Triplesourced

Having left the comforting bosom of ZDNet.co.uk to strike out on my own as a freelance journalist recently, I found myself contemplating a shocking truth – I was going to have to shell out for some technology.

Luckily the thought of having to actually spend some money on kit for once, rather than just take what ZDNet provided or what I could scrounge from tech companies, was softened a bit by the fact that I would actually at least get to choose exactly what I wanted.

First off – the phone. Having suffered through a year of HTC and Windows Mobile ownership I had no intention of spending my hard-owned on either platform. Luckily, this was never going to be my fate given that I am a bit of a Mac fan-boy and Apple has just launched the iPhone 3G. After a bit of fretting about the battery-life and having to do business with 02, I found myself a fully paid-up member of the iPhone-erati.

Despite a complete nightmare two hour sign-up process in the Apple store – mostly down to O2's systems – I am feeling distinctly pink and tickled with my iPhone. Yes, you do have to charge it almost once a day, but as I need to sync my Gmail and iCal calendars about as regularly, so it's not too much bother. As long as you accept that the iPhone is more like a very small and perfectly formed MacBook (is there any other kind?) and not really a phone at all, then the battery life becomes acceptable.

Leaving just enough time for the post-iPhone blush to leave my cheeks, (it genuinely still makes me smile when I use it), I turned my attention to finding a laptop. The last five years have been spent with a series of Toshibas which have varied in weight and quality – but have never felt really portable enough. The new wave of netbooks doing the rounds looked a lot more like my idea of what a notebook should be. However while Asus led the way and seemed to have got it mostly right with the Eee PC, the first models looked a bit insubstantial, and the keyboard was just too small.

However with the Eee PC 1000, ASUS seemed to have solved most of the problems – even if that does mean a heavier and more expensive device. A trip to London's Tottenham Court Road yesterday revealed that despite the Eee being launched a week ago – most of the so-called tech specialist shops hadn't even heard of the machine – and some hadn't even heard of ASUS. But in true Hollywood-cliche style, just when I was about to give-up, head home and order it online, I finally found a stockist. (Yes my iPhone should have helped with this process but the dodgy 3G connection and a sluggish Wheretobuy page on ASUS's website meant that I was back to old school foot-work).

After a day with the Eee 1000, I have to say I am pretty happy with it (I am writing this from a riverside pub on a lovely sunny Friday afternoon in Kingston – thanks to the Eee). The battery life doesn't appear to be the 6 to 7 hours I was promised, but that always sounded a bit unrealistic. I think the reality is more like 4.5 which is a hell of a lot better than any of the Toshibas I have had. The keys are also satisfyingly firm, unlike the HP 2133 Mini-Note, and three USB ports are enough. Also, I don't know if it is the smaller size of the screen or better resolution, but I had no probs typing this post outside, although I was in the shade – and wearing shades.

The only real down-side is that the Linux model hasn't been introduced yet, and I couldn't be bothered to wait, not when there is free-Wifi, and riverside pubs to be exploited. I was toying with the idea of swapping out XP for Ubuntu, but realised that this was going to be a pain without a CD Drive. Besides there is a nice symmetry in having one mobile device running OSX and the other on XP, which will have to do until I can get my act to go to go Windows-free completely.

Steve Jobs owes me nearly two hours of my life back. Or at least he would do if I wasn't so chuffed with the iPhone that finally became mine after a bum-achingly long period propped on stool in an Apple Store yesterday.

Actually blaming Jobs or even Apple is probably unfair, as short of building their own 3G infrastructure, and fabricating a time machine to go back and bid for a spectrum license, there was no way to avoid having to work with one of the mobile operators.

I've been lucky enough to have a free work mobile for the last five years so had forgotten what an interminable process signing up for a mobile contract is. Actually not just that - even before you get to that stage, the shiveringly dull task of getting your head around all the purposefully obtuse minutes, talk-time and other bunkum terminology employed by the mobile operators is enough to kill a bull elephant stone dead from sheer exasperation.

But I digress, the specific torture I had to endure to become an iPhonista, was wallowing through the 02 registration and sign-up process in the Apple Store. If you have been following the hoopla surrounding the launch, you'll know that Apple was forced to run a virtualised version of Windows on all its in-store Macs in order to integrate with 02's sign-up software - which is web-enabled - but unfortunately only for IE - a platform Apple and Microsoft have chosen to abandon on the Mac. (I am not sure where the motivation came from for that - probably apathy rather than anything approaching strategy).

Having been on the receiving end of this dastardly 02 application, I really wish Apple hadn't bothered jumping through those technical hoops. I am not sure what the alternative would have been but it surely would have been better than the barrage of banalities I was forced to sit through. After having to dictate my email and address no less than three times to the Apple salesperson, things went from frustrating to farcical.

As I hadn't been in my present or previous address for long enough, the 02 system demanded that I pay a £100 deposit to be paid back to deductions from my next three months bills. ( I opted for the 8G, £35 month tariff which meant the handset still cost me £99). This meant the Apple man, or boy in this instance, phoning up the 02 call centre on his iPhone in the middle of the Apple Store, and shouting out my card details to the presumable ex-artilleryman now gainfully employed by O2. The card was declined, so we repeated the process again with Apple boy now shouting my credit card details across the Apple store trying to make himself heard over the lunchtime throng of teens and bored office workers. The second card was declined - despite me pointing out that there was nothing wrong with either card and the fault probably lay in the perfect storm of Apple Store circus noise, crap phone reception and possibly brain-dead 02 call centre drone.

We tried again with another 02 drone and finally cleared the deposit hurdle. Great, the finishing line in sight, I started to relax. Only to face another barrage of online forms, insurance questions and no end of bar-code scans and cross-referencing of codes. Honestly, my last mortgage application was infinitely easier than this, in fact I bet the last space shuttle launch was a darn site was less fail-safes and cross-checks

The process did finally come to an end, not as I feared with me slamming the nearest piece of designer IT onto Apple-boy's coiffured head, but with the appearance of a natty little black cardboard box with a silver apple log on either end and the familiar icon-strewn surface of the iPhone embossed on its lid. I should have told them where to stick the box and marched out of there, a consumer who will not be messed with, but I was weak. They had me at "just take a seat on this uncomfortable stool please sir".

But I can honestly say that having spent two days with the pocket Mac now - calling it a phone is like calling a Sabre-tooth tiger a cat, technically accurate but dangerously misleading - I don't regret my bout of meek consumerism one bit. Forget all that you have read about 3G connectivity, Outlook integration, video-playback - using the iPhone makes you smile. My first train ride and serious play and I was literally grinning to myself like a chimp in a banana factory. Looking around at the other commuters toying with their Crackberrys and other so-called smartphones, they might have well have been using 1980's brick-phones complete with batteries in a handy suitcase.

And anyway, I did manage to salvage some consumer pride out of the whole affair -- 10 percent off the carrying case - which was a snip at just £25. Proof, if proof is needed of how good the iPhone is, is that I don't even that bit of daylight robbery. However I do have a bloody good idea where Apple should direct its flair for simple and elegant user interfaces next and it's not a consumer gadget, a registration application for mobile operators that doesn't make the client want to commit suicide five minutes in would be a start.

Attending a session at the Red Hat conference in Boston recently, I got to witness a Microsoft exec brave, or with enough front, to step into what can only be seen as enemy territory for any Redmondite.

Microsoft national technology officer Stuart McKee was there to take part in a panel a debate about OOXML – probably one of the most divisive issues his employer has been involved in a while – and it has been involved in a few.

During the panel debate McKee said:

"We don't have a standards office. We didn't have a standards department in the company. We found ourselves so far down the path of the standardisation process with no knowledge. We don't have a standards office. We didn't have a standards department in the company."

And:

"I think the one thing that we would acknowledge and that we were frustrated with is that, by the time we realised what was going on and the competitive environment that was underway, we were late and there was a lot of catch-up."

This kind of admission was surprising to hear in some ways but not in others. Microsoft doesn't exactly have a strong-pedigree of playing well with others, let alone the intricacies of standards processes.

Anyway – the idea that Microsoft was completely unprepared for the furore around OOXML was believable to a degree but not having any standards expertise didn't quite ring true – nevertheless that is what McKee said and our job is to report those kinds of comments.

However one of his colleagues at Microsoft – Jason Matusow - found the comments odd, obviously blaming inaccuracies in reporting, given that he actually works on standards and interoperability for the organisation.

He had this to say about the story:

"More than eight years ago, a corporate standards organization was formed in the company to help product teams be better participants in standards orgs, to make more strategic decisions about what and where to contribute specifications, and how to deal with the legal issues surrounding standards bodies (there is an entire specialization in the legal field for this kind of work believe it or not).

Currently, the standards organization at Microsoft has more than 25 full-time employees in it and is focused not only on standards, but how the company thinks about interoperability and standards as a whole. What's more, because we are active in more than 150 standards orgs at any one time, and more than 400 overall - we have more than 600 product team and field employees who have been internally certified for standards work (and most of them are active in some committee or other). Our products have supported literally more than 10,000 standards and we have contributed specifications in the areas of development languages, runtimes, networking protocols, systems management, hardware, mobility, document formats, security,...the list goes on. "

I think the thing to talk about here – is how much expertise did Microsoft have around standards pre-OOXML. I guess it doesn't make sense to think they were as bad at is as McKee claims – his excuse for why they played "catch-up" so hard and alienated so many standards bodies in the process around claims of vote-rigging – but although Microsoft has obviously been involved in standards processes for 20 years, that doesn't translate to them being expert in it or having a specific department.

At the end of the day, my role as a reporter is to report what was said – and a Microsoft spokesperson did say that the company "found ourselves so far down the path of the standardisation process with no knowledge." While this may not be an accurate reflection of the true-state of Microsoft – the comments were made.