Tech News Vermont

Today is the day for pre-ordering the iPad, Apple’s magical and revolutionary product, but no discounts seem to apply.  This touch based tablet computer appears to be running the iPod Touch/iPhone operating system, and as announced by Apple at the product introduction, looks to fill the gap between smart phone and laptop computers that is currently filled with netbooks.

Netbooks have become the standard college student accessory providing note-taking, email, and web browsing in a light weight small footprint.  We’ve reviewed the Acer One here at technewsvt.com and we’ll be reviewing the iPad the first week of April and see if Apple’s claims of magical and revolutionary are accurate or hype.

The curious thing is that Apple hasn’t discounted the iPad for college students or faculty.  Perhaps Apple feels the price point for the device is low enough or maybe the iPad is not meant to replace the netbook on college campuses, many of which are running Linux or Widows 7 and offering a more robust platform for school work (writing papers and programming.)

I just reset my iPhone because it was being very slow and not allowing me to connect to the Internet via Edge.  After the reboot…. 3G!  In Northfield!

There was a posting on the Burlington Free Press web site that suggested that iPhone in Chittenden county have started registering 3G signal. AT&T’s press release said that plans for a first quarter 2010 roll out of 3G service were in the works for Northfield and Montpelier. I haven’t see 3G in Vermont myself but I’m traveling to Burlington tomorrow.

The new Droid ad infers that other touch phones are beauty queens while the Droid is ugly but functional.  The metaphor the commercial uses is a racehorse duct taped to SCUD missile.  I’m not a marketing whiz by any stretch of the imagination but I think Verizon and Droid need to seriously consider connecting their service and phone with a 1950’s era missile that has been used to attack Israel in 1977,  fired by both Iran and Iraq during their war in the 80’s, and used against US troops in the first Gulf War.

Watch carefully and you’ll see that the missile doesn’t appear to be a SCUD at all but, resembles the American Polaris missile.

I suppose Verizon and Droid want to emotionally connect their phone with a Soviet weapon system employed by such wonderful countries as North Korea, Iran, and Vietnam for some particular reason.  Perhaps Droid is going to go for the left over international market where other touch phones are not available. Why would you sell to the American market by comparing your product to an adversarial missile system?