Palm-Mac

PowerBook update

Well, I have done what I was aiming to do and it has been successful, I think anyway. Leopard was installed the other night and using the tips in the Missing Sync for Leopard manual I managed to save around 6gb of space by not installing stuff like printer drivers and other languages although I did, for some reason of which I am not quite sure, install Spanish and French.

Although there is only a 867mhz processor, which puts this PowerBook well down the pecking order in G4 PowerBook bragging stakes, it is running surprisingly well. Those with 1.5ghz G4 PowerBooks must be able to enjoy a nice user experience. I also installed the new battery which arrived a few days or so alongside the Airport Extreme card and I have enjoyed a) the much improved battery life and b) being able to connect seamlessly and with the minimum of fuss to the home wifi network?

I have noticed one or two slightly odd behaviours though and I wonder if anyone can help me out by offering advice. Firstly, the cursor seems at times to have a mind of its own as it jumps around, not a huge distance but it does move. What could be causing that? Next, I am able to control click on the MacBook by placing two fingers on the trackpad and then clicking the bar below it...this has no effect on the PowerBook yet it works when hovering over an app in the dock? Odd. Lastly, when mousing over items in the dock often one of the apps will open seemingly of its own accord and I don't think I have pressed the trackpad bar to trigger this action.

My initial thoughts when comparing it to the MacBook are that the PowerBook has a far better keyboard. The MacBook, by virtue of its 2.2ghz intel processor is obviously much quicker and the user enhancements made to the hardware make it nicer though to use...I'm thinking here about trackpad scrolling scrolling. I do however, oddly, prefer the PowerBook's smaller form factor as it is quite a bit smaller being a non-widescreen device, unlike the MacBook. It gives the impression of being much more portable. I really need though to start learning all those time saving laptop keyboard shortcuts.

More on the Samsung i780

It is turning into a veritable love-in at pda247 with regard to their review of the Samsung i780, particularly since Shaun has discovered how well StyleTap, the palm emulator style app, runs well on the 320x320 screen. From the looks of the pictures of the device with StyleTap in action the application really benefits visually from the enhanced resolution. When I used it on a previous win mob device, possibly the treo 750, the lower resolution resulted in blocky low res looking palm apps.

Sadly, what does this say about Windows Mobile, that plenty of folk want the benefits of the hardware specs that palm have cingularly failed to provide, such as wifi and 3g, but want as little as possible to do with the operating system and applications as they think that a 5 year old o/s provides a better and easier user experience.

Back to the iPhone again

For the last week now I have been using the iPhone again, virtually exclusively. I'm going through one of those "can't be arsed with the windows mobile tinkering" phases again and thus the HTC Cavalier and treo 750v have been relegated, I feel deservedly, to the unused gadget drawer for ongoing misdemeanours and all round (at times) irritating-ness. As such, their places in the first team squad have been taken by the Centro and then next in line, the 680.

The Centro lacks some of the stuff I would really like such as wifi but it is super fast, stable and very very pocketable. Those that decry it for missing this or that are being harsh on a sub £200 sim free touchscreened device that is easily and readily customisable via a superb range of 3rd party apps, some of which are free and very much up to the job.

Without wishing to bore you all, I am sooooo looking forward to the big 3rd party apps flood for the iPhone in June sometime. That will unquestionably transform it for me and should fill many of the shortcomings in terms of my useage needs. I will also probably go for the 3g version too as non wifi browsing is painfully slow and without a decent connection speed much of the benefit of a superior browsing experience is somewhat negated.

Batter and better the Battery

They always say that you need to calibrate your laptop battery and that it only needs doing once. This just seems to involve running it right down and then charging it up again. Those in the know about these things say it helps prolong the battery life so by jingo, if it's good enough for them then it's certainly good enough for me.

Even as I type this, I am running it down to less than 15%.

You have to fully charge and then discharge your battery only once to calibrate it. After that, you can connect and disconnect the power adapter when the battery is at any charge level.

Nokia have nailed it....

Apple get a bit of jip for putting form over function, as if they are the only company trying to inject a bit of style into the mundane world of consumer computing. Nokia try too, with mixed results, as these three show. Putting the "designer" on the advert is a bit naff although I can't think why, it just is., it's like when you see a hairpsray advert and it has a picture of some bouffant-ed mid 40's guy trying to look 15 years younger..."Sebastien La Ponce created Whiff for ladies like you"

What about this piece of insightful corporate speak  though from Nokia as they launch another 3 phones (as if we need another 3 Nokia phones in the first place) that basically look rather similar to the last 25 phones they have launched:

"there is a strong consumer demand for mobile handsets that blend elegant looks with modern features"

You don't say!! I was under the impression that people preferred bricks with 1997 specs.....link from Morning Paper

PowerBook failings...and solutions

Yikes, there are a few things not as good on the PowerBook G4 in comparison to the MacBook. It is funny how you take certain things, often very small things/features, for granted on newer machines yet miss them hugely when they are not available on older ones. For example, the MacBook has track pad scrolling and the PowerBook does not, I assumed that "technology" would have been around for ages....yikes, I really miss it.

Luckily, although I haven't tried it yet, there is a 3rd party application called iScroll2 available for older PowerBooks. Hopefully this will do the job. (UPDATED - boo hoo, it doesn't want to install on the PowerBook so it is back to square one on that front)

Possibly even more alarming is that there was no Safari installed, instead it came with Internet Explorer...yuk. What an absolute pile of poo that is/was for the mac platform and a horrible throwback to the days when Microsoft ruled not  only their land but everyone else's computing land too. Of course this is also easily solved by downloading Safari and/or Firefox but I won't need to do that as Leopard is going on very shortly. Hopefully, this will also restore the strangely missing Bluetooth features previously mentioned??

By Wednesday, I should have the PowerBook set up the way I need it

• maximum amount of RAM allowed 1.25gb
• Leopard up and running and updated to the lastest version, without the 6gb of gunk that I will never need
• the Airport Extreme card installed and subsequently being able to connect to the home wifi network (downloading the Leopard updaters is dependant on this working!)
• the new Apple battery fully charged and working
• have Bluetooth working properly, not so much working in fact, just actually being there would be nice.

Centro review...Tracy and Matt

Interesting Centro review over at Tracy and Matt's site. They are undeniably the masters of the dull unboxing video and have done an odd review of the Centro which is pretty much very fair although it makes some strange claims.

Palm are keen to offer this as a smart phone, with there own Palm OS installed. But in testing I found that it lacked features that are commonly available on competing Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and the Nokia N series devices – as it does not offer WiFi or GPS.

Yeah, how many touchscreened win mob, RIM or Nokia devices are out there for £179?...or how many of the same have wifi or built in GPS for £179?

But if all you need is to send text messages, emails edit a word document and browse the internet on the go, then this is the perfect device for you.

What a strange thing to say, because of course the Centro can do so much more out of the box and with such a huge 3rd party range of apps the world can be very much your oyster with a Centro.

i-mate 9502 review - pda247

Gavin at pda247 has done a review of the i-mate 9502 which is a bit of a big one, weighing in at 200 grams (the phone that is, not the review)...crikey. Nonetheless, he seems pretty darn impressed by it and if you are in the market for an all singing and all dancing win mob smartphone then this is probably one on your list.

Actually, it would be nice if this i-mate, who are apparantly struggling, phone sold well as it would provide some additional competition for the likes of HTC who seem to be having things more or less all their own way these days. We seem to be getting to the stage where the only real excitement in the win mob world is waiting for snippets of info about possible new HTC devices. As such, they can almost corner the market in near Apple style hype with their "secret" announcements a la Touch last year and forthcoming May 6th bash. Certainly here in the UK and Europe anyway where we are fortunate enough to get first shot at any new HTC devices.

PowerBook G4 first problems surface

Oh Lordy, I should have foreseen this happening. Firstly, the Airport card I had lying around doesn't in fact work in the PowerBook, I need to get an Airport Extreme one. Luckily, these are still available online from the Apple store at a reasonable £30 brand new. No problem, I thought, I will just use my T-Mobile web'n'walk modem stick thing to get temporary internet access enabled.  Cue Family Fortunes uggh uggh buzzer sound. It only works apparantly with Mac 10.4 and upwards and it refuses to install on 10.2.

Not to worry, I'll just need to get a new copy of Tiger or Leopard and stick that on. Still, it just shows you how the costs for these things soon mount up...£89 for a new battery, £30 for Airport Extreme card (almost cheaper buying new from Apple than on ebay), £50 for a 1gb memory module...oops, not forgetting a £84 copy of Leopard which, after checking, does seem to run okay on the G4 especially as I will shortly max out the memory to 1.25gb once the Crucial memory upgrade both arrives and is installed.

Next problem was my Bluetooth hardware seems to have gone walkabouts. I haven't used mac 10.2 for years and finding my way around the menus is a bit hit or miss, funny how you soon forget things that you used for months on end. On Leopard, there is the Bluetooth icon in the top right menu bar but it is nowhere to be seen on the PowerBook...possibly because of the aforementioned problem?

Speed wise, as it stands at the moment, running 10.2 on 256mb is not the fastest computer I've used in the last few weeks. The MacBook is lightening quick in comparison although the keyboard on the G4 is nicer to use.

MegaPhone 1.5

Formerly called iPhone Drive, this renamed app claims to let you copy text and PDF files to the Notes app in your iphone and iPod Touch. Do you need a jailbroken iPhone, I dont know.
A demo is available from their website to let you find out if it works okay dokay.

MegaPhone's familiar Mac OS X interface makes it simple to transfer files between your Mac and your iPhone. Use your iPhone's unused storage space as a disk drive to backup data or transfer between Macs.