Print to any printer from your iPad

Printing from the iPad ... #handy

I don’t actually print very often, but it’s nice to have the option and given the amount of time spent with an iPad in my hand it tends to be my primary screen. As you might already know AirPrint is limited to a small handful of the latest HP printers and given I’ve got an Epson at home, I’m SOL for the time being … or so I thought.

Volker Weber published a very simple howto to get printing going with any printer via Macs running 10.6.5. Follow the instructions … it worked great for me and I printed my first test page within a few minutes.

Are netbooks bad for the industry?

intel atom logo

Thanks to NetbookNews I watched this interesting interview between Xavier from Notebooks.com and Rahul Sood, the founder of VoodooPC and currently the CTO of Voodoo at HP…

Rahul has written a great post which led to the interview on his blog and I definitely recommend you read that as well for a very insider perspective on netbooks and Intel’s Atom.

While listening to the interview and reading Rahul’s post I’ve considered my own experiences with the Samsung NC10
and I would have to agree with the general assessment here. Netbooks are killer machines, but they are also limited in what they can really do well. As long as you understand how they really work, you’ve got a very capable system in your hands.

As Rahul points out, the confusion with Netbooks started with how they came to be. Initially designed for the lower end and emerging markets, they quickly found greater success as supplementary systems in more developed markets due to lower costs and pretty solid specs. What’s happening now is a fairly vast commoditization of systems. Looking at the spectrum of netbook news as I’ve been since becoming interested in the category, the specs across the board are essentially the same. The main differences tend to be based on size and how much standard RAM, HD and whether you get a 3 or 6-cell a battery. Just about every brand is using the same 1.6Ghz Intel Atom chip running Windows XP. Aside from a few players the category is pretty vanilla.

The more I’ve used and enjoyed my netbook, the more annoyed I also get with things like flash video stuttering or that I can move faster in google reader than Firefox seems to want to go. I know I bought a “cheap” system but because I’m running standard operating systems and applications it’s easy to forget … The danger here is that the we see a crossover in the types of products in which Atom gets used and as we go bigger, the worse the result.

I’m far from sold on new operating systems or start up modes for netbooks as interesting as Jolicloud does look. Instead I’m sold on the longer battery life, ultra light and mobile systems we currently call netbooks. I hope we see innovative ways to bring the power but keep the size – just like the good old days of Moore’s Law! Now that I’ve experienced the potential power of ultra mobile computing I just want more … absolutely not less. I don’t think netbooks are bad for the industry. Sure these are interesting financial times, but look at how many people are talking about and more importantly buying these PCs. So Rahul, if you are thinking of a Voodoo machine in the 10″ range with at least 6 hours of battery life (though perhaps not a netbook), I’m definitely interested.