Honest in the Russian government 
It will be interesting to see how much longer Andrei Illarianov remains Vladimir Putin’s economic adviser. In an interview in today’s Financial Times, Illarianov baldly states:
“The quality of economic policy has got worse. In 1999 and 2000 economic policy made a positive contribution to economic growth. The best economic policy was pursued in 1999. Since 2001, it has made a negative contribution to GDP growth.”
After humming and hawing for a heck of a long time, I finally took the plunge and bought a Tablet PC. I suppose it’s partly technophilia, but there were two serious reasons why I bought my Toshiba M200.
First, my existing laptop was woefully, woefully out of date. It wasn’t powerful enough to run Radio UserLand, which I use to write Davos Newbies. And I’ve recently started using Groove to collaborate with some people in different countries — I couldn’t do that either with my six-year old Vaio.
Second, although I’m hugely keyboard friendly, I’ve also always been an avid notetaker. After trying a Tablet, and seeing how incredibly good the handwriting recognition is, I thought this would be the way forward for me: keyboard and the ability to take handwritten notes all in one machine. I’ll try to report on what I see the pros and cons over the coming weeks.