This article about a possible ARM-based Nokia tablet to come in the fourth quarter? And the author mentions that the Nokia Tablet MAY run Windows 7 Can you imagine? Nokia management shipping yet another OS on their equipment?
I think this is grounds to fire everyone at Nokia from the VP’s on up, and replace them with monkeys. They couldn’t possibly make worse decisions that this group of Nitwits.
I have had a revelation with regards to SmartPhones and the Reality Distortion Field.
Simply put, if the device, any device, that does not behave like a profit generating platform for Apple, should not be considered a Smartphone.
Sorry not for me, even Android’s more subtle marketing of Google is too much for me. If you are new here, you can be excused for not knowing that I use an Open Source phone called the Nokia N900. And while Nokia has done a lousy job marketing it, it still does all the things that the mighty Apple iPhone 4.
This week Nokia announced that MeeGo would not officially be supported on the N900. On first appearance this would seem to be a bad thing. But I managed to down load the MeeGo v1.0 for Netbooks and burned it to a DVD. I attempted to run this with VirtualBox and then Parallels and neither would finish the load. But my old work Dell Pentium 4 worked just fine booting from the CD.
So I went exploring, and overall it was a bit of fun, and most 5 year olds will be comfortable in a few minutes with it. But use it on an adult machine, a netbook to get work done on? Not a chance, it’s like a world-of-wonder 5-10 year old grade toy.
And guess what, it’s a GREAT thing that this, this, what ever MeeGo is, is not going to be forced ‘officially’ on the N900 users of the world. Compared to Maemo 5…what am I saying, it’s not comparable, if you are listening…
UPDATE: Someone else doesn’t like Netbook MeeGo a NoGo
NOTE: and the BS continues, with Intel killing off MeeGo for Tizen to further delay or destroy Open Source for mobile devices.
One of the things that i’ve found very useful about the GPS in the Nokia N900 is that when the wife and I are out investigating the back-and-beyonds the N900 is suppyling us with townlands as we traverse. In genealogy often the only locational information you can find are townlands, and many modern maps do not label them. Now I don’t know if othe GPS’s have this data, but it’s nice to have them in the pocket, in the form of the N900.
A very nice sunny day at Black Rock Casltle, what more can you say more than that.
It’s pure vanity that makes one believe they can be unaffected while waiting for an unexpected event. It may be even worse when you are a geek waiting on something as Geeky as the Nokia N900 PR-1.2 update. It’s like waiting on arthritis and old age, you know they are coming, just not when.
I’m enjoying the Nokia N900 more and more. The replacment of my original unit has demonstrated what the N900 is all about, and vindicates my choice of this system over Android or iPhone. I know that there are plenty of great smartphones out there, this one is mine.
Sounds like a Saga doesn’t it? Well it might be, if for no other reason than one of learning.
My Nokia has finally returned, thrice actually. My original
If you’ve been reading this Blog, the fiasco which resulted with the N900 being returned without being fixed my Nokia directly. But upon contacting Expansys where I purchased it, and they directed me to sent it to them. And I did, 5 weeks ago! I had contacted them after 3 weeks of no news, and they indicated that its was being ‘quality’ checked and would be sent in a few days. Another week elapsed, and I contacted them again, and again they indicated that they would sent it, 4 days later (on a monday) I was surprised to see the delivery of my N900, the same N900, WITH THE SAME PROBLEM! They even sent me back the document I included to explain how to test and identify the problem. A problem so simple, that just turning it on would identify it’s functionality. They never even tried to fix it. They simply expected me to accept it broken! Which I didn’t! Contacting them the very afternoon that it had been returned resulted in another return, on their account, to their facility. With the promise of a ‘Replacement’ Finally! And now it arrived, Yesterday, and the problem (that would appear a boot time) was gone, so I thought great. Done!
But this is Expansys The first indication of trouble, the camera, right after I opened the camera door, it indicated that it could not open the application, as there was NO MEMORY to open it, which I checked, and sure enough the user memory, some 32GB of ram was ‘corrupted’ and unusable. Broken, except to the geek, Me, who while trying to diagnose the issue with the first N900, had become an expert in ‘flashing’ the phone. So I flashed the eMMC with the ‘VANILLA_PR_EMMC’ image. And surprise, the camera worked, along with the sample videos stored there, which further proved that the old error was gone. Happy right! Not! While I was doing this testing/fixing/ I did not have my SIM installed, so having celebrated my Geek victory, I proceeded to complete my move back into my new device.
Deliberate Pause
The N900 didn’t recognize my SIM, any SIM. Not a useful thing for a Phone not to do. But I didn’t throw it across the room, or jump up and down crushing it into dust. I rallied the Geek, and did a System Flash with the latest Maemo Image. And without further adieu, it worked, I had a phone, and it works. Having inserted my micro SD card I restored my backup from the previous N900, and Bingo, it works. I did not restore the applications that I had installed previously, but enough to know that it mostly works. I did not install some of the communications extensions that knew were causing performance issues with the battery. It’s been 7 hours and I’m only down one bar, the battery works!
The bottom line, Expansys is a pain to work with! They took ages to return my ‘repaired’ phone, that wasn’t repaired, nor did they do ANY QUALITY CHECKS to see if it had been repaired. Then after being forced to do the ‘right’ thing, they replaced it with another (non-working) phone that was Obviously NOT NEW. I can only assume that it was another used N900 that someone had returned. To anyone else this replacement was more broken than the one I had sent in, and only by my own hand does it work at all. Not a good place to do business. The experience has taught me never to purchase an item like this via the internet. Better to spend the extra money to have a place to return it to, and this one has cost me plenty in time and shipping costs to resolve.
One last point, both the first N900, the one with the broken DSP, it still worked, with the only real impact being shortened battery life. The replacement, broken also, has been corrected, as far a I can see, via software alone. Making the N900 and very reliable, although quirky device. One I can still recommend. Try doing those things with your iPhone, OOPS, sorry, no can do.
Having read this article about iPad sales predicted to top 7.1 million in 2010 alone, the term, FanBoy gains a new meaning, Delusional! It’s not that the iPad isn’t cute, or that it won’t BE fun or even useful. It’s that this is still a recession, and there aren’t 7.1 Million geeks in the world who have enough money to buy this thing. The second point, Apple with all it’s planning couldn’t get God to manufacture 7 million of these things this year.
I almost assumed that the article was a late April Fool’s joke. But there really are a lot of people who believe that Apple can do no wrong. Mostly because of youthful forgetfulness no one seems remembers the Cube and even though Steve Job’s was not at Apple, still there was the Newton.
I remember, I still have a Newton 100, which I upgraded from the the original Messagepad. And I think, I’m even pretty sure the sales of the iPad will not exceed 1 million sales this year. I can almost guarantee they will NOT exceed 2 Million. Given that, it will still be profitable, and considered a success. I might even like to have one, except of the fact that I already have something a lot more practical, and ultimately more useful, a Nokia N900!
Update One: I’m calling BullShit on the 700,000 iPads. At best there was 500K with less than 100k which were not pre-orders.
While I love my Nokia N900 I’ve often been disappointed with the battery life. Recently I’ve been only getting 6 hours between charges and while I’ve had better runs in the past, I could never narrow down what the major drain was, but I think I have it. It looks like the ‘extra-devel’ Pidgin Protocols may be spending too much CPU keeping in contact with Yahoo IM. When I have that disabled from the ‘Availability’ panel, my battery life doubles.
So for now I’ll have to content with just GSM/SMS Skype and Skype IM for my connections.
What can say Nokia support is indescribable, as in not available. I have an New Nokia N900 purchased through Expansys U.K. Which shipped it to me, from london (as in U.K.) but it turns out it was acquired by them from the U.S. and Nokia Europe does NOT service (as in repair) Nokia handsets that are sold by Nokia U.S. in the U.S.
Ok, What? Nokia will NOT service Nokia handsets because it’s a U.S. Nokia warrantee and not a E.U. Nokia warrantee. It’s a Nokia, and it’s a their warrantee!
Now I have to ship my phone to the U.S. to find warrantee service on my NOKIA Phone!
In another example why I’m happy with my choice of the Nokia N900 over the iPhone as Apple removes Wi-Fi finders from App Store . After all, Apple knows better than it’s customer what it should allow on IT’S product. The customer is stupid and incapable of using OUR product without proper controls.
So Apple joins Amazon in determining what the customer should be allowed to do on THEIR product.
Or rather fractured, at least as far as the operating system. It appears that the DSP, a function (I think) of the GPU (PowerVR SGX) is not working as the DMESG command executed in the terminal application results in the following output:
[ 83.651947] WMD_DEH_Notify: ********** DEVICE EXCEPTION **********
[ 83.651977] WMD_DEH_Notify: DSP_SYSERROR, errInfo = 0x300
But due to the very forgiving Debian/Maemo kernel simply works around the issue, by making the CPU work harder, and consuming the batteries quicker. When everyone else was experiencing improved battery life with the release of PR 1.1.1, mine got worse.
Now the issue will be how to get it serviced as I bought it from Expansys out of the U.K. (I’m in Ireland, the Republic of) and there is the question of wither I send it to them, or directly back to Nokia?
The really important question is, when do I want to let go of this fun computer/phone thingy long enough to get it fixed.
Gowalla FourSquare, and Google Latitude are all Geolocational applications intended to provide your whereabouts to your friends while out participating with life events. Restaurants, sports, shopping or any other activity outside of your home. And while interesting, they bring into question this, if you went to these places, would you want to have your followers join you there? I’m fully aware that the participation in these application ‘games’ are part advertising of the location you are at, and sometimes benefits the user. But it does so by utilizing your active participation, bandwidth, and costs in a new kind of distributed broadcast medium.
If you can truly state that you would love to have your friends meet you at these venues, then this is all very well. The every concept of the RobMeNow.com site makes this a questionable practice. But it also assumes you have Friends 🙂 . ( I personally can’t speak to the matter, as I have none) who care. And it could be helpful to broadcast the quality of the product at site of your adventure, should it prove valuable.
The ever nature of the applications forces me to look for native app for my Nokia N900, even as I question the need for them. That’s good hype! Anyone want to jump in and add any comments?