Windows 7 was announced on June 24 with a ship date of January 2010, (see “Microsoft VP confirms Windows 7 ship date: January 2010” from Info World). This is quite a big deal, as Vista was only released in January 2007, and now the next version of Windows is being announced with a ship date. On top of that, to quote from Information Week, Microsoft has promised support for Windows XP through 2014 ( see “Microsoft Pledges Windows XP Support Through 2014“).

Another gem in the same article says:
“(Microsoft) has apparently accepted the fact that many of its largest customers will skip Vista altogether and will continue using XP at least until Windows 7 becomes available three years from now, and possibly longer.

In addition to supporting XP through 2014, Microsoft is now actively promoting a program that allows customers to downgrade Vista systems to XP through a loophole in the company’s licensing terms. Microsoft’s software license allows customers who purchase a copy of Windows to install and run a previous version of the OS at no additional cost.”

Windows 7 gives something for companies and individuals to wait for. If you cannot wait until 2010 for a new PC, Vista should be fine if bought on a powerful enough PC, although research any possible peripheral incompatibilities (Palm handhelds etc) first.

As for extended support for Windows XP, I don’t think this is completely unheard of, as Windows 98 was supported until a few years ago. Then companies were installing Windows 98 on PCs which been shipped preloaded with Windows XP.

This was meant to be a feedback blog in which I happily told how successful I was browsing the internet with the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet hooked up to the Nokia E51 smartphone. Fortunately though I was willing to bet on my success I didn’t put any money down. So I guess you could say it “didn’t work as expected”.

I found a blog “Internet Tablet School” which had a tutorial on connecting the Nokia N800 to the internet using a Bluetooth phone. The cellphone must support the the DUN (Dial-Up Networking) Bluetooth profile. They even have an embedded YouTube video showing how it is done, and they manage to succeed! It turns out that you need to switch the cellphone Bluetooth on and then run a search for Bluetooth devices from the Nokia Tablet.

Connecting the N800 to the cellphone went well, so did telling the N800 to use the phone to connect to the internet. When it came to actually opening up a webpage in the browser on the N800, it timed out after a few minutes. After fiddling around with the settings a while, realized that the problem was most likely caused by the way my Nokia E51 was configured to connect to the data network. To fix this would involve deleting a whole lot of settings on the phone and starting again from scratch, something I may try at a later date. Alternatively I could wait for the Nokia N810 with WiMax and for Sprint to roll out WiMax in my area.

Wireless internet on an itty-bitty phone.

Sometime ago I mentioned my current cellular handset of choice - the Nokia E51. Along with many other features it has built-in wireless. Great, you can browse the web at a wireless access point, as well as using EDGE. Maybe I’m spoiled because of the larger screens on PDAs, but browsing the internet on a 2 inch 240 by 320 pixel screen really doesn’t do it for me. Make no mistake, the Nokia E51 web browser is no slouch, and has an easy way of navigating around web pages not meant for mobile devices.

Then I remembered something from the manual (yes, I glanced through the manual, I couldn’t help it!); the Nokia E51 can be used as a cellular modem. The manual describes using a laptop to connect to the Nokia E51 with either Infrared or Bluetooth, and so browse the internet on a bigger screen. I was looking for a more portable solution though.

I have not tried it yet, but I’d be willing to bet that it may be possible to use the E51 as a cellular modem for the Nokia N800 Internet tablet. This may be possible especially since both devices are made by Nokia, even though they have different Operating Systems.

The update to the popular Asus Eee PC 700 arrived over a month ago. The Asus Eee PC 900 adds a bigger screen (almost 9 inches). There are only minor differences in the Windows and Linux configurations.

Both versions are slightly larger and heavier. They have 1GB of RAM (as opposed to 512MB) and weigh 2.2 pounds. The larger screen now has a resolution of 1024 by 600 instead of 800 by 480. The processor has not been upgraded though, and is still the same 900MHz Celeron processor.

One of the more remarkable improvements is the touch pad. It is larger and supports a handful of gesture controls. Images can be pinched (or un-pinched) with the thumb and forefinger to zoom in and out, and two fingers can be used to scroll up and down Web pages (sounds familiar doesn’t it?)

Now we come to the difference between the Linux and the Windows XP versions. The Linux version has a 20GB SSD hard drive, while the Windows XP version only has a 12GB SSD hard drive. This is presumably to pay for the license of Windows XP. In a perfect world the Windows XP version would have the larger flash hard drive, as it needs more space.

Price wise, the new models are over $500, which does not seem as much of a budget buy as the first models.

Listen to the voice. Not the voice(s) in your head, but the commanding, navigating voice.

I didn’t listen to the voice at first, “Turn left in 200 yards and then bear right“. I knew the way home from work, and wanted to drive my normal route. Eventually the voice was giving the directions I was driving.

It was a totally different matter when we went away for a long weekend to Cape Cod. Then I had no choice but to listen the computerized voice of the GPS, especially after getting lost following a map and some printed directions.

No GPS device is perfect, and it takes a bit of time to get used to the workings and limitations of a device, even one as highly rated as the HP iPaq rx5915 Travel Companion. The HP iPaq rx5915 does not have a text to speech option, which means it does not announce street names. As long as you are paying attention to the screen, you can see the name of the street anyway.

There were a few times when I could have done with a “Where am I?” option to tell me where I was, and not just where I was going.
The Tomtom GO 720 GPS actually has this feature, along with voice-guided turn-by-turn directions and a map-sharing function for the most up-to-date maps.
It doesn’t function as a handheld computer or have Wi-Fi though…

What is a GPS doing on a computer blog? Well, this particular GPS is a converged device. Not converged with an MP3 player (although it can play MP3s), but converged with a Windows Mobile handheld computer.

It is is the HP Compaq iPAQ rx5915 PDA, otherwise known as the HP iPaq rx5915 Travel Companion. The design is more like that of a GPS, although it is a fully functional Pocket PC with Wi-Fi (b and g), Bluetooth, standard Windows Mobile applications and it runs Windows Mobile 5.0. The main difference it that is has 2GB of onboard flash ROM, in which the maps are stored. The device comes preloaded with the maps for North America (US and Canada) including Alaska and Hawaii as well as Tom Tom navigation software, so after the first charge it is ready to go. The screen also has transflective antiglare coating designed to reduce glare and improve readability outside.

Prior to an upcoming trip I decided to update the map files, since I haven’t updated them since getting the iPaq rx5915 almost two years ago.

The installation instructions with the map update were not very positive – to get it to work you either had to delete the “iPAQ GPS” folder from Rom, which meant all your maps and the mapping software would be gone if the update wasn’t successful, or “Run the update four times. The fourth time the update is run, it will proceed successfully…. This map update requires at least 45 minutes to complete“.

I tried the map update once, and got an error message about an invalid system configuration. After re-reading the install instructions figured I would rather take a chance on map data which was a bit out of date.

The 3G Apple iPhone was announced with a price drop of $200. It features new apps developed with the official Apple SDK, as well as the Apple SDK or runtime. The new firmware for the iPhone is version 2.0. Existing iPhone owners will be able to upgrade to this new firmware around July 11. Since the price drop of the 3G iPhone is subsided by the cellphone carriers, the monthly plan for the 3G iPhone will be more expensive – between $10 to $15 per month.

It remains to be seen whether the iPod Touch will have a price drop – somehow I doubt it, as there are no cellphone carrier to subsidize the Touch. The apps which are free on the 3G iPhone cost $10 for the iPod Touch. I have seen a lot of rants about this by irate iPod Touch owners in various forums, most of it not repeatable.

As an interesting point, anyone who bought an iPhone after May 27 is eligible for a free upgrade to the 3G iPhone. Since the iPhone has been out of stock almost everywhere for a few weeks, that may be a handful of happy people. As for the iPod Touch users, Apple should not forget them.

The capacities of Flash Thumb Drives is increasing. Back in April 2006 Kanguru Solutions announced a 64GB Flash Drive. At $2,800 it was a bit pricey, as you could get a good notebook computer for that price. The Kanguru Solutions 32GB FlashBlu USB 2.0 Flash Drive is available on Pricegrabber.com, and has dropped considerably from it’s initial price of $1499 to a more reasonable one. Considering that a 160GB portable external hard drive costs less than this, unless you really need a 32GB Flash drive right now, it is worth waiting as the price will most likely drop a lot more.

How much space do you really need in a flash drive though? Right now 4GB and 8GB drives seem to be the best buys for capacity versus price. It all depends on the number and specifically the size of the files you are storing. If they are just a few documents then a 1 or 2 GB USB drive may be enough. Any type of graphics, audio or video files may need far more. Personally I’m trying to limit myself to a relatively fast 4GB USB drive for data files and a number of programs I like to carry around with me.

There are other factors to consider, like security. USB flash drives are relatively small and easy to lose. Again it boils down to the type of data you are storing. If it is some sort of confidential data, then using a drive with built-in security like the Lexar 4GB JumpDrive Secure II Plus USB 2.0 Flash Drive may be advisable.

Currently my USB Thumb Drive of choice is the SanDisk 4GB Cruzer U3 Micro USB Flash Drive. It has a decent capacity, relatively small physical size and the retractable USB connector saves having to worry about losing the cap.

So what is U3? I was hoping you would ask. Without going into technical details the flash drive is formatted in such a way that it can run applications which have been modified for the U3 “platform”. There are a number of applications, including virus scanners, security programs (password managers and encryption) and even the Firefox browser, which have been modified to run from a U3 USB drive.

I noticed quite a number of complaints in the user reviews about the U3 functionality. Fortunately it can be removed – SanDisk has a “U3 Launchpad Removal Tool”.

Here I must confess that I have removed U3 from my SanDisk Flash drive, and replaced it with the free PortableApps suite, which includes a selection of free applications. PortableApps applications are written in such a way that they run from the USB drive and do not write anything to the host PC.

There are also several applications which offer “portable USB stick” versions, and can be installed to a USB thumb drive without U3 or Portable Apps having to be present.

If like me you are feeling a bit of a “3G iPhone!!” information overload, here is something to possibly counteract the high-tech marketing hysteria.

A story is told of sometime ago in the days of Windows 98, about a father who used to let his young son play games on the family computer. The father was quite proud of his son, who could find his way around the computer without a problem. Then one day the son cried out “Help me dad, I’m stuck in the black space”. Puzzled, and wondering what game his son could be playing, the father went to have a look. The son was really stuck, no amount of mouse clicks could get him out of the DOS Prompt. The Dad quickly typed “exit” and the computer was back into colorful GUI Windows.

Since then it has become harder to get into the black space of the DOS prompt, it will now open in a non-maximized Window which can be closed with a mouse click. It no long gives dire warnings about closing a Dos Box, since it is no longer DOS, just an emulation.

Out of interest I found a Y2K compliant version of IBM PC DOS right here on PriceGrabber.com. This is real DOS, it actually comes on a CD, like software sometimes still does.