iPad 2 Review

I wrote a short review of the original iPad back in May last year when it came out. Writing iPad reviews is a bit like re-inventing the wheel so I will keep this short! Clearly the iPad 2 is an incremental update to the original iPad in that they are broadly similar. What has changed is:

• It's thinner
• It's lighter
• It's faster
• It has two cameras (front and rear)
• Has HDMI output that mirrors iPad screen on a large screen TV
• Despite all of the above the battery life is as good
• It's actually a bit cheaper

That could be more or less the end of the review! However I will cover a few areas in a bit more depth.

Asus Eee Pad Transformer Review: The Ultimate Commuting Device?

Asus Eee Pad Transformer

I spend around 3 hours a day commuting on trains and like many people use the opportunity to get some work done or sometimes to relax and enjoy some quiet child free time! For many years I have been trying to find the perfect commuting device to enable this. What a device ideally needs to be is:

• Small - fit physically into the aircraft style trays on my trains so ideally 10" no more than 11"
• Instant on - turns on straightaway with no need to boot
• Long battery life - ideally work all day without a charge
• Physical Keyboard - I like to type things like blog posts, emails and work on documents
• Web browser with Flash and ideally tabs
• Allows USB keys and SD cards to be connected
• Charges USB devices (like my phone and MiFi)
• Usable office applications (Word processing, spreadsheet and presentations)

For many years I made do with the compromises of small windows laptops that did the job but were a bit big, expensive and had to be booted up or at least resumed from sleep before they could be used. Battery life was a challenge too.

The launch of the iPad changed all that with an instant on device capable of most of what I wanted. Like many though I find the iPad much more of a content consumption device so it tended to get left in my bag in favour of the Windows laptop when serious work or blogging was to be done.

The Eee Pad Transformer promises the best of both worlds and this review will see if in real world use it can deliver or if it too gets left in my bag during my commute. I will also compare the device to the iPad 2 which is its main rival.

Suffolk Library Decision and Petition Debate Timetable

The library petitions are well over the 3700 or so signatures needed to force a debate by the County Council and we have now agreed a timetable for the petition debate and decision making process.

The Petition debate date for libraries will now be 14th July at 2pm

The next County Council meeting is on 26th May and three petitions will be presented at this meeting including the eXplore card petition which will be handed over with a photo call at 1230 with the debate from 2pm so please come if you can, more details on Caroline Pages's Blog

Decision Making Timetable

26th May - Suffolk CC Annual Meeting, 3 Petitions (eXplore Card, Country Parks and Refuse Sites) to be presented, 2pm Endeavour House

14th June - Scrutiny Committee to discuss libraries - 10am Endeavour House

14th July - Petition Debate on Libraries at County Council - 2pm Endeavour House

19th July - Cabinet Decision - 1.30pm Endeavour House

The Battle for Waveney District Council

Alan Duce
Outgoing
Chairman

In the May elections the Conservatives lost overall control of Waveney District Council loosing some four seats. Labour gained 8 seats leaving the balance as Con and Lab each with 23 seats and 1 Independent and 1 Green. Since the election there have been as you might imagine some negotiations between outgoing Conservative Leader Mark Bee, the newly elected Labour Leader Julian Swainson and the Green and Independent.

The end result of the negotiations is another deadlock as the Green has perhaps unsuprisingly sided with Labour and the Independent with the Tories. So there is a tie 24 to 24.

The first business of the Council at its annual meeting on 25th May is to elect a Chairman. Now normally the Chairman of a District Council is a ceremonial figure, opening fetes etc and wearing a chain of office but like most chairmen they also get a second or "casting" vote in the event of a tie.

So the "Monitoring Officer" of the Council (who is a lawyer) has had to go away and look at the Council's Constitution and the Law and work out wht should happen to elet the Chairman who in turn will have a casting vote for the election of Leader of the Council.

He has published his opinion here and basically the outgoing Chairman Alan Duce is allowed to come back and Chair the meeting even though he is no longer a councillor. He does not get a vote unless there is (as is expected) a tie and then he must use his casting vote to elect a new Chairman. The new Chairman can then use his casting vote to elect a new Leader if (as expected) there is another tie.

Now the outgoing Chairman of Waveney is a Tory and despite the fact that between Labour and the Greens they got 49% of the Vote against the 40% that Independents and Tories got it looks like the Tories will retain a slim control of the Council on the Chairman's casting vote. Probaby legal but is it fair? It also seems strange the Council has an even number of seats (48) seems to be almost asking for this kind of unsatisfactory mess to happen!

Suffolk, pulls out of "SPINE" library stock management deal with Essex and Cambridgeshire

It has been revealed that Suffolk have pulled out of the  "Spine" partnership for library stock management that was expected to begin in September 2011 between Suffolk, Essex and Cambridgeshire. Plans were already well advanced within Suffolk libraries for this service to take over with its own stock management unit reduced in size. Considerable savings were promised as part of this plan.

Suffolk's press office issued the following statement:

SCC's SPINE partnership with Essex and Cambs county councils has had two strands: a strategic relationship aimed at having a joint electronic library management system in the medium term; and a joint provider relationship which was expected to start in September 2011. The strategic relationship with SPINE continues, but SCC has now decided to disengage from the provider relationship as it can no longer deliver what was expected. 

Instead we have opened dialogue with our major book supplier, to develop a model for supplier-delivered book services. Because the book supplier services very many library services in the UK, we can look for the removal of duplication at this national level, rather than regional level. This, together with the delivery of books direct to local libraries, rather than the central stock unit in Ipswich, which has already started, should bring at least the savings that we expected from SPINE, and perhaps more in future years.

So Suffolk are suggesting that they might get an even better deal from another supplier than they would from SPINE. However a note of caution was seen in an email sent to all staff in Suffolk libraries :

We also intend to pilot full bibliographic service delivery by a library supplier, as a means to find savings in future years. The market is immature, so the pilot really is a trial, and no decisions have been made about the outcome.

Whatever the longer term situation for staff on the ground this is yet more uncertainty as another plank of the County's future strategy on library services collapses. That said, if the County have avoided signing a contract that is bad value then this could be good news in the longer term and possibly indicate that lessons have been learned from the mistakes of the BT Customer Service Direct contract.