Musings of John Milner

The last couple of days I've been testing the TomTom iPhone SatNav app with traffic, looking for an alternative to the NeverFound devices I always end up with while traveling. Since I'm not traveling now, I've been playing with the app on my normal commute, and this morning, TomTom pulled a SatNav classic (one I was hoping it wouldn't do). While on my normal commute the traffic service said there were delays, yes it's rush hour in DC Metro. While on the freeway the app told me it had found a route that would be 6 minutes faster with traffic if i exited the freeway now. I was unfamiliar with where I could go from this exit, but considering i didn't have to be anywhere, I'd give it a try.

So how was TomTom going to save me 6 minutes? by getting right back on the freeway. Yes, the app pulled a classic get off and get right back on, but the "alternate" route didn't save me 6 minutes, it added about 10 due to the surface street congestion getting through three lights getting back on. Stupid SatNav!

Overall I'm a little under impressed with the TomTom app, it works like most standalone GPS units, but seems a bit more touchy than others. Will it be helpful while traveling to have everything in one device, yes (so long as i can keep it charged). The interesting thing I've found is that with the TomTom app running, my car kit (A griffin kit) is not able to keep up with the power draw of the iPhone so over a long road trip the app would actually drain my phone. Maybe I just need a different car kit, but still not the best.

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Light wind on the bay today but it's refreshing out!

Sun, 11 Jul 2010 12:52:22 -0700

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Sent from my iPhone

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Just got my corporate laptop back after ~20 hours...

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 12:09:18 -0700

Where was it for nearly 20 hours you ask? With our IT department being upgraded. No physical hardware was upgraded but I was "finally" upgraded from XP and Office 2003 to Vista and Office 2007. Yes, its July 2010 and Windows 7 is out as in Office 2010, but enterprise IT spent so much time rolling out Vista that we are still a generation behind. That's nothing new. The upside to this "upgrade" was 1) i got a fresh install of Windows (always a good thing after a wile) and 2) I can now open a lot of those excel files people keep sending me!

Besides for Microsoft Office, which I use all day long and at this point can not be replaced by any could offering, the only software I've needed to install for my personal use is Chrome (ok, there were a lot of chrome extensions too, but that I just copied the profile over). Just about everything that I do, outside of work, can be done over the web (the two caveats being photo editing/ management and iTunes).

One day I hope that enterprise computing will be platform agnostic much like most individuals computing is today.

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