Vista SP2 on the way

no need to go into to many details – but this is the main new features.

 

• Windows Vista SP2 adds Windows Search 4.0 for faster and improved relevancy in searches.
• Windows Vista SP2 contains the Bluetooth 2.1 Feature Pack supporting the most recent specification for Bluetooth Technology.
• Ability to record data on to Blu-Ray media natively in Windows Vista.
• Adds Windows Connect Now (WCN) to simplify Wi-Fi Configuration.
• Windows Vista SP2 enables the exFAT file system to support UTC timestamps, which allows correct file synchronization across time zones. 

and a quote from Mike Nash:

As a part of the development and testing process, we're going to start by providing a small group of Technology Adoption Program customers with Windows Vista SP2 Beta for evaluation next Wednesday, October 29. The final release date for Windows Vista SP2 will be based on quality.

So release date is not set yet.

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.

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.

Being HTC Touched

The hype is on – let you fingers do the walking – or in case of the touch phones – the sliding. There are two new touch phones in the market – one is the Apple iPhone and the HTC Touch.

I’m the happy guy with a HTC Touch Phone. The phone is one of the latest models from HTC, with Windows Mobile 6. Since many people already have described the Windows Mobile 6 interface, I’ll try to concentrate on what sets the Touch apart from other phones.

The Hardware
The basic HTC Touch is a very slim and elegant phone. Look absolutely stunning. A phone for the fashion conscious J You can’t really appreciate the tiny size before it is in your hands. It got the typical HTC Extended Mini USB for charging and for headsets – so don’t expect to use any Jack based headsets for it.

SIM card and memory card is hidden on the right hand side – a bit hard to get to – but works okay. Camera is a “standard” 2 mpix picture with okay quality but no autofocus. Quality of pictures are okay – but not better than okay.

Call and Hang-up buttons are very small – and a bit unhandy and hard to press – but in the “keeping” the design small – and nice looking I guess there was not a lot more they could do – or was there?

The “Rocker” pad is again a bit small for me. (The button you use to scroll up/down/right/left). Too often I find myself hitting the middle pad (enter) by mistake.

But the glass front on the touch is excellent. It makes it very easy to clean the screen and to keep it looking nice. It does not collect the dirt in the corners like other of the HTC phones with “embedded” screens does. Absolutely a nice feature. But it also seems like it hinders Pen operation a bit, since you feel like you have to “push” a bit hard on the glass for the pen to react. Hopefully a firmware update will change the sensitivity a bit. The screen itself looks okay. Very sharp but seems a little low key on colour resolution. The Colour dept just seems a bit low compared to some of my other PDA devices. But absolutely does the job.

The speed / processor / memory in the phone seem a bit “under” average. The phone is slow to react in many situations. Available memory is quite low, and quite often you will get the “Not enough memory to execute program” error message. But thanks good HTC has a “close” program feature which not many Windows mobile phones has as standard. (Hold the pen on the close “X” for a sec. too really close the program)

WiFi sensitivity is excellent though – just as good as my HTC S710. It can pickup and use WiFi where my different notebooks give up. (Sony UX90s, ThinkPad X60 tablet, and a lot of other devices). On connection with a Zyxel access point, the Internet Explorer shows some “fun” errors though. (Does not work) but any other access point I have tried works like a charm. Opera browser on the same access point works fine – what a puzzle..

Phone is only GPRS/EDGE based so no 3G. But speed seems usable.

Software
Well the big thing here is Windows Mobile 6 + HTCs custom touch interface. The Touch interface is a shell / GUI on top of Windows Mobile 6, so you can operate your touch phone with your fingers – a lot easier than you can in standard Windows Mobile 6.

It works really well – a lot better than I expected. Using your fingers to navigate to your different applications is great. The only problem is that is a shell on top of the standard Windows Mobile 6. So in the middle of your joy and ease of use – you launch a program not optimized for touch (mail, browser, office pack and any other standard Windows Mobile software) you are then back at the standard not finger optimized piece of software, forcing you to get out your pen.

And this is where the concept fails. All the glitz and glitter falls apart and you are back at a standard pen based PDA.

But since most people do not really spend that much time editing documents on the PDA – I think most people will find the HTC Touch a nice phone for daily use. Most navigation is done with fingers between mail/sms and phone book, and here the Touch shines. Reading mail and sms works fine with your fingers – but replying to them does not. But the most used features are supported by the Touch overlay on the phone. So all in all – a big step forward in the usability of the Windows Mobile PDA interface. Now just modify the Message applications (SMS/E-Mail) so you can write on the screen with your fingertips. That would then cover 80% of the device usage. Then optimize the media player and we are at 90%.

Maybe this concept phone can show Microsoft some of the things needed for a great touch interface, and HTC and Microsoft can cooperate on optimizing future versions of Windows Mobile to be truly touch enabled. At least Apples iPhone is forcing them to look in that direction.
In conclusion – a great phone for its intended audience. A competitor to iPhone – I don’t know yet since I have not tried it on.... But my feeling is that is a semi worthy contender. Size is perfect, battery life is okay, WiFi is superb. Price is right and Windows Mobile is now actually a usable phone interface. So go get it :-) It is worth it!

Star rating (subjective) 8 out of 10. The last 2 stars will be awarded when majority of applications support “Touch” with your fingers.

iPhone – what is the buzz about?

The world is a strange place. Apple launches a phone with specifications worse than any top range phone. They provide a nice design, but a mediocre phone. Touted as the first ever multimedia phone the adverts are well “less than true”

I have tested more than a fair share of phones – from Symbian (Nokia/Sony Ericsson) to every other Microsoft phone (HTC/I-mate and many others)

Right now my phone is the HCT S710. A Microsoft WM6 based phone, with browser, media player, WiFi, GSM Edge/GPRS and basically everything I need for business. It even got a real keyboard. I can stream files from my Microsoft Media Center to my phone in great quality. The WiFi is the best I ever seen – the phone can pickup and use wireless signals from every room in my flat where often my notebooks, other phones and gadgets can’t pickup any signals. (2nd best is actually my Sony US90s...)

But the real iPhone deal breaker for me is that it is NOT a business phone – its a consumer phone. No integration with Microsoft Exchange – only POP3 and maybe IMAP mail – not good enough in our day in age.

And what about forcing you to have iTunes on your pc? What a piece of crap software... just to run your phone? I wish Apple could make nice software and not only make up for it by making it “look nice”...

So the only iPhone i consider buying is the Cisco/Linksys one :-)

The Joys of (missing) Upgrades

I’m the lucky owner of a Polar 625X running and exercise watch. A gadget that follows me on every exercise. And in short a gadget that keeps me going back to the gym again and again.
The reason is that all the data it collects, including how far I run (??) is stored in that watch and then transferred to my pc - so I can follow my progress and if I become better and get more miles to the gallon. :-)

The software is called Polar Precision Performance v. 4 (actually 4.03.046). Great software with updates from time to time (latest April 2007) but a bit of a Windows 3.11 (yes..) interface and a bit harsh on the eyes. But in general it works. And to update it – you NEED to have the software installed or have the old original CD available, so you can install the old version and then upgrade to the latest version. A bit annoying but “ok”…

Then I checked out Polar – and they have now made some new watches – like the RS800 and the RS400 – clearly with a couple of new features – and damn – a NEW software called Polar ProTrainer 5. And I thought – what is this ProTrainer 5 software. I got the Polar Precision Performance 4?

Well in short – the software is not new. It is just the old Polar Precision Performance in version 5 in a slightly new dress-up.

But to avoid giving out upgrades to the old owners – and thereby giving them the opportunity to “BUY” a new watch.. (read the sarcasm) to get the software – they (Polar) must really think the average user is stupid.

What a shame. ProTrainer 5 is not that big an upgrade to v4 – but now the graphs and other graphics are updated to an XP+ kind of look – and seems a bit more user friendly – and it even works out of the box with my 625X watch?

I am a capitalist and like supporting brands I use. But not even giving me the opportunity to throw in a few dollars for an upgrade to V5 – seems a bit stupid. Maintaining two products will in the end turn out more expensive than charging me $5 or $25 for an upgrade.

But trying to cheat your users calling the software a new name?.. Well do they think we are stupid sports-jocks all of us? Polar - get a grip and stop treating your user base as idiots. We just might stop buying your products.

And since it is illegal to tell people to be software pirates I’m not able to tell you the software might be available for download on some – what is it called? Torrent Sites?? As ISO files… bypassing the need for transporting your original V4 CD with you all the time.

But Polar – I would PAY for an upgrade if YOU provided one at a cost relative to upgrade value of the software (somewhere between $5 and $25 – anything else would be highway robbery)

The head does not know what the body is doing

Today I wanted to restore my user profile to my Samsung Q1 using Windows Easy Transfer. Quite a nice way to get same settings on all your new Vista PCs. (I got an X60 tablet, a Samsung Q1 and a Shuttle X100 2.33 GHz Dual Core) all running Vista.

But imagine my frustration when all I got on the Q1 was a message saying.. “Sorry you can’t do that… Windows Easy Transfer requires a minimum resolution of 800x600” Damn Microsoft – you guys should start talking together inside. Your OWN specifications for the “Origami” Machines lists 800x480 as minimum resolution – so why do your tools not work on your own g.d. specifications? And what could possibly be the reason for an 800x600 minimum requirement apart from bad screen design?

Another design flaw in Windows Easy Transfer is that you can only select to restore ALL settings from your old machine. My old Vista was running Office 2003 – so imagine so much crap being loaded into the registry..

Now I have to try to get the Q1 into a “virtual” state of running 1024x768 or 800x600 to restore. Bugger since the drivers are not really Vista “perfect..” Or alternativly connect to an external screen - which i don't have right at hand...

Well that was my sour grapes of the day.

Thanks again Microsoft….