my windows mobile pda opens the phone app in under two seconds even while the turn to turn navigation software is working. so much for years you stated. even my parents, both having a windows mobile device, have no problems short of an occasional need to reboot every two or three months (the price for custom roms).
Device specifications please? Mine is a HTC Wizard (TI OMAP850), it has ~200Mhz and 64Mb memory. Linux on this particular device blows windows mobile away in speed, running from the SD card.
For the others reading the discussion: There is a team of people (which I belong to) porting Linux to the HTC Wizard. Project website is http://linwizard.wiki.sourceforge.net/
anyway, windows ce is a real multitasking operation system and allows the applications to multitask, too, which makes it pretty powerful. it can happen, that a background process or a shitty written application eats all the cpu time causing a slight response delay.
yes there is a shitty written application eating all the cpu, it is called activesync
if you are unpatient and click everywhere hunderds of times when an application doesn't response instantly all of your actions would be executed the moment the device starts responding again, thus slowing the system to a crawl.
device starts responding again? The device shouldn't, in anyway, stop responding; much less the UI. The windows mobile scheduler is utter garbage.
Just look at the iphone and be amazed how responsive the device is. A preemptive Linux will also behave just fine under high load.
the problem in this case is not the device, it is you, because you use the device wrong and shouldn't have bought it in first place.
True, I shouldn't have bought it. I didn't sell it yet just because I'm actually enjoying porting Linux to it.
a pda phone with windows mobile isn't a phone. it is a wearable handheld personal computer with a phone function - a complete different paradigm.
I certainly wouldn't call it a "personal computer", much less a "different paradigm", LOL. Windows mobile is a very limited subset of win32 as you know. IMHO, the closest you can get from a PC (personal computer) is running Linux on it. If you take a chance of learning a little more about it, you will realize that you can run most of GNU applications there without having to rewrite them (if the device has enough CPU and memory of course). For example: GCC (the compiler) runs just fine.
if you need a device for listening to music, watching occasional movies, reading books, surfing the web, making some calculations, doing turn to turn navigation, full PIM and a lot more - all things you can do at home on your pc, but on the go and with a small device, then a windows mobile pda phone is the right thing for you. but only in that case.
Latest Nokias with symbian can do that too, without abusive delays and without crashing.
If you look better, symbian, android, and iphone's OSX they all have a purpose. They do very well what they are intended to do. Windows mobile pretends to be something it can't be and it does very bad what it was meant to do (if any).
if you are not a power user and if you cannot be bothered to learn how to use the device then keep your hands of windows mobile. it is not for you. it doesn't mean that it is bad, though.
what do you want with a fast operating system that cannot do all the things you want to? i'd rather stick with a slower but more powerful one.
I expect them to open the phone app when I want, not to display a busy cursor and take years to open. There is also the case when apps starts crashing and you have to reset the phone.
What you say is all funny, but it gets serious when someone is in danger and can't call for help because the system is "busy".
Not sure if you are joking or not, but the N-Gage was my best phone.
Despite that ridiculous look one had to make while making a call, I found the keyboard layout very handy. The construction was also very resistant, and lightweight. It was relatively big in size but it was comfortable to wear in my pockets.
I'm not using it right now just because it was stolen.:(
This makes it sound like CE is just some new kid on the block.
It isn't. However, based on your comment, I guess you don't own a windows mobile device (which is a subset of windows CE).
Unfortunately, I own one and I can honestly tell how useless they are. They are cool in the first weeks but then you realize that they are not practical for everyday use. It is a real pain to do simple tasks, which in most cheap phones you can do easily.
Also, if you look to high-end PocketPCs from HTC like the Touch Diamond, you will see that the windows mobile firmware is exactly the same thing, except the fact they run a high level UI app to interact with the user. The end result is a utter slow device that no one wants to use. Seriously, most of my friends that bought one are either using a iphone or a cheap phone (they sold the HTC diamond).
Unless the zune UI will come as a different paradigm, I think it will fail (again) to attract people from the ipod touch.
Honestly, am I the ONLY person who doesn't want to type on a fucking onscreen keyboard? Give me a slide-out mini keyboard ANY day (...) The Nintendo DS and the PocketPC are designed in this way, why the hell does Android have to copy Apple's mistakes here??
I own a HTC Wizard which has an QWERTY slide in keyboard and a stylus. Seriously, you wouldn't want to take out the stylus every time you want to write a message. It's very annoying and irritating.
About the slide in keyboard, I'm with you. Although the way WinMob (of pocketpcs) is designed, it actually makes your keyboard useless. Plus the fact that it is very slow to rotate the screen when you slide the keyboard and sometimes the app crashes. So I usually type the messages on on-screen-keyboard carefully using the tip of my finger instead.
So, my advice: Typing with your own fingers is much better than stylus. Slide in keyboard is a good idea but I never saw it being well implemented.:)
In late July of LAST year WinMo _alone_ had 18K applications.
Does it matters? Most of WinMo apps are utter crap. The platform itself isn't good for any specific purpose.
Seriously, I find my old Nokia N-Gage with Symbian more useful to make calls and manage contacts than my WinMo device.
So lets all assume the platform is more useful for non-phone applications. But it isn't!
The IE browser is totally useless, it cannot render correctly most pages (meaning that you cannot really surf them). The embedded "office" is a joke, even the MSN messenger is so badly designed that makes me feel totally annoyed with constant popup windows (people login/logoff) that steals the window manager focus.
IM+ is a very good replacement for default mobile MSN messenger. There is also skyfire that renders your pages on their servers and sends you layered jpegs, it works very nice but has privacy issues. So what can we tell when third party apps are better than platform bundled ones? We can tell that after spending 600â on a HTC phone with WinMob, we need to spend a lot more buying apps to make the brand new phone near useful. It makes sense, doesn't it?
If everything wasn't bad enough, the bundled messaging app is always crashing. Activesync (which I don't really use) starts up randomly for no reason on the phone at starts hogging the cpu.
Then there is also stupid design issues like when the phone is getting with low battery. In this case, WinMo likes to awake the device from his low power state to inform me that the device is low power. Of course it would be enough to tell me this once, but it doesn't. It turns on every 10 minutes or so.
This is only what I could remember from the top of my head, but I assure you, there is a lot more. I didn't dumped the device just because I'm actually enjoying hacking Linux into it: http://linwizard.sourceforge.net/
Who cares how fast it is? What kind of application requires real-time computing without a video output?
Even Matlab could be ran without a screen. I do it all the time. I have a headless box at the university which I connect to using ssh. Matlab runs perfectly in a terminal.
In contrast, I have neighbors that calls me for help saying that their anti-virus has detected "cookies" getting inside their computers - What should they do??
I did setup a gentoo desktop at my parent's house. They use it regularly and they like it a lot. They only need a browser (with flash to browse youtube), a music player, pdf viewer, text editor and java. Java is needed because the government taxes simulation program is written in java (cross-platform).
Since I have my own personal server at home, I have shell access to the desktop computer and I deal myself with the updates.
I must say that is kind of funny when my parents see on the TV news that FOOBAR virus is in the wild and if they shouldn't take care.:P
IMHO if the passwords are strong enough there is nothing to worry about, unless you get pissed off with flooded log files and the waste of bandwidth.
None of my systems allow passwords via ssh
Exactly, using public key authentication and disabling PAM/Password authentication solves the problem.
and I run log-guardian.pl to "3 strikes - you're out" the idiots who do the brute-forces by putting them into iptables
sshguard is nice too, they will be firewalled in no time. (watch out for DoSs though)
However, it is not just ssh. Http and servers also suffer a lot from automated breakin attempts. Anyway.. I'm glad services running on port 22 are not in the same security level of services in 23,137 and 138. Otherwise it would be the holocaust!!
It's my understanding that Android is a mobile OS based in Linux [wikipedia.org] so why do we need to feature new phones? Can't we take an already popular model (like the Chocolate or Razr or whatever the devil it is the kids consume these days) and just compile it down to match the architecture and write the drivers for the devices on the phone?
I bought a Qtek 9100 (aka HTC wizard) some years ago (~4~5). It came flashed with wm5.
Guess what? Qtek is killed, the official firmware updates went from a very reduced quantity to null. So, right now - Zero support.
Fortunately there are groups of people constantly cooking their own ROMs with updated stuff. www.xda-developers.com Although, rom cookers have a hard time looking for a way to flash these phones that are usually locked down.
For those looking to have Linux on their phone, (I found http://linwizard.sourceforge.net/ for the HTC wizard and I'm part of the development team for a long time now) the task is even worse, there is absolutely no documentation about the hardware.
My point is that with opensource hardware, if the vendor dies, "supporting" the device by the community is much easier.
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my windows mobile pda opens the phone app in under two seconds even while the turn to turn navigation software is working. so much for years you stated. even my parents, both having a windows mobile device, have no problems short of an occasional need to reboot every two or three months (the price for custom roms).
Device specifications please?
Mine is a HTC Wizard (TI OMAP850), it has ~200Mhz and 64Mb memory.
Linux on this particular device blows windows mobile away in speed, running from the SD card.
For the others reading the discussion:
There is a team of people (which I belong to) porting Linux to the HTC Wizard. Project website is
http://linwizard.wiki.sourceforge.net/
We are starting to have a fully supported device. Between the working devices is GSM and touchscreen.
Join us at #linwizard if would like to run Linux on your OMAP850 handheld.
Some pictures:
GPE running:
http://dev.gentoo.org/~miknix/gpe.png
And Illume:
http://dev.gentoo.org/~miknix/enlightenment/illume_bar.png
anyway, windows ce is a real multitasking operation system and allows the applications to multitask, too, which makes it pretty powerful.
it can happen, that a background process or a shitty written application eats all the cpu time causing a slight response delay.
yes there is a shitty written application eating all the cpu, it is called activesync
if you are unpatient and click everywhere hunderds of times when an application doesn't response instantly all of your actions would be executed the moment the device starts responding again, thus slowing the system to a crawl.
device starts responding again?
The device shouldn't, in anyway, stop responding; much less the UI. The windows mobile scheduler is utter garbage.
Just look at the iphone and be amazed how responsive the device is.
A preemptive Linux will also behave just fine under high load.
the problem in this case is not the device, it is you, because you use the device wrong and shouldn't have bought it in first place.
True, I shouldn't have bought it. I didn't sell it yet just because I'm actually enjoying porting Linux to it.
a pda phone with windows mobile isn't a phone. it is a wearable handheld personal computer with a phone function - a complete different paradigm.
I certainly wouldn't call it a "personal computer", much less a "different paradigm", LOL.
Windows mobile is a very limited subset of win32 as you know.
IMHO, the closest you can get from a PC (personal computer) is running Linux on it. If you take a chance of learning a little more about it, you will realize that you can run most of GNU applications there without having to rewrite them (if the device has enough CPU and memory of course). For example: GCC (the compiler) runs just fine.
if you need a device for listening to music, watching occasional movies, reading books, surfing the web, making some calculations, doing turn to turn navigation, full PIM and a lot more - all things you can do at home on your pc, but on the go and with a small device, then a windows mobile pda phone is the right thing for you. but only in that case.
Latest Nokias with symbian can do that too, without abusive delays and without crashing.
If you look better, symbian, android, and iphone's OSX they all have a purpose. They do very well what they are intended to do.
Windows mobile pretends to be something it can't be and it does very bad what it was meant to do (if any).
if you are not a power user and if you cannot be bothered to learn how to use the device then keep your hands of windows mobile. it is not for you. it doesn't mean that it is bad, though.
When I grow up I want to be a power user too!
*Whoooosh!*
what do you want with a fast operating system that cannot do all the things you want to? i'd rather stick with a slower but more powerful one.
I expect them to open the phone app when I want, not to display a busy cursor and take years to open. There is also the case when apps starts crashing and you have to reset the phone.
What you say is all funny, but it gets serious when someone is in danger and can't call for help because the system is "busy".
Not sure if you are joking or not, but the N-Gage was my best phone.
Despite that ridiculous look one had to make while making a call, I found the keyboard layout very handy. The construction was also very resistant, and lightweight. It was relatively big in size but it was comfortable to wear in my pockets.
I'm not using it right now just because it was stolen. :(
This makes it sound like CE is just some new kid on the block.
It isn't.
However, based on your comment, I guess you don't own a windows mobile device (which is a subset of windows CE).
Unfortunately, I own one and I can honestly tell how useless they are. They are cool in the first weeks but then you realize that they are not practical for everyday use. It is a real pain to do simple tasks, which in most cheap phones you can do easily.
Also, if you look to high-end PocketPCs from HTC like the Touch Diamond, you will see that the windows mobile firmware is exactly the same thing, except the fact they run a high level UI app to interact with the user. The end result is a utter slow device that no one wants to use. Seriously, most of my friends that bought one are either using a iphone or a cheap phone (they sold the HTC diamond).
Unless the zune UI will come as a different paradigm, I think it will fail (again) to attract people from the ipod touch.
Corporations doing what is best for their owners and share holders is a MYTH. This is one of the biggest myths of the corporate era of history.
It is time to call MythBusters! I wonder if they can come up with a way to put the words "corporation" and "explosives" in the same sentence.
Now get off my lawn and leave me with my non-ready Linux desktop.
Honestly, am I the ONLY person who doesn't want to type on a fucking onscreen keyboard? Give me a slide-out mini keyboard ANY day
(...)
The Nintendo DS and the PocketPC are designed in this way, why the hell does Android have to copy Apple's mistakes here??
I own a HTC Wizard which has an QWERTY slide in keyboard and a stylus.
Seriously, you wouldn't want to take out the stylus every time you want to write a message. It's very annoying and irritating.
About the slide in keyboard, I'm with you. Although the way WinMob (of pocketpcs) is designed, it actually makes your keyboard useless. Plus the fact that it is very slow to rotate the screen when you slide the keyboard and sometimes the app crashes. So I usually type the messages on on-screen-keyboard carefully using the tip of my finger instead.
So, my advice: Typing with your own fingers is much better than stylus. Slide in keyboard is a good idea but I never saw it being well implemented. :)
In late July of LAST year WinMo _alone_ had 18K applications.
Does it matters? Most of WinMo apps are utter crap. The platform itself isn't good for any specific purpose.
Seriously, I find my old Nokia N-Gage with Symbian more useful to make calls and manage contacts than my WinMo device.
So lets all assume the platform is more useful for non-phone applications. But it isn't!
The IE browser is totally useless, it cannot render correctly most pages (meaning that you cannot really surf them).
The embedded "office" is a joke, even the MSN messenger is so badly designed that makes me feel totally annoyed with constant popup windows (people login/logoff) that steals the window manager focus.
IM+ is a very good replacement for default mobile MSN messenger. There is also skyfire that renders your pages on their servers and sends you layered jpegs, it works very nice but has privacy issues.
So what can we tell when third party apps are better than platform bundled ones? We can tell that after spending 600â on a HTC phone with WinMob, we need to spend a lot more buying apps to make the brand new phone near useful.
It makes sense, doesn't it?
If everything wasn't bad enough, the bundled messaging app is always crashing. Activesync (which I don't really use) starts up randomly for no reason on the phone at starts hogging the cpu.
Then there is also stupid design issues like when the phone is getting with low battery. In this case, WinMo likes to awake the device from his low power state to inform me that the device is low power. Of course it would be enough to tell me this once, but it doesn't. It turns on every 10 minutes or so.
This is only what I could remember from the top of my head, but I assure you, there is a lot more.
I didn't dumped the device just because I'm actually enjoying hacking Linux into it:
http://linwizard.sourceforge.net/
you insensitive clod!
Parent *WAS* modded -1 Troll.
I did use my score to make him visible and let moderators do their job.
I also posted a similar reasoning to yours in
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1220227&cid=27802107
I'm glad to see we all agree that headless boxes are useful :)
Who even needs a display? Run X over SSH.
Why troll?
Who cares how fast it is? What kind of application requires real-time computing without a video output?
Even Matlab could be ran without a screen. I do it all the time. I have a headless box at the university which I connect to using ssh. Matlab runs perfectly in a terminal.
In contrast, I have neighbors that calls me for help saying that their anti-virus has detected "cookies" getting inside their computers - What should they do??
I did setup a gentoo desktop at my parent's house. They use it regularly and they like it a lot. They only need a browser (with flash to browse youtube), a music player, pdf viewer, text editor and java. Java is needed because the government taxes simulation program is written in java (cross-platform).
Since I have my own personal server at home, I have shell access to the desktop computer and I deal myself with the updates.
I must say that is kind of funny when my parents see on the TV news that FOOBAR virus is in the wild and if they shouldn't take care. :P
..will it crash scanning /dev/urandom?
Because it starts generating pseudo-random bits when the buffer with "true" random bits is exhausted.
Disclaimer: No, I didn't read TFA.
No I'm not.
the comet CHAIR-R51 is in route collision with planet earth!
Will IE count as basic Windows tool? This will inherently give them advantage over any other browser.
Can someone confirm?
http://www.reactos.org/
There you go.
IMHO if the passwords are strong enough there is nothing to worry about, unless you get pissed off with flooded log files and the waste of bandwidth.
None of my systems allow passwords via ssh
Exactly, using public key authentication and disabling PAM/Password authentication solves the problem.
and I run log-guardian.pl to "3 strikes - you're out" the idiots who do the brute-forces by putting them into iptables
sshguard is nice too, they will be firewalled in no time. (watch out for DoSs though)
However, it is not just ssh. Http and servers also suffer a lot from automated breakin attempts.
Anyway.. I'm glad services running on port 22 are not in the same security level of services in 23,137 and 138. Otherwise it would be the holocaust!!
that Linux is awesome for research!
It's my understanding that Android is a mobile OS based in Linux [wikipedia.org] so why do we need to feature new phones? Can't we take an already popular model (like the Chocolate or Razr or whatever the devil it is the kids consume these days) and just compile it down to match the architecture and write the drivers for the devices on the phone?
The motorola razr2 v8 already comes with Linux:
https://opensource.motorola.com/sf/projects/razr2v8
I bought a Qtek 9100 (aka HTC wizard) some years ago (~4~5). It came flashed with wm5.
Guess what? Qtek is killed, the official firmware updates went from a very reduced quantity to null.
So, right now - Zero support.
Fortunately there are groups of people constantly cooking their own ROMs with updated stuff.
www.xda-developers.com
Although, rom cookers have a hard time looking for a way to flash these phones that are usually locked down.
For those looking to have Linux on their phone, (I found http://linwizard.sourceforge.net/ for the HTC wizard and I'm part of the development team for a long time now) the task is even worse, there is absolutely no documentation about the hardware.
My point is that with opensource hardware, if the vendor dies, "supporting" the device by the community is much easier.
That's the point of buying an opensource phone. To use it as our sandbox.
you insensitive clod!