Friday 31 August 2007

Sneak Peak at the HTC Shift

As I'm writing here now – I'm sitting with a HTC Shift prototype. No not the final – but a late prototype. I had a chance to play with it for a while.

My initial impressions are that it is a really solid device. Much better than I anticipated. The screen tilt stuff works well and you can position the screen as you like. The screen supports is really only 800 x 480 but supports 1024 x 600 resolution – but at 1024x600 it can seem a bit "muddy to look at"

The current model only got a "limited" Windows Mobile 6 built in. No Mobile Office in it. Bit of a shame. But it does support e-mail. I don't know if you can install custom applications like Skype on it. But it is connected to the "pc" part so it will act as a modem in Vista for your Mobile Data Connection. But it does have parts of the HCT Touch (the phone) front screen interface with calendar, clock and weather + direct access to mail. It did not seem to enable the Vista Windows Mobile Sync interface to sync the Windows Mobile part. But one can hope that changes for the final version – so you don't have to double sync your outlook to get calendar and mail in to the Windows Mobile part.

Unfortunately Windows Mobile do only support 640 x 480 – so when in Windows Mobile mode the screen is "enlarged to fill the 600 pixel screen height – but leaves 16:9 equal empty bars at either side.

The mouse works well and the device seems quite snappy. It claims a Vista Performance index of 2.0 which is quite reasonable for such a small pc. But it does have a camera on the front for Skype J and other Web Chat systems. Nice.

But the keyboard is very very small. You can't touch type on it – but tactile feed is great and I do think you can get away with writing on it at a reasonable speed when you get used to it – but 2 finger typing seems best J But a lot better than my Sony UX-90s.

The Pen is a typical HTC "fold out" pen. Not the best really. And I hate not having an active touch screen like on my ThinkPad X60. But newest "rumour" is it will support multi touch for a lot of things. J Fx. Place 2 fingers on screen and move fingers closer together to zoom in – and move them apart to zoom out. Nice touch (no pun intended)

HTC Shift shipping and price

Price point will be the same as the HTC Advantage x7500. So in UAE Dirham – about 5.000. (US$1.362) Shipping is said to start no later than 4 weeks after Gitex. Nice and small christmas gift then :-) More info from Gitex during 8-12 of September. :-)

Will I get one.. Yes I ordered one FIRST in LINE... J It will replace my Sony UX-90 I guess.

more HTC Stuff:
HTC Shift to Launch at Gitex
HTC Advantage X7500 WM6 Official ROM Review

Over and out for today.

Thursday 30 August 2007

HTC Athena /Advantage / HTC X7500 WM6 Review

HTC X7500 Windows Mobile 6 (WM6) First Impressions

As you might have read, I just got the upgrade to the HTC Athena / HTC X7500 to Windows Mobile 6. It is an official ROM – named "shipping". The full file name of the ROM is RUU_Athena_HTC_WWE_2.21.405.

So I guess if you keep searching on Google for RUU_Athena_HTC_WWE – you might find it popping up somewhere very very soon. But I can't share this ROM with you L since I want to maintain my great relationship with my HTC contacts. So don't even bother to ask J

Release date? My guesstimate is end of this week or beginning of next. The file is build time stamped the 21. August J so I guess HTC is just waiting for final go before official release.

The WM6 Version Numbers

OS Version : CE OS 5.2.1238 Build 17745.0.2.3
Radio – 1.50
ROM Version : 2.21.405.2
ROM Date : 07/20/07

Initial Impression of WM6 for HTC Advantage X7500

Well the news and improvements are small and but some of my issues with the X7500/Athena has been resolved, but the most annoying "feature" is still the same. Namely not TRUE OS supported VGA support despite screen being 640 x 480. Now if you are only surfing on Internet it does not matter at all. But if you want to use the X7500 as a desktop "replacement" from time to time – it is really annoying that you cannot utilize the high screen resolution. I had really hoped that with WM6 native support for 640x480 that this would have been resolved. L

Open Mobile Excel and you only got 5 x 8 Rows to work in and all menu texts are oversized for a 5" screen. My Nokia E90 – has a slightly larger resolution (800x352) but manages to present me with 14 x13 rows of data and that is still readable.

Open Word – and your typing is great if you are near sighted. But everything again is "oversized" and not really great to work on.

Mail – is also oversized and not using the great real estate the screen offers.

What a shame – It actually turns a potential business tool in to a toy, which for me is a total deal breaker and therefore my X7500 goes up for sale, and I'll stick to my Nokia E90 for the time being. (and get the HTC Shift when that comes out..)

Another thing missing from my ROM is the VoIP part of WM6. HTC has some issues including it – so I hope another upgrade is on the way.

Another thing that would have been nice is the "HTC Touch" front screen, to which I have grown rather fond. But that is not included in this ROM. So only the TyTN II / Kaiser will get that it seems. (Well officially anyway)

Last thing that does not really bother me – but is "the talk of forums" is the powerbar only moves in 10% steps – and with the new firmware this has not changed. Still 0-10-20-30-40-50-60-70-80-90-100%... Nothing in between.

Last bug just found.. I got 3 SMS's while writing this. Read them –and noticed after a while that I still had one "Unread" SMS. But none unread in my Inbox. I deleted all SMS's – but still shows 1 unread.:-)

But on to the good things:

  • The Touch Screen works a lot better. Much better finger control and more consistent "pressure sensitivity". Before when pressing on screen – the device would ignore finger presses if you was not careful. This issue has been resolved.
  • Phone seems to react quite a lot quicker.
  • Windows Update is working now – but did not find any updates J
  • Wi-Fi seems to work a lot better than before. When streaming from ORB before i could never get "re-buffer" free streams at more than 160 kbps. Now I can do 320 kbps without a hitch. Coverage test will follow later.

This was my Initial Impressions – out with the X7500 for now... And let's see if someone can make a High Res WM6 device where all the applications are using the big screen as they should. (Remember Windows 2.11?...)

I really look forward to Gitex J - greeting from Dubai.

Wednesday 29 August 2007

Official WM6 for HTC X7500

WM6 for HTC Athena / X7500

Just got it on a memory card J and are upgrading as we speak.

Full version name is RUU_Athena_HTC_WWE_2.21.405.2_1.50.00.00_Ship

Upgrade complete – now customizing J So far no problems.


The GPS for Dubai?

I don't know if you know Dubai. A now very big city, growing day by day. It is a MAJOR hassle for any GPS map producer since road change on a daily basis.

But TomTom is showing the way forward with the new TomTom MapShare, where users can amend their own maps. Quite a nice idea. And as the name implies – you can share your map updates with other people.


Let's just hope that TomTom then decides to come out with base Dubai maps. TomTom just launched the MapShare for their TomTom 520 and TomTom 720 GPS units.

Let's cross our fingers and hope! J

Click here to learn more

Wednesday 22 August 2007

12 new phones from i-Mate

The Very Quiet i-Mate company has confirmed they will be launching 12 new Windows mobile phones soon in 3 different product ranges.

After the break-up with HTC in November, i-Mate and owner Jim Morrison has been very quiet, and i-Mate posted its first loss since operations started in 2001.

But now, just before Gitex the Middle East IT Exhibition opens, i-Mate starts talking.

All the phones will feature Windows Mobile software, but of course no longer manufactured by HTC – but from a range of manufactures. So the new phone ranges will be:


I-Mate JAMA
The low end versions with a price point of about US$ 350 – small and lightweight. Two new models will hit the market within the next 6 months.

I-Mate Urban
The Mid-Range I-Mate Urban range will be introduced within the next couple of months. Expect about 4 different models priced at about $550.

I-Mate Ultimate

The Ultimate Range of phones – already well know in the market. 6 different phones with almost same specs – only screen, format and keyboards are different on each model. High end phones with a price tag of about $950.

It is confirmed that the Ultimate 6150, Ultimate 8150 and the Urban 201 will be on show at Gitex. More information as it flows in. I will of course participate in Gitex and give you updated information plus hopefully great pictures.

All above is from the mouth of Jack Craine – i-Mates new global sales director. J

Welcome to a turbulent market Jack!





VPN for Symbian – astounding figures!

I know there is a need for S60v3 and Symbian VPN. I just did at statistics run on my search engine referrals.

35% of you come here to find out about some kind of VPN solution for Symbian devices – and we are not talking small figures.

Now which supplier will come out with a solution to give the users Symbian Based VPN?

Nokia WAKE UP!

anthavpn WAKE UP! Get Movian VPN out in a E90 supported Configuration!

Stop sleeping there is a gigantic need for VPN for Symbian Devices!

Tuesday 21 August 2007

Skype still working in Dubai

Skype got the servers up and running again. And much to my joy I can say that Skype is still working without a hitch on my DU internet line. Skype In / Skype out works perfectly. So I have been bold and once again enabled my SMC and Netgear Wi-Fi Skype phones, updated the firmware on both, and are now "contactable" on my Skype in numbers wherever I got a Wi-Fi signal.

I would love to hear if Etisalat users have access to Skype without VPN too. Leave a comment please!

I'm still waiting for a resultion to the problem between my Netgear 854T and the SMC Phone. Updates will follow.

Logitech Harmony 890 and Logitech Harmony 880

Fancy exchanging all of your remotes with just one unit? Forget about separate remotes for TV, Radio, iPod, DVD player and most of your other gadgets?

To that I can only say... I do...

So I have been through a range of Universal Remotes, from Kameleon to high end Marantz and Philips Pronto expensive programmable remotes.

The first thing that hit me was all the touch screen based remotes was they are actually unusable for me. I like to be able to find buttons by feeling and not by looking at a screen. So any remote without real buttons turned out to be a no go. You can survive with a couple of buttons like volume or change program – but real buttons beats them all. So out went the Kameleon, Marantz and Philips Pronto, despite the heavy price tag.

Programming them was a hell to btw. You have to do so much manual labour to get them to work as an integrated solution. Not really what I fancy spending my time. I gave the Philips Pronto a last chance when they came out with the RF based version where you via radio waves can send remote control messages to other "remote" locations via Radio waves – so I could control my skylight in my bathroom from my Remote. But once again I quickly found that programming the Pronto was more of a headache, than I liked. So it went on the growing "slightly used gadget shelf" not to be ever seen by daylight again.

The Logitech Harmony 880

Then my world changed. I got a Logitech Harmony 885 (equal to the Harmony 880 in the US). The setup was a "reasonable" bliss. Using the Harmony Manager for the pc you setup the remote by telling the software which devices you have. Then the Logitech software downloads the "Remote" codes from their gigantic database of devices. On top of that – Logitech then analyses your setup and proposes "ideal" setups for you, asking you which "main" devices is used for sound and display and how the Logitech should change between the input sources.

So in about 30 minutes you have your entire home control setup. And you can just press "Watch Television" and the Harmony 880 turns on the TV and your surround sound system, and tunes both to the right settings. Press "Play a PS/2 game" and the Harmony 880 switches input on your surround system to the PS/2 and changes TV to PS/2 – and turns on the PS/2 Slimline. (Old PS/2s do not have Infrared receiver without extra hardware) Great show! J

I won't dig into technical details about the specifications etc. since so many other sites deals with that. All I can say is user experience is very good. The Software could use some work to make it faster. Sometimes it is a hog and takes forever to go from screen to screen.

The Bad stuff about Harmony 880 and the Harmony 890.

Well there is no such thing as a free ride. The Logitech Harmony 880 and 890 have some issues that could be better. As I said the PC software for configuring the device is pretty shabby and slow to say the least. Takes a damn lot of resources too. It is good though that your configuration is stored online at Logitech's database, so if you lose your remote, you just login and the configuration is re-downloaded into your remote. But that gives you another problem. Logitech's system only allows you to own one remote.... That being – if you have more than one remote you need different logins at the Logitech "Database". Crap....

I have now bought the 890 which is an 880 with additional RF transmitter / receiver, so I once again can control my skylight in the bathroom remotely. Owning 2 remotes as said was not a breeze with Logitech's software.

But an even worse problem is the build quality of the devices. They could do with some slightly better quality hardware. I could not understand why charging the device in the cradle on both devices was "unreliable" to say the least – and the remote very often "rebooted" – when the remote was moved. I thought I might have bashed them – but both?

So I investigated a bit. And it turns out that after a while the battery compartment seems to lose grips of the battery – leaving the battery to sail a bit around in the compartment. Enough so that the battery sometimes lost contact with the electrical terminals in the remote. That leads to a "remote" reboot when the battery touches the terminals once again.

How to fix the Harmony 880 and Harmony 890

But then I made a quick fix. J I folded some newspaper tight and shoved in between the plastic bezels behind the battery, giving it more "push" force towards the battery terminals on the remote. And since then I have not had a single "reboot" in either remotes. A quick and cheap fix. Just make certain you have read the newspaper you shove in J But again – Gives us a bit better quality please Logitech!

Saturday 18 August 2007

Skype is back and working and Skype works in Dubai

Now all Skype problems seems to have gone again.

Nice J and I can still confirm that Skype works without a hitch in Dubai without VPN or other tricks. At least on my different DU lines. (version 3.5.0.202).

I have not tried on Etisalat yet.




Friday 17 August 2007

Weird problem between Netgear 854T and SMC WSKP100

When Skype worked a couple of days ago, I tried using my Wi-Fi SMC WSKP100 Skype phone for my Skype calls.

But every time after 12-15 minutes of Skype talking the Netgear 854T reboots and throws all connected clients of.

I tried 5-6 times – and it happens every time.

Any of you got any solutions? I'll report it to Netgear today J since it should not be possible to bring the Access Point down from ANY client.

Update 17th. August - Reported the bug to Netgear - lets see how long time it takes for them to look into the issue.


Thursday 16 August 2007

Now Skype works – now it does not

Yesterday I was so happy that Skype worked in Dubai... But today Skype got a problem with their servers – not allowing any logins.

You can follow progress on Skype Heartbeat – but today it is not only in Dubai it does not work.

I guess yesterdays Internal Skype software update took the systems down. They say 12-24 hours before they are up and running again (Posted on skype heartbeat at 14:02 GMT) L

I hope skype works again for ALL including the Dubai residents tomorrow.





Wednesday 15 August 2007

Skype in Dubai – working today

As some of you might have noticed, my residence is in Dubai. A country where the government has an active protection policy towards Internet usage. That means that a lot of things are blocked, so you can't access them.

There are two telecoms companies here. Etisalat and DU. Both are partly owned by the government of Dubai. And each has different "content" blocks in place, protecting people from themselves. J

But that bad thing is – that both are blocking access to use Internet Phones now. Before only Etisalat was blocking access, but now both block by active packet inspection. That unfortunately means no access to VoIP without VPN (Virtual Private Network).

The protection is done to protect their phone revenues, since 70% of the population here are expats. So International phoning is a big revenue generator for them. (Some say as much as 80% of their income is from International Phone charges)

But the past couple of days, it actually seems like Skype 3.5.0.202 can get through perfectly without any problems. (On the DU network anyway)

One can only hope they are coming to their senses and are opening up for VoIP use. Unfortunately SIP is still blocked by them L



HTC SHIFT launch at Gitex in Dubai

The much awaited HTC Shift is rumoured to launch at the Gitex Computer Exhibition in Dubai that takes place from 8th to 12th of September 2007. I have heard from an inside source that the entire HTC Staff will have HTC Shifts to demo, and work with from Gitex and onwards (read – HAVE to work with! and they have to ditch their old notebooks for this one). Chippy confirmed Gitex as the launch date as well on the UMPC Portal

The HTC Shift is a portable Vista based UMPC with a built in Windows Mobile Computer. So it is a combination device, giving you the benefits of having a "Real" Computer when you need it and a Windows Mobile device for the quick and dirty stuff.

Battery life is said to be about 3 hours running Vista and 5 days of battery life if you only use the Windows Mobile part.

It is going to be interesting to see how HTC have made the integration between the two devices. It would be a killer if both "machines" have access to the same file system, so you don't need to copy/paste between them.

Well the Shift is on my wish list for Ramadan or Christmas J anyway. Gitex btw. got a big "Gitex Shopping Section" where you usually can buy the latest gadgets - so one can hope it will be available there.



Tuesday 7 August 2007

Nokia S60 VPN gone missing

Guys – how hard can it be to put VPN on a Symbian Phone

I do really love my new Nokia E90. Great screens – easy to use. My Roadsync is up and running with my exchange private certificates (see previous article). But the biggest missing object from my phone is ability to use VPN.

I'm constantly on non-encrypted Access Points everywhere. I don't check anything with passwords, unless I can get through a VPN connection on my computer.

But checking the built in Nokia E90 Communications tutorial – it states:

"For VPN usage..." (go through tutorial..) Contact your systems administrator." - Nokia – are you taking the piss?

But Nokia forgot to inform the world's system administrators on how to provide VPN access to a Nokia Phone. Hacks exists on the Internet on how to use "older" E series Nokia Phones Mobility VPN package, and install it on the E90. But that requires mechanical software skills most people do not have. You have to do a LOT of work to get your VPN up and running, including getting special security certification to "encrypt" the settings you send to the phone. And Nokia has strategically removed the "download" options around the world for the "old" VPN software, leaving even hard ball techy guys in need of VPN with only one solution – find a "pirate" copy.

MovianVPN used to be a solution. But Certicom does not offer that anymore. You can still buy the Movian VPN for S60 from anthavpn but despite 3 attempts to contact them about E90 compatibility I have so far to succeed. Not a single answer so we must assume they have gone bust or are to busy selling anthavpn solution for Microsoft Mobiles. And that is despite Microsoft Mobiles got VPN built in out of the box.

So dear dear Nokia, please wake up and make a good VPN client available for the S60v3 series of phones. I would not mind to pay – as long as it can connect to standard VPN boxes out there like Cisco or my Microsoft Server based VPN – or even OpenVPN. I just need something so I know my browsing is secure and no one can sniff my passwords – and when I am in "Protected" areas, where VoIP is blocked by network operators –that I can tunnel home and establish my phone connection anyway.

My only alternative is changing to the HTC Kaiser (TyTN II) when it comes out and once again be able to surf and call with piece of mind – which pretty much have the same specs as the E90. So Dear Reader – write your Nokia representative J and complain! I did!

Kaz911


Saturday 4 August 2007

I got a Nokia E90 and I like it

The Nokia E90 buglist and missing features

Last update: August 15th. 2007

I just got the Nokia E90. It comes in Communicator package, but runs Symbian S60 and not the S80 the other communicators use. So basically a N95 with better and bigger hardware. I'm a http://www.my-symbian.com/ user J and have been for a long time. And the My-Symbian forum got a lot of Info on Symbian based phones, including the E90.

So I have been cruising the forum to check for known bugs and other stuff. And while i like the forum, the "Official Bug Thread" is getting crowded – so I though... What about a compiled list of issues with the E90. The Bug Quick Reference guide...

So let's try.. I have split it into hardware and software – most bug's courtesy of the S60 E90 forum users on http://www.my-symbian.com/. The bugs are only reported in the list if confirmed multiple times or I have seen them myself.

Nokia E90 Hardware

  • Internal keyboard might touch the inner screen, leaving "marks" on the screen. Mostly finger grease is transferred but potentially will scratch phone. There are reports of a slightly newer model with better spacing.
  • The bottom corner "protectors" are not the same height, making the phone a bit wobbly when used on a flat surface
  • It is not possible to charge the Phone via the USB connector L

Nokia E90 Software/Firmware fixable


  • GPS is very slow to acquire satellite fix. As slow as on Nokia N95. New N95 firmware got A-GPS (Assisted GPS, where you download the Satellites position map/almanac via the internet, and don't have to wait for the phone to "download" the data from the slow GPS data stream.) Some N95 users are reporting satellite fix within 15-45 seconds. On my E90 it takes 4-10 minutes in clear sky.
  • Navigation Application License looses activation when flashing firmware. This is a big problem since Nokia only allow 2 activations. If you need more than 2 activations it takes forever with Nokia Support. (Took me 4 weeks..)
  • Battery Meter – shows from one to seven bars of power. Sometimes the Battery meter seem to get stuck –and a "turn off/turn on" will set the Battery meter significantly different than before the reboot.
  • 3G network failure when using Data Connections. "Gateway failure"
  • Taking pictures in Scene modes applies HIGH sharpening to picture, giving them an un-natural look.
  • Internal Applications does not seem to agree on which button should be "Exit" Some uses lower Softkey – others uses top softkey+menu selection. Flaky design.
  • Wireless connection when connecting to Netgear 854T with WPA2 – requires usually 2 connection attempts before connection. Connection stays fine when finally connected.
  • Bluetooth connection to Sony Ericsson HBH-970 Stereo headset is "flaky" – especially when coming out of "connection sleeping"
  • External Wireless Keyboard mapping is not perfect... Some keys are repeated even on the Nokia SU-8
  • Some applications do not recognize the ctrl-c (copy) / ctrl-v (paste) (QuickOffice. New version of QuickOffice 4.5 can do cut/copy/paste)
  • Sometimes Internal keyboard messes up. This seems to be because the phone still think it is "closed" so fx. number keys takes the properties of the front keyboard. (Press 2 for a/b/c - press 3 for d/e/f). Closing the phone and opening it again will fix it. (Updated August 5.)
  • Spontanus Reboot after a call. (Updated August 15th)
  • FM kind of loud hiss on GSM phone calls from time to time. (Updated August 15th)
  • Built in browser does not correctly reconize Anchor tags (#) in URLs (Updated August 19th)
  • Buildt in Browser JavaScript is not compatible with iGoogle - the personalised Google pages. Some keeps showing "Loading" after page is complete. (Updated August 19th)


Nokia E90 Missing Features from older communicators


  • Scheduled SMS
  • Fax capability
  • Recorder goes on Pause when going to another application (Bug or feature)
  • People complain about lack of speed – fx. when switching to contacts menu compared to old communicators.
  • Calculator - 3 digit spacing (eg. when entering number then 1000 becomes 1.000) (updated August 6. thanks to Anonymous )

Nokia E90 3rd party application Bugs

  • TOMTOM 6 Navigation does not recognise built in GPS


But despite the above bugs – I still like – a lot more than the N95 anyway. But I'll report back later with my views of the phone and the software. Follow the thread on my-symbian for more info on the bugs.

Word 2007 blogging works with pictures

And I might have gotten picture blogging to work too.

Let's see if this one wants to upload.

A picture of the HTC Touch Phone I'm playing with at the moment...

Really a nice feature – but only problem is you cannot EDIT your posting after first post. That is a bummer. But anyway – you can Blog from Word 2007 – and pictures gets uploaded to your own "image space" and referenced correctly in the blog. Great feature. Word got so many features that I don't know 10%. But at least I found this one J Better than blogjet which I tried to use – but never got used to.

So Word 2007 can update my blog

This is nice – being able to write to my blog directly from Microsoft Word.

I wonder if that is useful – but it connects to blogger directly – and can put my pictures on my own FTP server.

I look forward to seeing if this will improve my blog speed, since all my postings are done in Word first – and before I cut-copy and paste to blogger. So maybe this will increase my number of postings.

But I can't figure out if I can add "tags" from here – or I have to go to blogger to do that.

I'll keep you posted.

Wednesday 1 August 2007

The Crappy Upgrade Companies

Dont buy from Polar, Ahead Nero or Corex Cardscan

I have started to get a real grudge against the companies who cheat their users of upgrades at reasonable cost.

If you read more on my blog – you can see my grudge against Polar, who is NOT providing an upgrade of their running software – and prefers to do a name change to convince people to buy a new watch – but the software is still the same – that kind’a makes a bad taste in my mouth. One that really inspires people to be pirates and copy the offending companies software. But now I got a couple more.

But I got TWO new additions to my hall of shame and blame

Ahead Software – Nero. Well you go out buy a nice DVD burner drive and get Ahead Nero. Yepiii you think – only to find out the version included is Nero 6 – and does not work with Microsoft Windows Vista. Vista is even nice enough to tell you that Ahead got an upgrade for Nero 6 to make it work – but Nero tells you otherwise. You need to buy an upgrade to get Vista Support. Only Nero 7 runs on Vista. Great you think – until you find out that the upgrade version is only about $10 cheaper than buying a brand new copy.

Well okay I thought – I got a FULL version 6 I bought once - the discount on that might be a lot higher. But nope – a few pennies more in discount – upgrade cost 80% of new price. Hurray... All i wanted was a freekin’ DVD burning software. But says Nero – we have put so much more in the package.. I DON’T WAN’T MORE – I just want to do my basic tasks such as burning a DVD on Vista. I don’t want a multimedia madness centre that fills my computer with unusable features. If I wanted them – I would PAY for them.

Calling it an upgrade is an insult...

Which moves me on to... CARDSCAN

Corex Techologies / CardScan has been in my arsenal of business tools for a long time. The software works by scanning business cards and putting the data into Outlook – a really nice feature –and I have been a very happy client.

I got 2 licenses – a 5 user license and a single user. To make the story short – I paid $79 for my full version of CardScan 1 ½ years ago. I got a nice mail telling me Version 8 was online and I could upgrade. Cool I thought might finally recognise Danish language, a feature I have been missing for many years.

But surprise surprise - Cardscan has almost doubled the price of the software to $149. And if you are an old customer – they value your upgrade with a 20% discount... Yes – 20% - from $149 to $119. Damn still 50% more than the license I bought earlier. And the news? Well now you can directly print on dymo labels + they have made an affiliate program – giving lead referrers an 8-13% referral fee. Hurray.. Not really ground breaking upgrade warranting a 150% upgrade cost is it?

But thanks god my CardScan 7 works on Vista so no need to upgrade at all – and that was last time my companies have done any business with them.

So in SHORT – DONT BUY UPGRADES or products from Ahead Nero, Polar and Corex CardScan – don’t even think about buying their products unless you are fine by being screwed for your hard earned dollars.