unfortunately, most times I just fix the computer. Why does everyone think that because I work in IT and am good with computers, it necessarily means I want to fix them all the time, especially when IT’S YOUR OWN STUPID FAULT YOUR COMPUTER IS F***KED UP ANYWAY!*

* I mean who told you to click that link while browsing in Internet Explorer? Didn’t I install Firefox for you the last time I was here?

ps. I like fixing computers, just not under circumstances described above!

One of the things I was worried about when I got a slider phone was whether it would be sturdy, and here I can most unequivocally state that there is nothing to be worried about. While I haven’t tried throwing it about or banging it on the floor, I have not been overly cautious, and there have been no squeaks or rattles at all.

The other thing that I like, as I said earlier, is the WiFi. It makes using email and other internet enabled applications simpler and faster. But there’s an odd problem with WiFi on the Kaiser. As it was shipped out of the box, the performance/power setting for WiFi was 50/50, but I was unable to browse. Later, when I moved it to 100% performance, I had no issues.

But coming to browsing – when is M$ going to ship a decent browser with their mobile software? I want something fast but useful. When I try browsing with IE mobile, it sucks. Then I tried Opera Mobile, which is nice, but sucks because it is too heavy. Maybe when Fennec gets released, it will do for the mobile web what Firefox did for the desktop.

And as I see it, the problems with the Kaiser are mainly with the OS. Even the keyboard problem is a software problem – mainly. Adding a calendar event – go to calendar, click menu, new, and then enter the details. In PalmOS, just go to calendar, tap on a time and start typing. It’s quicker to create complicated events in WinMo, but for a basic event, Palm wins hands down.

It’s very similar throughout the OS – whether it’s contacts or tasks or messaging. And then there are such glaring inconsistencies. For example, cut and paste. In some applications, I can tap Menu->Edit->Cut/Copy/Paste. In some others I can just hold down the centre button of the d-pad and a context menu pops up, and in other cases I have to tap and hold on the screen for the context menu. Why can’t we have one consistent method (or preferably all three in all apps)?

The biggest advantage, though, with regards to the OS is the flexibility of installing a huge variety of 3rd party applications. Even though it is claimed that PalmOS has more applications available (especially free ones), most of them are now outdated and not maintained. WinMo applications cover a whole lot of ground ranging from ones that almost completely hide the underlying OS like SPB Mobile Shell, to others like Fring and Dashwire for communication, to proper RTS games like Age of Empires. And unlike with the iPhone, anyone can make software (the SDK is free to download) and you don’t need to use iTunes to add applications. And of course, Apple won’t be around to stop you from selling the app you make.

It’s much nicer to use the Kaiser than most other smartphones that I’ve seen, especially because of the touchscreen+keyboard combination, but it’s not perfect. It’s not as neat and clean as the iPhone, but it is functionally more powerful. It’s not as simple to operate as a Blackberry, but is more extendable. So, for now, I like it – mainly because there is nothing really better out there. But if it were up to me, I’d want a Treo Pro running Android (in about six months when the hardware and software settle down)!

So, with great trepidation, and not much choice about it, I have jumped the sinking Palm OS ship and jumped straight on to the Microsoft bandwagon. So this review deals both with the Kaiser (when I say Kaiser, I mean the TyTN II) as well as with the Windows Mobile 6.1 platform.

For those of you who don’t know (or to refresh your memory), the specifications for the Kaiser are:

CPU:          32bit Qualcomm MSM7200
CPU Clock:     400 MHz
ROM capacity:     256 MiB (accessible: 145.2 MiB)
RAM capacity:     128 MiB
Display Type:     color transflective TFT , 65536 scales
Display:     2.8 " 240 x 320 Touchscreen
Networks:     GSM850, GSM900, GSM1800, GSM1900, UMTS850, UMTS1900, UMTS2100
Data:         CSD, GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA
Expansion:      microSD, microSDHC, TransFlash, SDIO
Bluetooth:     Bluetooth 2.0
Wireless LAN:     802.11b, 802.11g
GPS Services:     Assisted GPS, QuickGPS
Main Camera:     3.1 MP
Secondary Camera:     0.3 MP
Battery Capacity:     1350 mAh
Keyboard: Sliding and tilt

If you’re not really technically minded, it means that this is a fast device, with a touchscreen and a slide-out keyboard which tilts up to make it look like a laptop. To top it off, it’s got connectivity anywhere in the world and it supports 3G, 3.5G and WiFi data.

For a person like me, the last one is really great, since in India we don’t have 3G and getting on the net from one’s phone otherwise really sucks.

So, the first thing I did on getting hold of the Kaiser was to upgrade the software from Windows Mobile 6 to 6.1. (Okay, okay, I’m a geek – sue me!). I was not really curious to see the difference between 6 and 6.1 and all the reviews said that 6.1 is far better, so there it was: I went to the HTC website, downloaded the update, plugged in my phone and voila everything worked – wonderful! Updates on the Treo were as easy, so it’s quits between the two.

One of the nicest things about the Windows Mobile OS is the home screen. It’s got a lot of stuff to see at a single glance and is easily customizable with a variety of plugins from a huge number of developers. I like the default HTC home page, but it is a little limited. Unfortunately, HTC decided that since they were going to ship a top-of-the-line phone they would not add the customizations that they had put on their slightly lower-end phone (the touch) like the Touch cube and the finger friendly optimizations. Luckily a number of developers have spent a long time working on porting all these applications, and now I have a really nice home screen similar to what you would get if you follow this thread on xda-developers. (btw xda-developers is clearly the best place to get started if you have an HTC phone).

Unfortunately, the phone dialer isn’t half as nice. On the Treo, the buttons were nice and big and SEPARATE! Here, the buttons are not nice, not very big and touching each other, so with my thick fingers, I often end up typing the wrong number. The good part about the dialer is that it tries to figure out my contacts based on the letters I type, so if I type 234, it finds ADItya sengupta. Since this is a clever device, if I type 273, it finds Aditya SEngupta. This is very useful, considering that I really don’t want to slide out the keyboard to find my contacts by name.

And this is the biggest problem on the Kaiser – the keyboard. As keyboards go, it isn’t bad. It has a nice tactile feel and the buttons are big and nicely spaced and you can feel the press of each button. But Windows Mobile sucks here. When I slide the keyboard, sometimes the screen rotates almost instantly, but sometimes I have to wait for it to realise – oh! the keyboard is out, the keyboard is out – and then run around madly wondering what to do next before it changes the orientation. And then, there’s the problem of auto-complete. Until I disabled it, auto-complete was making typing so slow that it s e  e   m  e  d to take forever to type a single word! I guess it’s useful if you’re using the onscreen keyboard or the transcriber, but using the hardware keyboard with it sucks. Also, the other funny thing. If I use the onscreen keyboard when the physical keyboard is hidden away, it still shows later when I slide out the physical keyboard!

On the Treo, on the other hand, the keyboard was much smaller and more difficult to type on, but it never needed to be slid left, right, up or down. It was just there, which made it easier to type!

Ok… this is getting to be a long long post, so let me cut it here. More in the next installment…

Not bad so far. I will provide a review of this soon.

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What’s up google??? Get your act together.

For those who haven’t read it yet, my favourite Clarke has to be Childhood’s End. Read it.

And here’s a few of the things that Moz developers say is new in FF3:

It’s More Secure

• One-click site info
• Malware Protection
• New Web Forgery Protection page
• New SSL error pages
• Add-ons and Plugin version check
• Secure add-on updates
• Anti-virus integration

It’s Easier to Use

• Easier password management
• New Download Manager
• Resumable downloading
• Full page zoom
• Tab scrolling and quickmenu: tabs are easier to locate with the new tab scrolling and tab quickmenu.
• Plugin management: users can disable individual plugins in the Add-on Manager.

• Star button quickly add bookmarks from the location bar with a single click; a second click lets you file and tag them.
• Tags: associate keywords with your bookmarks to sort them by topic.
• Location bar & auto-complete
• Smart Bookmarks Folder: quickly access your recently bookmarked and tagged pages, as well as your more frequently visited pages with the new smart bookmarks folder on your bookmark toolbar.
• Places Organizer: view, organize and search through all of your bookmarks, tags, and browsing history with multiple views and smart folders to store your frequent searches.

It has an Improved Platform for Developers

• New graphics and font handling
• Color management
• Offline support

It shows Improved Performance

• Speed
• Memory usage
• Reliability

 So, what do I think of it? It’s pretty good! The new location bar is enough reason in itself to upgrade. Compared to the current location bars on most browsers, when you start typing some text, it shows you not just the history, but bookmarked pages as well, and not only based on the url but also on the title!

Of course, the other stuff has also improved, like the download manager (finally!) and simple but irritating bugs have been fixed, like the bug that didn’t show the full alt text when one moused-over an image.

And FF3 is fully Acid2 compliant! And it is still among the highest browsers for Acid3 (more on Acid3 later!).

There are still a few things to iron out. A few bugs, like the bookmarks page not working correctly, random crashes et al. And of course, most add-ons haven’t yet been updated to support FF3.

So, while you may not want to use this (or even the next) beta, you should certainly use it when the final release comes out – hopefully in the next month or so.

And if you aren’t already on Firefox2 then you’re not doing yourself any favours. If you want to use Opera that’s fine, but if you still are s(t)uck with Internet Explorer, then I guess you’re happy with a virussy buggy painful browser experience – your bad.

Go Firefox!

Please visit Click Me or directly view my new article on the latest Wikipedia controversy:
Where have all the Wiki’s gone? ]]> http://blog.aditseng.com/2007/03/new-thoughts/feed/ 0 http://blog.aditseng.com/2006/09/google-logins-screw-up-blogger/ http://blog.aditseng.com/2006/09/google-logins-screw-up-blogger/#comments Fri, 29 Sep 2006 08:53:00 +0000 Aditya http://blog.aditseng.com/2006/09/29/google-logins-screw-up-blogger/ Continue reading →]]> So after yesterday’s post, I was really kicked about the fact that I could blog directly from my Treo to Blogger and not need to use the email blog system.

That joy was shortlived, however, as I, very cleverly, updated from Blogger to Blogger Beta! And now my mobile blogging doesn’t work. That’s not all, even my Windows Live Writer doesn’t work! In fact, no third party blogging tool works anymore!

This was a really stupid move by Google. The problem starts because you need to use your Google Account to login to Blogger Beta, and not your regular blogger login. And the methods of logging in have also changed.

Why, o why, did they not keep the same interface working? Why disable it altogether?

Anyway, if you use any 3rd party application to blog on Blogger – DON’T upgrade to Blogger Beta!

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