A Big Garden is by Gilles Clement, Professor Emeritus at the Versailles National School of Landscape Architecture and holder of the Chair of Artistic Creation at the College de France in Paris. He is famous for creating several public gardens such as the Andre? Citroe?n Park and the garden of the Quai Branly Museum in Paris and the Henri Matisse Park in Lille. The illustrations are by Vincent Grave.

This is a large format coffee table or get-together-with-the-family-to-read style book. Interesting and insightful text accompanies a brilliant and detailed illustration for each month. The text waxes between poetic and informative, giving the impressions of a master gardener’s master gardener. The illustrations are of the type that invite a long period of inspection, looking for proverbial waldoes, and are often fanciful and humerus.

Even though the book is about gardening, which tends to be a seasonal activity, it well and truly covers every month of the year. This can be on your gift shopping list for anyone’s birthday or for the winter holidays, not necessarily someone who is a heavy duty gardener. We spend some time trying to figure out if this was a kids book or an adult’s book. After a while we realized we were asking the wrong question. Clearly the text is not for young readers, but it is for any listener, of any age. And, again, the illustrations are amazing and for everyone. Each of them is equivalent in content density to an entire graphic novel, which is not surprising since Grave is a graphic novel illustrator.

I highly recommend this book, for yourself, or as a gift.

One of the keyboards I liked was Das Keyboard Model S Professional for Mac Clicky MX Blue Mechanical Keyboard (DASK3PROMS1MACCLI). However, as I noted in my review, the letters on the keyboard are stylized, and non standard. I find this jarring, and almost disqualifying. I thought I’d get used to it, but that never happened.

Meanwhile, some of the letters on the keys on my Avant Stellar keyboard, which is no longer made, have worn off entirely.

So, I came up with this solution: The Universal English Keyboard Stickers.

They are vinyl, and stick nicely on the keys. They are easy to put on, and removable. They are cheap. You get two in a pack. That means I was able to replace the key letters on my Das Keyboard, and also, my avant Stellar. I’ve not decided if I’ll just fix the Avant Stellar keys that are worn down, or put all new lettering on. Depends on how if feels, I suppose.

Anyway, here are the new letters partly applied to the over-stylized (in my opinion) Das Keybard keys:

Yes, there are come cat hairs now attached permanently to my keyboard.

This time I tried the AGPtEK M20S 8GB Mini MP3 Player(Expandable Up to 64GB), Lossless Sound Touch Button Metal Music Player with FM/Voice Record,Silver and I love it, enough to recommend it.

Here are some of the specs from the manufacturer:

<li>Tiny and Solid Construction: The metal body makes it sturdy with some weight. Mini and portable,only 3 x 0.3 x 1.2 inches.</li>

<li>Lossless Sound Quality: High sound quality brings crystal clear sound wherever you are. Support audio formats: MP3/WMA/OGG/APE(Normal/Fast)/FLAC/WAV/AAC-LC/ACELP.</li>

<li>Easy Operation with Touch Button: Designed with 6 touch buttons and 5 metal buttons,independent locking and volume control. Fashion and convenient operation.</li>

<li>Multi-function: With music play, FM radio, FM/voice recording, resume playback, folder view, clock screensaver, bookmarks etc.</li>

<li>Long playback time: Up to 14 hours of audio playback with 2 hours of full charge. 8 GB digital storage media capacity, supports up to 64 GB (not included). To avoid incompatibility, please use AGPTek Memory Card.</li>

Did you see that it holds a microSD? I’ve not used that feature, but that is pretty cool. It has folders you can divide the music up in, which is, essentially, a very efficient way of making a play list. I’ve also not tried to record music off the radio. I’ll probably never listen to music on this radio. I may, however, record Rachel Maddow now and then..

At this point, being fairly new, I think it goes well beyond the 2 hour charge estimate.

It is complicated, this little device, and therefore can not be operated with a single button like a Shuffle. So, it will take a little while to lerarn how to use it (perhaps a full five minutes). Just remember, the reverse U button backs you out, and that’s a great way to change modes. The menu hamburger button, while listening to a radio station, lets you make a preset or change the presets.

I’m not sure that I loved the headphones. I remember not being too impressed with how they fit, but that’s going to be true for everybody vis-a-vis various headphones. I just plugged in my favorite headphones and used them. I’d grab them and look them over one more time to give you my opinion, but it is possible that the cat ate them.

Also, I just noticed, that if you get the AGPtEK now and buy an additional item with it, like a microSD card or a wall charger, you can get a discount on something. I’m not in the market for any of those things so I didn’t look closely.

If there is a Bechdel Test for ableism, it would pass.

This is an interesting story written for youthful readers (see publisher’s summary below) that is well written and mostly devoid of the usual plot holes we find in this genre, but where the characters represent a range of non normative persona.

Benny, fifteen, is solitary by circumstance more than choice: he counts each move to a new town as “a life.” He’s on Life Number Seven. His last! He plans to run away from his paranoid mother, who’s been on the run since the disappearance of his father when he was three. Benny has no memory of it, except for weird dreams of a firestorm and a hideous dragon. After a fight with his mother, Benny packs his bags. Boom! The house explodes, catapulting Benny into a world he never imagined existed. The trail leads him to a gated Neoclassical building in the woods and to six teens he vaguely remembers: Kami is deaf, Amir is blind, Zuma is overweight, Layla is gorgeous but lazy, Chaz is in a wheelchair and Raj is as angry as the purple dagger-shaped birthmark running down the side of her face. These unlikely heroes share a common thread: Benny lost his father and they lost their mothers on the same day. The only clue to the mystery is Benny’s grandfather, Domenico H. Adez, a strange and dangerous man. “In my last years at Harcourt, I can’t remember reading one single fantasy MG or YA that was half as interesting as the world you have created. . . It really was a cool discovery that you had linked these modern-day misfits to Greek mythology and Greek history! So brilliant! Between the fight scenes and the stories and people and creatures of Greek mythology coming to life, it was truly a roller-coaster adventure. And the ending—now THAT is how you leave us wanting for more!” –Editor, Evil Speaks

Evil Speaks is self published, and the author, S. Woffington, also wrote Unveiling.

But I wanted an ePaper reading surface for all the reasons people tend to discuss. It is more like paper, perhaps does not have the down sides of constantly staring at a light emitting screen, etc.

There is an ePaper kindle that is under $80 (with the non obtrusive special offers on the sleep screen) that has very long battery time, holds a gazillion books, etc. This link will get you to the “New Kindle 6-inch”. I’m sure that’s a great Kindle, but I opted for the somewhat more expensive “Paper White” model: Kindle Paperwhite E-reader, 6″ High-Resolution Display (300 ppi) with Built-in Light, Wi-Fi. This comes in different colors (black vs. white) and with or without cell phone type connectivity.

The “Paper White” has mysteriously placed LEDs that light the screen from somewhere nearby the screen itself. It is like having a book light but using quantum mechanics instead of a tiny light bulb. I don’t really understand it. It is optional: can be turned off for the full effect of ePaper, or turned up and down as desired.

There are a couple of elite super duper higher end versions of this as well that have potentially important differences, and some probably very unimportant differences.

The Kindle Voyage E-reader is slightly smaller and lighter and brighter (more of the LEDs). The “Kindle Oasis” has even more LED’s, and comes with a fancy “charging cover,” and is even smaller. This is for people who are so fancy they can spend nearly 300 bucks on an eReader that is smaller than everyone else’s eReader!

To me, this is crazy. If anything, I’d like a larger one, maybe an inch taller and a quarter inch wider.

Here’s the thing. The original Kindle and several early models had buttons that you could use to turn the page. That was annoying to many people but many got used to it. The “New Kindle” and the “Kindle Paperwhite” use only touch screen capabilities (but built on to the ePaper using some sort of magic). This eliminates the accidental page turning. The touch screen, however, is not the best touch screen in the world. I’m doing fine with it, I’m happy, but some people will want their damn buttons back. The Voyage and Oasis have both touch screen and buttons. And, they are vastly more expensive. I’ve not played around with them so I have no advice on this, but I don’t really like the buttons so it was easy for me to not spend the extra money.

With this new eReader, I actually find myself reading more, and choosing the eBook option over the paper option more frequently.

The Dragon Touch M8 2016 Edition 8 inch Quad Core Tablet is a competitively priced high quality tablet, with excellent reviews. It costs 80 bucks. A while back, I asked if you should buy a $50 Kindle Fire Tablet. I concluded that maybe you should, because it is cheap and if the main thing you are doing with your tablet is grazing your Amazon Kindle booklist, it is actually idea. The Dragon Touch M8 (2016) is larger (8 inch display), and runs basic Android (different from the fire) and while a bit more expensive, it is also cheap.

Click through to see the specs. . It is a quad core with 1gb of ram, has a memory card slot for an extra 32 gigs of storage above the built in 16 gigs, GPS (that requires, I think, wireless), blue tooth, an HDMI plug, which might make it ideal for carrying around to give presentations (though you might need a ).

Scanning the reviews on Amazon, it seems that the bad reviews are about individual tablets that are broken in some way. The good reviews are pretty glowing. There are some complaints about the forward facing camera, but this may arise from the fact that at least in some tablets, this camera has a separate protective film on it that some may not have removed.

This tablet is not going to be as good as an iPad or a Google Nexus 9. It may be noticeably slower, especially with high demand apps like some games. But, if you simply can’t afford a tablet this may be a good choice, or if you want a second device for specific purposes that are not that demanding, you can probably skip some mid-priced pleasure (like going out to eat or something) and totally justify the purchase.

One mouse to rule them all

I had previously reviewed the Logitech Ultrathin Touch Mouse, suggesting it as a replacement for the Apple Magic Mouse. Now, I’ve tried it on my Linux machine (don’t know why that took so long). It turns out to work very well, better than most, possibly all, mice I’ve used.

One’s mouse is a very personal thing, and everyone is going to have a potentially different opinion about what the best mouse is. The Ultrathin is designed to work with laptops/notebooks because it is small, and it is assumed that everything you use with such a portable device must be small. The truth is, you can carry around a whopping big mouse in your notebook bag and not even notice, so this is a bit of a fallacy. Anyway, it obviously works with any computer with a bluetooth connection, desktop or laptop.

Also, some people want their mouse to be big, some want it to be small. And most people can probably grow to like whichever mouse they are using, and thus develop their preference longer term. I personally like a very large mouse or a very small mouse. I can not explain that.

A touchy mouse

There are, these days, two fundamentally different kinds of mouse. One is the kind with buttons and scroll bars and such, the other is the kind with a swipe-able surface. The Logitech Ultrathin Touch Mouse is one of the latter. It vaguely resembles the standard Apple mouse that comes with modern Apple computers, but is trapezoidal in shape rather than ovaloid. It is also smaller.

As I noted in my earlier review, my Apple mouse was starting to act strange, so I decided to replace it, and instead of getting an Apple mouse, I got the cheaper Logitech touchy mouse to try it out, and I’ve not looked back.

Designed for Windows/Mac but Works on Linux

There are two versions of this mouse, the T631 for Mac for the Mac, and the T630 for Windows. As far as I can tell, they are the same, but look different, with the Mac version being white and the Windows version being black. Makes sense at several levels.

I have read on the Internet, which is never wrong, that the Windows version works fine on Linux, and I can attest to the Mac version working fine on Linux as well. I doubt that at present Linux is using all the various swipy capabilities of the mouse, but it moves the cursor, has left and right click, swipe-scrolling, and it may also emulate a middle mouse button. Two fingered swiping back and forth trigger Linux buttons 8 and 9. And so on.

Obviously, I’ve not tried this mouse on Windows. Why would I ever do that?

Two hook ups and Great Battery Life

This is a bluetooth mouse (and that is how you get it to work with your Linux machine). The mouse has a selector switch, A and B, so you can pair it with two different computers (such as your desktop or your laptop).

Unlike the Apple Mouse or many other existing mice, this device does not use batteries that you replace. (Indeed, the Apple Mouse is even pretty picky about the kind of battery you use.) You plug it in to a micro USB cord hooked to something with power, every now and then. It charges really fast, and the charge lasts a long time.

I recommend the T630 or T31.

I had been using the stock Apple Magic Mouse on an iMac. The right click often didn’t work properly. Also, selecting and dragging files in Finder, or the Finder replacement I use (PathFinder) often failed. I figured the former was related to the mouse but assumed the latter was related to the OS. That turns out to not be the case.

The Magic Mouse will run on any AA batteries but if you don’t want to change the batteries a lot and have other problems, you need to use super-duper electronic device batteries. I think I was spending at least $50 a year on batteries. That Magic Mouse is a great piece of design and innovated in being a device that could handle gestures as well as act like a normal mouse.

But eventually my Magic Mouse started to get old, started burning through batteries more quickly, and most importantly, started disconnecting or otherwise giving problems. No big deal, mice get old and die. Time to get a new one.

In considering replacing it with a new Magic Mouse, I looked into alternatives and found the Logitech Ultrathin Touch Mouse t631 (not to be confused with the t630). It is explicitly a replacement for the Magic Mouse, but officially also runs on a Windows machine. Checking further, I also found, as is the case with so many devices including those made by Logitech, that it also works on a Linux machine, though the manufacturer does not support it.

Logitech Ultrathin Touch Mouse t631

Knowing that the mouse works on Linux and knowing that I needed a new mouse for my Linux laptop anyway, I went ahead and bought the Logitech Ultrathin Touch Mouse T631 for Mac (for somwhere south of $60, which I think is cheaper than a new Magic Mouse).

The problem I had with double clicking is gone. So, too, is the problem I had with selecting files. Had I known that was the mouse, I would have gotten a new mouse a long time ago (I doubt this is a Magic Mouse problem, probably something wrong with my specific mouse from the get-go).

The Logitech mouse will not be liked by everyone. When I first started using the Magic Mouse I found the touch was way to sensitive. But in short order I got used to that. People who like the fact that the Magic Mouse has a hair trigger on the click may be annoyed by the fact that you have to push harder to click with the Logitech Ultrathin. Personally, I’m fine with that and probably prefer it.

The Logitech Ultrathin is, well, ultra thin, and generally, much smaller than the Magic Mouse (but about the same width, which is important for gestures). Given Apple’s trend towards extreme smallness, this should actually excite Apple Ecosystem denizens. For me, again, the smallness is fine. Personally, I prefer to move back and forth between mice of very different sizes, shapes, and overall feel as I move between computers. That is probably just a quirk of mine but I think not ensuring that my hands are always configured in the same exact way no matter what reduces muscle and joint fatigue, decreased the chance of carpel tunnel syndrome, etc.

The mouse has all the usual gestures. Oddly, even though the Logitech Ultrathin is designed as a Magic Mouse replacement, it has several gesture features that don’t apply to the Mac, but do work with Windows to do various things. For example, there is a left and right edge swipe. It also has an app espose gesture that works on the Mac. The gestures are highly configurable and can be disabled.

Seeing this extra gesture functionality makes me want to try it out on Linux sooner than later. Note, for example, that the Logitech Ultrathin has a middle click. Yay for the middle click! (This especially applies to emacs users.) Again, I’ve not tried it out yet, but I’m sure it will work on Linux with a little tweaking.

The Logitech Ultrathin is a Bluetooth mouse, so your device is going to have to be a bluetooth device. Also, it has a button on the bottom that effectively changes the mouse’s identity, so you can pair one identity with one computer, the other with a different computer. This allows you to easily switch between two computers. All the literature with the mouse talks about doing this with two different Macs, but I don’t know why that wouldn’t work in general. I’ve not tried to pair it with my android phone yet… or an iPad … We’ll see.

The mouse runs off an internal rechargeable battery, so that 50 bucks a year I’m spending on batteries for the Magic Mouse paid for the Logitech Ultrathin, assuming it lasts just over a year. It has a fast charge, so one minute of charge is said to produce one hour of use-juice. The company says that one and a half hour of charge gives you about ten days of use. So, remembering to plug it in all night now and then will do it. Which, of course, I won’t remember, but it is a nice thought.

There is a design flaw, in my opinion, that I want to mention. You plug the charge cord, a micro-USB (which is highly convenient) into the bottom of the mouse. So you can’t use it while it is charging. I’d rather have the mouse hook up to the charger and still be usable, even if it has a cable hanging off it, for those moments when I have to keep working but forgot to charge it. I’m not sure why they made it this way.

And another thing, one of those strange quirks of the Magic Mouse, now solved. For reasons I did not understand at the time, Google Maps were useless on my iMac. When trying to navigate (using the mouse) by dragging the map, the zoom mode would activate and the map would start growing and shrinking rapidly and randomly. I’d be looking at the distance between my hope and my son’s new grade school, and suddenly I was comparing the distance between Coon Rapids, Minnesota and Bognor Regis, England. With the new mouse, that does not happen. So that is yet another quirk that was the Magic Mouse’s fault, now solved.

The mouse does not require installing configuration software but you will probably regret not doing so. So do that. Easily done on a Mac, and it works. If I experiment with Linux, I’ll write something up on what esoteric command line magic you will need to make the mouse sing on that OS.

Well, there’s good news and bad news. As the Kindle technology and the eBook market have developed, all of those original promises have become either vapor or else very different than first imagined. Nonetheless, I want a new-old Kindle as well as a Kindle Fire. Let me ‘splain.

First, on the cost of books. A kindle edition of a book is generally cheaper than the print edition, but rarely is it half price as has been claimed by Amazon. Let’s check a few examples to see.

Amazon advertizes five books as the “Best of the Month” for October. If you were an avid book reader, you’d read at least one or two of these, right? Let’s compare the print price, the Kindle price, and the percentage Amazon claims you save by comparing the Kindle price with some fictional number that you’d have to be a total chump to pay.

1Q84 in print, hardcover: 16.77; Kindle: 14.99; Claimed savings: 51%

The Marriage Plot: A Novel in print, 14.72; Kindle: 12.99; Claimed savings: 54%

The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean in print, 20.97; Kindle: 9.99; Claimed savings: 71%

Lost Memory of Skin: A Novel in print: 14.05 (paper); Kindle: 12.99; Claimed savings: 50%.

The Dovekeepers: A Novel in print: 16.15; Kindle: 14.99; Claimed savings: 45%

Result:

$82.66 Total cost to buy print editions
$65.95 Total cost to buy Kindle editions
$16.71 Savings

So, if you buy these books on the kindle, you will save 20% over print editions. Amazon makes the claim that on averge you’ll save about half, and for these particular books (taking the average of their claimed savings) you’ll save 54%.

From this we can suggest the following possiblities:

1) Amazon can’t do math.
2) Amazon thinks you are stupid.

Both are distinct possibilities. I assume that Amazon is using the publishers’ suggested prices for these books to estimate the savings, but in truth, no one pays retail. And Amazon, since they sell the books, should be aware of this. And of course, they are. Hey, if you are reading this and you are an attorney general with nothing else to do this week, this can be your low hanging fruit! Make Amazon stop claiming that you are saving 50% when instead of paying 14 dollars you pay 11 dollars.

There is another way in which Amazon does not save you money. Or at least, it does not save me money. For novels, going back a year or so, I used to save a LOT of money because most of the novels I read were loaned to me by my mother-in-law who: a) reads a lot; b) is an expert on modern lit (has a degree in it and everything); c) has good taste in books; and d) is very good at explaining to me what a book is about so I can decide if I want to read it or no. Oh, and e) was in the habit of buying piles of books.

But then she got a Kindle and my source of free novels has been eradicated by technology! So now, I can buy novels for the kindle and save 20 percent, which actually means I pay 80 percent MORE than zero!

Having said all that, I love my Kindle and I want more. First, about the price: Who cares! We’re talking about books here! (Have you been to my house?) I’d pay MORE for the electronic version in fact, because they are search-able! (Don’t mention this to Amazon, please.) Plus, there is a whole category of books that are actually much much cheaper on the Kindle than anywhere else.

Here are a few books I’ve read on the Kindle over the last couple of years:

The Complete Sherlock Holmes. Print: 10.00

The Great Boer War: the Final Edition Covering the Entire Conflict 1899-1902. Print: 32.99

The Origin of Species. Print: 9:95

And a bunch of other books. On the Kindle? Free. Yes, they are also available free from other places, such as various web sites. But the Kindle is a reader, and my computer is not. It is hard to take the computer to bed at night for a half hour of Victorian literature.

OK, enough about price, what about technology? The Kindle Fire is the newest technology and it is essentially a tablet iPad like thing that is a dedicated reader. A bit like a Motorola Android pad with a screwdriver driven through part of its brain so it can only do a few things. But it’s not that expensive, and it’s smaller and lighter than a tablet. Yet, it is heavier than a kindle. Is it too heavy? Is it not as light and nice as a Kindle, in the hand, lighter than an actual book, etc?

I’m not sure yet. I’d like to borrow one and play around with it. Maybe I can convince my father in law that my mother in law needs one! But my estimation is that i would like it.

But, it is very interesting to note that the Fire does not use Whisernet. Only WiFi. That is in fact more than a little interesting.

I’ve found over the last several months that Whispernet sucks for anything but downloading a book you just bought. And, it does not work in some places. Like up at the cabin. Julia is at present spending months in a country with zero Whispernet access. Good thing her Kindle also has wireless!

I think Whispernet was a nice idea but if I were to buy a new Kindle, I’d get the kind with only wireless.

Which brings us to the final item I wanted to mention: As expected, with the Fire in the mix, the regular Kindle price has dropped. If you don’t mind the ads (which are not visible in the reading area, but they are visible in the index area and on the screen saver) and don’t want Whispernet (which you don’t) and like the smaller form factor (which is good … it is what makes the Kindle a good thing to read from) then you can now get the Kindle, Wi-Fi, 6″ E Ink Display – includes Special Offers & Sponsored Screensavers for 80 bucks.

That’s the cost of a discounted academic book or 10 novels at Barnes and Noble.

One of the problems of having a machine to read your books is the anxiety of the machine breaking. And the Kindle is a bit delicate. At this price, that anxiety is much less. A new reader every couple of years for 80 bucks is very reasonable.

And by “you” I mean yooz guyz who are skeptics.

In order to get there, to the point of this argument, I’m going to have to define skeptical computing, and to do that, skeptical anything, and to do that, what being a skeptic is. That sounds like a long journey but I promise to be concise.

What is a skeptic? A skeptic is a person (or other sentient, symbolically thinking being) with the ability to make rational arguments. The skeptic applies these rational arguments generally, and makes most or all important decisions on the basis of these arguments, where possible. When the skeptic fails to apply the rational argument and develops a belief that is not rationally tested, or that is rationally rejected, the skeptic compartmentalizes that belief as needed, and does not mind when laughed at by other skeptics for such belief.

In other words, a skeptic is a (typically) human (as in flawed) rational thinker with imperfect information living in a world very different from the one economics modelers often assume.

What is skeptical computing? This is a bit more complicated because computing itself is a vague concept as I’m using it here. I mean using computers as a person and the choices you make, but if you are a highly placed IT person that may be quite different than if you are mainly writing letters and keeping track of your schedule. So one dimension of complexity is scale. In addition, you may have more or fewer choices as to what hardware, operating system, and application software you can use. So one dimension is that of available options. Finally, there are probably stylistic choices and personal proclivities that have to do with experience or something specific to you.

For instance, I find that the very pretty, soft, stylized rendering of fonts and other visuals on the current Mac System X to be hard to read, so for me using a Mac no matter how wonderful it might otherwise be is difficult and slightly painful. I therefore feel quite excused for not using one. People who have only used Windows for many years may not like another OS that is far superior simply because of what they are used to (i.e, being crapped on by their computer). There is an irrationality to that, but the irrationality exists as the larger societal level, not necessarily at the personal level.

It might be easier to define skeptical (i.e., rational) computing by defining what it is not. I know a lot of irrational Windows users and a lot of irrational Mac users. People who will tell you that Macs never do anything wrong, or that their Windows machine has never crashed. Those would be the non-skeptical, insane people.

And then there is Linux. Linux is actually the operating system of Skeptics who have a) choice b) some interest in the technical aspects of computer use and c) a tiny bit of experience or training. Linux actually works for more people than that, but making that argument is hard. I’d rather say to people “Linux is not for everybody” and then chuckle quietly when I think what that really means.

My point being, very simply this: Rational people use Mac’s and Linux, depending on various factors. Many rational people are, sadly, forced to use Microsoft systems and software. Woe is them.

So, what is the rational choice regarding buying an iPad?

Well, the most rational choice for most people is probably to not buy one at all until a few months has gone by, because that is what one should always do with totally new hardware if you can. Second or third generation configurations usually become default and basic in a few months, difficulties are worked out, prices drop, and so on.

But aside from that, there seems to be two categories of argument emerging to never buy one, or to at least be very negative about the Apple iPad, or, in some cases, to even bash them with baseball bats and put them in blenders instead of using them. And these arguments are wrong, from a skeptical, rational point of view.

The first is in what appears to be a rather quirky design. The new iPad can only be connected to the outside world in a limited number of ways, and the usual methods of connecting are in some cases lacking. This seems strange, even uncanny. But remember how uncanny the first Macs that had no floppy drives were? That seemed so odd, so counter intuitive, so bizarre, they might as well have been talking dogs or something. But now, nobody has a floppy drive, and we are all so much happier. True, we have thumb drives out the wazoo, and can still never find the files we want, but at least there are no more piles and drawer-fulls of floppy disks laying around everywhere! Yay!

My point being: You might think some of the design aspects of the new iPad are strange, but you might just be behind the curve. Apple has repeatedly introduced totally new ideas that freaked everyone out and that have become universally accepted. They may have only 10 percent of the market, but 100 percent of home computer users use Apple-like desktops and don’t use floppies.

The second strike against the iPad is the number and diversity of negative reports about hardware and to some extent software.

This is where the skeptical part really comes into play. This is where the autism vaccine deniers are separated from the rational people, but in computer-think. Here is the truth: For the average established computer system, the percentage of actual hardware failures, flaws, or quirks that get blogged about … I’m talking about individual instances here, where Joe Schmo has a broken machine and writes a blog or live journal entry about it or comments on an existing blog … is tiny. A small fraction of the instances in which someone’s USB port breaks make it into the blogosphere as news, or are turned into YouTube videos.

In contrast, for brand new, aggressively marketed and hyped hardware and software from a major company like Apple, the percentage of possible (not even actual) hardware glitches that get onto the Internet and discussed rather loudly is … NOT tiny. It might be closer to ten percent. Maybe more.

So you have to take the news with the proverbial grain of salt.

I don’t like Apple’s proprietary approach, and I distrust specialized hardware. But I DO own a kindle and I love it. I’d probably like an iPad very much.