The iPod Touch is a converged device; a portable media player and a basic PDA. At the moment it appears to be the younger (and neglected) sibling to the iPhone. It also appears at first glance to be more expensive than the iPhone:

iPod Touch 8GB costs $299, 8GB 3G iPhone to cost $199
iPod Touch 16GB costs $399, 16GB 3G iPhone to cost $299
iPod Touch 32GB costs $499, no 32GB iPhone yet.

Of course the 3G iPhone comes with a two year contract which costs at least $70 per month (without any text messaging package). That means after two months the a 3G iPhone will cost more than the same capacity iPod Touch.

Two weeks ago I was almost sure there wouldn’t be a price cut for the iPod Touch, now I’m not sure.
The iPod Touch is an important device, it is the next generation iPod, a true portable media player with a wide screen and closer to a PDA than any other iPod before it. With the next firmware update, which unfortunately is not free, the SDK will be added. Now third party developers can legally write applications for both the iPhone and the iPod Touch. I know of at least one commercial developer with several applications which run on everything from Palm to Blackberry to Symbian devices. They are now developing for the iPhone as well. This will bring some world class applications to both the iPhone and the iPod Touch.

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.

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.

Any port in a storm refers to a ship on the high seas. It definitely doesn’t apply to input and output ports on PCs.

Most of the legacy ports have been around so long I’m pretty used to them. Mouse and keyboard (both the PS/2 type ports and the newer USB ports), VGA for the monitor, the fast disappearing parallel printer port, serial port (are there still any serial devices?), audio in and audio out port (and some ports I’ve probably missed).

My Dell Inspiron 530 threw me with another port, a DVI port. There were also two cables for the Dell SE198WFP LCD monitor, a standard VGA cable, and a DVI cable.
DVI is “a digital connector which is the ideal way to connect to an LCD monitor.”
DVI-I (Integrated) can carry both a digital and an analog signal to support VGA monitors, and DVI-D (Digital) provides only a digital signal. DVI was intended to replace VGA.

HDMI is backward compatible with DVI. HDMI carries both digital video and audio signals in a single cable. Most gamers would know about HDMI as the Xbox 360 Premium began shipping with a HDMI port last year.

Early in May I wrote about the Symbian Operating System which is used in more than 50 percent of the smartphones worldwide.

I decided to have a look and see what was available in the US with regard to a smallish Symbian smartphone, in a reasonable price bracket. It appears that none of the US cellphone carriers currently carry a Symbian smartphone (although there is a rumor that AT&T may be offering the Nokia N95 later this year). This means no subsidized Symbian smartphones, so you pay full price.

Initially I had a brief look at the highly acclaimed Nokia N95. Somehow I had expected that the dual-slider design meant it had a QWERTY keyboard. Instead it had a phone keypad and music controls. Since the N95 is well over $500 (anything cheaper than this could very well be a Chinese knock-off), I gave it a miss and looked for something cheaper.

I found out that I should be looking at the Nokia E Series of cellphones. According to Wikipedia the Nokia Nseries “is a product family consisting of multimedia smartphones“, while the Nokia Eseries consists of “business-oriented smartphones, with emphasis on enhanced connectivity“.

The first smartphone I came across was the Nokia E61. It has a “Blackberry” look to it, and a QWERTY keyboard. There is also a Nokia E61i, which is an update to the E61. It has a 2 megapixel camera and an improved design. The Nokia E61 looked promising until I compared its size with the Treo. Then it looked uncomfortably wide. The Nokia E61i was also over $300, a bit more than the $200 to $300 price range I had in mind.

The E90 Communicator I discounted because of it’s price and the fact that it was a brick.

Then I came across the Nokia E51, quite an unlikely looking smartphone. A candybar style phone without a QWERTY keyboard, it is easy to use just as a phone. Delve into it’s menus though, and this is a powerful business tool which can browse the web or read your emails to you. Compared to a Windows smartphone, this one flies!

Sometime ago I mentioned Desktop Linux as a viable alternative to Windows Vista. The usual response to that is: “Linux is for Geeks, just give me Windows or something really simple“. Linux is not just for geeks, but I would be lying if I said it was “really simple”. What I would say though is that it is worth trying. It costs less than Windows. (Exhibit A: Novell SUSE Linux 10.1 for less than $15)

So why Linux? The website Why Linux is Better lists more reasons (in multiple languages!) than I could ever think of, although it is slightly out of date. In regard to running Windows software and games on Linux, major advances have been made in this area. Also, defragmentation is not so much of a problem on Windows XP as it was on Windows 98 - with NTFS defragmentation still happens, but not as bad as on previous versions of Windows.

Most Linux distributions (I’ll try to explain what a distribution is later) are free or have a free version. If you had a broadband internet connection you could download a couple of Linux distributions (preferably “Live CDs”), and burn them to CD. The definition of a Live CD is in the article What are live CDs, and how do they work? at Free Software Magazine.

Next: Linux Distros – what and why?.

One of the things which distinguishes the Sony PlayStation 3 from its competitors is that you are legally allowed to install another operating system onto the the gaming console which will run alongside its gaming system. This is particularly unusual, especially for Sony, who are in a constant battle to keep hackers from running homebrew applications on the Sony PlayStation Portable. Of course the only operating system you can install is Linux. This is not really restrictive, since there are so many different flavors or distributions of Linux. Also there probably would be some legal ramifications if Sony allowed you to install Windows XP on the Sony PS3. This functionality has been available since the PS3 was released.

There is a small problem though; the Sony PlayStation 3 currently comes with a maximum of 80GB of hard disk space. This is really not enough for a modern PC. The PS3’s hard drive can be upgraded, although not as easily as a PC hard drive.

Popular Mechanics has an article on “How to Turn Your PlayStation 3 Into a Linux PC“, which describes in detail how to upgrade the hard drive of a 40GB PS3 to 250GB and install Ubuntu, one of the most popular Linux distributions.

Today I was listening to the Buzz Out Loud podcast from earlier this week when I heard this interesting news item:

According to the NPD Group, Apple’s retail market share of PCs for the first quarter of 2008 is 66 percent. Hold on – that is market share for PCs costing $1000 or more. Apple’s retail market share for all PCs is 14 percent. The share for PCs costing $1000 or more makes sense, as most of Apple’s computers cost more than on thousand dollars. Their competitors (Dell, HP, Gateway etc) usually sell PCs for less. The most remarkable thing about these figures is that while Windows notebooks had hardly any growth, Apple notebooks had more than 50 percent growth. In the Desktop PC arena the figures are even more remarkable – Windows desktop sales are down 25 percent, whereas Apple desktops are up 45 percent. (see the Apple Watch Blog) Keep in mind though that this refers to high-end PCs which make up 14 percent of the total market, like this Apple 15 inch MacBook Pro Notebook.

In the other 86 percent of the PC market, Apple’s only product is the Mac Mini, which is more of a niche product, although it seems to be highly rated by users.