artiss.blog

Category: Life

Random thoughts on life

  • The iPad – fitting a role that doesn't exist?

    I can see the attraction of a tablet PC (which, no matter how they try and dress it up, is all the iPad is) but all Apple have done is dress theirs up with their funky phone OS and a quality touch screen.

    None-the-less, because of the drum banging and ceremony that goes with an Apple launch, BBC feel the need to allow people to submit their comments. My favourite is this…

    Apple never just produces ‘gadgets’; they engineer solutions that people can see fitting into their lives eventually.

    It’s that last word… eventually. What he’s trying to say is that Apple find solutions to problems that don’t currently exist. Whoever could accuse Apple customers of being vain, purchasing style over price and function?

    Having said that, I quite like this comment…

    You can just hear the money being poured into the Apple bank account as the brainless tech sheep of this generation rush out to by this fantastically overpriced netbook.

    <snigger>  The worst comment award though must go to..

    Finally stupid netbooks will disappear. But if you’re going to carry around a 10-inch so-called pad why not just buy a Macbook with more power, to do work, play DVDs and all that added functionality?

    Yea, those stupid netbooks. Good case against them. Erm. But, yea, if you’re going to carry around a 10-inch computer, why not just buy a much, much bulkier 13-inch Macbook at not far off twice the price of an iPad<snort>?  Stupid consumers eh? And there they are buying 10-inch £200 Netbooks. What are they thinking?

  • Clearing all data from the Nokia N95

    As I said I would, I’m selling my Nokia N95 to one of the many “we’ll buy your old mobile” sites (the one that would give me the most money!).

    However, first, I had to remove all my personal data from it. There is an option in the settings to reset it to factory settings but that leaves the data behind.

    After some searching I found the answer. So, here’s what to do…

    1. Connect your Nokia to your PC and format the removable drive (FAT32 flavour)
    2. Disconnect and type in the following on the phone – *#7370#
    3. It will prompt you for a lock code. If you’ve not changed this, the default is 12345.
    4. It will now reset and start prompting for country, date and time, etc.

    And it’s done. Bye bye Nokia – you promised so much but ended up a disappointment.

  • What they don’t tell you about Android & the HTC Hero

    What they don’t tell you about Android & the HTC Hero

    Before I bought my Hero, research highlighted a few things that I suspect (and, indeed, looking at forums I know this is the case) many first-time users won’t realise at the time of purchase. What I’m not so sure about is where the dividing line is between T-Mobile, HTC and Android, so some of this information may only be relevant to one of these. Or a combination.

    So, in no order what-so-ever, here’s my list of what you need to know.

    (more…)

  • HTC Hero – my early thoughts

    I’ve now had my HTC Hero (AKA T-Mobile G2 Touch) since yesterday, so thought I’d give an update on my initial impressions and thoughts.

    There were a few initial issues but these were all related to my network provider, rather than the fault of the phone – my data connection didn’t work (T-Mobile had to resend my settings) and I couldn’t access the Android Marketplace (this is because it may contain content for over 18’s so you have to override this on the T-Mobile website).

    Once all that was sorted, I was off.

    My thoughts, before I got the phone, is that Android provides only the basics, expecting you to populate your phone from the Marketplace with what you want. Well, thanks to all the “additions” from HTC, this is not the case and I’ve been surprised how “well stocked” the default set-up is.

    I was very impressed with the way that I supplied my Google signin details once and it automatically connected all the appropriate Google apps – including downloading all my contacts to the phone book. A nice touch.

    There is no PC software with the phone, but you can download HTC syncronisation software – but this is merely to syncronise contacts, etc, with PC applications, something I don’t use. That means there’s no backup software, which will be one issue I’ll need to tackle.

    Once connected via USB there is an option on the phone to “mount” the device to the PC, allowing the phone to act as an external hard drive. From here you can use Picasa to import any photos and Windows Media Player to synchronise music.

    Now I continue with setting the phone up and getting it just how I’d like. The built in alarm clock is okay, but doesn’t have a “vibrate only” option (and when I’m getting up at 5:30am this is essential for me) – I may have to splash out a whole $1.99 for something more advanced!

  • The Apple iPad – my views

    So, the Apple iPad has been announced after months – and months – of speculation.

    Many people were expecting some exciting name, with it often being referred to as a “slate”. In the end it’s the underwhelmingly named iPad. You see, it sounds like iPod. How they must have chuckled at their own ingenuity.

    The thing is, nobody was really talking beforehand about the software – that’s the one thing that Apple are good at and with the iPhone and Mac OS already available, it was obvious that one of them would be used. None-the-less, most thought it would be the latter as they were expecting a slim, multi-touch computing device. In the end, it’s turned out to be a big iPod.

    And there’s the rub – Apple have traditionally not been so good with the hardware so, to me at least, the resultant iPad isn’t very exciting.  It literally is a big iPod. Or iPhone if you buy the 3G version. Look at the picture above of Steve Jobs with the iPad – it does look like he’s got some kind of promotional oversized iPod in his hands. To me, it looks like some kind of bad Photoshop picture.

    What does the iPad offer? Well, it’s got a special screen with a wide viewing angle but it’s smaller than the screen on my Netbook. It’s not even OLED – it’s just a bog standard LED with better viewing angles. And, well, that’s about it.

    Apple are intending to target gamers and, particularly, eBook readers.

    The former, well, I can’t see it working. Gamers either want full scale powerful gaming or a pocketable device – this is neither. Electronic Ink based eBook readers are 100 times (okay, maybe I made that statistic up) better for reading eBooks with. Why spend £500 on an iPad instead of under £200 for a dedicated eBook reader?

    Okay, I’m not Apple lover but I can appreciate a good bit of kit and I will happily say good things about the iPod and iPhone, even if I don’t want one myself. But the iPad has left me cold. I just don’t get it.