If you would like to contribute or send in an article please do- hopefully I will be able to produce versions that run on your PDA over time. Doc and iSilo versions will be available for each article and you will be able to read them direct from the web site but it would be nice to bundle them together in a PDA friendly format so that you can carry articles with you. PS. Watch out for my book 'Angel' which will be released soon. Thanks Shaun McGill
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Why Can't I Change? (24/05/03)
A colleague at work recently won a Toshiba e740 Pocket PC in a competition but decided that he would have no use for it. Being the kind of guy I am I offered him some money to take it off his hands nd we were both happy (especially me:))
I'm not really sure why I purchased it as I already own an NX70V, a 1GB MS Pro, a $100 leather case for it, spare cradle, extra memory sticks, Bluetooth MS, chrome styluses, modified Stowaway keyboard and so much registered software it would be impossible to list here. This would be a very difficult package to replace and whilst it would no doubt fetch a good price on eBay it would probably not reach the value it should.
I guess the curiosity factor got to me... again! I have owned 5 Pocket PCs in the past and none of them for more than 2 weeks- of course the fact that I was guaranteed an easy profit on eBay for this one helps:)
So, I started with a quick browse through Handango and must say that my initial reaction was that there are some VERY smart applications and games available for the PPCs. Take a look at 'Journal Bar' which does the following:-
It sits in your today screen and displays your local weather forecast, updated news and sport, movie reviews and a whole host of other information chosen by you This is all updated each time you run an ActiveSync- brilliant! Sort of like an AvantGo merged with a Weather Manager on hand all of the time.
This review at Handango also caught my eye- "I am a relatively new user of a Toshiba e335 Pocket PC, and recently bought your Journal Bar and Battery Pack. What amazing "little" products!!! I absolutely cannot believe how such small programs can provide such extraordinarily usefully, real-time information in an elegantly simple, easy-to-acess desktop design. I could go on and on, but suffice it say . . . they're brilliant. Total common sense stuff. My whole hearted congratulations on two REQUIRED TOOLS now for my Pocket PC. By the way, I have been a Palm V user for the past four years and it finally "gave up" on me. In shopping around I decided to go with the Pocket PC OS. Boy am I glad. What a far superior systems, since I am a businessman and link it to everything on my computer system in the office (MS Office, Outlook, MS Money)."
The next item to catch my eye was Interstellar Flames which is a game I played for a while on a Sharp Zaurus. Unfortunately it's Pocket PC cousin falls well short of the Linux version in that I found it quite unresponsive with a poor control mechanism which could be partly down to hardware design.
I was struck by the number of games on the site which looked fantastic in the screenshots but didn't exactly perform when on the Pocket PC (even with a 400Mhz processor). Anyway, the games are not the reason I put it back in it's box after only 2 hours...
The hardware side of this device is actually quite nice- the casing feels solid enough for everyday use and it is very thin which is surprising considering it takes a Comapct Flash card and SD card for expansion. My one criticism would be the width of the device which made it feel just a touch uncomfortable in the hand.
The reason I keep returning to the Clie is not clear to me- it's one of two:-
1/ The Clie is a superior design, runs the superior Palm OS and has all the extras I want- video camera, MP3 player etc.
2/ Maybe I am just too used to the Palm OS to move to a Pocket PC device. I had a similar experience when trying out a Tungsten T for an extended period- it was a very nice machine and worked very well but when I had a play with my NX again I jumped back in the blink of an eye. It was like returning home:)
In my opinion the Pocket PC OS is not good at all- it's cumbersome and a memory hog which affects system performance greatly, it's far from user friendly and to this day many of the day to day used features are still not accessable quickly without third party software. The third party software available contrasts in a good and bad way compared to the Palm offerings available:-
Good: Some very impressive programs are available and many of the applications have been developed with real attention to detail and some nice innovation (such as Journal Bar)
Bad: Very little freeware available (comparitively) and the good programs tend to cost more than their Palm OS equivalents
I'm still convinced that if I had moved from a Psion to a Pocket PC first then I would probably view the Palm OS as too simple for my needs. You will see many, many Pocket PC v Palm arguments on forums and there is no winner- the fact is that the majority of people will argue for what they are used to and will presume that their PDA and it's OS are superior because they cannot master the other one quickly (that includes me:))
The only flaw in my conclusion is that no matter how much I use and love the Palm OS when I play with a Psion (even if I have not touched one for 6 months) it still stands out as the better machine for me and probably always will... Maybe that's because I used a Psion before any other PDA and thus it probably supports my conclusion after all- or does it?
Launchers (22/05/03)
No here's a tricky subject. I remember slating YiShow once on the front page of Clie Planet and received over 100 emails from devoted users advising me not to use my position to make negative comments. The surprising part for me was the level of emotion a few words invoked in people because they loved the product so much. All I want to do in this article is explain why I use the launcher I do and to not cause a mountain of emails dropping into my inbox:)
The first launcher I used was MegaLauncher on my old N770CU- it was stable as a rock and had some features which I could not live without such as the 'favourites' list which became an absolute must for me in everyday use.
When I purchased the NR70V I had a dilemma- for a long time I still used ML even though it did not support the hi-res+ screen and therefore a lot of screen real estate (nice cliche!) was lost. YiShow at the time was the only launcher capable of supporting hi-res+ but whilst it looked good it sadly supported little else (in my experience) such as not crashing every day, handling external cards in an efficient manner and most worryingly of all launching applications. To be fair I have not tried the very latest version so things may have moved on a great deal. Let me know if they have...
SilverScreen was next- it was pretty, was the best launcher initially on my newly purchased NX70V but just did not seem to have the balance right for me. It looked good but the interface choices available were not too hot- there seemed to be a lot of wasted space in the main launcher screen and the extra features were not easy to get to.
Eventually I jumped to LauncherX- I say eventually because it took about 17 years from the time it was announced to full release:) It, like ML, proved to be a very capable launcher- stable, nice looking and 'clean' which is a feature I really like in any launcher. I also grew to love the choice of left, right, top tabs and stuck with left hand tabs for many months.
I tried ZLauncher one day out of curiosity and hated it. I tried it again a month later after a few updates and loved it. ZZTECHS actually emailed me a while back and thanked Clie Planet for helping to grow the public awareness of this product in the early stages. For a few weeks I was happy and liked the overall look even though it could be described as cluttered no matter what skin you use but it is one hell of a memory hog and the icons do not always come out as clean as I would like. It's hard to explain but for all of it's good looks that is ultimately what lets in down- there's just too much happening and the learning curve or should I say initial customisation process is extremely long for a launcher. ZZTECHS are one of the best companies for support and customer service and their update rate is unbelievable! A new version seems to be available every 2 weeks. I tried this launcher the other day and whilst I initially fell in love (again) it was just too much for me to take in. I will explain later what I mean by this.
So, after all of the above I returned home to MegaLauncher 4.3 which had progressed a lot from the early Betas I had tested for Megasoft before it was released. It was stable, looks VERY clean and has all of the extra functions I need:-
Quick access to categories
Memory and Battery meters always available
Favourites feature
Quick access to Palm Prefs
Choice of backgrounds and icons for apps in RAM and on a Memory Stick
A bit of a memory hog though
There are not many themes available yet for MegaLauncher but hopefully this will change soon- I would also like to see more icon packs being made in numbers big enough to create a consistent launcher page.
This is my 'one sentence' reasoning for choosing MegaLauncher above all others at this time:-
YiShow is not stable enough, poor external card support, poor customer support (I believe this is made by a one man developer which must be difficult)
Silverscreen looks good but does not do much more than the built in launcher when it comes to quick access to enhanced features
LauncherX is very stable and does the job well- just missing something which I can't quite put my finger on
ZLauncher is an amazing piece of software but has progressed far beyond what a launcher should be- the main interface to your PDA. It needs to bring together your frequently used functions in an attractive and stable package which does not hog too much memory and which enables you to see where you are going almost sub-conciously.
MegaLauncher does what is described in the ZLauncher piece above. Again it's hard to explain but there is just something about this program which gives me a sense of trust in that it will not crash when I most need it and it manages to get the balance between features and a 'clean' interface spot on.
I believe that MegaLauncher is currently vastly underrated because it took a long time to get it working under OS5- it may have taken time but it definately got there in the end and for me will be very hard to move away from. No doubt I will still dabble with the other though:)
Games- have they changed us? (16/05/03)
Many moons ago when I was 12 years old (1982 in fact) I remember playing a game called Match Point on my rubber keyed ZX Spectrum for hours and hours and hours. A whole day could fly by during the summer holidays just trying to get to the next round. Highlights included the ability to lob, hit the ball at different intensities and what appeared to be stunning graphics.
A year ago I purchased a ZX Spectrum on eBay along with some of the classic games I loved- Horace Goes Skiing, Manic Miner and of course Match Point. I also purchased a Commodore 64, Vic 20 and ZX81 but I will discuss them another day... Excitedly I plugged everything in- the enormously heavy transformer, TV aerial lead and the cassette player (that's to run the game if you are a young person:)) and followed the normal procedure- typing "Load R (I think) and pressing 'play' on the cassette player. After about 17 hours of computer generated noise (a bit like the Pet Shop Boys) the main intro screen of the game appeared in blocky not very colourful pixels. Amazingly I remembered all of the key combinations to make a lob etc. and had to admit after 20 minutes of play...
IT WAS RUBBISH!
Why is this? The game had not changed and should have still been as playable today as it was 20 years ago. I started to wonder what our abilities would have been back then if someone had presented us with Medal Of Honor and a Playstation 2- my guess is that the VAST majority of us would have run a mile and screamed "It's too complicated!", "I can't control the soldier" etc. etc. Has a generation of increasingly complex and graphically intense computer games changed the way our minds work and do we need more and more complexity to get a thrill from a new game?
Probably not- take a look at Bejeweled and games like TableTennis3D on the Palm OS to see that complexity is not the reason. Some games still entrall many people and seem original without 10 million lines of code needed to make them. I am sure that it's because it was the best at the time and that we always want more and more from each successive release. No doubt we have changed in that we are able to do so much more due to having let computers and consoles form a big part of our lives but their is still a part of me that wonders if exposure to computer games has actually changed our minds (just a little bit) and allowed us to reacte quicker and with more dexterity.
I went clay pieon shooting this morning for the first time in my life and hit 8 out of 10 clays in my first go- as I shot it felt very normal to me and I couldn't help but think of the various shooting games I had played helping me with this task:)
When we shout at kids for playing too many computer games just maybe they actually do them some good afterall.
PDA Web Thoughts (12/05/03)
I was thinking the other day just how many big sites there are on the Web that cover Palm OS news alone and was surprised to find that it's not that many really. There's PalmInfoCenter, Clie Source, PalmAddict and a few others dotted around (no doubt I have missed some enormous ones and will be notified in due course:)) Clie Planet and Clie Source are the only 2 sites I know of that concentrate on Clie news alone- CP every day and CS more sporadic until recently.
It strikes me that most of the Palm sites (and indeed the sites that concentrate on all PDAs) tend to share the news around and on many occasions most of our news is duplicated. I guess it's the same for newspapers and is unavoidable to an extent. My downfall is that on a day to day basis I run the site alone and this has led to only one update a day albeit it with an average of 11 articles and this can tend to mean the nes is delivered late in comparision to the sites which have people available to update them 24 hours a day.
So... what's the solution? My first thought is to build a section that allows the visitor to update the news as soon as it breaks rather than email me with the details. This would be more than a forum section and would allow the news to be formatted as it would on Clie Planet today and thus would appear as a web page on the site. There would be certain volunteers who could remove any posts made which are unsuitable if they spot them and there would still be the main news page updated once a day for those who like the current format.
My second thought is to rename the site to PDANews24.com which would cover ALL Palm OS PDAs and SmartPhones. A comment was made on the Clie Planet forum regarding this-
"I have to admit that, whilst I respect that the final decision rests with Shaun, should this be more than a hypothetical question, it was the monogamous nature of Clie Planet that attracted me to it. There are many sites dealing with all-things PDA, and Clie Planet stuck out as one with a lot of information relevant to me. I would prefer it to stay for Clies, but, as I said, I would return whether PDA or Clie, as Shaun does an extremely good job!"
This is the main concern with doing this but my guarantee is that any Clie news that is currently covered would continue to be- my expectation is that over 60% of the news content will be specific to Clies and that the amount of daily news will grow to 'add' news of the other Palm devices to the current Clie news.
The main reason for doing this is not because I am moving away from the Clie side- I use an NX70V as my main PDA and cannot see many manufacturers making machines that would tempt me to switch- I am also far too used to my video camera and superb quality MP3 player to do that:) The reason is to enable the site to grow...
I started the site one day when I had a spare couple of hours and never expected to be managing the beast that it is today. It receives a very large number of hits for a one man site but the numbers visiting has stayed steady for a few months now- my idea is 'in for a penny, in for a pound'. I may as well do everything I can to increase it's exposure and make it a BIG site to be proud of. Advertising has started to come in but up to now the site has generated very litle revenue- under $100 from donations, about $20 commision per month from the store and a one off payment for the advertising so far. This equates to a big loss over the past year when I add up the hosting, software and hardware costs (I don't even want to think about the time I have spent maintaining it) and it cannot continue that way- I am opposed to filling the screen which hundreds of adverts and I especially do not like pop ups but some more advertising will have to come in the future. I will keep this to a minimum though.
The work has already started on the new site. Bert Austin (designsbybert) has already spent a few hours hunched over his computer to make the new site as original as possible. Whatever happens and however the site turns out you can be assured of as much effort going in as has done in the past year and you will not lose any Clie news- stop worrying!!!
You can make a comment on the Clie Planet forum regarding the site change here.
What to buy? (09/05/03)
Many of us probably spent an eternity looking at the specs and comparing PDAs before we purchased our first one. It's a difficult choice for the novice, especially now with so many differents PDAs and mobile operating systems available.
There are Palm, Pocket PC, Epoc, the Zaurus range and many, many SmartPhones on the market with seemingly one or two more being announced each week. So, how do you choose which one if right for you?
It's not an easy task as the help you get in certain electronics stores is usually far from useful. I remember an assistant telling me to go for a Pocket PC because of the RAM, processor etc. at which point he then compared them to the Palms on offer at the time. For a newbie to PDAs this would be a good argument as most of us are used to buying PCs dependant on the specs included- RAM, hard disk and processor to name but a few.
The people selling these things rarely have real world experience of using them and thus the tendancy to follow what is written on the box. I can understand this as to this day PDAs are not common place and I am sure I would be the same if I had to sell something like an Iron.
"Yeah, it's got steam, spray and a nice go-faster blue stripe down the side...um.... You can also plug it into the wall and iron clothes with it and I would suggest you go for this one as it's more expensive and I get more comission compared to selling you a cheaper one which does exactly the same thing..."
I use the Palm and Epoc OS's because, to me, they have proved more reliable and on the whole 'quicker' than any Pocket PC machine- they are also more intuitive to use and do not have the clunky feel of the Microsoft OS. Add to that the number of very good free programs available and there is only one choice for me.
I read that 90% of PDA users never install a third party program so why on earth would they need a 400Mhz processor and 64MB of RAM- I also remember a sales guy telling a lady to buy a Compaq Ipaq at over $400.00 when she had asked about a Clie SL10. She said that all she wanted to do was carry her agenda, contacts and emails which were in Outlook on her PC with her. The guy told her that the Compaq was the only choice because it was using a Microsoft OS and that the Palms were not good at this function. I managed to have a quick word with her when she was thinking about it and explained that the Palm could do what she wanted to do and that she would save over $300 by going for one. She took my advice (and my Clie Planet business card:)) and even emailed me a week later to say how much she loved her new toy and that it did everything she wanted. She also said that she justified spending $300 on clothes because of the money she had saved:)
PDAs like the Zire and SL10 are the best thing to arrive in a long time and will really help to grow this market- even the packaging of the Zire is perfect for hanging up in a supermarket to tempt an impulse buy. I read lots of comments complaining that this machine was a step backwards with it's lowly specs but these were usually made by the people who say things on forums like "you've got a PPC so you are a fool..." etc. etc.
So what is the point of this article- purely to say that if you are considering your first PDA it's more than likely best not to listen to anyone. A sales guy will have comission on his mind, a Palm user will say but Palm and vice versa. Your'e best bet is to have a look at what's on offer, try as many as possible and make your own choice for whatever reason you want.
If you think that you are unable to make a choice without help then read up on PDAs a bit more- if you don't know enough to decide which one to choose you will probably have great problems using one for the first few weeks.
Good luck in your choice...
Back up for a minute! (08/05/03)
As you may have read on Clie Planet the other day I recently suffered a massive system failure on my new Compaq laptop (5 days old to be precise). After over 5 years of never needing to do a 'full' system restore on any PC the day finally arrived and it filled me with a major sense of doom!
Thirty minutes of technical support calls did not help and whilst they were very helpful I could feel the positive vibes from the guy on the other end of the phone ebbing away as we spoke.
No doubt many of us religiously back up our PDAs in case a hard reset is required and indeed this has happened to me on a few occasions (one of the trials of testing loads of Beta software for the web site). It usually takes no more than fifteen minutes to be back to where I was and it's a reassuring feeling to know that the data is held on my Memory Stick, PC Hard Drive and a CDRW all of which are fully backed up once a week.
It never occured to me that one day my main PC would fail and have to be restored to the super fast and clean state in which first I received it- fortuately for me I had only just purchased it.
Anyway the guy on the other end told me the bad news and I just sat there in my study feeling like my cat had just died... A realisation hit me that I had no idea what to do next. I knew how to use the restore CDs as I had just done this to my old laptop to sell it and I also had a few CDRW's with various bits of information on them such as the past year's email archive, settings files, favourites and the Clie Planet directory (these were only made to transfer to the new laptop).
Let's take a time check- I logged on at 6:15pm and found the problem on the laptop- it was now 7:20pm. By the time I had completed the system restore and located the CD's I needed it was 8:35pm.
40 minutes later I had restored my email archive, favourites, Office 2000, WS_FTP and my web design softwares. The Clie Planet directory took another 15 minutes to go through. All I had lost was my personalisation of Windows such as desktop, icons etc. but that can wait for another day and the last 5 days worth of emails. At that point I could update Clie Planet for that day- I do get awfully concerned when I miss a day as stupid as that sounds:)
All in all it took me 3 hours 15 minutes to complete the restore and this does not include various bits of software still to go such as Paint Shop Pro etc. My main cause for concern was the loss of the recent emails and it dawned on me that some data MUST be backed up above all others- favourites, applications and games can all be retrieved from the original CDs but emails and settings must be routinely backed up at least once a week. Maybe I am in a different position to you in that I have to keep the web site regularly updated and my email archive is incredibly important in doing this but here's my tips to ensure you don't go through the same agonies as me:-
DONT'S
Do not install loads and loads of unneccesary software on your PC such as games and applications which you will rarely use- keep your machine as clean as possible.
If you use an 'always on' Internet connection such as Broadband and a USB modem which requires you to dial up make sure you close your connection before putting your desktop or laptop on standby. The very first question the technical support guy asked me was "Do you use Broadband?" followed by "Have you got a USB modem" followed by "Do you disconnect it before you put the laptop in standby?" He refused to be drawn further but it's interesting that he jumped straight to those points.
Going into standby all of the time can cause problems over a long period of time. If you can try to fully turn off your PC once every 2 days.
Make sure you have automatice Windows XP (if you are using it) updates turned on- I know that many people dislike this idea but it works.
DO'S
Keep backups of data in the following order (on a CDRW if possible):-
1/ Emails and settings (all non-retievable from anywhere else information) 2/ URLs for downloadable software that you use often such as FTP clients etc. 3/ Misc files such as word documents, files etc.
Keep the CDs from the above with your most used applications (including your System restore CDs) in one place such as a CD carrier. This will enable you to quickly go through what you need in order and thus cut your restore time in half.
This may sound over the top but if you do this when it happens to you it will be a blessing. Think about how often you keep your PDA fully updated compared to your PC...
Broadbanned (05/05/03)
I was wondering around my local record shop a couple of weeks ago and a disturbing thought hit my conscience. There I was considering the purchase of a CD costing a whopping £17.99 and holding only 10 tracks and I thought to myself "If I had Broadband I could just download it. That alone would pay for the first months subscription."
No doubt some of you are disappointed by this thought and strangely so was I. Having looked at the likes of Kazaa, Blubster etc. I have never really spent much time downloading songs and videos (mainly due to a 56k connection) and if anything when I did it would be to listen to one song which quite often would result in the purchase of a CD by the artist. Artists I discovered this way were JJ72, Beth Gibbons and Eva Cassidy to name but a few.
The main problem for the record industry is that with the evolution of telecommunications and the popularity of products such as Broadband and ISDN (to a lesser extent) individuals can now leave their PC's on for 30 minutes and download 20 songs with little or no effort.
The whole issue was brought home to me when someone at work arrived one morning with Radiohead's new album which is not even scheduled for release for 2 months! Out of interest they are back to their OK Computer and The Bends form which is good news for people with good musical taste. If I ask any friends who like Radiohead about the new album the general response is "It's good isn't it. Had it for a few weeks now."
Apple are at least trying to do something about this with their new iTunes Music Store which has already proved massively popular with over 200,000 tracks downloaded on the first day alone. It costs 99 cents per song and this is a good rate compared to other paid for music download services which currently are priced in a way which will send people flooding to the free services. The main problem for companies such as Apple is that 99 cents is still 99 cents more expensive per track than the peer to peer file sharing services such as Kazaa. Add to this the fact that a recent court ruling made file sharing legal and it's uncertain where this will end.
It's easy to have sympathy for the record industry and the artists who make the music that is stolen every day by millions of people but remember this is a record industry who has been charging WAY over the odds for CD's, cassette's and vinyl for many, many years. The music industry is a bit like football (soccer if you are in the US) in Britain and Baseball in America- the stars get paid huge sums for doing their jobs and ultimately we pay to watch them by buying tickets etc. Robbie Williams was recently paid over £60,000,000 for a 5 album contract and this is a man who has not broken the US yet- it's unlikely he ever will though as he is not clean cut enough for that market and most of his music includes lyrics detailing how successful he is. Americans must be thinking "what an arrogant pr*ck. Anyone got a Britney Spears album I can listen to?" I won't even get on to the Maria Carey story…
So, to cut a long story short I now have broadband and I am sitting in my garden writing this article listening to a selection of tracks downloaded from the internet. Do I feel bad? Very slightly- I tend to download tracks I would not normally buy and I have never downloaded a whole album (yet). I guess I'm a bit of a hypocrite because I cannot stand warez and the fact that it rips off the developers but I guess my morals fall through the floor when it comes to getting something for free from the likes of EMI and RCA compared to a one man developer working all hours of the day to make a living.
Do you have an opinion on this? You know where I am- editor@pdathoughts.co.uk
Customer Support (Is support the wrong word?) (04/05/03)
If you look around the various forums and chat rooms on the web you will find countless comments and posts about poor customer support with very few people raving about the support they receive. I am sure most of us think that companies undervalue the need for product support and it appears to become less important the bigger the company is.
I am sure I don't need to tell you of Sony's reputation when it comes to technical support (particularly regarding their Clie range)- I receive about 5 emails a day asking for help with a Clie related problem and many of the people emailing have already contacted Sony about the problem with little success. Here are a couple of examples:-
"My Clie won't turn on when I press the power button- Sony advised me to return it to them."
The problem was that the hold button was in the lock position- that's all. To be fair we at Clie Planet did advise a previous requester to do a full reset before we stumbled on the very simple resolution.
"My screen no longer reacts properly to the stylus."
Amazingly he had been advised that the screen probably needed replacing when all he needed to do was use the Digitizer function in Palm Preferences to reset it.
Sony are an unusual company in that they command customer loyalty through the quality of their products and the innovation of design they employ in most of what they do from MP3 players through to the Playstation range. To be fair to them I personally have never had any Sony product fail and I have owned a few including 4 Clies, stereo systems, Playstations etc. I wonder if they realise this and hence the reason for the sometimes poor tech. support or is it just that they sell too much to effectively deal with all of their customers?
One major aspect of customer support, particularly when dealing with computer based products, would be a top rate web site which housed as many customer problems as possible. I notice that companies like Sony do not include forums for customers to discuss their issues- although this may give publicity to complaints at least users would be able to help each other when a problem arises. A better solution would be to change the design of their current sites- I recently had a couple of problems with a Bluetooth memory stick and Clie Mail and although the answer to one of the problems was on a Sony site a Clie Planet visitor had to point me in the right direction.
For companies who do not have products that create a 'fan base' customer support is even more important. Take the company who hosts Clie Planet- FastHosts have proved very reliable and the value for money they offer compared to other hosts is very good (especially when it comes to bandwidth which was a big problem for Clie Planet in the early days). The main reason I recommend them is because they offer some of the best telephone support I have ever experienced. I have had a few small problems with the service (mainly down to my equipment) and each time I have called them they have been polite, knowledgeable and taken a great deal of time to rectify any issues I have. It's unusual to end a call with a company and think "what a nice bloke".
I would be interested to hear of experiences you have had with companies and their customer support departments, especially good ones. It's a shame that we don't often shout about good service and are all very quick to slam companies who have problems. Let's give some publicity to the good guys out there- editor@pdathoughts.com
I didn't have time for a full article so I thought I would add one of the best jokes I have heard in a long time...
A woman was observed speeding by a traffic officer and was pulled over to the side of the road.
Woman: Is there a problem, Officer?
Officer: Ma'am, you were speeding.
Woman: Oh, I see.
Officer: Can I see your license please?
Woman: I'd give it to you but I don't have one.
Officer: Don't have one?
Woman: Lost it 4 times for drunk driving.
Officer: I see... can I see your vehicle registration papers please.
Woman: I can't do that.
Officer: Why not?
Woman: I stole this car.
Officer: Stole it?
Woman: Yes, and I killed the owner.
Officer: You what?
Woman: He's in the trunk if you want to see.
The Officer looks at the woman and slowly backs away to his car and calls for back up.
Within minutes 5 police cars circle the car. A senior officer slowly approaches the car, clasping his half drawn gun.
Officer 2: Ma'am, could you step out of your vehicle please!
The woman steps out of her vehicle.
Woman: Is there a problem sir?
Officer 2: One of my officers told me that you have stolen this car and murdered the owner.
Woman: Murdered the owner?
Officer 2: Yes, could you open the trunk of your car please.
The woman opens the trunk, revealing nothing but an empty trunk.
Officer 2: Is this your car, ma'am?
Woman: Yes, here are the registration papers.
The officer is quite stunned.
Officer 2: One of my officers claims that you do not have a driving license.
The woman digs into her handbag and pulls out a clutch purse and hands it to the officer. The officer snaps opens the clutch purse and examines the license. He looks quite puzzled.
Officer 2: Thank you ma'am, one of my officers told me you didn't have a license, that you stole this car, and that you murdered the owner.
Woman: I bet the lying git told you I was speeding, too...
The Perfect PDA (01/05/03)
I recently held a competition on Clie Planet asking people to design their 'Perfect Clie' and I was surprised to receive a hard disk worth of entries. I was even more surprised at the number of entries which were built around the current PDA designs with just a few small innovations being added.
I'm typing this article on what I consider to be the best designed PDA to date- the Psion 5mx. Why is this PDA almost perfect? It's for the simplest of reasons-
Landscape!
Take a look at the new Sharp Zaurus SL-C700 which makes the best of Sony's Clie and PSion's PDA designs from the past few years.
It is a landscape model but with a twist and flip screen almost identical to the ones found on the NR,NX and NZ series Clies. It's not a machine I would buy due to the software implementation which by all accounts is not good but that's not the point of mentioning it- from a hardware point of view it is incredibly practicle.
Many of us have grown accustomed to the Palm type design of PDA (especially in the US) but some of us still use Psions alongside their Palms as they are a more practical alternative to a Palm with an attached keyboard. The problem for Psion was bad (or non-existant) markting in the US which ultimately killed them. I'm convinced there would be 3 main players in the PDA market today had they invested in the US market. Subconsiously I am sure I tolerate the portrait Palm/Pocket PC design rather than actually like it- the fact is that input options like Graffiti (ar any input with a stylus) are still markedly slower than a good keyboard for the majority of users. There's another reason why landscape works better in everyday use. Take a look at the screenshots below:-
As you can see the Psion agenda screen works much better for the display of diary information than the common Clie display (even though Agendus does a very good job trying to overcome this). Here's another example:-
Whan you are typing it's so much easier to see a 'page' worth of information on a landscape screen. Don't be fooled by the images above (the WordSmith one has 'tiny' text). We have been brought up with reading approx. 14 words accross on a screen or a piece of paper and for some reason it really does not work for me when I can only read 8 or 9 words maximum.
Of course there are applications where portrait works best- when I think of one I will let you know:) If you are reading this and thinking I am wrong then read on...
I am not advocating doing away with portrait PDAs- I want a choice dependant on what I am doing.
Here's my ideal PDA (at the moment):-
- Sony Clie NX height and width dimensions
- Palm OS 5.2.1.3.2.5.6 (whatever the latest one is) or Epoc- both in one machine would be nice.
- A twist and flip screen, MP3, TV Tuner, Camera etc.
- A choice of landscape or portrait screen orientation in text based apps
- A landscape keyboard (Sony would do well to buy Psion's design)
My NX is a fantastic PDA but I just don't understand the logic of a PDA with so many features that includes a tiny keyboard that is barely useable when a simple (almost) design tweak would increase it's useability ten-fold.
A World Without Technology? (30/04/03)
I was talking to a friend I used to work with the other day and we tripped onto the subject of how little technology we used back in the late 80's.
We worked for a bank and had to deal with claims for lost and stolen travellers cheques- it's almost surreal to think that we filed claims from customers in card folders, alphabetically in cupboards and the current work was kept on our desks in 'piles'.
There was an internal computer system but it was very basic and was just designed to look up travellers cheque numbers- the vast majority of work was done either with a pen (whatever that is:)) and over the phone. It seems bizarre that we often used a computer screen which was shared by a whole team of 20 people and by which you could only gain access if a supervisor wa stood next to you overlooking your actions.
The strangest part of our discussion was the realisation that we were actually rather efficient and that the number of errors were minimal. Of course if it were statiscally analised properly we would no doubt have done less than we do today but there seems to be a worrying trend in today's workplace- laziness. I used to work with people who were 18 years old (indeed I was as well) but the majority had good work ethics and the amount of time spent not working was a few minutes at most per day.
This contrasts markedly with how people work today. Here's an example:-
Do a few minutes work
Check personal emails (on work PC)
Do some more work
Get coffee
Do some more work
Look at eBay, Amazon, Clie Planet:) etc.
Do some more work
And so it goes on.....
Don't get me wrong here- I love technology as much as the next man and I believe the Internet to be one of the most improtant inventions of the past 50 years but it strikes me that most of us (as people) would be more efficient without it- yes email, instant messaging and web sites are incredibly quick ways to access information and make contact with other people and add to this the networks, servers and wireless communications and it's obvious that businesses today would fall apart very quickly without them.
It's not us who are more efficient- it's the technology we use that gives the illusion of efficiency. Maybe this sounds a bit over the top but it would seem that the technology we use is changing us as people- I work with people who have real problems constructing sentences and using punctuation correctly. If I see another email with no capital letters at all I will scream!
i cant understand why people dont want to use basic english when i and others write proper like.
The above sentence is an example of the type of email I see every day (are you reading this- Jude Dillon!). I won't even get onto the subject of the 'text message society'- the word is 'great' not 'gr8' (again, blame Jude)- arghhhhhhhhhh!!!
Maybe I am a bit touchy when it comes to the English language because it's probably the only subject I loved at school. On a side note I do laugh at the ignorance of some British people who continually deride the Americans for the way they use our language- it may be a shock to you to understand that a lot of the words that are spelt differently in the US were invented by them. Still no excuse for spellings like 'color' and one I see more and more- 'addicting' (always thought this was 'addictive'?)
Perhaps I am wrong when I say we are changing as people because of technology and I'm sure I am sounding a lot older than my 32 years but there are times when I would just love to spend 6 months in a tech. free environment (I would need to be forced into it as I could not give up my Clie and laptop voluntarily) and get used to using a pen and doing things manually again- I am sure it would be a liberating experience:)
Games on a Palm- why? (30/04/03)
My guess is that there are probably more games available for Palms than any other type of program- up until recently I got quite excited (sad I know) when a good looking new game was released for my beloved Clie.
In my experience less than 1 in 30 Palm OS games has anything to make it worth the time downloading (even with Broadband!)
The 3% of worthwhile games which spring to mind include Bejeweled, Billiards and Cool Curling and no doubt this is down to the fact that they are most suited to stylus play on a small screen. I have lost count of the number of times I have downloaded a 'ground breaking' new game and then felt dissapointed after a few minutes of dealing with an almost impossible control system or an RPG clone which has had the guts ripped out of it to fit on a Palm PDA.
Recently I received a GameBoy Advance SP as a bit of a childish present and was shocked to see games like Doom and Colin Mcrae Rally 2 play just like their PC siblings in the palm of my hand.
I'm not sure if this is down to hardware or Palm OS developers not having the resource or inclination to get their teeth into challenging games but the difference is enormous. Add to this the fact that many GBA games are now under $15 makes the choice easier to make.
As I said some Palm games are classics such as Bejeweled but for true handheld gaming a Palm just doesn't float my boat. I have tried a few Pocket PC games as well and had similar feelings- they look good but they play poorly.
I guess a comparison could be drawn with PC and console (PS2) games- personally I like the 'throw in a disk and play' feeling of a Playstation compared to the 'have the correct drivers, set up the controllers and wait for a crash' PC feeling.
Maybe I am being unfair as PDAs are not designed for gaming BUT I'm convinced someone out there can buck the trend one day and give us substance over style (surely OS5 machines can handle Doom?)