CTitanic just released an app called CTWarranty. It keeps track of all your warranties for you in one place. Fantastic idea. It has a UMPC form factor, too! I’m downloading now.

Hans released Graphite! I’ve been using this app on and off for a while and I’m glad to see it’s finally available for everyone! The code and the appilcation are free. Graphite is great during meetings for drawing diagrams and taking whiteboard style notes. It senses the boxes you freehand and lets you drag them and their contents around.

From the FAQ:

• What is Graphite? Graphite is the Spiffy Codename for a tablet PC application for drawing and manipulating flowcharts and other box-and-line graphs.
• Why not use Visio? Good question. I use Visio at work all the time to create system architecture diagrams. The trouble with Visio is that it’s not really designed for real-time note taking. I wanted a fast and fluid app that I could use while in a meeting.

Requires Tablet Edition (XP or Vista) and .NET 2.0. The UI is even UMPC friendly (although the shape detection is iffy on UMPCs until the next build).

I vacationed in Anchorage, Alaska for a little over a week last month.  Though I spent some of that time visiting family and looking at wolves, black bears, ptarmigan, and mountains, I did some geeky stuff, too.  I kept tabs on my team at Homestead (VPN, Outlook), I did a full reinstall of my sister’s PC (downloading device drivers and reading security howtos) and I kept up with the latest news (firefox, gregarius rss aggregator).

I knew I’d want to do all of those things, so I spent a lot of energy beforehand deciding whether I should bring my laptop or my eo UMPC.  I finally decided that the eo would be all I needed and the extra portability would be great.  Turns out, I was right!  The eo performed beautifully and, paired with my Cingular UMTS phone, I had great data throughput even when wifi wasn’t available.  On the plane, it was an easy carry-on and it came in handy when I got bored with my DS Lite.

Dennis Rice has the news:

• eo™ i7210 Intel® Pentium® M 1.0 GHz ULV / 1 GB DDR2 RAM / 60 GB HDD (initial pricing = $1399)
• eo™ i7209 Intel® Celeron® M 900 MHz ULV / 512 MB DDR2 RAM / 30 GB HDD (initial pricing = $1099)
• Bundled Dock (ethernet, usb, svideo, etc)
• 1.8” IDE HDD
• Intel 915GMS with embedded 3D engine with Full Direct X9 Compliance
• Dual display support
• 1.3 Mega pixel CMOS camera with video capture capability
• 4-in-1 Card Reader (supports SD/SDIO/MMC/MS)
• 802.11b/g Wireless Networking
• Bluetooth v1.2 (v1.1 compatible) built-in USB 2.0 compliant module
• HD 7.1 channel audio
• 2x USB 2.0 / Headphones Out / Microphone In
• Rechargeable Lithium-Ion Battery Pack
• 7” WVGA touch screen display (80 gram)
• Dimensions: 8.88” W x 5.67” H x .98” D
• Weighs 1.83 lbs. (with battery pack)
• Ships with Microsoft Tablet Education and Experience Pack pre-installed
• Integrated Computer Stand
• Screen rotation supports portrait and landscape mode
• Fingerprint resistive casing

I’ve been using my eo for months now and I have a pretty good idea of what I’d like to see change.

• The buttons on the UMPC should be configurable based on the application that is currently in use.  A kludgy workaround is TabletButtonProfileManager.
• There should be a ‘Fn’ button that can be used to virtually double the number of programmable buttons on the UMPC.  Fn-PageUp and PageUp could have two different mappings.
• It should be possible to configure one of the buttons to act as a ‘right-click’ meta button.  This button would tell the screen to treat a tap as a right click.
• Highly granular motion sensors.  If you’ve ever played WarioWare Twisted, you’d know how powerful motion sensitivity can be.  Imagine scrolling a spreadsheet up/down and left/right with very slight movements.
• Two battery slots so you can hot-swap in fresh batteries.
• A new power-save mode that turns off the backlight and screen and forces the cpu into it’s slowest mode – all with one click.  Obviously, this would be less intrusive than Stand By, but it would also be less of a power savings.
• Make it easy to switch from Stand By to Hibernate.
• Windows needs a new service pack so that new computers don’t take an hour to patch with Windows Update when they arrive.