To be honest, as a Desire user, I think this review is overly harsh.
While I do agree with the screen complaints (the OLED screen is all but unviewable in direct sunlight) and the battery life isn't great (although I find it'll last the day with moderately heavy use (and thats before dicking around with sync settings and other various battery-improving tweaks)), the other complaints I diagree with - for example I much prefer the chat system on the Desire to the bubble-style conversations of the iPhone although obviously other people will prefer things the other way (and they can install Handcent or one of the myriad other progams that will bring that functionality.
He complains that on the iPhone there is a button to bring up the menu for any given app - this is true, but there is no guarentee it is in the same place or clearely labelled on each program - with the Desire you always go to the same place allowing for a more consistent experience. Personally I find that the phone has just the right number of buttons, even if it is a few more than the holy iPhone (home, menu, back, search and then power and volume keys
The standard keyboard is a bit tricky to use in portrait mode due to key size (especially for me - I'm 6'5 and fairly stocky) however what it does offer is *choice* - quite apart from the landscape mode keyboard (which I believe iPhone now allows globally?) there are two other portrait keyboards you can use instead - compact QWERTY (each key has two letters as with some blackberries) and then a Phone keypad. One feature that impressed me is that if you have accidentally added misspellings to the dictionary (which I have done more than once) you can delete words individually rather than just resetting the user dictionary (which is certainly what you used to have to do with the iPhone, but I must admit my info could be out of date here.
I do not see any of the complaintes about the sound quality of the phone - the earpiece is typical smartphone (which is to say good enough but easily beaten by the old dedicated phone handsets) and the speaker is pretty loud. Of course you'd never want to listen to music with it, but its good enough for spoken word stuff (audiobooks and stand-up comedy in my case).
I don't agree with his complaints about the trackpad either, although to be fair I've not tried to use it with wet fingers so I can't comment on that, however I have seen no unusual behaviour with it either (and to be honest I don't use the track pad much anyway, It's served more use as a camera shutter button than it as as a navigation device - while its nice to have the choice I find the touchscreen is just much easier.
To be fair there are some things that do annoy me with the phone, but its all minor things - for example in the media player I would like that in the media player it was possible to navigate back up the tree, but thats not always an option (for example if you pick a track from 'first principles' (ie fire up app, select artist then album then track) you can do it, but if you just tap on the media player widget it takes you to the currently selected track but if you want to change you have to navigate from those first principles again (with the exception of pickig a different track from the same album.) but its a pretty minor complaint, and the other things that annoy me are all little things as well.
One thing that is an issue currently is that a lot of pay-for apps are as yet unupdated for Android 2.1 and are just not there in the app store, which is really irritating to be in a position to download say a 'free' (whether ad-supported or somehow limited) version, want to buy the complete version and its just not there. Lack of Google Earth is particularly annoying.
Nokia's Symbian defaults to allowing signed apps only, however you can disable that quite easily and install what you will, and IIRC you can freely install Android applications - you don't *have* to use the Android store.
You can just restore from a backup - I maintain a backup of all the really big games to save redownloading. When MW2 decided to re download following the beta activation I simply deleted stored data and ran the backup data installer, this installed fine and required no subsequent download or update.
More annoying is the lack of Steam Voice support atm (you can place a call, but the 'answer call' button doesn't work) and some people have reported issues with the Steam overlay too...
That assumes some identifying information is being sent over to the person montioring the scanner - from the example images released I can't imagine anyone being able to identify their own mother from the picture let alone Harrison Ford...
However, "touchscreen not as accurate as iPhone" != "Shitty touchscreen". In a lot of ways I prefer the screens on the current crop of Android phones. Based on limit experience I've not noticed any difference in sensitivity in real world use, but prefer the higher res and image quality on the newest Android phones.
Bear in mind this is the third PC iteration of Alien Vs Predator. The first was a good few years ago but (despite relatively primitive graphics by the standards of the day) was a superb FPS game. Piss scary and bastard hard in places too.
The sequel was a bit more mainstream, so not as hard but had a few innovations in too, such as the Alien game starting you out as a facehugger looking for an appropriate victim, then giving it the chestburster bit and so on.
Anyway, the first game came from the same dev house as this one, and I for one am really looking forward to it, not matter how fecking awful the movies one (although as somone else mentioned at least the sequel was appropriately violent:)
Crap, other way round - we have slightly more channels open than you do, so you'd only really need to worry about it if you need to connect on something broadcasting on 12 or 13.
From what I recall the legal channels for wireless differ between the US and the UK. In the US (I think) channels 1-13 are legally available, while in the UK it's only 1-11. TBH I wouldn't bother changing anything especially as the routers OP will be connecting to will only be broadcasting in the legal range anyway:)
I've just recently bought one of these - I've not done much more than install Debian and a LAMP server on it thus far but have come away thoroughly impressed with the kit. All the magical incantations you need to a) set the device up to boot from SD card and b) install debian to said SD card can be found here. In my case I needed to follow the instructions to update the u-boot system on the plug, but I presume by now they are shipping with the updated ROM in place.
Long term I intend to offload torrenting and streaming duties to the plug, attaching it to a NAS for storage... I have a few other ideas in mind additional to this, which may or may not require additional plugs, but at a cost of around £90 it's no great hardship:)
But here in the UK Android seems to be picking up momentum - theres finally some choice in handsets available (a few from HTC and a few others inbound from the likes of Sony and Samsung). While the initial G1 OS was a bit clunky the cupcake (1.5) update improved things a lot.
Speaking anecdotally, half a dozen of my friends have recently upgraded their phones (as in the past month). Five of them picked Android (3 Magic's and two Hero's) while the other went for a Nokia. Of course I also know more than a few iPhone fans as well.
Speaking personally, this Nokia user will be looking at Android very closely when its time to upgrade at the start of next year.
From what we saw while Sam Worthington plays a dude in a wheelchair than it hooked up with one of these avatars, there are others that have normal mobility that use them as well - Sigourney Weaver's character for a start
I'm with you on this - I was pretty much blown away by what I saw - the 3D was extremely well done, and so what if the story is apparantly Dances With Wolves in a SciFi setting? Besides as mentioned more than once above, Cameron and Sci-Fi have a long and successful history together. Personally, I can't wait to see the finished article...
I think he is referring to performance - theres a more than noticable hit on the performance of a netbook utilising full disk encryption (I read a couple of benchmarks suggesting it was in the region of 10-20%). YMMV as to whether its worth the hit for the security of what you want to store on the Eee
Likewise - I won't replace mine until the current one breaks, and will only bother to update the maps if the current ones are hideously inaccurate - on my two-year old Tom Tom I have found only two map inaccuracies on my travels - one is in my home city so isn't a problem as I never use it for navigating here, and the other is right by a family member in London, again in an area I know well.
Personally I have several devices that are GPS enabled, but I still only use the Tom Tom in the car - simple reason is its a big touchscreen interface so if I do need to interact with it I can do so easily, while the small (by comparison) non-touchscreen of either of my phones make them singularly unsuited for such use (well unless I pulled over first of course).
In saying that, however, my phone having GPS and maps capability *has* come in handy when on foot and lost in an unfamiliar city - the interface issues aren't a factor then, but the convenience of having the capaility when in such a situation is huge.
I do have the HD-DVD drive as does one other guy I know with an X-Box. Admittedly though that was after HD-DVD lost and we both intentionally bought into a dying format simply because everything was dirt cheap - we both of us have PS3's too and in both cases they see significantly more use as a playback device than a console...
Agreed - I picked up the game cheap as soon as it was released (think I paid £17 on a preorder from Amazon for it) some six months ago and since then have played 1-3 sessions a week on it of around 2-4 hours a time (usually 1 a week of about 3 hours). I've picked up more friends on Steam then I have at all before (like alot of other people I try to play with known people, but if we fill a slot with a random and (s)he seems cool I'll add them and play with them again).
We generally play co-op campaigns on Expert, but occaisionally throw a little Vs or Survival into the mix
I feel I have *more* than gotten my money's worth out of Left 4 Dead over the past six months, and I like the look of more or less all the changes - especially the 'multiple routes controlled by the AI' part. The one thing I hope is that the L4D campigns are available within L4D2 (whether you can import them from the first game or are just included by default) so its not necessary to move between the games for the different campaigns...
Didn't they say something about the T-101 having a power lifespan of 120-odd years? Given the war is 30 years in the future then why can't they send Arnie back to get the records and just wait it out until he catches up with the original timeline?
Personally I'm going to go with 'because that would be a *really* boring movie':) Plus of course from a logical point of few it would make sense that the knock-on effect of changing even one thing sixty year is likely to be more far-reaching than changing that one thing 30 years previously instead... But I prefer my interpretation:)
Slashdot Mirror
Just to make me look an idiot, the pay-for versions of the apps I was waiting for are now available - whups!
To be honest, as a Desire user, I think this review is overly harsh.
While I do agree with the screen complaints (the OLED screen is all but unviewable in direct sunlight) and the battery life isn't great (although I find it'll last the day with moderately heavy use (and thats before dicking around with sync settings and other various battery-improving tweaks)), the other complaints I diagree with - for example I much prefer the chat system on the Desire to the bubble-style conversations of the iPhone although obviously other people will prefer things the other way (and they can install Handcent or one of the myriad other progams that will bring that functionality.
He complains that on the iPhone there is a button to bring up the menu for any given app - this is true, but there is no guarentee it is in the same place or clearely labelled on each program - with the Desire you always go to the same place allowing for a more consistent experience. Personally I find that the phone has just the right number of buttons, even if it is a few more than the holy iPhone (home, menu, back, search and then power and volume keys
The standard keyboard is a bit tricky to use in portrait mode due to key size (especially for me - I'm 6'5 and fairly stocky) however what it does offer is *choice* - quite apart from the landscape mode keyboard (which I believe iPhone now allows globally?) there are two other portrait keyboards you can use instead - compact QWERTY (each key has two letters as with some blackberries) and then a Phone keypad. One feature that impressed me is that if you have accidentally added misspellings to the dictionary (which I have done more than once) you can delete words individually rather than just resetting the user dictionary (which is certainly what you used to have to do with the iPhone, but I must admit my info could be out of date here.
I do not see any of the complaintes about the sound quality of the phone - the earpiece is typical smartphone (which is to say good enough but easily beaten by the old dedicated phone handsets) and the speaker is pretty loud. Of course you'd never want to listen to music with it, but its good enough for spoken word stuff (audiobooks and stand-up comedy in my case).
I don't agree with his complaints about the trackpad either, although to be fair I've not tried to use it with wet fingers so I can't comment on that, however I have seen no unusual behaviour with it either (and to be honest I don't use the track pad much anyway, It's served more use as a camera shutter button than it as as a navigation device - while its nice to have the choice I find the touchscreen is just much easier.
To be fair there are some things that do annoy me with the phone, but its all minor things - for example in the media player I would like that in the media player it was possible to navigate back up the tree, but thats not always an option (for example if you pick a track from 'first principles' (ie fire up app, select artist then album then track) you can do it, but if you just tap on the media player widget it takes you to the currently selected track but if you want to change you have to navigate from those first principles again (with the exception of pickig a different track from the same album.) but its a pretty minor complaint, and the other things that annoy me are all little things as well.
One thing that is an issue currently is that a lot of pay-for apps are as yet unupdated for Android 2.1 and are just not there in the app store, which is really irritating to be in a position to download say a 'free' (whether ad-supported or somehow limited) version, want to buy the complete version and its just not there. Lack of Google Earth is particularly annoying.
Nokia's Symbian defaults to allowing signed apps only, however you can disable that quite easily and install what you will, and IIRC you can freely install Android applications - you don't *have* to use the Android store.
Dude, in factors of 88mph this thing goes to 11 ;)
You can just restore from a backup - I maintain a backup of all the really big games to save redownloading. When MW2 decided to re download following the beta activation I simply deleted stored data and ran the backup data installer, this installed fine and required no subsequent download or update.
More annoying is the lack of Steam Voice support atm (you can place a call, but the 'answer call' button doesn't work) and some people have reported issues with the Steam overlay too...
Sure but theres nothing stopping him slinging on a full GPS app like CoPilot onto the Nexus - that stashes all maps on the SD card.
That assumes some identifying information is being sent over to the person montioring the scanner - from the example images released I can't imagine anyone being able to identify their own mother from the picture let alone Harrison Ford...
However, "touchscreen not as accurate as iPhone" != "Shitty touchscreen". In a lot of ways I prefer the screens on the current crop of Android phones. Based on limit experience I've not noticed any difference in sensitivity in real world use, but prefer the higher res and image quality on the newest Android phones.
Published by Sega - the new one is being developed by the same dev house as the first, Rebellion \o/
Bear in mind this is the third PC iteration of Alien Vs Predator. The first was a good few years ago but (despite relatively primitive graphics by the standards of the day) was a superb FPS game. Piss scary and bastard hard in places too.
The sequel was a bit more mainstream, so not as hard but had a few innovations in too, such as the Alien game starting you out as a facehugger looking for an appropriate victim, then giving it the chestburster bit and so on.
Anyway, the first game came from the same dev house as this one, and I for one am really looking forward to it, not matter how fecking awful the movies one (although as somone else mentioned at least the sequel was appropriately violent :)
Not to mention the renting option - and a few places I've seen will generally discount a game by the price of the rental if you subsequently buy it.
Crap, other way round - we have slightly more channels open than you do, so you'd only really need to worry about it if you need to connect on something broadcasting on 12 or 13.
From what I recall the legal channels for wireless differ between the US and the UK. In the US (I think) channels 1-13 are legally available, while in the UK it's only 1-11. TBH I wouldn't bother changing anything especially as the routers OP will be connecting to will only be broadcasting in the legal range anyway :)
Myself and two colleagues banded together and ordered 3 from NewIT a couple of weeks ago. Delivery time was around 20 hours after order placed.
I've just recently bought one of these - I've not done much more than install Debian and a LAMP server on it thus far but have come away thoroughly impressed with the kit. All the magical incantations you need to a) set the device up to boot from SD card and b) install debian to said SD card can be found here. In my case I needed to follow the instructions to update the u-boot system on the plug, but I presume by now they are shipping with the updated ROM in place.
Long term I intend to offload torrenting and streaming duties to the plug, attaching it to a NAS for storage... I have a few other ideas in mind additional to this, which may or may not require additional plugs, but at a cost of around £90 it's no great hardship :)
My year-old E71 uses Micro-USB, as does my finacee's E75...
But here in the UK Android seems to be picking up momentum - theres finally some choice in handsets available (a few from HTC and a few others inbound from the likes of Sony and Samsung). While the initial G1 OS was a bit clunky the cupcake (1.5) update improved things a lot.
Speaking anecdotally, half a dozen of my friends have recently upgraded their phones (as in the past month). Five of them picked Android (3 Magic's and two Hero's) while the other went for a Nokia. Of course I also know more than a few iPhone fans as well.
Speaking personally, this Nokia user will be looking at Android very closely when its time to upgrade at the start of next year.
From what we saw while Sam Worthington plays a dude in a wheelchair than it hooked up with one of these avatars, there are others that have normal mobility that use them as well - Sigourney Weaver's character for a start
I'm with you on this - I was pretty much blown away by what I saw - the 3D was extremely well done, and so what if the story is apparantly Dances With Wolves in a SciFi setting? Besides as mentioned more than once above, Cameron and Sci-Fi have a long and successful history together. Personally, I can't wait to see the finished article...
I think he is referring to performance - theres a more than noticable hit on the performance of a netbook utilising full disk encryption (I read a couple of benchmarks suggesting it was in the region of 10-20%). YMMV as to whether its worth the hit for the security of what you want to store on the Eee
Likewise - I won't replace mine until the current one breaks, and will only bother to update the maps if the current ones are hideously inaccurate - on my two-year old Tom Tom I have found only two map inaccuracies on my travels - one is in my home city so isn't a problem as I never use it for navigating here, and the other is right by a family member in London, again in an area I know well.
Personally I have several devices that are GPS enabled, but I still only use the Tom Tom in the car - simple reason is its a big touchscreen interface so if I do need to interact with it I can do so easily, while the small (by comparison) non-touchscreen of either of my phones make them singularly unsuited for such use (well unless I pulled over first of course).
In saying that, however, my phone having GPS and maps capability *has* come in handy when on foot and lost in an unfamiliar city - the interface issues aren't a factor then, but the convenience of having the capaility when in such a situation is huge.
I do have the HD-DVD drive as does one other guy I know with an X-Box. Admittedly though that was after HD-DVD lost and we both intentionally bought into a dying format simply because everything was dirt cheap - we both of us have PS3's too and in both cases they see significantly more use as a playback device than a console...
Agreed - I picked up the game cheap as soon as it was released (think I paid £17 on a preorder from Amazon for it) some six months ago and since then have played 1-3 sessions a week on it of around 2-4 hours a time (usually 1 a week of about 3 hours). I've picked up more friends on Steam then I have at all before (like alot of other people I try to play with known people, but if we fill a slot with a random and (s)he seems cool I'll add them and play with them again).
We generally play co-op campaigns on Expert, but occaisionally throw a little Vs or Survival into the mix
I feel I have *more* than gotten my money's worth out of Left 4 Dead over the past six months, and I like the look of more or less all the changes - especially the 'multiple routes controlled by the AI' part. The one thing I hope is that the L4D campigns are available within L4D2 (whether you can import them from the first game or are just included by default) so its not necessary to move between the games for the different campaigns...
Didn't they say something about the T-101 having a power lifespan of 120-odd years? Given the war is 30 years in the future then why can't they send Arnie back to get the records and just wait it out until he catches up with the original timeline?
Personally I'm going to go with 'because that would be a *really* boring movie' :) Plus of course from a logical point of few it would make sense that the knock-on effect of changing even one thing sixty year is likely to be more far-reaching than changing that one thing 30 years previously instead... But I prefer my interpretation :)
Sorry, I suppose I should have said 'feels a bit wasteful' which more accurately sums up my feelings on the matter.