Larry Carlton at The Firehouse Arts Center Pleasanton CA

Mr.335 himself, (nick-named after his signature Gibson ES335 hollow body jazz guitar) Mr Larry Carlton performed at the Pleasanton Firehouse Arts Center on March 22nd. The 4 time Grammy winner performed some of his best known classics and a number of new songs from his most recent album Larry Carlton plays TSOP, The Sound of Philadelphia. One of the highlights was his performance of If You Don't Know Me By Now. The cover of this Harold Melvin and the Blue notes song was soulful and passionate and brought tears to the eyes of the audience which was definitely an older crowd. We had third row seats near the center of this ultra small venue (207 seats) and this concert was simply amazing. If you ever have an opportunity to see Larry Carlton you will not be disappointed. He is a living legend of popular jazz guitar and put so many popular performers on the map as you can hear his lead guitar work on over 100 gold albums.

American Pie by Don McLean - The Perfect Seque into 2012

As the 2011 year winds down the song American Pie gets a lot of airplay between Christmas and the New Year. I guess a lot of DJs feel that the reflective nature of this song is most appropriate to play at the end of the year. I would have to agree with them. American Pie is Don McLean's Magnum Opus of a song which skyrocketed when it was first released way back in 1971. It is a song that resonates in everyone and carries so many personal meanings and interpretations and like carbon dating, links all of us to prior experiences when we all grew up in the seventies and eighties. The lyrics were amazingly simple, direct and heartfelt, and wove a story that even to this day sounds fresh and interesting as it did in the seventies. I remember saving my allowance and newspaper route money and buying the American Pie album from EJ Korvettes in Nanuet, New York. I played it so many times and now as I am much older, I have even more respect for Don as he was able to incorporate so many themes and touch on so many topics that related to the time when I was growing up during my adolescent years in a suburb of New York City..

The song was an instant classic even though it ran way longer time-wise than most other charting hit songs played on the radio. The recording was very clean and the choice of backing studio musicians made a big difference in the overall production quality of the song. Warren Bernhardt played the piano on American Pie and his contributions elevated the performance and made lasting impressions with each listener. Warren is a very famous and talented Jazz pianist whose mentor was Bill Evans. He also played on Paul SImon albums and was the musical director and piano player for the 1993-94 Steely Dan concert Tour. There were few popular top forty hits that showcased the piano front and center except for Billy Joel, Elton John and Paul Simon. It really raised the bar for songwriters to come up with songs that really delivered on both harmony and lyrical content.

Don really came into his own as a popular singer songwriter in the seventies and really carved his own musical career path and led a very independent life as he eschewed commercialism, performed at a lot of Hudson River benefit concerts, and aligned his music and philanthropic work with Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie. Moreover, Don was a local musician, born in New Rochelle, NY.

A few years ago, when I was selling for Voyage-Air guitars, I had met with Stan Jay, the iconic owner of the famed Mandolin Brothers vintage guitar shop in Staten Island. He counts amongst his clients, Bruce Springsteen, Don McLean, Conan O'Brien, George Benson, and most every famous rock and jazz guitarist in the NY metro area. He said that Don lives in Vermont with his family and visits his guitar shop about once a year and picks out some nice Martin Acoustic Guitars for his sons to buy. He told Jay that the royalty checks from American Pie allows him to do this and for that he is very grateful.

I don't think there is anyone, child, baby boomer or in between who does not know all of the lyrics of American Pie. Most people will also sing along when American Pie is played on the radio. Don wrote a song that is permanently embedded in the psyche of our country and I for one am very grateful for American Pie. It's been a helluva year. Any music that makes it a little easier for me to reflect and to count my blessings is a welcome gift so to Don McLean a big thank you is in order.

"So bye bye Miss American Pie drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry
them good old boys were drinkin' whiskey and rye singin' this'll be the day that I die
this'll be the day that I die, they were singin' bye bye Miss American Pie drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee but the levee was dry, them good old boys were drinkin' whiskey and rye singin' this'll be the day that I die."

Reflections on 2011 - Happy Holidays to All

Holiday greetings to all of my Blog readers and followers. After accumulating some 43,000 cumulative hits, I would like to personally thank everyone for taking the time to read my Blog and also for making valuable comments, technical advice and providing excellent insightful feedback on my articles and posts.

To my international Blog readers a heart felt thank you for reading my Blog. I am amazed at how many readers I have in countries around the world. I feel like an author who has a following outside of the United States and am grateful for all of the attention it has attracted to date.

Here are my reflections on 2011:
I think it's pretty obvious that 2011 was the year of the Tablet computer as Apple's iPad 2 along with the Android gang of Tablets from (Samsung, Acer, Asus, Toshiba, IBM/Lenovo, to name a few) found their way into consumers hands at an ever increasing pace. Coinciding with the Tablet's meteoric rise in sales and overall acceptance by the buying public is the rapid decline of Netbooks which were rapidly removed from store shelves and warehouses to make room for all of the new Tablets.

Steve Jobs passed away and one of the truly great leaders of the PC computing community left his indelible mark on personal and business computing by way of all of the great Apple products brought to market under his guidance and stewardship. The one take-away that resonated with me the most was Steve's regret that he did not have enough time to spend with his family as he was battling cancer to the very end. We can all learn from Steve's work ethic, his vision, the zen-like focus he had on changing the way we make and use computers and demonstrating consistently great leadership in all of the companies he was involved with. He will be missed and his legacy lives on through the continued success and acceptance of all products with the Apple logo.

It was a very tough year economy wise and a lot of small businesses struggled to keep their businesses solvent. I want to take a moment to recognize these unsung heroes of US Business who have been the backbone of our economy year after year without getting much if any help from our government. If you are a small business owner you have my greatest respect in adapting to a down economy and having the fortitude and stamina to tough it out during this extraordinarily tough business climate.

I think the country is doing a better job in reducing our overall energy consumption by purchasing cars that get better mileage and hybrid/electric/diesel cars, installing solar panels, replacing older appliances with Energy Star efficient ones and changing their incandescent bulbs to fluorescent and LED light bulbs. We still have a long way to go in reducing our dependence on foreign oil but I believe the tide is turning in favor of those who want to see us become totally energy self-sufficient. Research continues on safe alternate ways of generating electricity and we need to keep the pressure up on our law makers to continue to spend money on alternate methods of energy production.

Reality TV shows dominated the airwaves this past year and the dumbing down of TV content has reached new lows. I think that the networks have really given up on creating decent programs and content for network television and have also gotten extremely lazy by resorting to Reality TV drivel that is cheap to produce but gets astronomical ratings and sells tons of Ad time. It really insults our intelligence to have this drivel on network television as it continues to dumb down the TV audience. Do we really need more Reality TV shows? I don't think so.

Consumers figured out how to use coupons to their advantage and value shopping became popular as Black Friday approached. Consumers are much more savvy shoppers now and are looking for the best possible deals they can find. They are educating them-selves by researching products on the internet and by reading Consumer's Reports. Money is being spent on high quality items that out-perform their competition and mor folks are fixing rather than replacing higher cost items, such as appliances, electronics and automobiles.

All of us are adapting to the changing times. Most of us can remember the good and the bad economic times we have gone through. We are all wary of scammers and criminals like Bernard Madoff and I think 2011 sobered up a lot of folks with lessons learned from Computer Security Breaches, Hacker Attacks and Identity Thefts.

Here are my predictions for 2012:
The economy will improve somewhat and I think real estate will show some signs of life on both the buying and selling side.

A fire-sale on Netbooks will occur shortly after the 1st of the year. They have to write those suckers down and get them off the books before it impacts the 2nd and third quarter profits.

Amazon will become the dominant eBook and entry level Tablet sales leader by the end of second quarter of 2012. Their cloud computing content delivery model will pick up steam and they will sell a ton of movies through their Amazon Fire Tablet platform.

The Post Office will begin to shut down as half of their service offerings will be shut down to conserve costs and to help stop the hemorrhaging of red ink. Fed-Ex and UPS will step in the fray to provide the services the Post Office was providing but at different price structures. I think letter and junk mail will eventually be phased out. Email and Spam have put the nails in the coffin for the USPS to profitably deliver these items.

I think Fred Smith and the top management at UPS already have a doomsday plan in place that they are ready to implement once the Post Office makes the next round of severe service cutbacks, office closing and lay-offs.

Channels that offer luxury items at a steep discount will continue to prosper and grow. paying full price is something that is reserved for only the richest sheiks these days and even they are looking for ways to save money.

More models of diesel automobiles will be announced and begin their first shipments into the US markets in 2012. Look for the first diesel cars from Mazda and Subaru with more models being announced from Mercedes, BMW and Volkswagen.

That's about it for 2012 predictions. Let's see if these predictions were even close in a years time when I will be writing the Reflections on 2012 and predictions for 2013 Blog Entry next year.

Have a happy and safe holiday.

Wes

Samsung Series 3 11.6" Princeton Notebook $349.00 STAPLES Deal

12/18/2012 UPDATE
The Staples Ad for the week of 12/18-12/24/2011 just went live on their web site and sure enough, the Samsung  Series 3 11.6" Princeton Notebook with the Intel Core i3 Processor, 4 GB of memory and the 320GB Hard Drive is on sale for $349.99 WHILE SUPPLIES LAST!!!!!!

HERE'S THE LINK:

http://weeklyad.staples.com/staples/default.aspx?action=entryflash&adref=staples_right_hand_nav%20&icid=HP:HP:WEKLY_AD:WEKLY_:NULL::

This is a super deal and if you don't pick one up, you will miss out on the deal of the year. THis notebook offers much more bang for the buck than the Mac Book Air. At $349.99 it blows the mac Book 11 inch notebook into the weeds!!!!

Looks like Staples is blowing out the Samsung Series 3 11.6" Princeton Core i3 Notebook again and the alert is for next week (week of December 19-23rd). If you trade-in a qualifying used notebook you can get the price down to an incredible $249.00 by way of a $100.00 Visa Gift Card. The normal price at Staples is $599.00.

Thanks to TTRAN88 for posting this tip:

Here is the link to the tip:

http://slickdeals.net/forums/showthread.php?t=3712108

Amazon - Cloud Computing Colossus Has Arrived

I have been following Amazon ever since the company was formed some 15 years ago. In their very early years, their initial goal was to build a company that could deliver books to the masses in a very cost effective but profitable way. They took a lot of criticism at first spending millions and millions of dollars building out their computer infrastructure to handle the order fulfillment and advanced supply chain mechanism that has served them so well over the years. They re-invested virtually every dollar they earned into building a data center and network infrastructure that could easily handle their current and future (10 years down the road) computing and network requirements. I remember many Wall Street analysts chastising and publicly criticizing the delay of profitability when Jeff Bezos stuck to his guns and continued to heavily invest in technology and computing infrastructure. Well today, Amazon sits atop the heap of computing companies that has the best cloud computing services and is the go-to leading edge company for outsourcing IT, web hosting, order fulfillment and now platform media services. Amazon counts amongst its current Cloud Computing Services Customers: NASA, Foursquare, PBS, Harvard Medical School, Yelp, Newsweek, Netflix, Virgin Atlantic, and Newsweek. With the impending shipments of the new Amazon Kindle E-Book Readers and the revolutionary new $199.00 Fire Tablets, Amazon is poised to make a ton of money streaming video content and delivering e-books through the cloud faster than any other company that offers those services. They have figured out how to build a tablet that offers users almost 80-90% of the functionality of an Apple iPad with half of the memory required (8 GB vs 16 GB) while offering faster performance as the readers and tablets have been optimized (read perform much faster) to work with Amazon Cloud computing services. Their razor and razor blade model is brilliant and although seems to have lower profit margins, the pricing scheme and volume of users that will buy the Kindle and Fire will more than make up for it. This is a huge wager Bezos is making and believe me, he has pulled out all the stops in stacking the cards in Amazon's favor to win this bet. Apple is taking the totally opposite approach where 90% of their profits come from selling expensive Mac hardware platrforms, both mobile and desktops. Only 8% of their profits come from iTunes. Amazon will sell millions of their Fire tablets with only 8 GB of memory on board and the user will experience faster streaming and performance as each Amazon Fire will be hardware and software optimized to take advantage of the super fast Amazon Cloud computing engine. They came up with a hybrid Android based browser where half of the browser code resides on the Amazon Fire Tablet and the other half is embedded in the Amazon Cloud Computing Services. Since movies will be streamed, there is no need to store the movies on your Amazon Fire Tablet. With iTunes, you download the movie to your local hard drive and that requires a much larger storage capacity. Bezos claims that the Amazon Fire Tablet will easily outperform other computing devices with traditional client based browsers found on Mac, Windows and Linux PCs with traditional operating systems. This is no small feat and in some ways represents the holy grail of distributed computing. For a company like Amazon to pull this off with a pricing and business profit model that makes most software companies envious Bezos and his engineering team is to be congratulated for executing this plan in such a short time span. I really think that Amazon has paved the way for media distribution model that works for all economic classes and delivers affordability and computing functionality to the masses.

Amazon is the tech company to watch as it is really focused on doing things differently and changing the way media content can be sold and delivered over the internet. It is also bringing tablet computing to the masses with a full function Tablet that retails for less than $199.00 which is pretty amazing. The overall impact on the consumer and business computer markets will be positive as an entirely new level of price performance will be introduced into the marketplace and will drive down hardware and software costs once people figure out how great Amazon's streaming delivery service works. It will also add additional validation proof and competitive differentiation for Amazons Cloud computing service as they can point to the fact that millions upon millions of users are streaming high definition videos to their tablets

If you want to read the detail on how Bezos achieved what amounts to total domination of streamed and e-book content delivery please read the excellent cover article just published in the January 2012 issue of Wired Magazine written by Steven Levy; Amazon Owns The Internet "Jeff Bezos Started With Books. Now His Company Dominates The Web in More Ways Than You Think".

Anyone who thinks that US companies today lack vision or innovation are dead wrong. Amazon is just one example of thinking out of the box and coming up with a way to deliver innovation and services using a whole new paradigm that is not only insanely efficient and cost-effective, but brings some of the latest and greatest computer technology to the masses who previously could not afford it.

Ultrabook Trade-Offs & Ultrabook Alternatives

Intel had a pretty good idea when it came up with a development fund and specification for the new Ultrabook PC Computer class. The idea was pretty well received by most of the PC notebook manufacturers as they are still recovering from the Netbook sales shortfall. They watched as Apple cleaned up with the Mac Book Air and took copious notes. Thin, sexy designed notebook computers like thin fashion models never seem to go out of style. The thinner the better is now the mantra and battle cry. The commoditization of notebook PCs has now established $1,000.00 as the magic price point for which consumers are budgeting their well earned dollars on spending for a brand new latest and greatest notebook. As we rapidly approach Black Friday and the 2011 holiday gift giving season approaches, I felt it would be important to explain the trade-offs of buying an Ultrabook versus buying a less expensive notebook PC.

Form Factor
It's all about the form factor of the notebook chassis in terms of figuring out what feature set you can include or exclude. The majority of notebooks measure at least and inch 1/2 thick and follow the usual 8.5" x 11 " form factor for a 13.3 inch screen. The solidity of the chassis and construction materials ultimately determines what the chassis of the notebook is made of. Is it plastic, metal, a combination of both, or some form of aluminum, titanium or even carbon fiber?. All of these materials or combinations of them go into the construction of the notebook chassis, covers and LCD frames. To design and engineer a notebook for mass production you need to take into account: power consumption, heat generation by the CPU, cooling requirements, ergonomics, and durability requirements. Making the notebook thin introduces many more challenges from the design perspective.  How do you keep the notebook cool when you cannot have a huge honkin fan? How do you design a keyboard and touch pad that allows you to touch type error free at a decent clip? Is 2 USB ports enough? How about a built in HDMI port and a SD-HC-XC card reader writer? Forget about including an optical drive as the real estate on a.5-.75 inch thick notebook is extremely limited and fitting a battery that will offer 5 or more continuous hours of run time becomes even more of a challenge.

In summary, buying a new Ultrabook will leave the buyer with the following trade-offs or feature shortcomings:

1) Limited to just 2 USB ports
2) No Dedicated ATI or Nvidia Graphics Cards - You are limited to the latest Intel HD internal Graphics chip that limits game play to less than 30 frames per second at 800 x 600 resolution for games like Halo and Call of Duty.
3) No user removeable battery - Battery is integrated and can only be swapped out by a trained PC technician
4) No HD LCD display. Most right now is 720i or 1600 x 900 resolution.
5) Proprietary connectors that require conversion dongles for modems, ethernet and standard monitor and projector connections.
6) Price- Most Ultrabooks are well over $1,000.00 in price, more like $1299.00 with a 128 GB SSD drive.
7) No internal optical drive - but you can pack a portable external drive for those times when you need to read or write an optical disk when on the road.
8) Good fitted cases (that actually fit the new Ultrabooks) are hard to find. You need to settle for MacBook Air Apple Notebook cases and bags which surprise cost twice as much as the cases and bags made for PC notebooks. I guess that Apple tax has really caught on with the accessory maaufacturers (InCase, Kensington, etc.)

If you are looking for a good thin notebook computer that is not as thin as an Ultrabook but is much thinner than the average notebook, we're talking any notebook that is thinner than 1.25 inches....and will not break the bank; then you will find a bunch of computers out there that can be had for well under $800.00. Lots of models from Lenovo, HP, Sony, Acer, Asus and Samsung. Samsung has a value line of notebooks that start at around $599 called the Princeton Series 3. These notebooks are all less than an inch and 1/4" thick and have the latest Intel Core i3 Sandy Bridge Processors.

The market for used, refurbished or last year's models notebooks is more robust than ever.You can find many deals on Ebay, at Office Depot, Office Max or your local Staples Fry's or Best Buy Store, and mail order companies like Newegg, B&H Photo, J&R, Buydig, Buy.com and Amazon are all blowing out notebooks at up to 50% off the original retail prices. There are so many options now for a consumer to purchase notebooks. One thing is for certain. The rapid acceleration of new models like the Ultrabooks brought into the market will ultimately lower the cost of buying a really good used, refurbished or older model new PC notebook computers for everyone.

 It's a great time to snag that notebook you've always wanted but couldn't quite afford.

Samsung Series 9 13.3" Notebook Review - Mr Darth Vader-You're Notebook is Ready!!!

Samsung Series 9 Model Number 900X3A-A03 Notebook Review - REVISED 11/17/2011

Paging Mr Darth Vader....Your notebook is ready to go!!!!!!
Greetings! Yours truly just received a Samsung Series 9 13.3 Notebook and I have to say, this notebook is about as close to notebook perfection.....at least for my requirements and what I've seen from the competition so far. This notebook comes with a super speedy 128 GB SSD drive, Windows 7  and a gorgeous ultra bright and sharp matte anti glare LCD screen that is backlit by LEDs and is rated at 400 Nits of Brightness which is brighter than most desktop LCD monitors. It measures about .62" thick and weighs a tad less than 3 pounds with the 6 cell Lithium Ion Battery installed. The entire notebook is constructed and finished with a material used on aircraft called duralumin which is at least two times stronger that aluminum. This notebook does not exhibit any flex when touch typing or just holding the notebook. The hinges are smooth and the display screen is so thin but solidly constructed where it does not bend or exhibit any tendency to flex or change shape. The entire keyboard is back lit by LEDs which is a very nice touch and the finish does attract fingerprints as the black surfaces are like magnets. I suggest that you keep a microfiber cloth packed in the computer bag as this is one of the few shortcomings (read design flaws) of this notebook. It runs cool with zero fan noise and the second generation Sandy Bridge Core i5 Intel processor is plenty fast for most business applications.

Thin is In!!! or.....Cuts Like a Knife!
Samsung named it the Series 9
But they should have named it the Katana (Sword in Japanese)
IMHO & with apologies to Bryan Adams

What about battery life? I ran it down with surfing, WiFi and Bluetooth on and MS-Word and Excel open (4 GB of RAM installed and the LCD brightness set to about 33% or 1/3 of the brightest setting and I got about 5 and 1/4 hours of continuous run-time on the battery before it shut down. For an Intel equipped Core i5 notebook weighing just 2.9 LBs  that is a little more than 1/2" thick, the battery performance numbers are very impressive indeed.

Pay attention 007!!! Samsung also got the back-lit keyboard right.
Q wants his Samsung Series 9 returned from the field
 in the same condition as when it originally left...
Got that Bond?
Bond to Q...You must be joking?
Q to Bond... I never joke about my work 007!

I do not foresee any problems carrying this notebook anywhere as it is built to withstand the rigors of day-to-day business travel and usage and is supremely use-able. I am averaging a boot time from power off to the windows desktop in about 18 seconds. It comes to life after sleep mode in a few seconds and sips battery power when in the sleep mode.

The only knock I can see on this notebook is the omission of a USB 3.0 port and having  a built in micro SD memory card slot instead of a standard SD-HC-XC memory card slot reader writer. It just means you need to carry a USB SD card reader when you travel if you need to download photos from your digital camera.

I also like the fact that this notebook on average is about two to three hundred dollars cheaper than a comparably configured MacBook Air.

Samsung even figured out how to take the flex out of the chassis and LCD frame.
The entire notebook feels substantial......almost as if it was carved out of a solid block of titanium.
I can attest to the fact that it is a helluva a lot stronger and durable than it looks in the photos.

I really believe this is what Intel had in mind when they came up with the design specification for the Ultrabook. Take the Samsung Series 9 design and see if you can come with a package that can retail for under $1,000.00 with some design and material construction trade-offs.

I call the Samsung Series 9 Notebook the uber Ultrabook much in the same way the original Audi Quattro was affectionately nick-named the uber Quattro.

Audi S1 World Rally Champion Car 1981
Driven By Walter Rohrl
aka Uber Quattro