And we complete the trio with the Sony Ericsson P900 (or the P800, which is now doubless cheaper) which is running Symbian.
Really, any of the futurephones that run a PDA OS are bound to have solutions.
Hey, Motorola and Samsung amongst othersa re working on Linux based futurephones, so you could get one of those and write some syncing software of your own!
But hold on... I just realised my last three Ericsson non-PDA phones have come with software that syncs with outlook. Did you not look at Ericsson? Where were you looking, exactly?
Actually let's hold on a second more.
I just cut and paste the entire question into Google and guess who comes on the first page? Pumatech's Intellisync (a familiar name to my fellow Palm fans - it's very good Outlook syncing software) which has a phone version that syncs with Motorola V60c, V60i, V60ci, V60g, V60gi, V60t, V60ti, V120c, V120e, V120t, T720c, T720g, T720gi and the Nokia 3590, 6310i, 8265 and the Samsung SCH-a310* and the LG VX10, VX4400.
I always thought it was just sad cases who complained that no-one trys google before they get an ask slashdot post in, but I'm beginnning to see their point.
I liked Hutton's way of addressing this - he points out that no-one really understands what it means, and so you could consider the dossier was sexed up or wasn't depending on definition.
No, this isn't the government using these funds, it is the BBC. The Government is the other side ot the BBC in this row.
Now, it is taxpayers money they are using, but I've always felt a load of crap is talked about the license fee. Sure, a lot of it is spent on crap, but they produce a lot of amazing stuff you'd never get otherwise... such as their web site.
Oh yes we blooming well do. I don't think I've ever seen anyone run a Zebra crossing. I mean, hit someone on a Zebra and you're going to prison, no excuses.
What I want to know is why Pelican crossings are so called.
(For the North Americans: a Pelican crossing is a "crosswoalk" with traffic lights that is controlled by a button the pedestrian presses)
Connections to the net (via dial-up or WiFi) stay up when you switch between applications. They do time out quickly by default (to save battery power), but that is adjustable.
PalmsOS has not had real multitasking before because wasn't really any good reason to have it.
I mean, how many apps do you actually need to run in the background on a PDA while you;re doing something else? MP3 player? (Me, I'd sooner have my iPod in my other pocket) IM client? Not a big list... and as pointed out you can sort-of do multitasking because Palms are always running two things at once - the OS and the app - so if you need it badly enough you can hook your background task into the OS so it keeps running all the time.
Yeah, but you gotta remember, everyone thought Mr. Jobs would be announcing a new Newton. Took folks a while to get over their disappointment and look at the pod on it's own merits.
Hold on, if you're the IT manager for a Mac shop, then I kinda suspect that the fact that you use a Mac at work for 8 hours a day may have influenced your choice of home machine a tad more than "ooh, shiny ipod!".;-)
You need to carefully evaluate the cheaper boxes though. Some of them have poor sound quality (dwl, I know that 90% of sound quality on a portable music device is the headphones) and some have a much clunkier UI. That latter is a big factor for me, the pod is very elegant to use.
The "need third party software" thing was because before there was itunes for windows you had a choice of tools ot manage the ipod, and the general concensus was that the one shipped with the ipod sucked. Hence the recommendation not to bother with the shipped CD but just to donwload ephod.
Now itunes is out this is no longer a problem. There are some ephod features I miss, and some bugs I don't, but on the whole itunes is fine. their rejection of the Windows UI in all it's forms is a bit of a pain, but liveable with.
I noticed an odd new cable on the latest Dell Laptop to pass thru my hands, neither a figure-eight nor a C-5 cloverleaf, but a sort of three-prong figure 8. What a pain!
OK, I understand using C-5 since that is safer than figure 8, and I understand the new cable rather than C-5 since it is flatter and so the PSU can be tiny, but why didn't they think of this earlier and go figure-8 to new doodad?
There's an idea for a new distribution; one that is designed just to run rdesktop. Pity it wouldn't fit on a floppy, but you could put it on a bootable CD for a little bit less than the cost of XP licenses...
Mods, new skins, all that sort of thing. Third party voice apps.
These are all a bit FPS specific but I'm sure there is similare in other games.
What about game patches and bug fixes?
What about internet play? If you haven't got a routed broadband connection (and not everyone does) then you're a bit stuck, unless you want to specify your ISP details every time you play.
Oh, and another point about save games - my hard disk is kinda formatted NTFS, so that's not going to happen anytime soon is it?
It is for example, not unknown when doing big copper wiring jobs in business to put dark fibre in at the same time, because it's the laying of the cables that is expensive, not the cable itself.
Say it costs you $500 to lay the copper. If you lay fibre as well it comes out at say $600. If you don't lay fibre, and three years later realise you need it after all, then the final cost will be $1100.
So you have a $100 bet with yourself that you will need fibre later. If you don't, you loose $100. If you do, you win $500. Now, considering how geeky you are to be thinking about this at all, what are the odds like?
"I'm going to do X, which will achive result A but have side-effect B. A I want to happen very much; B is unfortunate but I can live with it, although it'll hurt you more. Hey though, if you do Y, that will achieve result A but not B, and ther'll be no point in me doing X. What do you think, is now a good time for you to do Y?"
Well, theoretically yes, although of course hardware will limit some things. This would seem to be one of the answers to the "why bother" question; once Linux works on an Axim an enormous pile of software becomes available.
It's like that great old story about the time Apple and IBM had a meeting, and the Apple guys turned up in suits, and the IBM guys in jeans and t-shirts, each trying to conform to the other.
Is your tattoo going to be easy to conceal? I mean, a swastika on the forehead, almost certainly a bad idea.
You can almost get them already can't you? That's only about £600, I bet a top top of the range Toshiba is near that.
At least the massive sales of the base level Zire have shown that the cheap and cheerful market is surprisingly strong for PDAs.
For me, my next PDA looks likely to be the Tungsten C, whose technical specifications are purely marketing driven.
You see, corporate purchasers assume that a 64Mb, 400MHz Toshiba must be so much better than a 16MB, 114MHz Palm, even though it isn't any better - the Palm has the slight advantage of not running Windows. But assume they do, so Palm have produced a 64Mb, 400MHz Palm. Stupidly overpowered electronics is where I'm at.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, the reason I rarely sit in my server room is because it's cold in there, but I see what you mean.
Although of course flying to NI does mean you get sent off to a different gate miles from anywhere for security reasons...
And we complete the trio with the Sony Ericsson P900 (or the P800, which is now doubless cheaper) which is running Symbian.
Really, any of the futurephones that run a PDA OS are bound to have solutions.
Hey, Motorola and Samsung amongst othersa re working on Linux based futurephones, so you could get one of those and write some syncing software of your own!
But hold on... I just realised my last three Ericsson non-PDA phones have come with software that syncs with outlook. Did you not look at Ericsson? Where were you looking, exactly?
Actually let's hold on a second more.
I just cut and paste the entire question into Google and guess who comes on the first page? Pumatech's Intellisync (a familiar name to my fellow Palm fans - it's very good Outlook syncing software) which has a phone version that syncs with Motorola V60c, V60i, V60ci, V60g, V60gi, V60t, V60ti, V120c, V120e, V120t, T720c, T720g, T720gi and the Nokia 3590, 6310i, 8265 and the Samsung SCH-a310* and the LG VX10, VX4400.
I always thought it was just sad cases who complained that no-one trys google before they get an ask slashdot post in, but I'm beginnning to see their point.
Suggests another entry to the Gallery; if someone could combine DeCSS with bomb-making instructions...
I liked Hutton's way of addressing this - he points out that no-one really understands what it means, and so you could consider the dossier was sexed up or wasn't depending on definition.
No, this isn't the government using these funds, it is the BBC. The Government is the other side ot the BBC in this row.
Now, it is taxpayers money they are using, but I've always felt a load of crap is talked about the license fee. Sure, a lot of it is spent on crap, but they produce a lot of amazing stuff you'd never get otherwise... such as their web site.
It's either that or because his e-mail address is Mitch.Bainwol@riaa.com...
Oh yes we blooming well do. I don't think I've ever seen anyone run a Zebra crossing. I mean, hit someone on a Zebra and you're going to prison, no excuses.
What I want to know is why Pelican crossings are so called.
(For the North Americans: a Pelican crossing is a "crosswoalk" with traffic lights that is controlled by a button the pedestrian presses)
No no, it's not anything like that bad.
Connections to the net (via dial-up or WiFi) stay up when you switch between applications. They do time out quickly by default (to save battery power), but that is adjustable.
PalmsOS has not had real multitasking before because wasn't really any good reason to have it.
I mean, how many apps do you actually need to run in the background on a PDA while you;re doing something else? MP3 player? (Me, I'd sooner have my iPod in my other pocket) IM client? Not a big list... and as pointed out you can sort-of do multitasking because Palms are always running two things at once - the OS and the app - so if you need it badly enough you can hook your background task into the OS so it keeps running all the time.
No we're not!
Yeah, but you gotta remember, everyone thought Mr. Jobs would be announcing a new Newton. Took folks a while to get over their disappointment and look at the pod on it's own merits.
Hold on, if you're the IT manager for a Mac shop, then I kinda suspect that the fact that you use a Mac at work for 8 hours a day may have influenced your choice of home machine a tad more than "ooh, shiny ipod!". ;-)
You need to carefully evaluate the cheaper boxes though. Some of them have poor sound quality (dwl, I know that 90% of sound quality on a portable music device is the headphones) and some have a much clunkier UI. That latter is a big factor for me, the pod is very elegant to use.
The "need third party software" thing was because before there was itunes for windows you had a choice of tools ot manage the ipod, and the general concensus was that the one shipped with the ipod sucked. Hence the recommendation not to bother with the shipped CD but just to donwload ephod.
Now itunes is out this is no longer a problem. There are some ephod features I miss, and some bugs I don't, but on the whole itunes is fine. their rejection of the Windows UI in all it's forms is a bit of a pain, but liveable with.
"Windows doesn't support very many file systems" sounds like a good technical reason to me.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
I noticed an odd new cable on the latest Dell Laptop to pass thru my hands, neither a figure-eight nor a C-5 cloverleaf, but a sort of three-prong figure 8. What a pain!
OK, I understand using C-5 since that is safer than figure 8, and I understand the new cable rather than C-5 since it is flatter and so the PSU can be tiny, but why didn't they think of this earlier and go figure-8 to new doodad?
There's an idea for a new distribution; one that is designed just to run rdesktop. Pity it wouldn't fit on a floppy, but you could put it on a bootable CD for a little bit less than the cost of XP licenses...
Mods, new skins, all that sort of thing. Third party voice apps.
These are all a bit FPS specific but I'm sure there is similare in other games.
What about game patches and bug fixes?
What about internet play? If you haven't got a routed broadband connection (and not everyone does) then you're a bit stuck, unless you want to specify your ISP details every time you play.
Oh, and another point about save games - my hard disk is kinda formatted NTFS, so that's not going to happen anytime soon is it?
They get a warrant and bring US Marshalls, alas.
It is for example, not unknown when doing big copper wiring jobs in business to put dark fibre in at the same time, because it's the laying of the cables that is expensive, not the cable itself.
Say it costs you $500 to lay the copper. If you lay fibre as well it comes out at say $600. If you don't lay fibre, and three years later realise you need it after all, then the final cost will be $1100.
So you have a $100 bet with yourself that you will need fibre later. If you don't, you loose $100. If you do, you win $500. Now, considering how geeky you are to be thinking about this at all, what are the odds like?
I agree, it sounds more like negotiation.
"I'm going to do X, which will achive result A but have side-effect B. A I want to happen very much; B is unfortunate but I can live with it, although it'll hurt you more.
Hey though, if you do Y, that will achieve result A but not B, and ther'll be no point in me doing X. What do you think, is now a good time for you to do Y?"
Well, theoretically yes, although of course hardware will limit some things. This would seem to be one of the answers to the "why bother" question; once Linux works on an Axim an enormous pile of software becomes available.
It's like that great old story about the time Apple and IBM had a meeting, and the Apple guys turned up in suits, and the IBM guys in jeans and t-shirts, each trying to conform to the other.
Is your tattoo going to be easy to conceal? I mean, a swastika on the forehead, almost certainly a bad idea.
You can almost get them already can't you? That's only about £600, I bet a top top of the range Toshiba is near that.
At least the massive sales of the base level Zire have shown that the cheap and cheerful market is surprisingly strong for PDAs.
For me, my next PDA looks likely to be the Tungsten C, whose technical specifications are purely marketing driven.
You see, corporate purchasers assume that a 64Mb, 400MHz Toshiba must be so much better than a 16MB, 114MHz Palm, even though it isn't any better - the Palm has the slight advantage of not running Windows. But assume they do, so Palm have produced a 64Mb, 400MHz Palm. Stupidly overpowered electronics is where I'm at.