As a long time Nokia fan, I just switched this week to the HTC TyTN (Cingular 8525) which is (and I'm sorry to say) a much better phone. My 4 phones were a Nokia 6230, 6682, 9300, and then E62. I went from S40 to S60 to S80 and then back to S60v3, but none of them really were able to fill the needs of what I wanted in a phone. Everyone values different things in their phones; some want a handset that will just make phone calls whereas some want a handset that will do everything, but pretty much everyone requires 3 things from a phone:
Great reception and sound quality
Quick navigation through menus w/ an interface that just "makes sense"
The right form factor with the right features for what type of phone the user desires
The sad thing is that Nokia used to have all of these issues figured out, and were probably the best. Lately though they have fallen behind in the last 2. The last phone that I had, which is currently Nokia's flagship, the E62 seriously lacked a fast enough processor to handle what Nokia/Symbian's OS was asking it to perform. Just trying to write a text message to someone would take 2x as long as on my 6682 which was not only S60v1 phone vs the new S60v3, but it lacked a QWERTY keyboard. Just clicking ont he address book on the E62 would take 5 seconds sometimes to load.
With the last issue, Nokia is soooooo close. Although I liked the form factor of the E62, it was lacking many of the features tha twold be expected for that type of phone. There are many examples that I can think of, but most of them center around it's compatibility with Microsoft Exchange. The E62 is supposed to be the first Nokia phone to commercially support Microsoft Exchange 2003's Direct Push technology, but compared to setting this up on a Windows Mobile phone, you have to jump through some serious hoops. The E62 lacks a useful and easy to use certificate system and since certificates can't be installed over email, bluetooth, sms, or even placed as a file on the device; they have to be set as an MIME type on a Webserver and then downloaded through the built in web browser as a *.der files that is in base64. In order to make this work I had to do a ton of certificate conversions using OpenSSL, but in the end the certificate worked with the phone. Once I upgraded to Exchange 2007 and Outlook 2007 though it was a completely different story. Outlook 2007 requires that you use the Exchange 2007 certificate generator when using "Outlook Anywhere" (RPC over HTTPS), if you require it to check the SSL certificate for the principal name (i.e. msstd:contoso.microsoft.com). If you use alternate DNS names in your Root cert which Outlook 2007 requires or else it will give error messages, then Outlook 2007 will work fine, but the cert is then incompatible with the Nokia phones. I tried Certificates with alternate DNS names on both the Nokia 9300 and Nokia E62, and neither actually used the certificate (you would always be prompted that you were visiting an unauthorized site when you would go to OWA). How is a phone that is supposed to be a corporate focused phone supposed to work, if it can't even read a wide variety of SSL certificates? BTW, my HTC TyTN, Cingular 8125, and Cingular 2125 all had no problem reading the certificate (all Windows Mobile 5 phones).
In the end the Window Mobile 5 phones now beat the Nokia phones in pretty much every category. The only category that most would question would be stability, but I would counter that by saying that my Nokia 6682 and Nokia E62 crashed all the time (definitely more than my WM5 phones). I really hope that the Symbian OS gets some huge improvements very soon, because otherwise they may lose any chance they have at gaining back previous respect they may have had. I think that if the Symbian OS focused more on open source features like better IMAP support, fast and easy to use menu's, and solid compatiblity/stability that they would then have a winner.
This is great news to developers, but consumers still have to wait for manufacturers to pick up on CE 6, and integrate it into devices. I don't see this happening for quite a while.
I've had my PC hooked up to my HDTV ever since PureVideo was released. I went right out and bought two 6600GT's as fast as I could (have since upgrade due to one of the 6600GT's going bad). I couldn't be happier with the DVD output, but I hate having to start up my computer just to watch a DVD some time. You have to run Windows (I normally use Unix based computers), and it takes almost 5 minutes to boot sometimes, depending on what new Anti-Virus, Spyware, System updates there are, and also what other programs decide to run at boot. I still have these troubles even though I have a top-of-the-line PC running Media Center 2005. I'm really waiting for Apple to release a Mac mini CoreDuo with PureVideo and then I'll gladly be able to format my current media center!
I really like the new theme, and I think it's great that so many people put a lot of hard work and effort into improving this community. Slashdot was in need of an updated appearance, and the thing that I like most about the new design is that it doesn't try to reinvent Slasdhot, it just tries to improve on what we are already enjoying.
I say hell yes if someone like Torvalds can step in and finally declare one of the GUI's superior. I think that the KDE vs. Gnome debate is only going to slow Linux down in the future more and more. If the teams combined then maybe we could get some of the best of both worlds, but currently progress on somethings can be too hard because you have to program for to different UI's.
After hearing this I'm going to switch to Kubuntu to support the cause, because I've always wanted just one main Linux GUI and if Linus has to be the guy to say it then I can't think of any better. That's the simplest way I can think of it.
-- Aaron Marks
I have been using Mac OS X and Windows simultaneously for 3 years now and have never had to restart the finder. I have to restart my Windows computers all the time! I'm an IT Consultant and know a lot about Windows XP/2003, but no matter how much you know the bugs are inescapable and the computer is going to crash/freeze when put in the hands of a normal user.
Sure, I can keep a Windows computer running alright on my own, but the only computer that I can give to somebody and trust to keep working is an Apple running 10.4. Clients thank me up and down once they've been running their Apple for a few months and tell me how it has completely changed their computing experience.
It's beyond annoying when I have Windows computers with networking issues. I see it all the time where they can't connect to a wireless network because they are using the stupid wireless config utility that came with their Dell TrueMobile 1300 wireless card because they didn't know that they should have paid $10 more to get the Intel 2200. None of this happens on an Apple computer, people never believe me, but "it just works."
-- Aaron Marks
I think that the most important thing is probably sticking to standards. I wish that every client supported the exact same version of AIM Talk/Video and that every client worked with Google Talk perfectly. About the only thing that you can count on any of the clients out there, AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Google, Trillian, Gaim, iChat, Adium, Kopete, etc. is that they can all do text between the two. Often times a simple thing like file transfer doesn't work.
I'm most frequently using my PowerBook and the other day I found out that even though I used to be able to use my iSight to talk with iChat AV with other Windows AIM users but now with the new beta version of AIM this is no longer possible.
I rarely use Windows Messenger mostly because it's so Windows centric... and it seems to have more connection problems than the rest. I love the fact that pretty much everyone I know has an AIM screenname. I almost think that there really just isn't any room anymore for another IM client. Google Talk may have jumped into the game a little to late, but in order for it to catch up they are definitely going to have to add stuff like Video chat, etc. My 2 cents.
-- Aaron Marks
Is there anywhere that has details about the new features available in Fedora Core 5? I'm definitely happy with Ubuntu right and will just stick with it, but it's always fun to read about Fedora. I think that Fedora definitely pushes the Linux community along and in the end definitely ends up benefitting from eachother deveolopement. AFter using Ubuntu though and coming from a Fedora install, I don't understand much why someone would deal with FC instead of Ubuntu.
I've been a strong believe in Firefox since day 1 and I'm really glad to see that the browser is constantly making headway. The general rule of thumb is really that if a page isn't showing up right in Firefox, then it was either made by Microsoft or it just wasn't made right (almost the same thing). Firefox has always been rock solid for me and I love it's features. I also think that it's really important that the browser is made cross-platform; what good is the web anyways if everyone can't see it the way it was intended to be seen???
I'm going to go put on my Firefox t-shirt now that my girlfriend got me for my birthday last year;-)
I'm glad to hear that someone else feels the same way I do. I have to set up wireless networks in environments for people all the time where they tell me that they, "need it to be 100% stable." This is a pipe dream these days with the way wireless networking devices are being made. Almost everything out their is utter crap unless it costs over $1k. I have tried almost everything and it all crashes and has interference problems. I wish that there was some piece of wireless equipement that you could just set up and never have to worry about it crashing. Just plug it in and come back to take it down in 2 years when it's time to upgrade to the newer/faster technology
I've tried a lot of the stuff that is out there from the Linksys WRT54GS running DD-WRT, OpenWRT, HyperWRT, Sveasoft, OEM, etc..., to a Netgear WG302, to the Cisco wireless-B AP's. It all crashes! Now this isn't to say that I don't absolutely love wireless and wish that the technology was more mature; I use wireless everyday and live with it by my side, but my clients that I work for as an IT consultant just need to learn to expect more out of what technology has to offer
I have had 3 Sony Trinitron's in the past decade and they have seen huge advancements and helped me through all my entertainment needs. I have owned a Sony Trinitron 27", a Sony Wega 27", and now my Sony Wega HD 34" XBR. The color reproduction on my 34" HDXBR can't be matched by any plasma, lcd, dlp, rear-projection crt, front-projection, you name it. CRT is still the standard when it comes to perfect contrast and color reproduction.
The only place that I wish my CRT was a Plasma is when it comes to using it as a HTPC. Having a fixed pixel (i.e. 1280x720, 1280x768, 1366x768, 1920x1080) display is great when using it as a computer screen because there is absolutely no overscan or geometry issues. CRT's biggest downfalls really are that it doesn't have perfect geometery across the screen and it doesn't have uniform sharpness across the screen, the outside edges are always blurry in comparison to the center of the TV. For the purpose of a TV though this really doesn't make a difference though most of the time, because as long as there isn't a static picture on the screen (i.e. computer desktop) you would never see this.
The most rewarding and exciting way to play computer games these days is in the dark and on a CRT HDTV. If you try to play in the dark on a LCD there is going to be white light from the backlight even on a 1000:1 contrast ration monitor. Not to mention that I can still see that LCD's aren't perfectly smooth like CRT's, even on 6ms response time LCD's! They don't ghost, they just stutter to the very sensitive eye (especially if you play a FPS).
Please continue to provide me with quality CRT HDTV's Sony incase I ever need to buy another one before a new technology comes out to replace all these current ones.
If you can set up a Windows 2003 SBS Avast! for SMB is the way to go. It is cheaper than the normal version of Avast! for Server because it is for Small Businesses, and works amazingly well (especially when compared to the offerings by companies like McAfee and Symantec). If you could somehow get your hands on a copy of Win2k3 SBS, set up an Active Directory and deploy Avast! that way you would be very happy. If not, just buy Avast! Professional for the Windows XP laptops and then Avast for Unix/Linux Servers and install them all separately.
I always highly recommend considering going with Small Business Server router though and setting up an ISA server with Active Directory and Microsoft Exchange email, etc.
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As a long time Nokia fan, I just switched this week to the HTC TyTN (Cingular 8525) which is (and I'm sorry to say) a much better phone. My 4 phones were a Nokia 6230, 6682, 9300, and then E62. I went from S40 to S60 to S80 and then back to S60v3, but none of them really were able to fill the needs of what I wanted in a phone. Everyone values different things in their phones; some want a handset that will just make phone calls whereas some want a handset that will do everything, but pretty much everyone requires 3 things from a phone:
The sad thing is that Nokia used to have all of these issues figured out, and were probably the best. Lately though they have fallen behind in the last 2. The last phone that I had, which is currently Nokia's flagship, the E62 seriously lacked a fast enough processor to handle what Nokia/Symbian's OS was asking it to perform. Just trying to write a text message to someone would take 2x as long as on my 6682 which was not only S60v1 phone vs the new S60v3, but it lacked a QWERTY keyboard. Just clicking ont he address book on the E62 would take 5 seconds sometimes to load.
With the last issue, Nokia is soooooo close. Although I liked the form factor of the E62, it was lacking many of the features tha twold be expected for that type of phone. There are many examples that I can think of, but most of them center around it's compatibility with Microsoft Exchange. The E62 is supposed to be the first Nokia phone to commercially support Microsoft Exchange 2003's Direct Push technology, but compared to setting this up on a Windows Mobile phone, you have to jump through some serious hoops. The E62 lacks a useful and easy to use certificate system and since certificates can't be installed over email, bluetooth, sms, or even placed as a file on the device; they have to be set as an MIME type on a Webserver and then downloaded through the built in web browser as a *.der files that is in base64. In order to make this work I had to do a ton of certificate conversions using OpenSSL, but in the end the certificate worked with the phone. Once I upgraded to Exchange 2007 and Outlook 2007 though it was a completely different story. Outlook 2007 requires that you use the Exchange 2007 certificate generator when using "Outlook Anywhere" (RPC over HTTPS), if you require it to check the SSL certificate for the principal name (i.e. msstd:contoso.microsoft.com). If you use alternate DNS names in your Root cert which Outlook 2007 requires or else it will give error messages, then Outlook 2007 will work fine, but the cert is then incompatible with the Nokia phones. I tried Certificates with alternate DNS names on both the Nokia 9300 and Nokia E62, and neither actually used the certificate (you would always be prompted that you were visiting an unauthorized site when you would go to OWA). How is a phone that is supposed to be a corporate focused phone supposed to work, if it can't even read a wide variety of SSL certificates? BTW, my HTC TyTN, Cingular 8125, and Cingular 2125 all had no problem reading the certificate (all Windows Mobile 5 phones).
In the end the Window Mobile 5 phones now beat the Nokia phones in pretty much every category. The only category that most would question would be stability, but I would counter that by saying that my Nokia 6682 and Nokia E62 crashed all the time (definitely more than my WM5 phones). I really hope that the Symbian OS gets some huge improvements very soon, because otherwise they may lose any chance they have at gaining back previous respect they may have had. I think that if the Symbian OS focused more on open source features like better IMAP support, fast and easy to use menu's, and solid compatiblity/stability that they would then have a winner.
This is great news to developers, but consumers still have to wait for manufacturers to pick up on CE 6, and integrate it into devices. I don't see this happening for quite a while.
I've had my PC hooked up to my HDTV ever since PureVideo was released. I went right out and bought two 6600GT's as fast as I could (have since upgrade due to one of the 6600GT's going bad). I couldn't be happier with the DVD output, but I hate having to start up my computer just to watch a DVD some time. You have to run Windows (I normally use Unix based computers), and it takes almost 5 minutes to boot sometimes, depending on what new Anti-Virus, Spyware, System updates there are, and also what other programs decide to run at boot. I still have these troubles even though I have a top-of-the-line PC running Media Center 2005. I'm really waiting for Apple to release a Mac mini CoreDuo with PureVideo and then I'll gladly be able to format my current media center!
I really like the new theme, and I think it's great that so many people put a lot of hard work and effort into improving this community. Slashdot was in need of an updated appearance, and the thing that I like most about the new design is that it doesn't try to reinvent Slasdhot, it just tries to improve on what we are already enjoying.
I say hell yes if someone like Torvalds can step in and finally declare one of the GUI's superior. I think that the KDE vs. Gnome debate is only going to slow Linux down in the future more and more. If the teams combined then maybe we could get some of the best of both worlds, but currently progress on somethings can be too hard because you have to program for to different UI's.
After hearing this I'm going to switch to Kubuntu to support the cause, because I've always wanted just one main Linux GUI and if Linus has to be the guy to say it then I can't think of any better. That's the simplest way I can think of it.
--
Aaron Marks
I have been using Mac OS X and Windows simultaneously for 3 years now and have never had to restart the finder. I have to restart my Windows computers all the time! I'm an IT Consultant and know a lot about Windows XP/2003, but no matter how much you know the bugs are inescapable and the computer is going to crash/freeze when put in the hands of a normal user.
Sure, I can keep a Windows computer running alright on my own, but the only computer that I can give to somebody and trust to keep working is an Apple running 10.4. Clients thank me up and down once they've been running their Apple for a few months and tell me how it has completely changed their computing experience.
It's beyond annoying when I have Windows computers with networking issues. I see it all the time where they can't connect to a wireless network because they are using the stupid wireless config utility that came with their Dell TrueMobile 1300 wireless card because they didn't know that they should have paid $10 more to get the Intel 2200. None of this happens on an Apple computer, people never believe me, but "it just works."
--
Aaron Marks
I think that the most important thing is probably sticking to standards. I wish that every client supported the exact same version of AIM Talk/Video and that every client worked with Google Talk perfectly. About the only thing that you can count on any of the clients out there, AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Google, Trillian, Gaim, iChat, Adium, Kopete, etc. is that they can all do text between the two. Often times a simple thing like file transfer doesn't work.
I'm most frequently using my PowerBook and the other day I found out that even though I used to be able to use my iSight to talk with iChat AV with other Windows AIM users but now with the new beta version of AIM this is no longer possible.
I rarely use Windows Messenger mostly because it's so Windows centric... and it seems to have more connection problems than the rest. I love the fact that pretty much everyone I know has an AIM screenname. I almost think that there really just isn't any room anymore for another IM client. Google Talk may have jumped into the game a little to late, but in order for it to catch up they are definitely going to have to add stuff like Video chat, etc. My 2 cents.--
Aaron Marks
Is there anywhere that has details about the new features available in Fedora Core 5? I'm definitely happy with Ubuntu right and will just stick with it, but it's always fun to read about Fedora. I think that Fedora definitely pushes the Linux community along and in the end definitely ends up benefitting from eachother deveolopement. AFter using Ubuntu though and coming from a Fedora install, I don't understand much why someone would deal with FC instead of Ubuntu.
--Aaron Marks
I've been a strong believe in Firefox since day 1 and I'm really glad to see that the browser is constantly making headway. The general rule of thumb is really that if a page isn't showing up right in Firefox, then it was either made by Microsoft or it just wasn't made right (almost the same thing). Firefox has always been rock solid for me and I love it's features. I also think that it's really important that the browser is made cross-platform; what good is the web anyways if everyone can't see it the way it was intended to be seen???
I'm going to go put on my Firefox t-shirt now that my girlfriend got me for my birthday last year ;-)
--Aaron Marks
I'm glad to hear that someone else feels the same way I do. I have to set up wireless networks in environments for people all the time where they tell me that they, "need it to be 100% stable." This is a pipe dream these days with the way wireless networking devices are being made. Almost everything out their is utter crap unless it costs over $1k. I have tried almost everything and it all crashes and has interference problems. I wish that there was some piece of wireless equipement that you could just set up and never have to worry about it crashing. Just plug it in and come back to take it down in 2 years when it's time to upgrade to the newer/faster technology
I've tried a lot of the stuff that is out there from the Linksys WRT54GS running DD-WRT, OpenWRT, HyperWRT, Sveasoft, OEM, etc..., to a Netgear WG302, to the Cisco wireless-B AP's. It all crashes! Now this isn't to say that I don't absolutely love wireless and wish that the technology was more mature; I use wireless everyday and live with it by my side, but my clients that I work for as an IT consultant just need to learn to expect more out of what technology has to offer
--Aaron Marks
I have had 3 Sony Trinitron's in the past decade and they have seen huge advancements and helped me through all my entertainment needs. I have owned a Sony Trinitron 27", a Sony Wega 27", and now my Sony Wega HD 34" XBR. The color reproduction on my 34" HDXBR can't be matched by any plasma, lcd, dlp, rear-projection crt, front-projection, you name it. CRT is still the standard when it comes to perfect contrast and color reproduction. The only place that I wish my CRT was a Plasma is when it comes to using it as a HTPC. Having a fixed pixel (i.e. 1280x720, 1280x768, 1366x768, 1920x1080) display is great when using it as a computer screen because there is absolutely no overscan or geometry issues. CRT's biggest downfalls really are that it doesn't have perfect geometery across the screen and it doesn't have uniform sharpness across the screen, the outside edges are always blurry in comparison to the center of the TV. For the purpose of a TV though this really doesn't make a difference though most of the time, because as long as there isn't a static picture on the screen (i.e. computer desktop) you would never see this. The most rewarding and exciting way to play computer games these days is in the dark and on a CRT HDTV. If you try to play in the dark on a LCD there is going to be white light from the backlight even on a 1000:1 contrast ration monitor. Not to mention that I can still see that LCD's aren't perfectly smooth like CRT's, even on 6ms response time LCD's! They don't ghost, they just stutter to the very sensitive eye (especially if you play a FPS). Please continue to provide me with quality CRT HDTV's Sony incase I ever need to buy another one before a new technology comes out to replace all these current ones.
If you can set up a Windows 2003 SBS Avast! for SMB is the way to go. It is cheaper than the normal version of Avast! for Server because it is for Small Businesses, and works amazingly well (especially when compared to the offerings by companies like McAfee and Symantec). If you could somehow get your hands on a copy of Win2k3 SBS, set up an Active Directory and deploy Avast! that way you would be very happy. If not, just buy Avast! Professional for the Windows XP laptops and then Avast for Unix/Linux Servers and install them all separately. I always highly recommend considering going with Small Business Server router though and setting up an ISA server with Active Directory and Microsoft Exchange email, etc.