Technology. Without Error

After I signed up for a Nokia N900 demo from WOMWorld/Nokia, I decided I didn’t want another of those long full length gadget reviews on the device. But thanks to them, I have loads of links to point you to. You will find them at the end of this long post which is more of a debate on whether the N900 is actually what you need (or rather, what I need).

Let’s start from the beginning, and that’s when I started waiting for my device, checking the DHL transit status page every hour. This C&H strip pretty much sums up what I was going through.

And at last, after numerous calls to the DHL, I was given possession(temporarily) of the N900.

I switched on the device and it welcomes me with the familiar Nokia animation. After some initial settings, the device quickly loads the device’s 4 customizable homescreens. The animations are quick and interesting and the whole interface takes seconds to get used to. Once you get the hang of clicking around empty spaces to exit any screen, that is. Multitasking works like a dream and its perhaps even better than on computers. The keyboard is really finger friendly and after a few hours, it really makes me forget that I am on a handheld device. I never had any complaints with the N97′s keyboard so I guess I get used to keyboards fast. The touch screen despite being resistive, is responsive and works like a charm. The default Micro browser displays websites at desktop quality and I would go so far to say that it is probably the best browser on any mobile device. The Fennec build wasn’t too fast and I found it a bit buggy so I decided to stick to the default browser. The permanent landscape mode (with the exception of when it gets into the phone mode) takes a bit getting used to, but after the N97, that wasn’t one bit hard.

It’s so hard not to review a device when writing about a gadget. I guess I got carried away so you can ignore the boring review above. I should start of by clarifying that even though WOM stands for world of mobiles, the N900 is not a mobile phone. It is an internet tablet, with a mobile phone feature. This means that I wouldn’t really miss the SIM card inside the N900, but then I’d need it for mobile internet access anyway. The device has an inbuilt chat client which integrates all your IM contacts to your phonebook (Here we go again, I am try hard not to review the N900) So, getting back to what I was talking about. The N900 is really good at being a handheld computer which runs Linux, because that’s what it is. That doesn’t mean that it isn’t good at handling calls or messages. But I found that the symbian platform of course makes for a better phone any day. But I’m really confused on this, I think threaded messaging is the way sms has to go. And, the N900 does that wonderfully well. Call clarity and reception are at par with the Symbian cousin as well. I was really confused about the N900, because it was a technological marvel, but yet it wasn’t really there. It fell short of perfection somewhere on the way. Now if only it could do this.

One more reason where the N900 loses out, are applications. Symbian’s been around for long. And the iPhone’s got a good(and definitely better) app store. A device is only as powerful as the applications which exploit it. True, the N900 has the power of the command line and is quite a geek friendly phone. It does an awesome job of integrating the IM client into the phone and witter’s a good app for twitter, but that’s about it. Gravity is an application that really reveals how powerful the symbian platform really is. If every Symbian app were that good, then  symbian would be the no.1 OS in the world. I really loved this battery application on the N900 which would display how I ran out of charge on my device. The N900 is built on the linux platform which provides it with truly extensive list of applications, and the application manager is truly a pleasure to work with.  But there is something about the applications that I, as a symbian lover miss. The N900 never made me “want” to install applications on it, something which I would do everyday with the Symbian. If I could, I would install every application every made for Symbian on my mobile phones. So the problem must be my love for the aging platform and also that the Maemo felt very amateur when it came to apps. Maybe I’m so used to signing applications and going through all those messy screens of installation that I find N900 a bit too smooth for comfort.

The internet browser, the quick snappy animations and responsive screen must be reasons why I should’ve loved the N900. But then, the internet browser is completely useless in India where we still don’t have 3G. There I was forced to use it over wifi, with great results. Over EDGE, the N900 bores you to death making you wait for the true internet to be delivered. The snappy animations. awesome interface and responsive touch screen all are reasons why I love the N900 still. I’m glad I didn’t really make this post right away and procrastinated a lot. Because, now I can link to this post as to why I really still love the symbian platform.

But the main reason I gave up on the N900 was its bulk. I found that the N900 was almost as bulky as the N95, if not more. I found it really a bit too bulky for my pockets after the N97. Maybe its because I don’t really carry even a bag around with me.

Links to “real” N900 reviews:

Joshua Wong considers the N900 as his Netbook replacement. Now this is something I can relate to, considering the N900 is more of an internet tablet than a mobile phone.

One authoritative review on the N900 is from @shivaranjan

Another one has to be the iPhone vs. N900 battle at Techpinas

Decided that wordmobi was taking too much space on the paltry space I had on my N97′s C drive. It turned out symbianguru was also in search of a blogging solution. I turned to the default Nokia browser and the wordpress backend which wasn’t too much to write about. It barely does the job and is almost next to being completely unusable.

I tried out wordpress on both the opera mini and the mobile and both of them wouldn’t let me type a single word.

Frustrated, I looked for help on Google and after a few stray results I got a wordpress plugin for the Iphone named the mobile admin, which unfortunately was unsupported with WP 2.5 and above.More searching around got me the Wphone plugin which allowed me to type the content until this point.

But it wouldn’t support images or links. And my search continued. Searching on google got me to this blog post on mobile applications I tried out a few java apps until I came across Wavelog from telewaving. Now wavelog had a really confusing interface and it wasn’t freeware. I downloaded the 30 day trial and got it to work with a little help from their help files.

The app works well on my symbian v5 device and supports v3 as well. I decided to go ahead and spend the $8.25 on the full version. Now thats the longest post I’ve made from my mobile phone. Now all I need are a few screenshots and this post is done. I think the search for a good mobile blogging solution is far from being complete. But then I don’t have an Iphone. Because we chose to be different.

The open source chromium OS on which Google Chrome OS is based on, was launched yesterday and soon many torrents were teeming with the Developer preview edition of the Chromium OS. I tried out Chromium from gdgt who had files for running them off virtualbox, (virtual machine software from Sun Microsystems) . The Chrome OS img itself was around 300 MB compressed and I had to download Virtualbox as well. Gdgt requires you to sign up before you download and you can use your facebook account to accelerate the process(Though, in my opinion they do ask for a lot more fb rights than actually required)

If you do not know what the chrome OS is all about, watch the video below:

If you have not setup a virtual machine before, try using this link here for a complete guide.

The Chromium OS login: Enter your gmail id/pw. I used a makeshift id; just in case.

The Chromium OS with a new tab open

The Menu?

These are the specs of the Virtual machine I used to run Chromium OS. And considering I loaded it on my Netbook, it took around 20 seconds to boot up. If I to install it, I’m sure time boot time would be less than 10 seconds.

Watch the Chrome OS launch:

The latest news doing its rounds on the internet is the futuristic looking, theme mockups of the Mozilla Firefox 4 browser. The new theme reminds me of the minimalistic feel adopted by both Chrome and IE8. The wiki states the mock ups are only for brainstorming and might be revised several times before they make it to real browser arena..

But, the interface looks really minimalistic and I loved it so much that I went around searching for a download. And here it is, in all its glory. Download the file, extract, click and drag the *.jar file to your Mozilla addons window.

Thanks to “BoneyardBrew“  and “SoapyHamHocks” @ DeviantART for the awesome theme. Do check out more of his work at his DeviantART gallery!
You would also need to install the Firefox Personal menu extension to complete the look.
Have a cool theme to recommend? Leave a comment!

I got myself a new ASUS EEE PC Seashell netbook last week and have been busy setting it up, customizing it and getting software. Considering that a netbook is meant to run more as an secondary system rather than your only laptop, netbooks are not usually as powerful as laptop (why is why they’re called netbooks, duh..)

Even though they’re called netbooks , its not exactly possible to ensure that they’re always connected to the internet. What if the friendly neighborhood cafe did not have free wifi? And Netbooks without the power of the net are well, just books. Or so we have been lead to believe. Until the making this list that is. My list of perfect software had to make sure it fulfilled two primary needs. Firstly, to be able to run on a machine with limited processing abilities. Secondly, the capability to be used even when you did not have internet access.

Browser: Chrome

Chrome had to be the browser of choice. Light, fast and easy to load. I still am a fan of firefox on my laptop but for my netbook I chose the ultra light chrome with the power of Google Gears. That makes sure I can read my feeds offline, my mail offline, my blog and loads of other Gears compatible stuff offline.

Edited on July 17, 2009: Firefox takes over my netbook. Its impossible not to use firefox especially considering that the internet is the center of your netbook. Plus the font rendering on firefox is much more adaptable to netbooks, which means its much more comfortable to browse the web.

Mail: Thunderbird

I couldn’t find a better mail client than this so I had to surrender to the power of Mozilla. Handles multiple inboxes, junk/spam protection, easy to use. Just like all other good Mozilla products you get the power to use extensions just make sure that you are making an application heavier on a netbook. I just have the minimize to tray extension installed.

Chat: Pidgin

This open source chat agent had to take the cake when it came to chat. Lets me run multiple IM services, light and powerful. Though originally designed to run on linux, Pidgin is now available for windows as well. Pidgin is functional, has an interface that’s the least distracting and comes with a multitude of options to customize it. I use gtalk considering that its the lightest around, considering I do not need multiple IM support.

Office applications: Microsoft Works

I still am using the Microsoft works, but this section might update once I install the Open office. Still considering this section, so do leave your choices in the comments section.

Blogging: Blogdesk

For the first time, I’ve considered the use of an offline blogging tool and after trying quite a few of them, I’ve decided that Blogdesk, albeit its limitations is the winner. Blogdesk has support for most common blogging platforms. I would have recommended the use of Scribefire extension if I were using firefox, but since this is a list, Blogdesk is a blogging tool with a functional interface, but lets you write blogs offline, save them and post them later.

Antivirus: AVG

This is really easy. You would want to keep the resource usage to a minimum and still ensure protection. Stick to AVG . Does a good job and is light on the processor as well.

Desktop enhancements: Launchy

Well, just because its a netbook doesn’t mean you shouldn’t dress up your desktop. How about a OSX styled dock? Rocketdock is only of the fastest and lightest docks out there. I would recommend using Launchy , the keyboard based program launcher especially since it works wonders when the super fast chrome is your default browser.