Paris

A few days before I left for France I posted a question on the Tablet PC
Buzz asing how I could work best in Paris on my email and documents given
that my TC1100 had to go into HP repair. Well this is how things got
resolved.

I purchased a 4gb verbatim flash drive. I wasn’t looking for any kind of
self contained operating system but it came with Ceedo. James Kendrick
suggested I use Migo but since the flashdrive came with Ceedo I thought I
give it a try. Well, overall it wasn’t that great. I can see the
potential though.

First of all there seems to be a problem when I plug the verbatim in the usb slot and run Ceedo on a tablet PC. This is the error message that comes up ("to open TCServer.exe under Ceedo, all other TCServer processes must be closed"):

 
When I plugged it in to a non-tablet pc this error message does not occur.  

So how was I able to manage all my work email? Well since I was meeting
Lynette and her TC1100 in Paris, she agreed to let me use it while I
stayed in France. She left Paris for Montreal last week sans Tablet PC, a
strange thing indeed. I put all my working documents on her Tablet and
also created an additional account in Outlook and was therefore able to
access all my email and write new ones with abandon (thank to mostly free wireless generously donated by the French).

Lynette’s TC1100 will be returned to her when we meet each other at the
Montreal airport tomorrow and board the same flight to Halifax. I suspect
that she’ll be eager to put her hands on the TC1100. All in all, let’s be
very clear: leaving me with her tc1100 for over a week was the ultimate
sacrific and I am grateful for that! Would you hand over your tablet for
a week without having access to any alternative except perhaps webmail (yikes!)?

So no Ceedo and Verbatim did not help sufficiently though I did need a
new flashdrive. I think Ceedo does have potential but it would need to be
able to run Office and Outlook without a hitch. I also posted a question
on the Ceedo forum asking them about the tsc server issue. I had hoped
for some response from Ceedo support but nothing was forthcoming before I left for France and I just checked the form website and no rsponse has been posted. Not sure if Ceedo understands the importance of customer relations.

What Ceedo looks like when you want to remove the flash drive:

Check out more on Ceedo by reading today’s article by NYT’s David Pogue.

And as to my TC1100, I received an email from work yesterday that my
TC1100 has been ruturned. And repaired, I presume. Yay!

I am here for work interviewing academics, civil servants as well as representatives of the private insurance side in the French health care system. Broadly speaking it has to do with resource (re)allocation in the health care system (we are doing a multi-national study comparing 7 countries). During one of the interviews I had the view of the Hotel National des Invalides and the golden dome was wildly bright. I would probably have to wear sunglasses if that was my office. During another interview I had a beautiful view of the Eiffel Tower. It’s a nice way to see Paris.

 

Here you see only part of the dome of the Hotel National des Invalides, an old soldiers home. Clearly, veterans were treated quite differently during Napoleonic reign.

Brasseries in Paris tend to have signs in the windows advertising free wireless. And that is exactly where I am right now with my Cafe Creme (latte equivalent with a twist). Though as you can see, many wireless setups are security enabled. In the offices I visit I see many Dell computers and a few have laptops as well. However I have not seen one Tablet PC as of yet.

 

In general, Paris is la cite de wifi gratuit – there are always a few people who kindly leave their wireless wide open, so that you can sit in most cafes, parks, squares, and be in touch with the rest of the world without paying. Of course the charm of the local environment does make escape via the internet less necessary than in some settings!

The other day I stood on a corner with my tablet, headphones on, someones donated wireless and skyping some friends in Canada.  

And here Lynette and I gave an opportunity to let the TC1100 see the Eiffel tower. There were more close ups but, truth be told, we did not take the tc1100 everywhere! And you have to look carefully for the Eiffel tower (it’s in the back!).

 

Bonjour from Paris! Here we are in Paris where our TC1100 receives a few stares here and there, but it does look awfully pretty in front of the Notre Dame!

 

From the Seine side 

 

and the front:

  

As the previous entry tells you Tablet Zero has spawned to 9! What can we learn from looking at this data?

Gender?

Well, all are women except one.

Field of choice?

Here is a chart of Tablet PC uptake by field. Technically the chart is more complicated because of cross-appointments etc. But this will do for now.

Where?

All work or teach or study at Canadian universities (mostly Dalhousie University), except for one (the sole male). He is located on another continent.

What can be gleaned from this? Well, probably not much except that we influence the adoption of new technology by those with whom we work at the university. And you can infer (backwards) that we work somewhere in the intersection of epidemiology, health policy, medical sociology, bioethics, philosophy, and law!