Sony Sliders: I could be referring to the new Sony PSP Go or the Sony MYLO, but I’m not.

This is not the first time I’ve had a problem with a slider button on a Sony product. My very first Sony PlayStation Portable was occasionally a source of aggravation, but only with certain games (most notably Grand Theft Auto : Liberty City Stories). In the heat of battle, I would accidentally flip the sliding On-Off switch and oh no, where did my game go? Sometimes I got it back, other times it was just tough luck - should I have being playing GTA in the first place?
This problem wasn’t just limited to the first PSP. I had the same problem playing a Pinball game on the Sony PSP 3000, the most recent PlayStation Portable (the last one which still handles UMDs). In both cases I just had to adjust my grip slightly and the problem went away. Don’t get me wrong, the Sony PSP is still my favorite handheld gaming console.

The last time I was blogging, I happened to be using my Sony VAIO VGN-S460P Laptop, and when I clicked the  “Save” button, I got an error message that there was no internet connection. It took a frantic few seconds to realize that I had accidentally flipped the Wireless switch to the off position, not that hard to do since the slider switch is just where my right wrist rests. Poor design? Maybe, but I still like the laptop.

I looked at two computers today, and tried to figure out which was the best laptop.

The first one has 4GB RAM and a 320GB Hard drive, as well as 14 inch screen. The second has 2GB RAM and a 160GB hard drive, and a 13 inch screen. Both have Dual Core Pentium Processors, DVD writers, IEEE802.11 Draft N wireless and a built-in webcam.

The first sells for around $650, the second for at least $1100. The first is a Toshiba Satellite L515-S4925 Notebook. The second one is an Apple MacBook Pro.

I guess it depends on whether you can afford the MacBook Pro, and whether you don’t mind that it does not have a user-replaceable battery. Other than that, it is likely to provide a solid computing experience. It also has a oversized multitouch trackpad.

The Toshiba Satellite costs $500 less than the Apple MacBook Pro, and has better hardware specs. It has double the memory and double the hard disk capacity. Since the Toshiba runs Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit, 4GB of memory is the recommended minimum of memory (1 GB is required). It also has a user-replaceable battery.

Which one would you choose?

It is so sad to see an Operating System die, particularly one which has been around for so long, and which I’ve grown with and even written programs for.  I’m not referring to Windows XP, but to the Palm OS for handheld computers and smartphones. Some would say that it has been dead or dying for some time. When a Operating System dies, it seems that the software development tools start dying first. A week or so back I logged onto a website of a Palm OS development tool I’ve used to be dismayed at the news that the website and the forums were closing down soon.

The Palm Operating System’s replacement is the Palm webOS as featured in the Palm Pre. At present there is only one smartphone being sold by Palm which still runs the Palm OS – the Palm Centro. With Palm (the company) it is hard to tell how long the Centro will be around. On the Palm website, the Centro is referred to as “Access Powered“, but that merely means “Running Palm Operating System licensed from Access, previously known as PalmSource”.

If the Palm Centro was to be killed off tomorrow, and the Palm OS was officially dead,  people would continue to use Palm OS devices, from old Sony Clies to Tapwave Zodiacs.

Even though the iPhone is getting more useful with each firmware release, I’m still using a Tungsten C which runs Palm OS, while moving to a Treo 680, which also runs Palm OS. Of course, if the Palm Pre or another webOS based smartphone comes to Verizon, I would take a good hard look at it.

Just after the iPhone OS 3.0 was released I was waiting to upgrade to iPhone OS 3.0 until it could be “easily Jailbroken” (see “Need for Speed II“). Well, I couldn’t wait. Within two days I had upgraded my iPhone to OS 3.0 then Jailbroke it almost as soon as the iPhone Dev Team released their “redsn0w” multi-platform Jailbreak utility. The main cost of being on the bleeding edge was discovering first hand a number of apps which were not iPhone 3.0 OS compatible.

But enough about Jailbreaking. I’ve been using the iPhone OS 3.0 for over a week now, and I like it.

One of the new features of the iPhone OS 3.0 is that you now have more pages for Apps. It looks like it has been increased to 11 pages (or “Homescreens”). Now instead of a maximum of 148 Apps, the max is 180 Apps, although I have heard that this is affected by available (storage) memory. This is great, because now there are more pages for me to try to group my apps more logically, the most used ones on the first couple of pages, eBook and reader type apps on one page, games grouped together over two pages and other apps after that.

The new landscape keyboard also really does make a difference, and is much more conducive to “Thumb- typing”, with my typing speed considerably faster than in portrait mode.

At the everythingicafe forum, members came up with this list of the more than 100 changes in the iPhone 3.0 OS and iPhone 3G S.

Once again, I’ve been listening to a voice and following its instructions without question. Of course it helped that I really didn’t know where I was and the voice was saying:
“Take slipway right onto I-87”

Almost a year since our last road trip, we went away for a long weekend to Lake George, in upstate New York. The voice was from a Garmin nuvi 760, a GPS with Text-To-Speech, and clearer maps and instructions than the old GPS. It always helps to be told which side of the road to find your onramp or your destination. Its successor, the Garmin nuvi 765T has even more features.

I must admit that I’m really sold on the Text-To-Speech feature. Combined with intelligent lane instructions it really takes a lot of the guess work out of driving with a GPS. This was one of the longest road trips so far with a GPS instead of a map. At stops along the way it was simply a matter of unplugging the unit from DC power, and letting it power down by itself. Then, when we were ready to go, the GPS quickly started up where we had left off.

The Garmin nuvi 760 is also good at finding satellites. I was pleasantly surprised that it was able to get a satellite fix while laying on a table about two feet from a west-facing window at home.

The Garmin nuvi 760 is not perfect. I’m not sure If it was the particular unit I had, but the volume just didn’t seem loud enough. This was solved by connecting it to the car stereo.

This week I finally canceled the monthly voice and data plan on my T-Mobile G1. It was just getting too expensive to have it and the iPhone.

This was before hearing about the T-Mobile G2 which is rumored to be coming out in July – I first heard about it from a Blog Entry by Keith “Next Generation Android Phone Out” on the Gottahave Blog.

Unfortunately, the G2 or HTC Magic, drops the one thing which made the T-Mobile G1 one of the more viable alternatives to the iPhone – the hardware keyboard. Now the slide out keyboard of the G1 has been criticized by reviewers since day one. The fact is, I would rate it better than any of the Palm smartphone keyboards – and from what I hear the Palm Pre’s keyboard is just too small. The keyboard may add at least a third to the thickness of the G1, but it is by no means a brick.

My only real gripe with the G1 is that you must have a Gmail account to activate it. Using it without a cellular data plan – which prevents the phone verifying your Gmail account, even if you are on Wi-Fi, disables the Android Marketplace (equivalent of the iTunes Store) and several other features on the device. That really sucks.

I’ve considered just using the T-Mobile G1 as a portable internet browsing device, as its browser is pretty good. It is a difficult choice between the G1 and the N810 Internet Tablet, which has an even better hardware keyboard.

“Need for Speed – Undercover” is one of the best racing games for the iPhone so far. If the announcement at Apple’s WWDC on Monday is to be believed, the game should load even faster on the iPhone 3G S. That is because the “S” is for Speed, and here we thought the iPhone 3G was supposed to be fast. No, the 3G S is faster still!

Actually, I’m quite excited about both the new iPhone (”iPhone 3G S”) and the iPhone 3.0 OS update.

Although physically there are no major changes, the third version of the iPhone adds some neat features. Improved battery life is one of them. Another is an upgraded 3-megapixel camera with built-in support for video recording. Then there is voice control, and a compass.

The iPhone 3.0 OS update (features available to the older iPhone 3G, as well as the iPhone 3G S) adds Cut. Copy and Paste (finally, you don’t have to Jailbreak to get this feature), a Landscape mode keyboard, MMS support, a search function and Voice Memos.

Also, surprisingly, the iPhone will now support tethering (using the iPhone as a wireless modem for a notebook). AT&T will not be offering tethering until their networks are updated. If you want tethering in the US you still have to Jailbreak your iPhone to get it.

As expected, the new iPhone comes in a 32GB capacity. It also has a 16GB version. One surprise is that the 8GB iPhone 3G is still going to be sold, but it is now the $99 iPhone.

148 Apps is one of my favorite iPhone App tracking websites. It is also the maximum number of apps you can get on the iPhone and iPod Touch. That is 16 Apps per page and 9 pages equals 144 plus 4 applications on the Dock at the bottom of the screen .

With so many iPhone Apps coming out all the time, it is harder and harder to stay within the 148 App limit.  There are even Apps which track or review Apps, like PandoraBox, BargainBin and AppReview.

If you happen to install more than 148 Apps, the apps at the bottom of the ninth page are moved to a tenth hidden page (see “How Many Apps Can Your iPhone Hold“). This can be temporarily used to hide App Icons, but on a Jailbroken iPhone the “BossPrefs” App will hide the icons you want - for example if you have no need to track the Stock market, you can hide the Stocks app which comes pre-installed. Of course not everyone wants to Jailbreak their iPhone, which quite understandable, considering the cost of the iPhone and the possibility of doing it some damage.

The only way I’ve found to keep on top of too many Apps is to be in constant cleanup mode. Fortunately Apps which are deleted from the iPhone can be easily reinstalled from iTunes or the Apple App Store.

Tripped up by levels of “compatibility”!. I had mentioned that I was having problems after installing Eeebuntu NBR (Net Book Remix) on my Asus EeePC 701 Netbook (see “Neglected Netbook gets new OS“). Important Dialog Boxes were cut off at the bottom of the screen, making it impossible to configure Eeebuntu properly. I though it would simply be a matter of looking at an Ubuntu distribution on another PC to see what the buttons are, and work from there. It wasn’t.

Then I came across some interesting information. The Ubuntu wiki had a page
“HardwareSupport/Machines/Netbooks” which gave three Tiers of compatibility for Netbooks which had been tested with Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.04. Tier 1 was “…netbooks that work reasonably well, with few or any issues, and no major issues“. Unfortunately, the Asus EeePC 701 Netbook fell into Tier 2:
“…netbooks that work somewhat, but have problems that may interfere with typical activities at the moment, or many smaller issues.”
For the EeePC701 there was this note “This netbook basically works, but most of the problems with it center around the fact that it has a very small screen with a default resolution of 800×400 and many apps simply won’t scale down to that size.” Two of the issues were “Evolution setup assistant takes more space than available on Eee 701SD” and “Display preferences takes more space than available on a Eee 701SD“.
By space they mean screen space.

This wasn’t even mentioned on the main Eeebuntu NBR website, and if I’d known about it, I certainly would have thought twice before installing Eeebuntu on my Asus Netbook.

After neglecting my Asus EeePC 701 Netbook for a number of months, I’ve now loaded a new Operating System onto it. The Netbook had fallen into misuse even before I started “playing” with UMPCs (Ultra Mobile PCs). The UMPCs with all their miniature delights almost put the Asus EeePC right out of my thoughts.

Then, a several days ago I charged it up , booted up and looked at the same old pre-installed linux Operating System, which for some reason is giving error messages when I try to get updates. Fortunately, I had just seen (and downloaded) Eeebuntu, after reading “Let Eeebuntu Free your Eee PC” on the GHacks blog.

I followed the steps mentioned in the blog. This took longer than expected - which is almost always the case when working with computers – the third step (”Plug in a >= 1 Gig Usb flash drive to your computer.“) taking the longest. For some reason the smallest USB flash drive I could find was a 4GB SanDisk micro. It had files on it, so I had a “quick” glance through them, backed some up, then deleted them from them removable drive; formatting it would definitely have been faster. An hour or so later I had Eeebuntu installed on my Asus EeePC 701 Netbook.

Now the downside. I should have spent a little more time trying it out, because for some reason the screen resolution is cutting off the bottom of dialog boxes. What that means is that I cannot see the buttons at the bottom of the dialog boxes to apply settings (I need to look at an Ubuntu distribution on another PC to see what the buttons are). Once I know the layout of those all important buttons, I can change the screen resolution and join the Asus EeePC to my home wireless network…