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by Volker Weber

Photo: vowe

2010-09-02 :: email :: tweet :: bookmark :: digg :: buzz :: comments (0)

Schlechter WLAN-Empfang bei Fritz!Box 7270

by Volker Weber

Photo: vowe

2010-09-02 :: email :: tweet :: bookmark :: digg :: buzz :: comments (12)

Dessau

by Volker Weber

Photo: vowe

2010-09-01 :: email :: tweet :: bookmark :: digg :: buzz :: comments (5)

Enterprise mindset vs. consumer mindset

I am currently participating in four different beta tests of unreleased products. Three are from vendors firmly in the consumer space. To upgrade their product to the latest test build, you will find a message on the device telling you there is an update. You select the option to install the update and the device does the rest.

One vendor however sold most of its products into the enterprise space. To update their software you get an email telling you to log into their beta portal. It will tell you that all the new features are on the portal and the mail does not even link there. To login to the portal you need to enter your email adress and a password that you had to build according to their rules, meaning you have to look it up on a piece of paper attached to your screen. Yes, you have to do that from the device if you don't want to make your life even more miserable. Once you logged in, you have to find the download page in a web application that was designed for much larger screens. Once you found that page, you have to find the link to download the software, click on it, scroll down through a lot of legalese you are not going to read anyway to find the 'I agree' checkbox and hit a button. Which does not download the software but leads you to another page where you have to fill in all your details, the ones that don't change very often, and then you have to do another 'I agree' song and dance. Then you get the package, have to install it, and then finally decide whether you want to reboot now or later.

Corollary: people use enterprise products because they have to. The only person who loves the product is the corporate administrator.

2010-08-31 :: email :: tweet :: bookmark :: digg :: buzz :: comments (17)

Nokia N8 looks like a winner

by Volker Weber

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Tonight I had a small group briefing of the Nokia N8 where we got to play with a few prototypes. I was generally very pleased. The N8 has a solid aluminum shell with two plastic ends that cover the antennas. The display looks good, but is bound to have some difficulties with direct sunlight. AMOLED looks good indoors, but not so much in bright surroundings. With a screen resolution of 640x360 it's better than an iPhone 3GS or any Blackberry, but well below the iPhone 4 and current Android devices.

Nokia is going for a feature war. The N8 comes with worldwide free navigation with maps you can preload, it sports a 12 MP camera with Xenon flash, you can capture 720p HD videos at 25 fps and edit them right on the device. An HDMI output mirrors the display to an HD TV and the N8 can send 720p videos with 5.1 surround sound over the wire. The phone comes with two dongles, one that connects a regular HDMI cable to the smaller HDMI output and another one, that lets you connect USB plugs like thumbdrives to the MicroUSB port. The N8 comes with 16 GB of internal memory, expandable with 32 GB of microSDHC cards and it can talk directly to thumbdrives and external disks that provide their own power. All of this makes it a very solid portable multimedia device.

I am holding off judgement of Symbian^3 until I have played with it for a while, but on first contact it looks very usable, much better than any other version I have seen before. I was promised that ^3 solves my major headache, the network stack. It should be connecting to all sorts of mobile and Wi-Fi networks without ever bothering the user.

An N97 survices only a couple of hours until I run screaming. The N8 is a breath of fresh air, that I could find quite likable. From what I have seen today, Nokia is back in the game. The N8 is no iPhone killer. But it plays on level ground. I am looking forward to giving it a longer run in a couple of weeks. And I want a silver one. ;-)

2010-08-31 :: email :: tweet :: bookmark :: digg :: buzz :: comments (11)

iPhone 4 screen is better protected than I thought

by Volker Weber

When I saw the first pictures of the iPhone 4, I thought it had two glass surfaces with no edge protection. Even after using one for a bit, I did not look at this detail. But then I discovered you can feel a small groove at the edge of the screen (and the back). On closed inspection I found that there is a black bezel around the edge of the screen which offers some protection against chipping off the edge of the glass.

2010-08-30 :: email :: tweet :: bookmark :: digg :: buzz :: comments (2)

If you think you are having a rough day ...

by Volker Weber

ZZ760E62A5

... then just imagine yourself inside a Hurricane, right there. Hold tight, Francie.

2010-08-30 :: email :: tweet :: bookmark :: digg :: buzz :: comments (4)

Let's find out if we can burn this Palm Pre Plus at 1 GHz

by Volker Weber

Photo: vowe

At 519 mA, the battery would be dead in 2 hours. Memory usage is well below the 512 MB physical memory. A Palm Pre w/o Plus would already be using swap. That's what makes the Pre Plus faster. The Uberkernel Default looks safer, doesn't peak with high mA, but isn't as blazingly fast.

Photo: vowe

2010-08-29 :: email :: tweet :: bookmark :: digg :: buzz :: comments (4)

Editorial | c't

by Volker Weber

Mitten in den Ferien schlug der Krake mit seinen mächtigen Tentakeln zu. Nichtsahnend sonnten sich die Deutschen gerade an der Costa Brava oder staubten im Vorgarten ihre Gartenzwerge ab, als es plötzlich hieß: Google Street View kommt nach Deutschland. Schockschwerenot!

Ausdrucken, Ihr Internetausdrucker.

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2010-08-29 :: email :: tweet :: bookmark :: digg :: buzz :: comments (9)