Review: Doberman Laptop Defender and Briefcase Alarm

Every now and then I come across one or other gadget that I cannot help but wonder why they are not more popular. Many people living in SA have developed an almost paranoid like sense of their surroundings which is frankly very stressful. Therefore we invest in expensive home security systems, constantly locking up everything around us which has become entrenched in our lives. In fact, it is kind of difficult to believe the stories like “when I was young we left the key in the car…” etc.

I decided to test out Doberman’s computer focused alarms which are very handy for paranoid people like me. The Laptop Defender attaches onto your laptop lid by adhesive, and then you activate them to start sensing sudden movements (like someone snatching your computer). You set up your own security code and simply press ARM and then your alarm is armed. Easy enough. A blinking light warns you that it is armed, and also moving the notebook will cause the alarm to quickly warn you with a loud beep. I think the Laptop defender is ideal for people who often use their computers in public places – for example, if you frequent airport lounges often, it now enables you to leave your laptop at your table to go get a snack. If someone snatches your laptop, a piercing alarm goes off which will of course attract attention. It seems like the Laptop Defender works better on a solid surface like a table. I tried to use it while the laptop was on my lap, but I got a warning after a while. While it is sensitive, it would not go off just by someone typing on the machine for example.

The Laptop Defender charges with USB – I have no idea how long the battery lasts, but I have used it quite often in the last few weeks and so far the battery is still fine.

The product that impressed me more was the Briefcase Alarm, which works in a similiar manner, but simply attaches to your briefcase. As someone who really appreciates the looks of my Macbook, I do not necessarily want to stick something to the lid of the machine, I will prefer to attach it to my briefcase. (Your opinion might differ. Cannot think the laptop alarm will spoil the utilitarian looks of a Thinkpad for example.) The Briefcase alarm works in the exact same way by getting armed with a code. Again, if you move the briefcase, it will warn you – loudly. Move it again, and it goes off. Loudly. VERY loudly.

In the manual they warn you that the alarm can create hearing damage – I would say that is a valid concern. In testing I let it go off in my office – my ears sang (is that the right term?) for the next few minutes. It will definitely attract a lot of attention if someone is running with this alarm going off…

Both of these products seem to be built very sturdily, and the Briefcase Alarm actually looks pretty decent as well with a leather finish loop which attaches to your bag. If you are someone who travels a lot or uses their laptop in public often, it is indeed a very good buy, especially at the price.

The Laptop Defender is currently going for around R350 and the Briefcase alarm for about R250.

Storage recovery must have: Paragon Rescue Kit

Recently a Lenovo netbook I use had a sudden hard drive failure, and the drive was not properly backed up. The drive would still spin up, but I could not get it to boot up into Windows. So what to do?

So next I opened up the netbook and removed the SATA hard drive inside. From there I plugged it into a USB to SATA interface (you can use any external SATA enclosure as well). When I connected the hard drive Windows refused to open the filesystem simply telling me that the drive is corrupt. So then I had to somehow get a method of opening the filesystem (the drive was physically damaged after all).

So after looking around for a decent file system recovery application I came to a realisation – most file system repair software on the internet is total and utter crap. All of them basically do the same thing, yet most of them insist on using malware type practices that keep nagging you when you finally install the software.

Luckily I came accross Paragon Rescue Kit Express. It is completely free (no strings attached) and the software simply burns itself onto a bootable CD. You will of course need more than one drive to copy all the recovered data on. Once you boot up the disc, a simple interface just requests which files you wish to recover, and then it effortlessly goes about its business. I recovered the entire hard drive with any issues whatsover.

To all the other companies who use unethical methods to get me to buy your software (for example, fooling me by saying the software is free when it is not, and then badgering me once it is installed), shame on you.

After all of this effort I decided it was time to switch the netbook to Windows 7 – good move. Read further about that here.

PS: No, no one payed me to talk about Paragon – their software solution was simply the only proper application I could find, and thus I recommend it wholeheartedly. Also thanks to Craig Nicholson for the tip.

Weekend Project: Building a Windows Home Server (Part 2)

In my previous post I described my hardware choices when building my new Windows Home Server, something that I am handling as a weekend project. I am still using the HP ML110 G5 server, with 4Gigs of ECC RAM. I also upgraded the 250Gig HD to a new 500Gig Seagate drive – a nice quick one with 16 meg cache and 7200rpm speed. The 250Gig is now a secondary drive a use for folder duplication – but more on that later.

When doing these upgrades I was once again reminded about why some people insist on buying dedicated hardware for server use instead of using generic desktop components. Upgrading this HP Proliant server is a bit easier than most desktop cases I have come accross. A thumb screw removes the side panel, and thereafter the front bezel of the machine swings open like a door. About 16 screws are neatly lined up on the front of the server for when you want to insert another harddrive – no need to look for extra screws. The hard drives just slide into the front of the machine, and it makes a nice “click” once its installed. Its the small details I like.

When choosing hardware, it is beneficial to use two or more hard drives with Windows Home Server, but also a good idea to use the fastest drive you can for the system partition. WHS uses a proprietary method to distribute storage instead of complicated RAID setups. However, the OS still uses the primary drive for its system installs and also as a first point to write files to when copied to the server, therefore a speedy drive is your friend.

Setting up Windows Home Server cannot be more easy – merely boot the install disc on your machine, and confirm most of the on screen tidbits. It will inform you that all the drives in the machine will be deleted – and you have to confirm this. Once again, it might be a good idea to use as new hardware as possible, which will lead to less chance of failure. The install is not exactly brisk – it takes about an hour, even with nice quick hardware. It reboots many times in the process as well, so be patient. If you are used to the quick installs that Windows 7 or Snow Leopard has these days, you might want to calm down a bit and just be patient.

WHS did not automatically install some of the drivers on my server, including the network card – no biggie, just install the Windows Server 2003 versions of the drivers that came with your hardware. To see which drivers did not install, just check the Device Manager.

Once all you drivers are installed, activate your copy of WHS, so that you can start installing software updates. Unfortunately my copy of WHS is pretty early, so I had a lot of updates – about 200MB’s worth. That again takes some time – patience is virtue. Its easy – just run Windows Update and use the express option.

Once WHS is updated and running, it is time to start setting up shares and backups. To do this you start up WHS Connnector software – you ought to get a disc in the box to install this, otherwise get it from the “Software” folder in your WHS install. Installing the connector software will enable you to administrate the server from your workstation, and also run the server “headless”, meaning it does not require anything but a powerplug and a network cable attached to your network. Once installed, just enter your server password and then you can start setting up your backups and shares.

Backups are pretty easy – using the connector software, WHS gives you the following tabs:

• Computers and Backup – use this to add computers on your network that needs to be backup up.
• User Accounts – setup user profiles who are allowed to access your shared folders, including a Guest user account.
• Shared Folders – So what folders do you want to share on the network? Add them here.
• Server Storage – Give an overview of the current storage on the server.
• Network Health – Will be green unless your computers have not been backed up in a while, or any of your machines have outdated windows patches, antivirus definitions, etc. Very handy.

Backups are pretty easy to do from the connector software, but WHS is also smart in the way that it stores it. If a identical file is found on more than one of your workstations, it will only back that file up once, not a separate version for each machine. In other words, backing up 5 machines with 100GB storage each does not translate into 500GB storage needed. Far from it – in fact, if your machines run mostly the same operating systems, you will see that WHS does not use a lot of space at all. Backups are one of the major reasons to get WHS, so get started with your backups – their first run can take a lot of time, especially over wireless networks, so you might want to connect to ethernet with the notebooks for their first backup.

Shared folders are easy to set up – you can easily choose which folders can and cannot be accessed by certain users in your house, but you can also setup a Guest account so that new machines who connect to your network can easily use some of the resources without any complicated login rituals.

So far in this review WHS does not show too many benefits – shared folders can be done with a lot of free solutions like FreeNAS, but the backup part is very well implemented. Where WHS starts to shine however is with addins and how well it integrates with other devices in your home like Xbox 360. But that I will leave for my next post in this series.

Weekend Project: Building a Windows Home Server (Part 1)

Many homes these days have more than PC and also have amassed quite a lot of media in the form of photos and videos. One of the small duties most people forget about with their home machines is to do regular backups – and yeah it is quite tedious, especially with more than one computer. While many methods exist to automate these backups, many of them are not particularly easy to use and stable. Microsoft has had a product called Windows Home Server available for a couple of years, and yes it is relatively unknown. But for multiple PC households, it is truly a great solution. So over the next few weeks I will document my experiences with this software and also the hardware I will use.

I recently got hold of a new low end tower server machine, a HP ML110 G5 (you can find it here)  and decided how best to use it. Seeing as it is a server machine, it has a terrible integrated graphics card and some strange proprietary PCI Express slots, so using it as a desktop machine was out of the question. In fact I tried installing Windows 7, but the machine refused to even play a h264 SD video. You can order the machine with Windows Server 2003, but I decided to rather go for Windows Home Server (which is also built on Windows Server 2003). WHS runs as a “headless” server, so you only need a screen and desktop set for the initial setup. Thereafter, you log into the server with other machines in your home.

Windows Home Server can run on quite old hardware, in fact using it on some retired old desktop machine would work fine. Microsoft says a minimum of a 1GHz Pentium 3 and 512MB RAM would work – but I would recommend a bit more. The machine I am using is a Pentium Dual Core 1.8GHz, with 4 Gig of error correcting RAM with a smallish 250gig SATA drive. Having some quad core Xeon processor Xeon processor will be an absolute waste – unless you plan on doing things like real time transcoding and streaming, and even then such a high end processor might be excessive.

I would recommend more than one drive, bigger the better. Also, since it is a server that is on 24/7, you might want to take note of the number of components in the machine which will save electricity in the long run. So if you using an old overclocked gaming machine you might want to first remove some of the excessive fans and components. The more bare bones, the better.

Microsoft however recommends using new components, seeing as they will probably last longer than some tired old component. Seeing as it is a server which will probably house some valuable data such as your old photos, it might be smart to take note of their advice.

When looking at storage, enterprise grade hard drives will probably last longer, but “green” hard drives that consume less electricity might be an even better idea seeing as redundancy can be catered for by the operating system. So far I only have the one drive in the machine, but I will soon start adding some additional drives I have laying around. Every time you add a new drive, the OS will simply remind you that its contents will be erased and then adds it to the storage pool. A system partition holds the OS, while all the storage is pooled into a D: partition, which caters for redundancy as well.

In terms of memory, MS says 512MB would be fine, but memory is so cheap these days it might be a good idea to get more memory. In fact pre-built HP Home servers these days ship with 2GB RAM, so I decided to get 4GB memory. The server machine I am using can use error correcting RAM, so I decided to stick with that, which cant hurt. I was quite surprised to see that ECC RAM does not go for much more than normal RAM.

So far I think I have hardware covered, but I need to create some more storage – my WHS will primarily serve as a backup device for all my machin,e but also as storage for all the media I play on my Xbox 360. WHS can stream movies, videos and photos to the Xbox, so having enough storage will be very important. So I will probably increase the storage with two additional 1TB drives, keeping in mind that the more hard drives you add, the more electricity the box will use, but using additional drives will also increase data redundancy.

What I will look into in the next few days is the actual setup, the backup functionality, media streaming and also mac compatibility. Seeing as I use Mac OSX on my main machine these days, I really want to see how I can do Time Machine backups to my server. Also, support for Windows 7′s connector software is currently still in Beta, so I look forward to see how well Windows 7 plays with it.

Wish me luck…

You can find part 2 here: details on setup of WHS and getting started.

Windows Home Server is $99, so you can find it in SA for around a R1000. Most places dont seem to carry stock of it, so you have to order it in most cases.

Long Overdue Full Review: iPhone 3GS

Vodacom launched the iPhone 3GS about a month ago on 28 July, but unfortunately stock was very limited – in fact, there is still a major shortage of the 3GS in South Africa. (you can read my about my mission to get one here, and a bit of well deserved praise for iStore here).

To the untrained eye, the iPhone 3GS looks eerily similar to its older brother – in fact its pretty undistinguishable. (Tip: only difference is the chrome lettering on the bottom half of the back). Clearly Apple is using a similar strategy it has in its computer business for years – they continually refine a form factor, with only radical changes every few years. Apple has also fortunately made the iPhone 3.0 OS updates available to the older iPhones – this review wont focus on the changes in iPhone 3.0.

The unboxing experience is also very similar to the 3G, only difference being a slightly smaller box and the lack of a polishing cloth. Not a big deal on my opinion. Still would love a dock like the first gen iPhone though. The headphones also got a slight revision – they now have volume control as well. These controls in the wire is however a bit more useful with the 3GS’s voice control, but we will get to that later.

The device still has its minimalistic design with only a few buttons – a timeless design that I reckon Apple will stick with for years to come. It still has the glossy plastic back which attracts fingerprints just like the front, but the white models tend to not attract as many fingerprints. Overall I like the form factor a lot, and it does feel very good in your hand. Even though it might feel on the large size, it clearly is a sweet spot once you start using the screen interface. It is also quite thin and sleek – especially compared to other smartphones on the market.

The iPhone 3GS on top of the Nokia N86 8MP, Nokia E75 and HTC G1.

So what has changed? It is all under the hood – first up, the processor is bumped from 412 to 600 MHz, with a larger cache to boot. This has a very clear improvement in the general speed of the device – applications load much quicker, some cases even double the speed. The interface reacts quicker as well – but this might have something to do with improved video chipset as well. The new chipset improves 3D games tremendously – playing a graphically rich game like Hero of Sparta or Assassins Creed shows much smoother frame rates which also add to playability of the games. Clearly Apple is making a major push into handheld gaming.

The framerate also carries over to general use on the devices – flipping pages in apps (for example clicking the “i” button in Weather) have a much smoother visual transition.
Hopefully game publishers will not focus too quickly on the new video chipset seeing as games will become very bad on older hardware, but there is of course still a much larger user base with the older hardware, so that wont happen too soon. Here is a video to show the speed increases (excuse the lack of proper focus, but you get the idea):

Memory has also been doubled to 256 MB – this leads to less page refreshes in multiple tabs in Safari, big applications never give a low memory error, and it yes, it also contributes to the speed. The 3G chipset is also now 7.2 Mbps cabable (up from 3.6) which does increase browsing and download speed. Unfortunately in South Africa this will go to waste – we have the ability on Vodacom Broadband Advanced now, but the fact that you have to pay extra irritates me.

Apple has also added a compass – which does not really sound like a big deal. And yes, in its current guise it does not add a lot to the user experience. You get a compass app, which, you guessed it, shows a compass pointing North. Google Maps also now uses the compass to show you which way you are looking at. But the real change is with apps that are coming – Yelp recently showcased its new “monocle feature” that enables you to look through the camera with restaurant reviews pointing at the restaurants you are looking out. Rumour has it that Google’s streetview will also get this soon. (You might have also heard that Google’s streetview cars are finally surveying South Africa).

The iPhone also gets Nike+ functionality like the 2nd gen iPod Touch has had. I used Nike+ on my Nano a while back, and the interface has been nicely ported to the iPhone OS. However, the lack of hard buttons to control while jogging is not great, guess you have to run with your iPhone supplied earphones to use the in cable controls.

Multimedia:

The iPhone also gains a few other enhancements – first up the camera. The sensor has been boosted from 2 to 3.2 Megapixels, but perhaps more significantly, has gained a autofocus lens. While this is old news on just about all other smartphones, Apple has made a few very useful additions to the way you use the camera. Instead of merely framing a shot and taking the picture, the iPhone allows you to select where you want to focus in the image. This works very well – in fact, I really hope to see this functionality in stand alone cameras soon. Photos do look much better than the 3G, with richer colour and and slightly better performance in low light. Could still use a flash though.

Big news however is the addition of video recording – again, a feature that just about every camera phone had for the last few years. But the iPhone’s video recording looks stunning – the framerate is decent, and the resolution is fine as well for casual use. The 3GS also enables a user to trim the video right on the device to take out unnecessary parts, and then the user can email the video or upload it directly to YouTube. Again, this is something that other phones have had for a while, but the iPhone’s implementation is just so simple, it begs to be used. (The new Facebook for iPhone app also supports video uploading, and this is something I have used a few times already).

The iPod’s functionality is pretty much unchanged, but storage has doubled. The 3GS is now available in 16 and 32 GB sizes. This is great news for people like me who still carried around their iPod classics on long trips – although it is not 120 Gig, 32 Gig is still a big jump from the previous capacity.

Other changes:

The other major change is again something other phones have had for a long time – Voice Control. But once again, the Apple implementation is worlds ahead of other manufacturers. As expected you can call people by saying: “Call John”. You can also tell the 3GS what number to call: “Dial 082 555 5555” and it will phone the number. However, for the number dialing I found it had a touch time with my South African accent (and no, I don’t speak like Wikus vd Merwe). Hopefully Apple will improve this in a software update.

But the 3GS allows you to control you iPod as well in this function, for example: “Play songs by Radiohead”, or “Play album OK Computer”. Then the creepy lady just confirms: “Playing songs by Radiohead”. This worked flawlessly with all the music I threw at it – and remember, the 3GS now supports up to 32Gig storage, which is a lot of music and movies.Here is a video (once again sorry for the lack of proper focus):

Apple also claims slightly better battery life for the iPhone 3GS – which is an outright lie. After using the device for a month, I have not found any improvements in the battery whatsoever. In fact, I will go as far as saying that the battery might be worse than the iPhone 3G, but not much. This is still the achiles heal of the iPhone, and seriously needs attention in the next revision (or even software update if its possible). Hopefully the next gen iPhone will get an OLED screen. The battery life is still better than almost all of its touch screen rivals however.

The other problem I have with the 3GS is with its Bluetooth – for some reason it does not upload names and numbers to my Supertooth handsfree kit. The previous iPhone 3G did this with no problems. While the 3GS connects, the device cannot read out names aloud anymore, merely telling the number which is just irritating. But I am confident Apple will fix this in a software update.

The screen also now has a oleophobic coating that supposedly repels oil from you fingers – I did not test this, seeing as I covered my iPhone in a Invisible Shield – which I highly recommend, if you can get it at a good price.

Conclusion

The iPhone 3GS and iPhone OS 3.0 addresses almost all the issues people have had with iPhones since day one – it finally has a decent camera, and many small additions like MMS and tethering is now available.

If there is one theme I have noticed with iPhone development is that Apple truly does not care if the iPhone does not do certain things. Instead of trying to pack every conceivable function into a device (like the Nokia N97), the iPhone only implements new features if these features can truly add to the experience of the phone. The camera, video recording and voice control all exemplifies this. This is features that are old news, but the implementation on the iPhone is just brilliant. I find myself using these features much more than on any of my other phones – why? Because its easy, and not merely a bolted on little feature – it integrates brilliantly with rest of the device.

My overall opinion of the 3GS is a mixed bag – there are real credible improvements, but I would not yet recommend it to current 3G owners. In South Africa there is currently a major price premium for the 3GS. The price in its current form is tailored for Apple fanboys (might be guilty) and gadget freaks (guilty as charged). If you already have a 3G, I would hold out for the prices to drop. But if you have upgrade coming up, go for the 3GS, it is worth the extra money.

Pros:

• Speed. Glorious Speed.
• Much improved camera and addition of video recording
• Voice Control is actually useful
• Graphically intensive apps look even better.

Cons:

• Current cost in South Africa is way to high. Give it a month or two.
• Battery life is NOT improved.

Rating:
9 out of 10. (Would have been 10 if the price was equivalent to 3G before 3GS launch, or the battery was better)

Review: Apple Mac OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard

On the 28th of August Apple finally released its latest version of its Mac OSX – called Snow Leopard. While it is a new version, the changes are very subtle, but those little things add up to highly revamped experience of using your Mac. While the traditional Apple fanboy/journalism bigshots like Walt Mossberg and David Pogue got hold of it a while ago, we regular little people had to wait.

First thing you notice it is quite cheap – at $30, it is much cheaper than any release of OS X up to now (except 10.1, which was free…). While this “new” price for an OS seems great, the honest fact of the matter is that Apple could not actually ask more for this OS upgrade. The typical user will not necessarily notice any of the changes, except for the big speed increase…

Installation:

The typical user will simply insert the Snow Leopard and click on install. Thereafter it asks you your password and thats it. On my machine the entire install took about 39 minutes, which is pretty brisk for a machine which has a lot of software and customizations running. No mess no fuss. Seriously, I cannot think how this can be easier. Even though the licence permits only a upgrade from Leopard, supposedly the upgrader updates Tiger without issue as well. (Microsoft might want to take note of this, their new Windows 7 install process does not allow a straight upgrade from Windows XP).

Apple tells us that we can expect up to 6 gigs extra back after the install of Snow Leopard, and reviews everywhere seem to concur with it. I got back 10 Gigs, which is always great. Apple gets this right by not storing all printer drivers on disk anymore, and also not installing Rosetta, which is now a optional install on the install DVD. (Rosetta is the translation software which enables you to run older PowerPC based applications that has not been coded in Universal code).

Speed, Glorious Speed:

After the first boot up you will notice that the interface is much quicker. Objects and buttons just seem to react quicker in all day to day activities. Opening up large files such as videos open instantly, thumbnails get generated much quicker and you don’t really ever feel that their is a lack of power in the machine. I am running Snow Leopard on a stock standard Macbook unibody with 2.0GHz processor and 2 Gig RAM. I only upgraded the hard drive to a 7200 rpm model. Things that used to crunch the little guy in the past like Time Machine is much, much quicker now.

Talking of Time Machine, not only is it quicker, but it clearly uses less processing power in Snow Leopard. (Apple says 80% faster, but that sounds a little optimistic. I would say 50%) In fact, I noticed many apps use less processing power than before, and the machine does run a little cooler because of it. However, I did notice that apps that are dependent on pure processing power like Handbrake run about the same, and CPU use might have even gone up, because there are more idle CPU power available. Whether it indeed results in faster encoding, I am not sure.

Apple has also rewritten all (or most) of its core applications in 64 bit now, which does make them faster in environments where machines have large memories (more than 4GB). I could not however test this, seeing as I did my testing on a Late 2008 Macbook. However, all the built in Apps do launch much quiker than before.

The other reason why things happen a bit quicker in Snow Leopard is down to a few things, most importantly Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL. Here is Apple’s official statement on GCD:

“With GCD, threads are handled by the operating system, not by individual applications. GCD-enabled programs can automatically distribute their work across all available cores, resulting in the best possible performance whether they’re running on a dual-core Mac mini, an 8-core Mac Pro, or anything in between. Once developers start using GCD for their applications, you’ll start noticing significant improvements in performance.” Well that beats the technical explanation.

OpenCL is a new way of employing graphics processors in modern Macs to assist with everyday processing jobs. Considering the amount of processing power in new GPU’s, it is really a great thing – instead having a graphics card that sits idle waiting for the next game, it can now continually contribute to all apps that have OpenCL code. This however only works on newer Macs with relatively modern GPU’s.

Ever since I started using a Mac, I was always dumbfounded at how well sleep works with a Macbook. I have not had any Windows machine that have worked so flawlessly for travelling – Snow Leopard makes that even quicker. Not that I have ever considered Leopard slow for sleeping and waking.

New Features:

Not counting the major changes in the background, Snow Leopard does not have a lot of new features – in fact, you have to look pretty hard to spot them. Most of the changes are small enough that you will only run into them m
Apart from the speed increase, the only major interface change you will notice is that the “stacks” in the dock is suddenly a whole lot more useful. Clicking on a icon within a stack reopens the stack with new icons, instead of opening up a Finder window as in Leopard. Also, you can scroll around in the stack if you use the Grid view. I find this much quicker than in Leopard.

One of Mac OS X’s standout features – Expose, has been changed slightly as well. Doing the traditional four finger swipe now works the same as before, but holding onto a icon in the dock now gives a quick preview of what it’s window looks like. Very similiar to Aero Peek in Windows 7, yes, but it does not feel as well implemented. Using traditional Expose is still way better than anything in Windows though.

The application with the biggest changes however is Quicktime Player. When I first read about the changes coming I could not care less – after all, who cares about Quicktime? In my mind, Quicktime has never been something more than a useless app that comes with iTunes. However, Quicktime X is completely different beast. Seeing as the preview function (which opens movies, documents and pictures quickly) is built on Quicktime, I find myself using preview a lot more. Where in the past I would fire up VLC for any video file, preview is now much, much quicker. In fact, opening up a multiple gigabyte HD file takes a matter of seconds. H264 files also seem to play very smooth thanks to Quicktime now using the GPU for decoding.
Snow Leopard has now also got support for Microsoft Exchange built in – but it requires that you run Exchange Server 2008 in your organization. I tested it and did not find a single problem – Addressbook and Calendar synced easily enough and it was easy enough to set up as well. I have never been a fan of Entourage for Mac, and this change is most welcome. (Luckily MS is going to switch to Outlook now for Mac as well in its next release). Funny bit of irony: Apple’s operating system comes with support for Microsoft Exchange out of the box, Microsoft’s own OS does not. Office for Mac is suddenly becoming a much tougher sell for the average user.

Issues:

To be honest, Snow Leopard has not given me any headaches so far. Some users have been complaining of incompatible apps, but I have not found any. My productivity software like Microsoft Office 2008 is functioning without issue, and Adobe CS4 is also problem free. However, I did find that these apps did not get the great speed boost I so wanted from Snow Leopard. I reckon the next version of Office for Mac will have better use of technologies like GCD and OpenCL. (Office for Mac is not exactly quick to launch).

I only had a small issue with a Wifi network using VPN for authentication at work, but I sorted it out within 5 minutes. Other than that, it has been problem free.

Wrapup:

Overall, I am very impressed by Snow Leopard. The entire upgrade process was hassle free, and the changes are apparent almost immediately. I commend Apple for keeping the upgrade prices low at $30 (not so much Core, who charges R329, I guess the tiny double CD sized boxes are very expensive to ship here.), but after reviewing it, it becomes apparent that the question is rather whether they should charge for it at all.

The fact of the matter is that yes, Snow Leopard is a service pack when you are looking at features. On the other hand, the speed increases are so welcome that I would easily pay the money. I am trying not to sound like a fanboy, but if you use Leopard, you are pretty silly not to make the upgrade.

Rating:

9 out of 10 (10 if it was free, but again, would it even warrant a review then?)

PS:

Then of course there is the constant comparison with Windows. Windows 7 is arriving end of October in stores and is already complete in RTM guise. We all want the next Windows to cost $30 as well, but Windows has to cater for such a broad range of hardware, that it obviously takes a much larger effort to refine its operating system than Apple. (Face it, Windows 7 is as much a service pack to Windows Vista as Snow Leopard is to Leopard.). While Microsoft will not bring it to market at $30, it will release a Family Pack for multi PC households. I am actually very excited by these two very mature new operating systems now available. (See my review of Windows 7 here.)

Nokia N97 Review – So Close, Yet So Far

Every now and then I come across a new gadget or piece of hardware that should impress me, but somehow, after spending time with it, there is something missing. You cannot quite put your finger on it – its just a lot of small things that all contribute.

Recently Nokia delivered the Nokia N97 to me – and it really is a beauty. Its hardware is sleek, and solid. Similiar to a lot of phones these days, it has chrome surrounds, and a seemingly buttonless front dominated by the screen. Small inconspicuous buttons for the phone and menu are on the front as well as a front facing camera for video calls. It flips open to reveal a full qwerty keyboard – and the action of the slider is just about the most impressive feeling mechanical slide in any phone I have felt. When opened, the rear of the hinge looks like a bragging list of features: 32GB, 5MP camera, 3.5” screen, A-GPS, Bluetooth 2.0, WLAN, HSDPA, etc.

So far, good start.

On the slightly rubberized rear is a 5 MP camera covered up with a slider, which automatically activates the camera once opened. It also includes a powerful flash, so I guess photography is covered then? It uses a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, and it charges using the new charging standard – micro USB. So far I am still impressed.

But then you fire it up – and here things start going a bit pear shaped. While I have always loved Symbian, I cannot help that somehow the N97 is underpowered. Clicking things on screen take a while to react, prompting me in many cases to try and click it again. Connected to the fact that it does not have a capacitative screen, the interface can sometimes be infuriating. OK, so if the screen takes a little used to, at least it has a keyboard right? Yes, but the keyboard has almost no tactile feedback. In fact, many times I find myself rather using the onscreen keyboard whenever possible. People’s biggest complaint with touchscreens are that there is a lack of tactile feedback – well this is the perfect example of how a poor keyboard is not better than a touch screen. On the N97, at least there is some haptic feedback when clicking on screen. This is still something that I think all touchscreen phones should get. Also, I cannot see how Nokia can make the stylus not slide into the device like the 5800 Tube. Instead the N97 has a little stylus that hangs of a little string.

The screen automatically rotates to landscape when needed, but it is hard not to notice that Symbian is not really designed for changing orientations – suddenly the soft buttons take up two thirds of the screen estate, which does not really add to usability. While in idle mode, with the screen on, the widgets are pretty cool to use and keep you informed. I stuck to the standard widgets including Facebook and AP News, but also used the new News24 widget, which is slick, but nowhere near as cool as the iPhone app. However, the widget system is really great to use and see info at a glance. I love that its apps download news and info in the background – other phones should take notice.

One major problem with Symbian in its current guise is still the use of “access points”. This feature has been part of Symbian for a very long time, and it is still a overcomplicated mess to organize your connections. While you can setup access point groups with priority lists, the phone will still in many cases first want to ask you to confirm what connection to use. All other smartphones these days understand the principle that if I walk into my wifi zone, I don’t want to use 3G. And no, I don’t want to confirm it every time. While I am sure there is some convoluted way to set this up on the device, it is definitely not simple. Please fix this Nokia.

OK, but say you get used to these oddities, and face it, the owner probably will. How is the features, and how do they stack up when actually used? Being a N-Series device, let’s start with the multimedia features. The screen is bright and has a nice high resolution – nothing wrong there. But I cannot help but feel a little cheated. Nokia’s recent N86 8MP has a OLED screen which has perfect pitch black darks and great battery life – For Nokia’s top of the range device, I think they should have looked at OLED.

The camera specs look fine – autofocus, 5 megapixel, flash. While photos looked great during the day, the photos were washed out when using the flash. Needless to say, the Nokia N86 8MP has much better camera and flash. So if photography is important, I wont say this is the handset to go for.

Storage wise, there is 32GB built in, and another 16GB can be added via SD card, which is quite amazing. While I realize this will probably all be used for multimedia, it is quite amazing to think how far we have come with mobile storage. Videos stored on the device looked okay, but I was not really blown away. It is no way close to video playback on a iPhone or HTC Magic, even if the resolution is higher. Again, I think a OLED screen could have helped the colours “pop” a little.

One thing the N97 does pull off is GPS navigation. Nokia Maps is included on the device, and it works a treat. However, like most GPS navigator phones, it sucks the battery dry very quickly. Good thing that Nokia includes a car charger in the box for South African buyers – I don’t think all countries are this lucky. Another plus is that unlike Google Maps, Nokia Maps can have entire country maps downloaded on the device, so you are not reliant on network data like on Apple and Android devices.

While Nokia might call it a N-series device, there is definitely a hint of series in there – it does include a full qwerty keyboard after all. As a messaging device it is hard to fault – setup of email accounts is even easier than on the E75, and I never had a single problem with messaging. Clearly Nokia has some experience in this field.

As a phone the N97 is not bad at all – everything works as it should. The sound quality is brilliant, and I did not have any issues. I am aware of other reviewers of the device complaining that the device would often lock up in the middle of a call, I had no such issues. The battery life was OK, but I did expect more. It has a large battery, but it does not last more than about 30 hours, not more than a day when actually used. While it sounds bad, it is not worse than most other phones that has this level of features.

As a whole I am still impressed by the N97. Its only once you start weighing up its competitors that you start seeing the issues. And this is truly a sad (but also exciting) state of affairs – a few new phones have spoiled it for the rest of the old legend manufacturers. But still, there are some truly revolutionary things appearing – be it in software, or in hardware. When looking at N97, it is hard to fault the hardware – it is truly stunning. When looking at the software, I think Nokia should look long and hard at Symbian. Currently Nokia owns Symbian, and it is being made opensource, which is great. I really believe Symbian is modular enough to be more suited to touch screens (hopefully capacitative) over time. But Nokia is now shifting to Meamo for its new N900 device, so we might see some strange things happen with Nokia and Symbian.

My honest opinion? I would still rather go for a Nokia E71 or E72.

Pros:

• Solid Build
• Nice big 32GB storage
• Sliding Action is without peer

Cons:

• Keyboard is almost useless
• Camera could be better for a top of the range device
• Symbian feels dated
• Device feels underpowered

Rating:

6 out of 10 (I want to give it 8, but it is not a cheap handset)

Review: ZAGG Invisible Shield for iPhone 3G/3GS

I am someone who is overprotective of my gadgets – I am almost cautious to remove the film off my gadgets the moment I start using them. Therefore, I tend to almost get decent cases for my devices (I personally use a iSkin Revo on my iPhone, but they are almost nowhere in SA.)

So this weekend I decided to give the Invisible Shield a go. Its claim to fame is that it is a very durable plastic film that was originally used by the US military to protect helicopter blades from debris and damage. Guess its strong enough for gadgets then. They also come with a lifetime guarantee, so they have confidence in their products.

Putting on the iPhone is different from normal films, but its easy enough. With normal adhesive based films you have one shot to align the film, which is quite tricky. The invisible shield comes with a water based solution that you spray on your fingers and on the film, which enables you to move around the film and properly line it up on the device.

Once you have aligned it on the device, you simply spray the top side of the film as well, and use the squeegy to squeeze out the bubbles. Then dry off the device, and let it stand for a while. Some people use a low heat hairdryer to allow the film to set, I just put it underneath a lamp for 10 minutes.

Once it is set on the device, I noticed that it has a slightly rubbery texture, which can be quite a change from the smooth glass feel of the iPhone. It also has a slight orange peel type texture, almost like your iPhone has developed cellulite.

But it definitely is tough. To test it, I asked my girlfriend to try and scratch it off – no go. A slight mark showed, but within a few minutes the mark disappeared. Very cool.

If you want to see some other “stress tests” that people have done with the invisible shield, look around on Google. Here is an example:

Would I recommend it? At R200? I guess not. If it was half that price, I would get it for all my gadgets (they make it for a variety of devices).

But if you adamant about not using a case with your devices, then it might be a good investment. My primary reason for a case on a phone is drop protection, something I dont believe this film would help with at all.

Review: HTC Touch HD

A few weeks ago I got hold of a review unit of the HTC Touch HD – one of HTC’s new top of the range Windows Mobile phones. Now before I start the review I should mention that I have used Windows Mobile a few years ago in its iPaq heydays. After using Palm OS I used quite a few Windows Mobile devices – and after many frustrations, I vowed to never use Windows Mobile again. From there I switched to Symbian devices for the long run. That is until the iPhone came along. I thought it might be time to revisit Windows Mobile, and see if the WM haters out there still had any valid points.

While I was busy with the review it became apparent that Windows Mobile is actually the Smartphone OS for the crowd who likes to tinker with their phones. While some phones like the iPhone is meant to work out of the box, with not a lot of room for customization (unless you jailbreak it), the Windows Mobile OS is a different animal. The slow development cycle of WM has lead to a large community of developers who have improved the OS in ways Microsoft should have actually had the decency to step up. Seeing as I used a review unit of the HTC Touch HD (and could not risk tweaking it too much), I called in the help of Henre Rossouw, who could bring us up to speed on the customization and tweaking front. As a long time user of Windows Mobile, Henre has some insights on certain interface “oddities” which might not be as apparent to someone like me who tests a lot of different phone operating systems.

One of my pet peeves are fanboys and haters of certain phones on forums and review sites who do not use a variety of devices. In most cases it is the people with least experience who are the most vocal. It is for this very reason I decided to try to do this review from two sides – one, a reviewer who regularly reviews different devices, and two, someone who has considerable experience with regard to Windows Mobile. Henre’s comments on my review is in italics. So here we go:

Windows Mobile is currently the third most popular Smartphone OS behind Symbian and RIM, and with good reason. Windows Mobile is still the compulsory smartphone OS in many companies, due to the (poorly informed) belief that is offers the best Exchange and Outlook integration in an enterprise. One thing that struck me as very odd is that the WM user interface has not changed much in all these years – now that can obviously be a good thing to people unwilling to learn new interfaces, but also highlights the fact that development on the UI side of WM is stagnant. In fact, many WM smartphone makers have taken it upon themselves to create their own “skins” to make the devices more touch friendly, seeing as WM itself is currently not ideal (read: terrible) for use without a stylus.

Yes and no. Microsoft has been slow…terribly slow to get rid of the ridiculously antiquated Windows Mobile 6.1. But we need to keep in mind that Windows Mobile devices range mostly from non-touch enabled phones to the latest touch optimized ones. It simply cannot compare to the Apple iPhone, because Apple only has one device in the market.

To predict how Apple would handle such a situation is unfathomable, simply because they entered the market at such an advanced stage. However, if we look at the Samsung Omnia device, which I have, you will see that Samsung has attempted a touch UI to “cover up” the Windows Mobile 6.1 OS. Again, mostly only a skin, and an absolutely terrible one at that. So much so that many Omnia users have turned to some pretty awesome developers on the net, and on a video I’ve shot a couple of months back, you will witness a “hacked” version of the HTC TouchFlo 3D on my phone. What HTC has done (very well in my opinion) is to develop its “skin” that they stick right on top of the touch unfavourable Windows Mobile OS. Previous HTC devices, while looking very slick with the TouchFlo 3D “skin”, was still highly critiqued simply because the same self “untouchable” Windows Mobile OS graced users after entering the second layer of the OS. On the new HTC devices however, this model included, HTC has gone and built upon the first layer, or the “skin” so to speak, and have built touch oriented functionality deeper into the OS. And I must say, of what I’ve seen from the new TouchFlo 3D, it is pretty remarkable.

Hardware: But enough about the OS, lets get to the phone. The phone comes packaged in a box which is more a display case than a way to box it up. The box is quite large and has a magnetized lid which does give you quite a good unboxing experience – something which is a prerequisite for a phone on this price level. It comes packaged with a charger, a 1350 mAh battery, a USB cable and a set of earphones. Pretty standard stuff. But it also gives a nice sleeve pouch (not that it will protect the phone in a fall), a 8GB micro SD card, a spare stylus and a screen protector. The large battery leads to excellent battery life. On average it lasted more than two days with a few calls, all radios turned on and mild multimedia usage.

Holding the device in your hand you do not feel short-changed – it is built very solid, from high quality steel and plastic components. In fact, I would go as far as saying this might be the most solid feeling handset I have used in quite some time. The rear has a nice rubberized texture, the screen is surrounded by darkened steel, the camera is surrounded by brushed steel and the stylus get clicked into place by a nice magnetic feel. The screen is big at 3.8 inches and bright. Below the screen is four touch sensitive buttons for answering the phone, home and back. There is no directional pad which is a bit of a bummer. Scrolling on Windows Mobile is nowhere near as elegant as on the iPhone or Android handsets, but I suppose you might get used to it over time.

You don’t…really. The scrolling effect of Windows Mobile is atrocious. They’ve attempted to remedy that and you’ll find those attempts on cooked Windows Mobile 6.5 ROMS (more about this later), but it’s still very unfavourable.

At the top of the device is a 3,5mm earphone adaptor (thank you HTC, please do this on ALL your handsets). Very smart move. I simply don’t understand why device manufacturers still opt for proprietary headphone jacks. A sleep wake button is also on the top right of the device, so iPhone users wont feel too out of place. It has a fast 500MHz + processor, GPS, Bluetooth, Wifi and accelerometer. The accelerometer has a nice little feature on this phone – when a call is incoming, you simply turn the device face down to silence it. Clever… Stolen from the Omnia.

The device is quite heavy for its size, but I always appreciate a bit of heft in a premium handset. Not that it is big – in fact it not much different from an iPhone. But because it has square corners, it does feel a bit more bulky in your hand, unlike the tapered edges of other phones. Overall in build quality I could not find too much fault with it, except with screen covering, which does not inspire a lot confidence in everyday use. Unlike the HTC Magic or Apple iPhone, the screen covering feels to plastic and flexible, and my chief concern is whether it will become scratched over time. Good thing HTC supplies a screen film, but I wonder how many busy business users actually bother putting it on.

Interface:

HTC has decided to put the TouchFlo interface on this device as well and with good reason. Out of the box, Windows Mobile is not suited to finger touch operation, but rather stylus only. This is a huge disadvantage, especially now that many devices are starting to use capacitative screens. Resistive screens require force onto the screen in order for the device to react, which in operation can be difficult to use once you have used a capacitative device. It is for this reason that the HTC developed the TouchFlo interface – it makes it much easier to operate the device with only your finger. Even though the Touch HD has a resistive screen, the reactivity within the TouchFlo interface was good, but not great. If you wanted to get work done, you will have to slide out the stylus. I mention this because the TouchFlo interface only reachers up to a certain point. You can scroll around, but the moment you go into a application (like say Calendar) its hello Mr Windows Mobile.

Yes, that is the point I tried to make at the top. Although, they have added some touch functionality, it’s not nearly perfect. But, if you head over to xda-developers, you will find vast improvements to TouchFlo 3D (called Rhodium I think) which will simply blow your mind. If you’er a Windows Mobile device owner, you NEVER have to be satisfied with what comes straight from the box…so please…experiment.

While TouchFlo home screen is handy and very classy in its appearance (the weather tab is particularly cool), it is still only skin deep. There are some custom adaptations to traditional Windows Mobile settings, such as the HTC Communication Manager, which gives you on/off switches for all the radio on the device. One of the tabs on the home screen is a programs tab which you can use to customize your list of favourite applications. This prevents you from having to use the ridiculous Start Menu to start an app.

In terms of standard Windows Mobile apps, HTC has done its best to improve them somewhat – for example, the Contacts application gains a new scrolling method – while in no way better than the “rolling” scroll method of the Android and iPhone, it does work. While it does “roll” it is not very reactive to your touch – requiring quite bit more pressure to “flick” the screen.

These can be remedied to a certain degree if you’re willing to tamper inside the Registry Settings of the device…something many warn against, but which I find strange to this day. I’ve never managed to break my phone and I’m no “registry guru”. Just follow instructions and you’ll be able to increase the “touch sensitivity” so you won’t have to press as hard…and also what they call the “down up” setting, for a more sensitive keystroke. Again, not close to the quality of the iPhone, but much better nonetheless.

The phone application itself is without fault, and it also includes smart dialling – something which I appreciate. Instead of typing out a person’s name, you simply click the numbers which include the letter you are looking for. For example, if you want to phone dave, you simply press 3 – 2 – 8 – 3, and it will narrow down your search to dave. Small things that count…

Yes, it does make a world of difference. Even if the phone doesn’t have that built in, people should realize that there are pretty spectacular applications available that has this functionality. This is the beauty of Windows Mobile. The options are endless. I use Iconsoft’s Phonex for outgoing call handling, while I discuss a 2nd app, VITO’s Fun-Contact contact management, a bit further down. (Crazy enough, I use a 3rd application for incoming call handling. Show me a phone other than Windows driven that can do this) Customized exactly to my liking.

Which brings me to my first big aggrevation – when calling someone, and bringing the phone up to your ear, the display switches off, just like many touch screen phones. But to switch the display on again, you have to use the sleep/wake button to wake the screen again. With other phones, the screen switches on again once it senses it is not close to your face. I just cant seem to understand why HTC would choose this method. After all, their HTC magic does it automatically, why not the Touch HD? It does however switch on the screen if you remove the stylus during a call and automatically opens the Notes app, which is well designed. I reckon HTC might fix this in a ROM update. Otherwise the call sound quality is excellent, and yes, better than the iPhone. The speakerphone is also really good. In fact, it is loud enough to use in your car.

That is petty things quite frankly which HTC could well have left out. Trying to be smart has never earned anyone wholesale fame. Keep it simple and open it up for the user to customize to their liking.

In terms of productivity, being a WM device, the device comes out of the box with the ability to view and edit MS Office files such as Word, Excel and Powerpoint, provided they are not too complicated. The high resolution screen is also great for presentations and PDF’s which is handled by Adobe Reader.

Web Browsing:

The Touch HD has Wifi as you would expect, so you can immediately give its browser a workout. The device is preinstalled thankfully with Opera Mobile, which is actually quite good. No, not quite good. If you can find an honest iPhone user somewhere, they’ll acknowledge that Opera Mobile is quite frankly, brilliant. The HD probably doesn’t come bundled with Opera Mobile 9.7 (which is still in beta I think), but I’d urge an upgrade. Simply brilliant. Again, the excellent screen resolution is great for web browsing. In fact, zooming out on many screen still renders text readable, provided you have good eyes. The browser also has Java support (which is nice for some older generation web applications) and Flash, which in my opinion is only there for ads. Still, its good to know its there. I do also appreciate the full screen viewing, and wish all other devices (ahem: iPhone….) would also give this ability.

Messaging:

The device has a perfectly acceptable messaging and email abilities. Right out of the box I used Exchange (to sync my contacts and calendar at first) and worked without a hitch. The WM interface for Messages and emails looks seriously dated, in fact it looks like it might be a copy of Windows 95. Even though the conversations can be threaded like on the iPhone, it looks terrible. Seriously, it looks like a IRC app from the 90’s. At least HTC has sharpened its usability up with scrolling. The on screen keyboards are a great improvement over the standard Windows Mobile input methods, and they work fine provided you are willing to work with a stylus. While it is possible to work with your fingers, it is terribly frustrating. The user can use a T9 type keyboard, a qwerty or a Blackberry “suretype” keyboard. There is no landscape option, so you have to be very patient with these. If this is a problem, I recommend you look at the Touch Pro 2.

Their keyboards do look nice, don’t they? Messaging on Windows Mobile 6.1…even the cooked 6.5 ROMS, are terrible. And this is probably my cue to come in with what makes Windows Mobile different, and more pleasing: Apps. Yes, yes…the iPhone is the epitome of apps, but then you’d be surprised at the array of apps available for Windows Mobile devices. Touch optimized at that. For messaging, I use VITO Technology’s SMS-Chat. The interface is great and VITO has aced the flick scrolling effect. Simply brilliant. I’m pretty sure VITO based this app on the iPhone though, because MMS is notably absent. I’ve grown pretty fond of VITO’s applications, sporting their Fun Contact application for contact management and their Winterface application which lends my phone a similar iPhone programme launcher feel, which I must say is very handy. It can get quite an expensive addition to the phone, because Windows Mobile apps are famously expensive. But again, I did not choose a Windows Mobile device because it was more cost effective (quite contrary to iPhone users’ beliefs). The first generation Omnia still outshines most phones in hardware spec.

Multimedia:

Seeing as this phone is equipped with a large, excellent screen, it is only natural to expect some multimedia prowess. Playing music is easy enough. The interface is easy to use, and the library functionality is lightyears ahead of Windows Media Player adaptations that has plagued some other WM phones. Unlike the HTC Magic, the Touch HD thankfully includes a 3,5mm adaptor, so you can listen to your music with whichever earphones you choose. A FM radio application is also included, which I think is very handy, despite Apple’s blind ignorance of it. The Camera is a 5 MP unit with autofocus. Overall I am quite impressed with its quality, although the interface is very laggy and requires same patience to get going, and there is noticeable shutter lag. Still it is much better than the iPhone or iPhone 3G. The camera also includes a touch to focus feature similiar to the iPhone 3GS, but I have not really noticed that it really improves photos. Video recording is not very good – in fact I expected much more. The resolution is only 352×288. In this HD era, that is not going to cut it.

It took Apple three versions of the iPhone to get their camera up to a pretty ordinary 3.2MP while the 1st Gen Omnia boasted with probably the best mobile phone camera ever, not only in quality, but settings and functionality to boot…only to be put to shame by…yet another Omnia with an 8MP version.

There is unfortunately no flash, but I found low light performance to be quite good. The image viewer is also good. Images look brilliant on the screen, and you really do see the difference of the high resolution screen compared to other phones. The image viewer is orientation aware, and you can zoom and pan by holding down your thumb. While in no way as innovative as the “pinch” patent on the Apple, it works. In terms of video playing, I had high hopes for the Touch HD – it does afterall have a lovely screen. Unfortunately, HTC dropped the ball by not including decent video playing software. After looking around the web I realized I would have to use Core player in order to do the device justice. All in all video looks incredible, and yes it does look better than on the iPhone or iPod Touch. Colours pop more and the high resolution does help. Especially on darker (in colour) movies like say Fight Club, there is noticeable improvements.

All in all, I think this to be a great device…Windows Mobile and all. I’d still be more inclined to go with the Omnia HD (I may be biased though) with better specs still…although it runs the Symbian S60 OS. I think it’s important to note that personally, I’m not consciously pro Windows Mobile, although it might seem that way. I’m simply pro specifications…and I’m willing to hack my way to a better Windows Mobile experience if that’s what it takes. My “old” Samsung Omnia is a workhorse…and made better continuously with updated cooked Windows Mobile 6.5 ROMS and 3rd party applications. I hope to see a future where device owners will have the freedom of choice though over which OS they’d like to run on their device…or dual boot systems even.

Conclusion:

As a straight comparison to similiar devices, I have to look at the device as a stock standard out of box phone. Its hardware is excellent, in many ways almost perfect. The battery lasts long, the build quality and call quality is excellent, and the device definitely looks good. So as a phone it is great. But alas again, the Achilles heal of the device is once again Windows Mobile. While I realize there is a sizable group of users who prefer Windows Mobile for many reasons, it is hard to recommend this device above other similiar phones in its price range. If you consider its chief rivals – the HTC Magic, the Apple iPhone and the Samsung Omnia HD, you do realize that the HTC Touch HD is a bit of a tough sell.

As I mentioned earlier with the HTC Magic, we are currently in the era where phone cannot simply get by by having the best featureset. It is all good and well that a phone is a mulitimedia powerhouse, but it is all about how it is to use that device. Is it easy to use? Is it easy to expand its cababilities? Does it have a lot of applications available? It is here where Windows Mobile drops the ball – while it is very customizable and highly capable, it is a bit difficult to use in everyday scenarios, and there is still no appstore available. Symbian, Android, iPhone and Blackberry (and soon, Palm) all have their Appstore available. WM appstore is only expected to go live in the Q4 and it is still not clear which versions of WM will be supported. We are past the point of going through a multi-step process just to get a app installed.

What I must say is that I did expect WM to be much worse – in fact, HTC has done an excellent job to improve the quirks of Windows Mobile. Seriously, I would really recommend to Microsoft to maybe get some of the HTC interface designers over to their mobile division. Where Windows Mobile was an absolute disaster on older devices, HTC has managed to make the interface a whole lot more bearable. In fact, some adaptations of HTC’s apps are brilliant. If it was my money I would rather recommend the HTC Magic or the iPhone 3GS. Once again, I can really see HTC shifting its efforts instead to Android phones. While it cant happen entirely, there is just clear evidence that HTC might have reached its limit in how much they can “fix” Windows Mobile. Lets see how WM 7 goes…

Pros:

• Screen and build quality is without peer
• HTC TouchFlo is better than ever
• Decent Camera
• Call quality is great

Cons:

• Windows Mobile cannot be rescued
• Inconsistent interface
• On screen keyboard not landscape capable except in Opera.

Rating:

If you are new to Windows Mobile: 6 / 10

If you are an Windows Mobile old timer: 8 / 10

Thanks to Henre Rossouw for his input- contact him @henre on Twitter or at his website.

Review: HTC Magic / G2 (The 2nd Google Android phone)

On Monday I finally received the HTC Magic – a phone I have long been looking forward to, not so much for the hardware, but for the operating system. This is Google’s second official iteration of Android, it’s open source mobile operating system.

It comes included with a mini-USB charger, USB cable and headset. The headset is unfortunately a proprietary USB type, rather than the standardized 3,5mm adaptor. This means a little bit of hassle if you want to use your own headset, or connect it to your car stereo.
Apart from the headphone adaptor, there is very little I can find fault with it. In fact, its design is brilliant.

It is quite compact in your hand, with no hard edges, in fact it feels like smooth slab in your hand, very similar to the iPhone. The device has a removable battery (which is a good thing, but I will get to that later). The entire device is housed in smooth shiny black plastic, which is a bit of a fingerprint magnet, but the overall effect is very elegant. It is also quite light at 119g, and slips easily enough into your pocket. It has a slight “chin” which I find handy if do place the phone face down on the table – it prevents the screen and trackball from damage somewhat.

The front of the device has a nice large 3.2 inch 320×480 screen. The screen is of the capacitative variety meaning it uses the electricity in your fingers to react. This is light years ahead of using resistive screens like on the Nokia 5800, which require you to press down on the screen. Below the screen there is trackball, and a few buttons like home, return etc. I appreciate the hard buttons to answer and reject a call, which is handy if you cannot look at the screen. The trackball also glows and pulsates to notify the user of occurrences such as email and messages.

The G2 on top the Nokia 5800 and its main rival, the iPhone 3G.

Hardware:

The phone is HSDPA capable, as well as Wifi capable. Wifi was easy enough to set up, and the phone always immediately connected to available known networks. A 3.2 megapixel camera, microSD slot, GPS and a “magnetometer” compass, which is used by apps like Google Maps (which is still almost useless in South Africa, despite the recent increase in detail, we do not have directions.)

If you though the iPhone had bad battery life, do not expect anything better here. With heavy use (playing music, calling, web browsing, using the camera etc) the phone would just make it make it back home with you at the end of a work day. HTC rates it at 660 hours standby, but I am pretty sure that is unattainable. On average I would look at about 1 and a half days use maximum. However, it should be noted that the battery might be “run in” yet, so I will update this in about two weeks.

Bluetooth seemed a little limited with only handsfree and A2DP support. Pairing it with my Mac showed no profiles that could be used from the PC side. It did sync easily enough with my car kit though.

Interface:

Here the G1 really shines. The device is joy to use, and I am pretty sure the typical user does not need more than 15 minutes to familiarize themselves with it. The main “desktop” enables the user to create custom shortcuts, or add widgets they choose. For example, you most frequently used apps, contact and say, you calendar. The user can also set up additional pages to add more shortcuts to, similar to the iPhone, however widgets are a bit more handy than little icons.

A full list of applications are available to pulling up the tray from the bottom of the screen. Simple enough. All notifications are added to the top of the screen – they are displayed as small icons which become more detailed once you “pull” them downwards on the screen. Intuitive and simple.

The keyboard is very similar to iPhone, but perhaps a bit more cramped due to the slightly smaller screen. It takes a little getting used to, but I got used to it quickly enough. One major plus over the iPhone – the phone supports haptic feedback which enables the phone to give a quick vibration on every keypress. Works a treat, but you can switch it off.

Setting up:

Theoretically, here is one of the great features of the phone. Google assumes you already have a big chunk of your info in its cloud. So if you have all your contacts, calendar, mail etc managed by Google, you are off to a flying start. After powering on the phone the first time, its as simple as entering your username and password. Done. From there the phone downloads all contacts and calendars over the air. If only all phones were this simple.

Of course this simplicity caters only to the Google-friendly crowd. You can still connect manually to Outlook on a Windows PC with HTC sync software. On a Mac, you are not so lucky. In that case it might be best to use the Google sync methods.

Other types of email accounts are of course included, and the setup is similar to other phones. Simply enter all the relevant details. Exchange support is also built in to South African versions, which some other countries do not have yet.

After setting all this up, the phone hits its biggest caveat. In South Africa, the phone is not able to connect to the Android Market. Similar to Apple’s Appstore, Marketplace would enable you to quickly and effortlessly access a catalog of apps available for the specific phone. I understand that Android Market is not available in SA, but only other UK and US currently. But for SA this is a major drawback. In fact, I really want to know what Vodacom was thinking when they decided to import this phone. While the hardware and OS is brilliant, it lacks a major chunk of its functionality by not being able to connect to the Marketplace.

Of course you can still use the old school method (similar to Symbian and Windows Mobile) where you manually go to a specific URL and download the install file. But then again, many of the excellent Android apps cater only to the Marketplace. For example, searching for a twitter client is an exercise in frustration – a process of searching and trying out a bunch of apps until you find one that works. How 2005.

While this method is not rocket science, there is a very good reason why modern smartphone platforms are all implementing Appstores. Its all about ease of use.

Leaf (importers of HTC in SA) is implementing their own appstore (called openmarket), but it is no way an alternative to the official Android marketplace. So far I am not too impressed due to a very limited catalog and poor quality control. But it is still very early, and I really hope they get it right, or alternatively get the official Android Marketplace here ASAP. We can only hope right?

Multimedia and Web:

The phone has a satisfactory media player, but in no way close to any iPod or iPhone. This coupled with the lack of a 3,5mm plug leads me to believe this phone is not really aimed at media “consumers”. While using the included headset works fine, I do believe the user would want to plug in their own stereo without the use of a adaptor. I honestly thought phone manufacturers would understand this by now.

The camera is auto focus 3.2MP unit, which works well enough. The image quality is pretty good, but the auto focus takes a little long to do its thing. Still much better than iPhone 3G though. Video recording is pretty good, and frame rate is acceptable, but not as good as the Nokia 5800. The imaging features are also neatly integrated with services such as youtube, if you should choose to upload something.

The web browser is excellent. It renders pages brilliantly and features Google Gears which is great if you use services such as Google Reader or Google Docs. The browser is very similiar to Safari, but one does miss using multitouch gestures. Zooming is however handled well enough by on screen buttons, and the interface is fluent and easy to use.

Verdict:

The phone and its OS is excellent, in many ways better that its main competitor (that Apple phone). It is honestly the closest I have seen to the iPhone in terms of ease of use overall feel of quality. The interface is intuitive and a joy to use, and I believe Android has a very bright future. In this 1.5 incarnation it is so far ahead of Windows Mobile I honestly do not know why anyone would choose any other HTC phone, even the first generation Android phone, the G1.

The unfortunate truth of the matter is that in SA I cannot wholeheartedly recommend the G2 before we get a decent Android Marketplace. It is just such an integral part of the phone’s already excellent interface, that it is crippled without it. I really hope Google makes plans to get it here soon enough.

Rating without Marketplace: 7 out of 10
Rating with Marketplace: 9 out of 10.

PS: After posting the review I heard that Leaf is running a competition for journalists who are write the most “curious” review article for the Android phones. I just want to assure my readers that I am in NO way associated with that competition/marketing campaign. This review was based on a review unit I requested myself from Leaf, and is my honest opinion of the device based on my hands on experience with it.