which is why i hate personalised menus in an os. i remember commonly used commands as 3rd option on 4th menu. having them juggled around slows me down as i have to read and process all the menus. of course when i dial into a customer for support guess which way their system defaults? thank you very fucking much microsoft for enabling that by default!/rant
but why even use a company when there are organisations like the red cross who are global could handle the shipping to major cities for collection and make a nice profit from the sale of each unit. just a random thought.
on a personal note, living in ireland meant that i couldn't order one of these unforunately. so i went for an asus eee. the demand for those this side of the pond was incredible. ordered december 4 arrived jan 22. i had to get mine from the uk as our company hardware supplier gave up after ordering 200 and only receiving 16. demand for cheap micro portables was insane.
in my office in the past year... * 2 sets of bows + arrows. we used to go to an archery club 2 miles away from our work place one a week before the other nerd's missus had a kid. currently trying to find a club a bit closer to my home. great fun, very relaxing. and the people you meet are fascinating. * 1 shotgun. boss holds a licence * 1.22 rifle. boss likes to target shoot. * 1 air pistol. boss is an idiot who doesn't know when to stop. * 1 crossbow. my brother was showing the other nerd here as he was thinking of getting one. * 1 sledgehammer. i use it to ensure that disks that are thrown out aren't casually used to see if there is any info on them. very therapeutic, i heartily recommend it.:-)
> Compound bows are wonderful, but expensive and difficult to maintain in the field, so they're not a combat weapon.
i prefer traditional bows myself. simpler purer somehow. compunds are definitely more difficult to maintain (when a string snapped on a compound near me i thought it was louder than a gun shot) but the guy who trained me was in the irish army and when i asked he said that different special forces around the world still occasionly use bows for their ability to silently deliver either an armour penetrating arrow or a rope. the bows he said were compound bows as they were smaller and more compact than a traditional bow as they delivered more power per weight. it's not likely that would use a bow in a shootout.
i think i saw a very similar program about how even plate armour was built with sloping surfaces to deflect arrows. but with the arrows been used as the machine gun of the middle ages it was still possible for a lucky shot to hit square on or hit a joint or find an eye slit. either way that lucky shot make the rest of the armour obsolete.
as for the farm boy training only once a month. in tudor times:
The Tudor kings and queens encouraged archery . It was the law that every fit man over 24 should be able to shoot a target 220 yards away. They had to practise on Sunday after church. of course in ireland we remember when poisoned arrows were used very effectively against irish peacekeepers in the congo in the 'niemba massacre' during the 60's.
back to the monitor. it has no sloping surfaces and even if the screen resists the arrow i reckon the impact may still be high enough to damage the electronics inside.
a compound bow? well i have seen a person shooting a target and knocking over the target stand. it was a huge compund bow and he was not a small person. he used blunt arrows as they only went half way through the target block and could be extracted. sharper arrows went all the way through and ripped the fletches off the arrows. something like that would penetrate any personal armour currently available. that monitor wouldn't even slow the arrow down.
i don't think that much more power is needed to damage the monitor. the longbow arrows would be slower than the crossbow bolts but would have more mass. remember the longbow was used to penetrate plate armour with the right head and was used effectively for centuries against fully armoured opponents.
have to say that the video of that monitor resisting a cross bow will still probably sell asus a lot of monitors.
nah, have you never heard of a lazy wind? it doesn't go around you it goes right through you.:-)
more on topic. if this would reduce wave action there are loads of locations that need very expensive sea defences and we also need to generate power. could we not combine the two by floating these generators off known locations that are been eroded? protect the location and generate power. makes it cheaper to build if you can tap into the others funds.
an old trick. from the brilliant series "yes minister"
Sir Humphrey Appleby, the supreme bureaucrat says, "I explained that we are calling the white paper 'Open Government' because you always dispose of the difficult bit in the title. It does less harm there than in the statute books. It is the law of inverse relevance: The less you intend to do about something, the more you keep talking about it."
> you can't get - yet - is a laptop that'll go thirty hours on a charge that only takes two hours to get
no but any decent phone can go for days on standby and you can be reading books on them in that time. last year i was commuting 3.5 hours a day by bus and using qreader on a nokia n70 while also using it as an mp3 player. and then using it during the day to take picture and video at work. barely decreased the battery gauge by one bar. the screen is small but i found it acceptable.
on a few occasions i didn't have a chance to recharge over night and it ran for 2-3 days at that level of usage with out running out of power.
a friend bought a sony book reader and while it looked nice it now sits on a shelf unused.
* it's too big. yes it is the size of a book but a book that you carry with you is quite pliable and ends up squashed in a bag or pocket. that cannot happen with an electronic device yet. as long as you are using ascii text it reflows to fit the screen. * drm nonsense. while i download books illegaly off the web i always go out of my way to get a legit copy. drm software is an unwanted level of complication that makes it harder to use. what when i upgrade from one device to another do i do with the electronic copy of a book. will it transfer? or will it be plays for sure nonsense all over again? * requirements. if you're travelling you'll need to drag another power supply along. i'd prefer just to bring a phone and a single charger.
some will say that they only want a phone to be a phone. guess what? i carry a swiss army knife too. it's not the best tool for the job but 95% of the time it is good enough.
i have used a variety of mobile devices over the years.
the fastest one i could type on by a clear margin was a psion series 3a in 1994. the buttons had almost no travel but the os added an audible click from the speaker which you could change the volume of it or turn it off. on that keyboard i easily 20-30 wpm. very good clearance between the buttons and audio click told my brain when i mistyped as i would hear 0 or 2 clicks if i hadn't pressed hard enough or had also caught a button close to the one i had meant to hit.
i've progressed through psion 3a, psion 5, palm iiix, palm iiic, psion 5mx, visor neo, palm m125, sharp zaurus, palm e, nokia 3650, nokia n70, nokia 770, nokia e61, nokia e61i.
the psion 5 had a larger keyboard but the buttons were bigger with a smaller gap between them which made me make more typos when i accidently pressed 2 buttons so that reduced the typing speed to less than 30wpm.
i got a nokia 770 last year as it looked to me at the time like a perfect device. however the onscreen touch screen while it had an audio feedback like the old psion when i pressed a button i could not feel the buttons and had to constantly look at where i had placed my fingers on the devices screen.
so today i am a happy owner of a nokia e61i. the keyboard is not as good as psion but then my psion was incapable of pictures, wifi, bluetooth and a whole pile of other stuff. until there is a way to feel what button your fingers are resting on without looking then virtual keyboards are not going to eliminate real keyboards. it might just need a clear plastic overlay so that you can feel the keys but still look at text.
now this is personal opinion but you couldn't pay me to use windows mobile. i've seen every iteration in devices my boss buys and they all have problems that make them completely unusable. battery life, crashes, sync problems.
while symbian could be improved i have no problems using it every day since a nokia 3650 -> nokia n70 -> e61 -> e61i. the current phone e61i is used every day to
* take screenshots when away from my desk to look up errors when i get a chance. * take pictures of a4 documents so i no longer need to locate a working photocopier for personal records. * working on long emails that i get 2-3 times a year from a correspondent. 200k+ documents been worked on when on the bus amongst others. * gmail application allows me to check email with or without wifi. bloody fantastic! i could get push email but i find the concept as annoying as sms. * video spectacular crashes so that i can email them to the supplier who claims that what i'm reporting is impossible. * notepad been used for every password username that comes my way. personal code used to encrypt the information before somebody points out that the builtin has none. mind you i know a symbian user who added a python wiki to his phone with encryption so could use that in the future if i really wanted. * qreader for reading ebooks. * web browser for when i need to check stuff out and about. i'm on a pay as you go contract so have to pay for every byte but sometimes a few k from google will give all the answers. * spreadsheets for personal accounts. * nokia maps for navigation * still trying to learn python on the little bugger. i'll get there. i'll get there. * planning on helping http://www.openstreetmap.org/ map out dublin by linking on a bt gps. will have to see how that goes. * plugs in as a usb device to a pc or mac so have used it as a thumb drive when necessary.
for me the killer app is taking notes. was at a software conference at the start of the year. loads of people taking notes on laptops over 3 days. and hunting for power supplies at the end of every talk. the e61 (was before the e61i) was slower to type on but the battery lasted the 3 days with top ups from a battery powered charger at night. much more convenient.
if it were that messy i could get none of the above done. it does depend on what you use your phone for though.
wow, they didn't write pay bribe to official x on the check stub. i'm shocked. what was it a consultancy fee?
> Mba-Uzoukwu wrote that Microsoft is still negotiating an agreement that would give TSC US$400,000 (£190,323) for marketing activities around the Classmate PCs when those computers are converted to Windows.
what marketing activities are required for this project. are they trying to convince the kids that windows is best? no. this money will be 'resting' in an account were somebody will have access to it.
have to agree with you. wish i had the mod points to vote you up. all i can do is talk about the crap i've dealt with using ce/ppc/wm
ok my company wanted to develop for ce/pocket pc/wm (whatever they're calling it this week, if they have to keep renaming it then they are failing to build brand loyalty)
my boss is obsessed and seems to buy a new one every year. not that he uses it as he finds that within the first month they lose data when he loses the charger/sync cable. he always loses the cable/charger, it's a gift.
xda this was absolutely hysterical. the first 'smart phone' from ms that i saw. three of our customers bought them and one managed to keep using it for 6 months. features included having to type the number that you looked up from the address book into the phone application as it couldn't do this itself when first released. my favourite feature was that when you were on a call touching the screen disconnected it. this meant the user had to hold the phone a few millimetres away from their head. then if you were talking and accidently brushed against the screen the other person missed all your end of the conversation. the person who kept it for 6 months bought a nokia to make calls and only used the xda for documents. till the constant data loss drove him batty. current location:in a drawer somewhere last i asked.
xda ii this was a much better device and barring the problems with crashes was ok. i could steer my away from the crashes by using nothing but one app at a time and stay away from media mp3s/mpgs. bit pointless when you do that for a device that sells itself as a media capable device. battery life was quite short. ok for somebody who would be driving so they can charge it constantly during the day. i made this device crash 14 times in 90 minutes just by using blue tooth. current location:gave it back to the guy who was trying to sell them to us.
jasjar this on paper is excellent. wifi, camera, bt, keyboard. tabletesque when you twist the keyboard out of the way and use it like a normal pocket pc. the killer was battery life. i once had it fully charged and with wifi/bt switched on walked out to the guy who wanted to see it saw the power drop 10% in less than 2 minutes. current location:on a shelf by my desk. hasn't been powered up in months.
mitac & yakumo gps pocket pcs we've had a few of these and sold a few to our customers as we were offered them very cheap. too cheap. suspiciously cheap. a nerd here at work bought one for the navigation. he's a long time palm user so there were a lot of jokes around the office about him switching to the dark side. first impressions very good. battery life excellent (achieved by slowing the processor). at first he used it as a media device with mp3s and movie files. after about 2 months he gave up on that as it made it lock and ofter the sound was out of sync with the movie. then he just used it for maps till it learned the trick of locking when been used on long journies so that he would miss his turnoffs. current location:he broke the system by punching it. that says it call to me.
htc s620 (i think) programmer won this at a ms lecture on how to use ms dot net and ms sql to sync data on pocketpc to desktop. having previous experience with a yakumo gps unit. he gave it to his wife to play with as she was on maternity leave so been stuck in the house wasn't going to worry about the battery life as she is always near the charger. first impressions ok. till the daylight savings kicked in. she had given up on it as it crashed a bit so was using it as an alarm. this worked ok for months till the clocks went back. all her alarms rang an hour late. she didn't wake up on time to feed the baby so they had a nice night of screaming. current location:he didn't say but he did ask for the loan of a hammer.
overall the way i judge hardware is the following. when i am finished with hardware does anybody else want it? i have never had a problem giving away psion/palm/nokia. there is always somebody who wants it. windows ce/ppc/wm. 90% of units i know of are unpowered on a shelf or drawer.
Slashdot Mirror
> working class
working class? only little people pay taxes.
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1840232,00.html
which is why i hate personalised menus in an os. i remember commonly used commands as 3rd option on 4th menu. having them juggled around slows me down as i have to read and process all the menus. of course when i dial into a customer for support guess which way their system defaults? thank you very fucking much microsoft for enabling that by default! /rant
but why even use a company when there are organisations like the red cross who are global could handle the shipping to major cities for collection and make a nice profit from the sale of each unit. just a random thought.
on a personal note, living in ireland meant that i couldn't order one of these unforunately. so i went for an asus eee. the demand for those this side of the pond was incredible. ordered december 4 arrived jan 22. i had to get mine from the uk as our company hardware supplier gave up after ordering 200 and only receiving 16. demand for cheap micro portables was insane.
> But thinking about the infamous Windows for Warships I couldn't resist
that explains the recent recruitment advert. i saw it first on theregister before christmas and thought it was a joke till i saw it on tv.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDHPCr5m4ko
don't you feel safer knowing that they are using windows on expensive weapon platforms? you couldn't pay me to get on a sub with windows involved.
i'd have modded you informative myself :-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDHPCr5m4ko
are you thinking of hactar, designer of the ultimate weapon?
http://hhgproject.org/entries/hactar.html
> Don't trust them
i actually pity them. been partners of any sort with ms just seems to be the kiss of death.
ummm, newsflash update...
.22 rifle. boss likes to target shoot. :-)
in my office in the past year...
* 2 sets of bows + arrows. we used to go to an archery club 2 miles away from our work place one a week before the other nerd's missus had a kid. currently trying to find a club a bit closer to my home. great fun, very relaxing. and the people you meet are fascinating.
* 1 shotgun. boss holds a licence
* 1
* 1 air pistol. boss is an idiot who doesn't know when to stop.
* 1 crossbow. my brother was showing the other nerd here as he was thinking of getting one.
* 1 sledgehammer. i use it to ensure that disks that are thrown out aren't casually used to see if there is any info on them. very therapeutic, i heartily recommend it.
i prefer traditional bows myself. simpler purer somehow. compunds are definitely more difficult to maintain (when a string snapped on a compound near me i thought it was louder than a gun shot) but the guy who trained me was in the irish army and when i asked he said that different special forces around the world still occasionly use bows for their ability to silently deliver either an armour penetrating arrow or a rope. the bows he said were compound bows as they were smaller and more compact than a traditional bow as they delivered more power per weight. it's not likely that would use a bow in a shootout.
i think i saw a very similar program about how even plate armour was built with sloping surfaces to deflect arrows. but with the arrows been used as the machine gun of the middle ages it was still possible for a lucky shot to hit square on or hit a joint or find an eye slit. either way that lucky shot make the rest of the armour obsolete.
as for the farm boy training only once a month. in tudor times: The Tudor kings and queens encouraged archery . It was the law that every fit man over 24 should be able to shoot a target 220 yards away. They had to practise on Sunday after church. of course in ireland we remember when poisoned arrows were used very effectively against irish peacekeepers in the congo in the 'niemba massacre' during the 60's.
back to the monitor. it has no sloping surfaces and even if the screen resists the arrow i reckon the impact may still be high enough to damage the electronics inside.
a compound bow? well i have seen a person shooting a target and knocking over the target stand. it was a huge compund bow and he was not a small person. he used blunt arrows as they only went half way through the target block and could be extracted. sharper arrows went all the way through and ripped the fletches off the arrows. something like that would penetrate any personal armour currently available. that monitor wouldn't even slow the arrow down.
i don't think that much more power is needed to damage the monitor. the longbow arrows would be slower than the crossbow bolts but would have more mass. remember the longbow was used to penetrate plate armour with the right head and was used effectively for centuries against fully armoured opponents.
have to say that the video of that monitor resisting a cross bow will still probably sell asus a lot of monitors.
well if he can cock the crossbow with just his hand then it's not a very powerful crossbow. try a 90lb long bow and get back to me.
like that monitor though. wonder if it would survive a sledge hammer to the screen. i've seen monitors taking a few punches from angry windows users.
we'd be missing a lot of dr. who episodes if it weren't for folks who copied the original broadcasts. not bad for the 60s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Who#Missing_episodes
what was the most difficult sum calculated on an abacus?
weren't the original adding machines hand cranked?
at least a starting point.
Certified for USING Windows Vista?
amateur compared to this announcement from irelands postal service.
"That mail used to be handled by hand, now it's handled manually."
Chief Executive of An Post, John Hines
nah, have you never heard of a lazy wind? it doesn't go around you it goes right through you. :-)
more on topic. if this would reduce wave action there are loads of locations that need very expensive sea defences and we also need to generate power. could we not combine the two by floating these generators off known locations that are been eroded? protect the location and generate power. makes it cheaper to build if you can tap into the others funds.
well they do have a case called twat for their cameras.
http://www.bizrate.co.uk/cameraaccessories/oid595387200.html
an old trick. from the brilliant series "yes minister" Sir Humphrey Appleby, the supreme bureaucrat says, "I explained that we are calling the white paper 'Open Government' because you always dispose of the difficult bit in the title. It does less harm there than in the statute books. It is the law of inverse relevance: The less you intend to do about something, the more you keep talking about it."
> you can't get - yet - is a laptop that'll go thirty hours on a charge that only takes two hours to get
no but any decent phone can go for days on standby and you can be reading books on them in that time. last year i was commuting 3.5 hours a day by bus and using qreader on a nokia n70 while also using it as an mp3 player. and then using it during the day to take picture and video at work. barely decreased the battery gauge by one bar. the screen is small but i found it acceptable.
on a few occasions i didn't have a chance to recharge over night and it ran for 2-3 days at that level of usage with out running out of power.
a friend bought a sony book reader and while it looked nice it now sits on a shelf unused.
* it's too big. yes it is the size of a book but a book that you carry with you is quite pliable and ends up squashed in a bag or pocket. that cannot happen with an electronic device yet. as long as you are using ascii text it reflows to fit the screen.
* drm nonsense. while i download books illegaly off the web i always go out of my way to get a legit copy. drm software is an unwanted level of complication that makes it harder to use. what when i upgrade from one device to another do i do with the electronic copy of a book. will it transfer? or will it be plays for sure nonsense all over again?
* requirements. if you're travelling you'll need to drag another power supply along. i'd prefer just to bring a phone and a single charger.
some will say that they only want a phone to be a phone. guess what? i carry a swiss army knife too. it's not the best tool for the job but 95% of the time it is good enough.
i have used a variety of mobile devices over the years.
the fastest one i could type on by a clear margin was a psion series 3a in 1994. the buttons had almost no travel but the os added an audible click from the speaker which you could change the volume of it or turn it off. on that keyboard i easily 20-30 wpm. very good clearance between the buttons and audio click told my brain when i mistyped as i would hear 0 or 2 clicks if i hadn't pressed hard enough or had also caught a button close to the one i had meant to hit.
i've progressed through psion 3a, psion 5, palm iiix, palm iiic, psion 5mx, visor neo, palm m125, sharp zaurus, palm e, nokia 3650, nokia n70, nokia 770, nokia e61, nokia e61i.
the psion 5 had a larger keyboard but the buttons were bigger with a smaller gap between them which made me make more typos when i accidently pressed 2 buttons so that reduced the typing speed to less than 30wpm.
i got a nokia 770 last year as it looked to me at the time like a perfect device. however the onscreen touch screen while it had an audio feedback like the old psion when i pressed a button i could not feel the buttons and had to constantly look at where i had placed my fingers on the devices screen.
so today i am a happy owner of a nokia e61i. the keyboard is not as good as psion but then my psion was incapable of pictures, wifi, bluetooth and a whole pile of other stuff. until there is a way to feel what button your fingers are resting on without looking then virtual keyboards are not going to eliminate real keyboards. it might just need a clear plastic overlay so that you can feel the keys but still look at text.
have to object to that.
http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/6203_204_million_Symbian_OS_handset.php The average royalty per handset is now $4.80 (down from $5.20 last year following license fee reduction doesn't sound that expensive.
> nearly as messy
now this is personal opinion but you couldn't pay me to use windows mobile. i've seen every iteration in devices my boss buys and they all have problems that make them completely unusable. battery life, crashes, sync problems.
while symbian could be improved i have no problems using it every day since a nokia 3650 -> nokia n70 -> e61 -> e61i. the current phone e61i is used every day to
* take screenshots when away from my desk to look up errors when i get a chance.
* take pictures of a4 documents so i no longer need to locate a working photocopier for personal records.
* working on long emails that i get 2-3 times a year from a correspondent. 200k+ documents been worked on when on the bus amongst others.
* gmail application allows me to check email with or without wifi. bloody fantastic! i could get push email but i find the concept as annoying as sms.
* video spectacular crashes so that i can email them to the supplier who claims that what i'm reporting is impossible.
* notepad been used for every password username that comes my way. personal code used to encrypt the information before somebody points out that the builtin has none. mind you i know a symbian user who added a python wiki to his phone with encryption so could use that in the future if i really wanted.
* qreader for reading ebooks.
* web browser for when i need to check stuff out and about. i'm on a pay as you go contract so have to pay for every byte but sometimes a few k from google will give all the answers.
* spreadsheets for personal accounts.
* nokia maps for navigation
* still trying to learn python on the little bugger. i'll get there. i'll get there.
* planning on helping http://www.openstreetmap.org/ map out dublin by linking on a bt gps. will have to see how that goes.
* plugs in as a usb device to a pc or mac so have used it as a thumb drive when necessary.
for me the killer app is taking notes. was at a software conference at the start of the year. loads of people taking notes on laptops over 3 days. and hunting for power supplies at the end of every talk. the e61 (was before the e61i) was slower to type on but the battery lasted the 3 days with top ups from a battery powered charger at night. much more convenient.
if it were that messy i could get none of the above done. it does depend on what you use your phone for though.
yeah, it's a game for the zx spectrum :-)
happy days
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkSb9upLpXM
wow, they didn't write pay bribe to official x on the check stub. i'm shocked. what was it a consultancy fee?
> Mba-Uzoukwu wrote that Microsoft is still negotiating an agreement that would give TSC US$400,000 (£190,323) for marketing activities around the Classmate PCs when those computers are converted to Windows.
what marketing activities are required for this project. are they trying to convince the kids that windows is best? no. this money will be 'resting' in an account were somebody will have access to it.
have to agree with you. wish i had the mod points to vote you up. all i can do is talk about the crap i've dealt with using ce/ppc/wm
ok my company wanted to develop for ce/pocket pc/wm (whatever they're calling it this week, if they have to keep renaming it then they are failing to build brand loyalty)
my boss is obsessed and seems to buy a new one every year. not that he uses it as he finds that within the first month they lose data when he loses the charger/sync cable. he always loses the cable/charger, it's a gift.
xda
this was absolutely hysterical. the first 'smart phone' from ms that i saw. three of our customers bought them and one managed to keep using it for 6 months. features included having to type the number that you looked up from the address book into the phone application as it couldn't do this itself when first released. my favourite feature was that when you were on a call touching the screen disconnected it. this meant the user had to hold the phone a few millimetres away from their head. then if you were talking and accidently brushed against the screen the other person missed all your end of the conversation. the person who kept it for 6 months bought a nokia to make calls and only used the xda for documents. till the constant data loss drove him batty. current location:in a drawer somewhere last i asked.
xda ii
this was a much better device and barring the problems with crashes was ok. i could steer my away from the crashes by using nothing but one app at a time and stay away from media mp3s/mpgs. bit pointless when you do that for a device that sells itself as a media capable device. battery life was quite short. ok for somebody who would be driving so they can charge it constantly during the day. i made this device crash 14 times in 90 minutes just by using blue tooth. current location:gave it back to the guy who was trying to sell them to us.
jasjar
this on paper is excellent. wifi, camera, bt, keyboard. tabletesque when you twist the keyboard out of the way and use it like a normal pocket pc. the killer was battery life. i once had it fully charged and with wifi/bt switched on walked out to the guy who wanted to see it saw the power drop 10% in less than 2 minutes. current location:on a shelf by my desk. hasn't been powered up in months.
mitac & yakumo gps pocket pcs
we've had a few of these and sold a few to our customers as we were offered them very cheap. too cheap. suspiciously cheap. a nerd here at work bought one for the navigation. he's a long time palm user so there were a lot of jokes around the office about him switching to the dark side. first impressions very good. battery life excellent (achieved by slowing the processor). at first he used it as a media device with mp3s and movie files. after about 2 months he gave up on that as it made it lock and ofter the sound was out of sync with the movie. then he just used it for maps till it learned the trick of locking when been used on long journies so that he would miss his turnoffs. current location:he broke the system by punching it. that says it call to me.
htc s620 (i think)
programmer won this at a ms lecture on how to use ms dot net and ms sql to sync data on pocketpc to desktop. having previous experience with a yakumo gps unit. he gave it to his wife to play with as she was on maternity leave so been stuck in the house wasn't going to worry about the battery life as she is always near the charger. first impressions ok. till the daylight savings kicked in. she had given up on it as it crashed a bit so was using it as an alarm. this worked ok for months till the clocks went back. all her alarms rang an hour late. she didn't wake up on time to feed the baby so they had a nice night of screaming. current location:he didn't say but he did ask for the loan of a hammer.
overall
the way i judge hardware is the following. when i am finished with hardware does anybody else want it? i have never had a problem giving away psion/palm/nokia. there is always somebody who wants it. windows ce/ppc/wm. 90% of units i know of are unpowered on a shelf or drawer.
beat me to it. he didn't turn in his ipod.
http://www.tuaw.com/2007/05/24/flickr-find-microsoft-amnesty-bin-for-ipods/