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Dust seems to be one of those things that just invades and clutters your home no matter how much you try to prevent it.  And while it’s a pain to clean it up (and believe me, I don’t consider myself very domestic!), we all have to at some point.

The characteristics of a good vacuum cleaner are:

1. Runtime – It has to last long enough to get through your cleaning cycle.
2. Suction – It needs to have enough suction to pull up whatever you are trying to clean.
3. Disposability – Throwing out a nasty dust bag can create a huge mess of its own.
4. Accessibility – Can you pull the vacuum out and clean something up on a moment’s notice?  Will you have to find an outlet first?
5. Size/Weight – it must be light enough to use comfortably.  A heavy vacuum cleaner can be not only unnecessary for the task, but also make you more unlikely to do any cleaning at all.

Based on all of the above, I settled on the Dyson DC35 (there are newer models now … the DC44 and DC59).  Why?  Read on.

1. Runtime – 12-15 min on normal, 6 on max suction.  Enough to do a quick pass across 1300 sqft.  But it’s easy enough to use that we rarely do full passes.
2. Suction – On the hardwood floors here, it picks up everything we need it to.  It is MUCH stronger than a dust buster and can easily suck up dust bunnies off a desk or in a corner without having to be right on top of it.
3. Disposability – The bin simply pops open with a latch release.  More thorough cleanings can be done by disassembling the vacuum.
4. Accessibility – This is one of the best features of the DC35.  A wall mount keeps the vacuum above the clutter … plus the charger slots into the wall mount so that you can “dock” the vacuum and it is always charged and ready to go.  Additional attachments hanging from the mount allow you to switch between floor and hand vacuum modes as needed.  And, of course, it’s cordless, so you don’t need to find an outlet for it next to wherever you are cleaning.
5. Size/Weight – The Dyson DC35 is incredibly light and not an appliance where the words “push” or “lug” have to come into play.  You might not want to vacuum several floors with it, but it’s a great choice for cleaning up a single room.

In short, I think this is the perfect vacuum for smaller living areas.  The wall mount saves space, which is by definition at a premium to begin with.  The integrated charging keeps it ready so you can “clean as you go” instead of having to lug out a huge vacuum cleaner.  It’s multipurpose, so you can replace a dust buster and a floor vacuum with just one compact device.

My only criticism of this vacuum is that it requires you to hold the button to vacuum.  This is fine most of the time.  It saves on battery life, because you can just hold the button on the areas that need it.  However, for extended vacuuming sessions, holding the button gets tiresome.

Nevertheless, it really is the perfect vacuum for a smaller space.  And arguably, even a larger one too.  I find the ease of cleaning with it means it actually gets used, as opposed to a larger and more powerful vacuum that nobody wants to dig out of the closet.  Buying the slightly older DC35 may be preferable, since you can usually find factory refurbs or used models for $175-200.  Highly recommended.

One topic of interest that I haven’t commented on my blog is my recent obsession with real estate.

Rather than going into a huge overview, I think deep diving on particular real estate topics of interest in individual blog posts will be more interesting.

So here’s a question many of my friends are facing recently.  You’ve got some money saved up, and you’re looking for a place.  You can afford a one bedroom pretty easily, or you could stretch and go for the two bedroom.  What should you do?

Well … in fact, the differences in the units themselves tend to be obvious.  I’ll outline those here.  The subtleties of this question tend to revolve more around your own finances than anything else.

Pros for one bedrooms

1BD’s cost less – Yes, we’re stating the obvious here, but it’s a big one.  Less sqft means you pay less!  If you don’t need more than a 1BD, why pay more? (There are some good reasons to stretch, actually, but keep reading for that.)

1BD’s can prevent you from overleveraging – Related to the above … if you want some real estate exposure in your asset portfolio, but you don’t want to overdo it, 1BD’s may be your best choice, regardless of how good 2BD’s are.  People who maxed out their net worth to buy a home took a huge dive in the wrong direction when the market swung negative in 2008.  Being forced to cash out at the worst possible time is very bad.

1BD’s are easier to maintain – Less square footage means you have less personal overhead.  Ask anyone who’s lived alone in a big house … it takes time and effort to keep all the rooms clean!  If you want to lead a leaner lifestyle, all you really need is a kitchen, washer/dryer, living room and bedroom (or a studio).  It’s natural and easier to keep the areas you use most often in working shape.

Pros for 2BD’s

You can get a roommate to help with the mortgage – Being a mini landlord is a great way to build your income stream.  And, if you rent out the extra room, you have the advantage of really being able to keep an eye on the place, ensuring the quality of the tenants and the property stays high!  Remember, living alone is an American conceit/luxury.  It’s not a human right, and you will waste a lot of after tax money for the privilege.

You can grow into a 2BD – 1BD’s tend to be transitional living spaces … after you graduate college, and before you start a family.  A family wants at least a 2BD so that the kids don’t wake up the parents constantly!  Transaction costs for real estate are quite high, so selling out of a 1BD into a 2BD because you need the space can set you back a bit.  This is why, unless you are a professional, I’m a fan of buy and hold when to comes to real estate.

You can maximize the mortgage interest deduction – Since 2BD’s cost more, you get closer to the magical mortgage interest deduction limit of $1,000,000.  There are a plenty of reasons not to spend more than you can afford, but, if your loan exceeds $1MM, you’ve got one more reason to hold back the spending.

A fully owned 2BD can be carried by renting just one of the rooms – Later in life, if you fully pay off a two bedroom unit, you can keep one of the rooms rented and use the other room as a pied a terre.  You’ll still make a bit of money each month (aka not be cash flow negative, which is a real no no when you retire) and you’ll still have a great place to swing by as you hop around the world.  It’s impossible to have that kind of arrangement with a 1BD, unless you have a VERY understanding tenant. 🙂

Dual income families can be more stable renters – With the premise of 2BD’s being more attractive to families in mind … if you eventually decide to rent out the entire unit, having two sources of income instead of one is great insurance against the possibility of not being able to come up with the rent.  Not to mention that, in many respects, having a family tends to correlate with stability and wanting to keep the place clean … just like you would if you were living there!

Perspective questions

Given the choice between a 1BD or a 2BD of nearly equal size, what should you get?

Go for the small 2BD.  The 2BD adds tons of flexibility, as mentioned above.

If you have a nearly unlimited investment budget, should you get many 1BD’s or many 2BD’s?

I would buy many 2BD’s.  At worst, you rent the rooms out individually like 1BD’s.  At best, you have all the benefits of being able to attract whole families and older/higher income tenants instead of just singles or DINK’s (dual income, no kids).  That’s a good segment of the market to gain access to.

Conclusion

I’ll end by saying that, in my opinion, relative to the cost, 2BD’s have a slight general advantage over 1BD’s.  The questions of personal financial leverage and commitment, however, still dominate the equation for most people.  Don’t spend more than you can afford, and don’t sacrifice other very high reward opportunities that your money could be in just to stretch into a 2BD!

But getting a roommate completely changes the equation in terms of buying a 2BD.  It can be OK to stretch the loan a bit if you are buying in an easily rentable area, because that extra rent coming in is offsetting your real leverage.   I highly recommend getting a roommate!

I enjoyed this book very much when I read it a couple of years ago.  While lengthy, it provides a very enjoyable insight into the mind of a very intelligent man, and argues against some fundamental human biases and the need to incorporate knowledge of them into our own modeling of markets and other industries.

The fundamental notion of this book is the “black swan” … that is, the extremely rare event that one almost never observes, but which defines.

1. People do not think about “exponential” distributions correctly.  They are built to understand gaussian distributions (or bell curves, in other words).  Non-linearity is just not something humans perceive well.

2. We do a very poor job of imagining or accounting for that which we have never experienced or seen.

3. Many experts are anything but.  It behooves you to think at a macro level about just how “expert” or “knowledgeable” someone can actually be at something.  Be appropriately skeptical.

4. Scalable jobs and technology displace the “good” or “better” segments of the workforce.  Would you buy a CD of the 10th best violinist in the world when there’s a CD of the best one out?  These kinds of effects create massive winners and a bunch of losers.

5. We prefer to focus on individual and easily understood narratives and events over the true complexity and causation of such events.  The book refers to this as the “narrative fallacy.”  This is a valuable insight, and one that I have extended into observations and arguments in politics, the media, etc.  It is exploited constantly by the media by making the public react to statistically insignificant, but gross or absurd, events.

6. We have a preference for the constant and predictable, as opposed to the lumpy and big.  This leaves a lot of room for making money in lumpy ways, if one has the emotional fortitude and intelligence to make the right calls.

Definitely a good read.  I often think of examples in this book when I refer to different events as they occur.  I also gained more of an appreciation for philosophy after observing how Taleb weaves his way through different thinking approaches.  I hope I’ll be able to spend more time in that area of study someday.

It is important to not let your old habits define your behavior today.  A great example that I’m writing about today for you is time and money.

Not everything is worth your time

Like a poker player sizing his bets or moving to bigger tables on the opportunities, you, in general, should be letting go of certain tasks as you become more successful.  As your earning power rises, your free time becomes more precious (and yet still very much necessary for one to recharge).  Consequently, small losses and gains should be ignored.

Here are some examples of daily activities that are worth the time to some, and not to others.

• Looking for the best deal on a flight
• Finding free parking
• Sweating over the good/better/best models of something
• Doing your own cleaning
• Mailing in rebates
• Hoarding old possessions and taking up living space
• Rushing to buy something on sale

Youth vs Age

When we are young, we spend lots of time trying to get money …. either by acquiring or conserving it.  Our early years are replete with idle time, not many ways to work productively, and summer vacations.  In order to get what we want, we have to be scrappy at every opportunity.

When we are older, we spend a lot of money trying to get back our time (if we are lucky).  We pay people to clean up after us.  We go out to eat.  We fly instead of drive.  Suddenly, the tables are reversed.

Many folks don’t quite make the correct transition from young to old, or poor to rich. That’s a little bit of a tragedy.  They spend their whole life struggling, because it’s how they grew up.  While there’s nothing wrong with studious work and attention to detail, it is crucial to transform the nature of that struggle into bigger and better things.  Don’t keep running a horse race when everyone else in your peer group is now racing cars.

Evaluating time

Now, one way to evaluate how to spend your time is to compare your average earnings per hour towards the time it will take to do something.

If you make on average 50 dollars per hour, is it worth it for you to worry about returning the socks that didn’t fit after you bought them last week?  Should you be worrying about not buying that extra storage on your phone for 100 dollars more and possibly regretting it later?  Likely, no.  Buy the best phone, throw out the socks, and enjoy the free time so you can do a better job at work.

There’s an argument, of course, that you can’t really just go out and earn another 50/hour ad infinitum.  Most salaried jobs pay what they pay … though, on average, doing a better job is going to get you up the ladder.

Regardless, you will find that simply telling yourself to think in terms of time vs money will slowly make you better at it.  It’s not important to get every detail correct … just the big ones (like negotiating big ticket items) and the frequent ones (which you will have lots of opportunities to get right over time).

Sam Walton

There’s a famous story about Sam Walton, the billionaire founder of Walmart.  An acquaintance of his, knowing his reputation for frugality, once left a penny on purpose in Sam’s path on the way to boarding the plane.  True to form, Sam stopped to pick it up.

Was that the rational thing to do?  Hell no!  Sam was a billionaire, but that doesn’t make everything he did right.  By all rights, he ought to have paid someone to wipe his ass if it would have given him more time to lead Walmart.  But what it can and does go to show you is that Sam’s obsession and outlook were probably the source of his strength at Walmart and an imperfection in other ways.

We humans have a tendency to behave irrationally when it comes to money.  For example, studies showed that many folks would travel to another store just to save a couple of bucks on a box of pens that cost $7 at the store they were already at.  But then, they wouldn’t spend nearly the amount of time negotiating the price of a new car.  This fact will be exploited against you when you are making big purchases.  Don’t let it happen to you!

Money is not a sacred cow.  It’s a tool.

Playing both offense and defense with your money is important.   We all know what it’s like not to spend money.  But sometimes it should be spent!

A good example is multiple large monitors … a clear productivity win for anyone that works at a computer.  Spend the money!

Hiring an assistant is also a great idea for folks that are being overrun with minutiae that doesn’t move the needle on their main source of income.

Books (non-fiction) are another great way to get better at something (but don’t forget, practice is still number one).  If you even have an inkling that you might learn something from a book, buy it and read it!

The point I’m making is that trading small losses now (in terms of spending) to permanently improve your productivity (or even just a chance at it) is great.  Rational people will aggressively *spend* money to “sharpen the saw.”  Perhaps even more interestingly, a truly rational person will spend money just at chances that the saw might be sharpened, because the return on a increase in personal productivity is so high.

Investing in yourself

One clear area where I bend the rules, per the above, is that investing in your own learning or productivity is usually A GOOD THING, even though the benefits may seem unclear at the time.  Such expenses should be in line with your earning power, but they often earn unseen returns in the future.

For example, I spent quite a bit of money just learning about repairing cars, changing my own oil, brakes, etc, and driving a car at the track.  Was it a waste of money on the surface?  Yes.  But now I can challenge any mechanic that’s trying to pull a fast one on me.  I can talk capably with other car nuts, which has its own benefits.  And I’m a safer driver on the roads because I know the limits of the car more than most.

If I think a book will teach me anything at all, I buy it.  I might not read it.  But then again, I might.  I rarely take away more than a few key points from any book.  But my mental model of the world has gotten much clearer over time, and it would not have happened without those books.

Conclusion

What was the right approach to your time and money in the past may no longer be correct now.  Many people make the mistake of living the last half of their lives like the first half.  Your approach to time and money should be adapted to situations of today.

Not everything can be reduced to a dollars per hour equation … but thinking about it will make you better at filtering out the events that can be.

I’ve spent a lot of time struggling with different home WiFi setups.  I really can’t count the number of times I’ve had different routers go out on me or just get flaky.  But I’ve settled on a solution that works and I’m going to share it with you now to save the world some time.

Here’s my recommended setup.

For WiFi – Use Airport Extreme’s or Express’s as standalone WiFi access points by putting them into bridge mode.  Hardwire where you can and use identical access point options … otherwise known as a roaming network.  WiFi clients will roam seamlessly between access points with the same SSID and security settings.

Place additional Airport’s strategically with the “extend a wireless network” option to get whole home or yard coverage.  This feature works remarkably well on the Airport’s and is a very good way to cover an unwired home.  While “extend a wireless network” does impact total throughput, it’s far better to use it to improve coverage to eliminate dropouts than it is to worry about theoretical performance.  You just don’t want to use it instead of a hardwired ethernet port when one is available.

For the gateway – WNDR3700 with OpenWRT as the router/gateway.   All I can say is that I’ve hammered this thing with pretty much everything you can throw at it and it’s been very stable and full featured to boot.

If you aren’t a tinkerer and don’t need anything special in terms of home router/gateway features, then just use an Airport Extreme as the gateway and be done with it.  Excellent choice if you just want to set up the parents and not get calls about the internet being down.

Note that recent generations of the Airport allow for simultaneous dual-band transmission.  Defaulting to the same SSID for both bands allows devices to roam to the best band for the job … 5 GHz for increased bandwidth and less interference from neighboring access points, but a seamless fallback to 2.4 GHz at range.

The problem with using the same SSID is that the operation of what is going on is obscured somewhat.  When using iOS devices, you can’t even tell what band you are on.  So it is sometimes desirable to use the option that names the 5 GHz band with a different SSID.  This is useful mainly in situations where you want to test the explicit performance on 5 GHz with different devices or compensate for a dumb device that doesn’t know it should connect to 5 GHz over 2.4 GHz in your house.

I used to name the bands separately, but I recently decided to switch to identical SSID’s and see how it goes.  When I walk out to the elevator here, my iPhone won’t aggressively switch down to 2.4 GHz unless the SSID’s are identical, which means the connection just dies.  And, you know, tech is supposed to make our lives easier, so I figured I would try to have a little faith in them.  I’m almost all Apple here, so I have reasonable confidence that the devices will be smart about selecting the correct band for the situation.

One of the observations I have been making over the past couple of years is that many people and the mainstream media, in particular, like to frame issues in binary terms.

Example: People are born gay or they aren’t.

Example: Obesity is a disease, not a willpower issue.

The binary narrative is tempting.  It’s simple to understand. It allows you to take a stand on an issue, often in direct opposition to others (which I think is detrimental).  But the truth is often, if not almost always, more complex.

For example, is it really accurate to say people are either born gay, or they aren’t?  Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that people are born with a certain level of attraction, or at least level of non-repulsion, to the idea of intimate relationships with the same sex … and that that attraction can be many different levels of weak or strong?

In a way, the binary nature of the original question forces people to take the complete opposite stance just because it’s the viewpoint they are most familiar with.  “Either a person is heterosexual like me, or they are 100% flaming gay.”  A hypothetical person, however, who gets the benefit of a more nuanced approach might initially be turned off by the 100% “gay” crowd, but then realize that there are folks in the middle who seem to be more like himself and yet aren’t all that bad (or at least, in his mind, easier to relate to).  And thus the bridge to understanding builds.

In a way, saying people are born gay or they aren’t, is like saying people are born tall or they aren’t.  In fact, many different factors contribute to one’s height, and it doesn’t seem like a stretch to suggest that this must be the case for one’s sexuality as well.

Or take the obesity issue.  Willpower, many say, is the answer.  In fact, that’s the narrative all diets try to sell to people, isn’t it?  But if we think about it in analog terms … it’s not so hard to imagine that certainly there have been times when I sit in front of things I shouldn’t eat, and I eat them.  And then it’s not so hard to imagine that it probably is a little harder for other people to not eat that cookie, and for some, maybe it’s really hard.  Sure, a gun to the head might stop them from eating it … but there’s a level of attraction to that cookie and it’s got to be different among different people. Suddenly, we realize that willpower isn’t the whole issue and maybe we should work through different avenues and approaches to help different kinds of people to reach their goals.  Now, that actually seems like a much smarter approach than taking on all kinds of schedules and being told not to eat things because if you do, you’re a bad person.

One of the reasons people embrace the binary narrative is that the analog scale creates complicated decisions when the outcome itself must be binary.  For example, mental illness.  How mentally ill does someone have to be before you deem them a danger and lock them up off the streets?  There will be some people that are clear and present dangers, and many people who are completely sane.  And somewhere in that middle grey zone, there will be some people who probably don’t deserve to be locked up and are, and there will be the occasional person allowed free that ends up hurting people.  That is an uncomfortable outcome, to be sure.  Or how about elderly folks that are getting too old to drive?  When do you take away a driver’s freedom because the risk to others is too great?  If you think that’s complicated … than what about codifying such practices into law?  The law does not deal well with such analog situations.

Once one realizes that many issues framed in arguments in the media are not truly binary, the nature of those issues becomes much more clear and less controversial.  Binary questions are really, in many cases, intellectual trick questions, and nothing more.

The Steve Jobs biography tells a fascinating tale of how Steve wanted to implement a uniform for his employees in similar fashion to Japanese workers.  While the idea didn’t transplant so well organizationally, the personal aspect was something Steve could implement, and did.  Hence his iconic black turtleneck and Levi 501 jeans look.

Surprisingly, this is one of those concepts I had to read about to really question for myself.  If it was good enough for Steve … could it be good enough for me?

Ignoring the social utility of wearing different clothes, the engineer in me realizes that wearing a bunch of very different clothes every day is very inefficient.  It wastes my mental power in deciding what clothes to wear.  I find my wardrobe gravitates away from certain clothes over time.  The extra clothes waste space.

So what do you gain from wearing a uniform?

Pros

1. No outdated clothes.  It’s a very common problem to tire of certain clothes and stop wearing them.  Eventually, half your wardrobe is just taking up empty space.  With a uniform, your wardrobe is always up to date and current.  In the future, I can anticipate that I may need to make a wholesale change to one or more pieces of the outfit when things start to wear out.
2. Compact wardrobe.  When you have only a few types of clothing, it becomes very easy to pack all items of the same type together.  All your clothes fit into less space.  This is useful both in daily life as well as on trips.
3. Highly refined look.  When you have a single carefully chosen outfit, the refinement of that outfit is present every day.  It is simply not possible to put as much thought into a look that you change each day as one that you wear all the time.
4. Easy to recognize.  With an iconic look, it becomes much easier for your friends to find you in a crowd.  Your clothes become part of your look, and you become a much larger and more identifiable target to locate in a crowd.
5. Easy to wash and sort.  It can be burdensome to toss around all the different kinds of clothes that should go together by group when you pull your stuff out of the wash.  With just a few types of clothing, grouping everything becomes much simpler.
6. Save money. Extra clothes simply cost more money.  They cost even more when you don’t end up wearing them after a while.  And reselling clothes is a virtually worthless activity.  A uniform means that 100% of your clothing budget goes towards clothes you will actually wear.  That’s efficient!

Cons

1. Lack of daily expression. While I would argue that a uniform defines your persona more strongly than daily outfits, you can’t really express yourself in seasonal or daily ways with the same outfit day in and day out.  I very much believe this is even more important an issue for the female gender than for males.
2. Some events really do require different attire.  I can’t wear my uniform into a fancy restaurant or to a funeral.  That means I still need a bit of extra space for the dress shoes, shirts, and slacks that accompany such events.
3. Extreme weather requires different clothing. I imagine Steve did not wear his jeans and turtleneck while skiing.  He would have been damned cold!  Sometimes, the weather demands something different from you.

After reviewing the above points, I decided the experiment would be worth conducting.  I went through all the items in my life and decided to figure out what colors and looks I had gravitated to.  I gradually become convinced that black with subtle red accents was the way to go.  But as I started to pay more attention, I realized there were more requirements.

1. The uniform must balance casual with business attire.  If I need a different outfit for work and for going out on the weekends, I’ve basically doubled my clothing load.
2. The uniform must be comfortable.  Sometimes people will put up with uncomfortable clothing to look good.  But day in and day out?  No way.
3. The uniform must be adaptable to a reasonable range of weather and temperatures.  Again, if I need a different outfit in the summer vs the winter … I’ll have a bunch of clothes sitting around doing nothing for half the year.
4. The uniform should favor easily replaceable items. While it’s not the end of the world, if you do happen to start experiencing wear and tear on some items, it’s a little easier if you can just cycle in replacements.  Otherwise, you will have to replace the whole shebang at once or rotate in new but different replacements over time.

So here’s what I ended up choosing.

1. Shirt – Hanes ComfortBlend Polos – $5.00 a shirt.  I could probably find something better, but these seem to be just fine for now and are easily replaced for the foreseeable future.
2. Jeans – 7 for all Mankind.  Ran to the outlet and picked up 5 extra pairs (for a total of 6), then had them hemmed.  Not cheap, but decided to make a bit of a fashion statement here.
3. Socks – Gold Toe UltraTec Crew Socks.  The nice thing about these socks is that they are very absorbent, so you don’t end the day with your feet feeling grimy.  Technically, they aren’t dress socks, but nobody will be able to tell the difference, so this saves me the pain of finding extra dress socks for those rare no uniform events.
4. Underwear – Alfani Boxer Briefs.  Not that any of you will ever see these, but this is what I went with.
5. Jacket – Adidas Icon Courtside Track Suit Jacket.  A great light jacket.  Very happy with this.  I probably should buy another one.  The inside pocket happens to fit my iPad mini perfectly.  This adds on perfectly to the uniform to balance out colder weather, but isn’t uncomfortable at all to wear indoors with air conditioning.
6. Shoes – Adidas Porsche Design SP1.  I bought two pairs in black with red accents.  They aren’t perfect because rain seems to soak through the toes.  But otherwise, I’ve actually been quite happy with them.  Seems to be out of production at the moment.
7. Watch – Let’s just say it’s black faced, with red accents. 😉
8. Wallet – Tag Heuer Billfold 8CC – Black, with carbon fiber, and red accents.  Expensive, but perfect for this.

OK … it took a while to pull all the clothes together, and get the right quantities.  For the washables … I purchased roughly 20 of each item (except for the jeans).  This allowed me to build up enough of a washload in the hampers while still having enough quantity of clothes to wear or take on a trip without worrying about running out of clothing.

Has this experiment been a success?  For me, yes.  The pros far outweigh the cons.  I travel lighter, have more space in my apartment, pack more quickly, and spend zero effort on picking clothes to wear each day.  Recovering time and flexibility is one of the most important things you can do to enhance your life.  While I believe this approach will generally work less well for those of the female persuasion (for social reasons), it works very well for me.  In conclusion … I have to say, Steve, you got this one right.  I feel like I’ve unlocked another one of life’s little puzzles.

Edit: And here’s a link to the final look.  After that huge essay, you might be surprised at how simple of a look it really is.

I checked out the Surface RT tablet today.

I disliked the 16:9 form factor, as expected. It looks like i’m reading a sheet of legal paper when held in portrait mode. I think the 16:9 could work in a smaller form factor, but here I thought it was too ungainly.  Especially in pure tablet mode, you can hardly reach your thumbs to the center of the screen to hit the virtual keys.

The software is unpolished and buggy. Example … you take a picture with the camera and you can’t see the picture you took. You have to navigate to the photos app to do that?

You try to play an game app from the store and it throws a guid error at you and asks you to download to play. I cannot imagine a single good reason to show a guid to a user on this tablet.

The store demo could not get their own internet working on the first tablet. They brought over another tablet that locked up right in front of me. Finally, they found another tablet and navigated to the website (reddit.com) and placed it in front of me. Not impressive.

The browser is responsive while scrolling and pinching/zooming. Good.

The universal gestures of dragging from one of the edges onto the screen are odd. At the very least, they are not intuitive or discoverable easily. But it’s a simple thing to learn, so I think I can let that go. What I don’t understand is the idea of dragging off the screen onto the screen again to remove the sidebars. That is very unintuitive. You would think that dragging the bar off the screen would be how this would work.

A lot of the UI seems to be designed around showing you a full screen of something, but even the most immediate actions are hidden behind an extra layer of gestures. example: maps and entering a location. browser and navigating to a website. This is a bad mistake.

The touch cover is nice. It does not accidentally register inputs and behaved without surprises. I would like one of these for my ipad.

The kickstand is useful, although I suspect it adds to the weight of the tablet unnecessarily. Why not make it a strong hollowed structure or something that isn’t a totally solid metal rectangle? I noticed folks were flipping the kickstand open and supporting the weight of the tablet with their hand gripping under the kickstand. Nice and I like it. I’d like something like this on the iPad as well, although it is not sexy.

The screen resolution was not as bothersome as I thought it might be. I didn’t really notice it while I was playing with the tablet.

Verdict: no cigar. This doesn’t bring anything new to the table for me. If I was obsessed with ms office or typing heavily from the surface, it might. But I’m not.  The Intel version of this will be a lot more interesting … and hopefully by then they will have refined the software more as well.