line here at Baconham Villa.



However - the one piece of technology that has always frustrated me is the mobile phone!

Now I hardly use mine. At one time I used the excuse that as I was at home most of the time looking after the kids I did not need it. My laptop here is on 24/7 and I can do pretty much everything I need to do on it. My phone by comparison is cumbersome, incredibly fiddly to type with, I can hardly read anything I try to look at on the internet as the fonts are either so small as to need a microcope or don't fit on the page so I have to fiddle about trying to find what I want, also attempts to scroll up the screen are a bloody nightmare, I try and run my finger up, and it ends up clicking on some other link and taking me off to another page, playing games, that's a joke, trying to line up tiles on Words With Friends, the constant failure to retrieve notifications on facebook, friends endlessly texting and expecting instant responses which take me forever, and it's all just...

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

Now what is most frustrating is that nobody else seems to have these problems. Bestie Lynda for example quite happily runs her whole life through her phone and only puts the laptop on about once a week for the odd thing she can't do on the phone. She can even write long blogs through it and once managed to write one quicker than I did on here.

Just to put this into perspective. That last sentence I wrote, I wrote twice. I typed it on here and I also typed it  into the text message facility in my phone, including correcting mistakes from predictive texts and timed myself each time. The results were as follows:

Laptop: 16 seconds
Phone: I minute 25 seconds

Says it all really. So what is wrong with me? Am I really that useless. I see both Claire and Lynda happily tapping away on their phones, playing games with no problems, which I am struggling. My phone (HTC) itself does not help - the touchscreen has never been that great and frequently freezes up, it's out of warranty so no joy there and Orange have been singularly unhelpful at all times.

That's another thing - the games. Now I enjoy playing games as much as the next man and got really into Words With Friends. However it seems that the next generation of games are being designed specifically for phones as opposed to the computer. For example, Lynda invited me to play this checkers game with her, but it appears that it is only available for Iphone and Ipod touch, neither of which I have. Another game that everyone is playing at the moment is some sort of drawing game, I believe there is an Android version but I am loathe to download as I know I will struggle with it.

As for using the mobile at home the signal is woeful, conversations frequently get garbled or cut off, I have taken to phoning friends on their landlines lately - that's how bad it is. It's like living in the stone age!

So what is the solution? I am starting to get out and about a lot more lately and I need a mobile solution. Something that can do everything I need to do. Here is a summary list of things I need to be able to do that I can do on my laptop that I cannot do on my phone.

1) Type as quickly as I am typing right now on the laptop.

2) Fully access the internet as clearly as I am right now, with the ability to put windows side by side in order to do things I need to do. For example, if I am at the track the ability to put the Betfair screen and a bookmaker screen side by side to compare odds and place bets.

3) Fast internet access that does not drop out all the time.

What's the solution? I don't know. Can an Iphone do all of these things? Still a bit small and fiddly for my liking. What about an IPAD? Never even seen one. Perhaps I will ask Alex for a demo of his.

Is this the answer?

And if I were to go down the IPAD route, how does that work in terms of accessing the internet. Do you have to get a mobile phone style tariff - or do it through the existing Orange contract? Does it have its own Wifi built in? Or is it covered by the BT infiniti out of home options - BTFON etc - and how reliable are those? My attempts to use it on the HTC have been woeful.

I really am not showing myself in a very good light in this blog entry am I? - hopeless and clueless, not like me at all. I guess I am just looking for some advice and to know if there is indeed a solution to my woes out there. Otherwise looks like we will be maintaining the status quo of this laptop being on 24/7 and my mobile phone sitting in my pocket as an afterthought.

Not going to make any hard and fast decisions until I am sure. I live and breathe this laptop, tapping away, all my windows open, running my whole life, I have it all exactly as I want it. However I cannot help feeling there is more out there and the IPAD is probably the answer for a lot of people. I am sure it must be superior to this in many ways - but like so many things in life - is it right for me?

Responses welcomed!

If you have enjoyed reading this blog, please take a look at my books on Amazon (Paperback & Kindle), where you can read lots more of the same! Click here.

Jason x x

PS: It took me 26 minutes to write this blog using the laptop, including interruptions from Ollie. I imagine on the phone it would have been several hours and then something would probably have gone wrong!