Is this the end of Sony? Probably not. But I really doubt anyone came out impressed by their E3 press conference. Cocky presentation. You can note the lack of enthusiasm from almost everyone, including Sony's Phil Harrison. Too many technical jargon, most of which I understand, but casual gamers would probably be put off by.
Graphics are sorely lacking and doesn't seem to fit the '4D' graphics that Sony touted. GT4 souped up with anti-aliased being presented for like 10 minutes. Xbox Live rip-off. The PS3 looks just as huge as an Xbox 360. If this is what Sony can muster I say that Nintendo has just won the next generation console gaming war.
Boring boring boring! I am going to bed now. You can still catch the whole thing live at Eurogamer's live text coverage or GameSpot's live feed.
What a farcical mess.
Update: So... the launch price for the PS3 will be US$500-US$600!
Technorati tags: E3 Sony Playstation 3
Tuesday, May 9, 2006
Monday, May 8, 2006
Brimming with anticipation
5.30pm BST Tuesday Nintendo E3 press conference. Coverage at The Guardian and various gaming sites (eg. Eurogamer). The secrets will finally be revealed tomorrow. Then another five months of waiting for the hardware to roll out.
Thursday while commuting on the Tube, I sighted the first DS Lite in the wild (apart from my own). Glad to see people are finally gaming on the go. Of course I also saw three Sony PSPs (two who boarded at White City - BBC employees are Sony fanboys!). However both of them doesn't even come close to the number of Gameboy Advance SP I have seen in the wild (an idiot was playing Zelda Minish Cap with the maximum volume yesterday on the bus).
I am also happy to see single-format Animal Crossing: Wild World continue being in the top 10 multi-format UK chart beating cross-format games such as The Godfather and the utterly fantastic Oblivion. It is apparently number one in the French multi-format console chart as well. It's almost like an exact replica of a Japanese gaming chart. DS and PS2. Not surprising as Jennifer's French colleague recently purchased AC:WW and is totally engrossed by it.
And now that Metroid Prime Hunters is out in Europe, don't forget to add my friend code (and e-mail me yours) if you want to meet up online. I also checked out my mate's UK version and compared to the US box. I can conclude that while NoE is happy to charge UK consumers more, they are also happy at skimming on the quality of the printed cover. The shiny boxart of the US version (that changes hue when you turn it) is replaced by a third rated pseudo version that smudges. Ugh.
In other news, just when you thought that summer has finally arrived, clouds starts to pour in and decides to piss rain on you. Final proof that global warming isn't exactly working (its charge to bringing Mediterranean style weather here) and the patented British weather is here to stay. For now.
Technorati tags: E3 Nintendo Wii Nintendo DS Lite Sony PSP Animal Crossing: Wild World Metroid Prime Hunters
Thursday while commuting on the Tube, I sighted the first DS Lite in the wild (apart from my own). Glad to see people are finally gaming on the go. Of course I also saw three Sony PSPs (two who boarded at White City - BBC employees are Sony fanboys!). However both of them doesn't even come close to the number of Gameboy Advance SP I have seen in the wild (an idiot was playing Zelda Minish Cap with the maximum volume yesterday on the bus).
I am also happy to see single-format Animal Crossing: Wild World continue being in the top 10 multi-format UK chart beating cross-format games such as The Godfather and the utterly fantastic Oblivion. It is apparently number one in the French multi-format console chart as well. It's almost like an exact replica of a Japanese gaming chart. DS and PS2. Not surprising as Jennifer's French colleague recently purchased AC:WW and is totally engrossed by it.
And now that Metroid Prime Hunters is out in Europe, don't forget to add my friend code (and e-mail me yours) if you want to meet up online. I also checked out my mate's UK version and compared to the US box. I can conclude that while NoE is happy to charge UK consumers more, they are also happy at skimming on the quality of the printed cover. The shiny boxart of the US version (that changes hue when you turn it) is replaced by a third rated pseudo version that smudges. Ugh.
In other news, just when you thought that summer has finally arrived, clouds starts to pour in and decides to piss rain on you. Final proof that global warming isn't exactly working (its charge to bringing Mediterranean style weather here) and the patented British weather is here to stay. For now.
Technorati tags: E3 Nintendo Wii Nintendo DS Lite Sony PSP Animal Crossing: Wild World Metroid Prime Hunters
Labels:
NDS,
Video Games,
Wii
Wednesday, May 3, 2006
Local elections, Rooney debacle and Oxford Street preacher
Local elections is tomorrow (7am - 10pm). I am pretty peeved by British politics right now. There is virtually no difference between the three main parties. Many of their policies are virtually identical and do not play well with me at least and Lib Dem has gone downhill since last year's general election.
Local issues should be a priority of course and in my town it is the proposed West London tram system that has so far dominated local politics. Still, I can imagine that I probably would not turn up tomorrow - what with my stupid flu which has yet to cure itself! I could vote Green, but seriously, apart from the environment, what are their other policies?
-
Reading the back pages of dailies today only reveal the farcical that is of England footie and its current obsession with a lad called Wayne Rooney.
I wonder how many of the players feel that the media and football pundits has effectively written them off if Shrek didn't play. Isn't football team based? He may be good, but he isn't Pele or Maradona. You just can't create a team around one guy. This is why England will never win the World Cup this year. Everybody is just too hung up over the ogre.
It is a pathetic sight and boy am I glad that Mr. Eriksson will leave this summer. My knowledge on football strategy is limited to SI's CM3 but I do know that any competent manager wouldn't risk bringing an injured player to a tournie.
-
You remember Philip Howard? Well he was in the news today. Apparently Westminster council is planning to evict him. The Oxford Street preacher is a well known figure in West End and Oxford Street would just be dull without him, so I beg the council not to get rid of him, no matter how ridiculous his preaching is.
Also just two weeks ago another preacher (a woman) has emerged on Oxford Circus preaching with the same style ("Don't be a sinner, be a winner") as Philip Howard. Has Oxford Street preacher finally found himself a partner? What a sinner.
Technorati tags: Football World Cup Germany English Football British politics Local elections Oxford Street preacher
Local issues should be a priority of course and in my town it is the proposed West London tram system that has so far dominated local politics. Still, I can imagine that I probably would not turn up tomorrow - what with my stupid flu which has yet to cure itself! I could vote Green, but seriously, apart from the environment, what are their other policies?
-
Reading the back pages of dailies today only reveal the farcical that is of England footie and its current obsession with a lad called Wayne Rooney.
I wonder how many of the players feel that the media and football pundits has effectively written them off if Shrek didn't play. Isn't football team based? He may be good, but he isn't Pele or Maradona. You just can't create a team around one guy. This is why England will never win the World Cup this year. Everybody is just too hung up over the ogre.
It is a pathetic sight and boy am I glad that Mr. Eriksson will leave this summer. My knowledge on football strategy is limited to SI's CM3 but I do know that any competent manager wouldn't risk bringing an injured player to a tournie.
-
You remember Philip Howard? Well he was in the news today. Apparently Westminster council is planning to evict him. The Oxford Street preacher is a well known figure in West End and Oxford Street would just be dull without him, so I beg the council not to get rid of him, no matter how ridiculous his preaching is.
Also just two weeks ago another preacher (a woman) has emerged on Oxford Circus preaching with the same style ("Don't be a sinner, be a winner") as Philip Howard. Has Oxford Street preacher finally found himself a partner? What a sinner.
Technorati tags: Football World Cup Germany English Football British politics Local elections Oxford Street preacher
Labels:
London
Texas Instruments OMAP850
I can imagine the cries of dispair when the HTC Wizard was announced last year, that it would be powered by a Texas Instruments ARM processor. This especially after the debacle that was the HP iPAQ h6315. After using the Wizard for a week now, I can say that while the OMAP850 processor on the Wizard is only clocked at 200Mhz, it is speedy enough.
It isn't as fast as the 624Mhz processor on the Axim x50v, but it feels just slightly slower than Jennifer's HTC Magician (which has a 416Mhz Intel XScale PXA272 and a slightly unbloated OS). Put it this way, it feels twice as fast as my old Toshiba e310 with its Intel StrongARM 206Mhz. And that is with the bloated Windows Mobile 5.0 OS.
Specifically the OMAP850 contains two cores, an ARM926 application processor from ARM's family of ARM9E cores and a TI EDGE digital baseband chipset, the TCS3500 (an ARM7MCU coupled with Texas Instruments C54 DSP). Basically the workload of the Wizard (or any mobile device that uses the 850) is thus divided into the two cores (with some shared) as you can see from the diagram below (from Texas Instruments):
The ARM926 core controls the WiFi module, Infrared, LCD, buzzer, SD/MMC flash card and SDIO modules, LCD backlight, USB connection, battery, camera, LEDs and GPS (The Wizard doesn't have one).
As Windows Mobile 5.0 is a multi-task processor, processors has to divide up between the phone part of the OS and the PDA part. Receiving a call could slow the device down considerably, but the 3500 DSP is specifically there to deal with GSM calls.
It also controls EDGE data communications, although my service provider (o2 UK) has no EDGE network, so that is useless to me (Orange is the only network to offer EDGE in the UK). The DSP also handles the AC97 audio controller, SIM card, touch screen controller and part of the Bluetooth (voice), as well as the speakers.
Both of the cores share the load on memory controller, 2D graphic accelerator, keyboard and data Bluetooth.
The only slow down I noticed is when playing DivX encoded videos (above 500kbps and it would stutter) but overclocking to 240Mhz using OmapClock would sort it. Even sophisticated 3D games like Michael Schumacher Racing World Kart 2002 ran well. So don't sweat if the device you want contains a OMAP850.
But speed is a subjective matter, and what may seem okay to me may not be okay for you. You should trial any device to see if it fits. Don't let the stores pester you to purchase something. Stay as long as you want and force them to demo the units you want to purchase and make sure they have a reasonable return/exchange policy should you change your mind.
Technorati tags: Windows Mobile HTC Wizard imate K-Jam T-Mobile MDA Vario QTek 9100 Dopod 838 o2 XDA mini S Texas Instruments OMAP850 OmapClock ARM ARM9
It isn't as fast as the 624Mhz processor on the Axim x50v, but it feels just slightly slower than Jennifer's HTC Magician (which has a 416Mhz Intel XScale PXA272 and a slightly unbloated OS). Put it this way, it feels twice as fast as my old Toshiba e310 with its Intel StrongARM 206Mhz. And that is with the bloated Windows Mobile 5.0 OS.
Specifically the OMAP850 contains two cores, an ARM926 application processor from ARM's family of ARM9E cores and a TI EDGE digital baseband chipset, the TCS3500 (an ARM7MCU coupled with Texas Instruments C54 DSP). Basically the workload of the Wizard (or any mobile device that uses the 850) is thus divided into the two cores (with some shared) as you can see from the diagram below (from Texas Instruments):
The ARM926 core controls the WiFi module, Infrared, LCD, buzzer, SD/MMC flash card and SDIO modules, LCD backlight, USB connection, battery, camera, LEDs and GPS (The Wizard doesn't have one).
As Windows Mobile 5.0 is a multi-task processor, processors has to divide up between the phone part of the OS and the PDA part. Receiving a call could slow the device down considerably, but the 3500 DSP is specifically there to deal with GSM calls.
It also controls EDGE data communications, although my service provider (o2 UK) has no EDGE network, so that is useless to me (Orange is the only network to offer EDGE in the UK). The DSP also handles the AC97 audio controller, SIM card, touch screen controller and part of the Bluetooth (voice), as well as the speakers.
Both of the cores share the load on memory controller, 2D graphic accelerator, keyboard and data Bluetooth.
The only slow down I noticed is when playing DivX encoded videos (above 500kbps and it would stutter) but overclocking to 240Mhz using OmapClock would sort it. Even sophisticated 3D games like Michael Schumacher Racing World Kart 2002 ran well. So don't sweat if the device you want contains a OMAP850.
But speed is a subjective matter, and what may seem okay to me may not be okay for you. You should trial any device to see if it fits. Don't let the stores pester you to purchase something. Stay as long as you want and force them to demo the units you want to purchase and make sure they have a reasonable return/exchange policy should you change your mind.
Technorati tags: Windows Mobile HTC Wizard imate K-Jam T-Mobile MDA Vario QTek 9100 Dopod 838 o2 XDA mini S Texas Instruments OMAP850 OmapClock ARM ARM9
Labels:
Mobile Phone,
Windows Mobile
TV Review: Lost season two
So... while we in Britain has just been treated with the opening two episodes of Lost Season Two on C4 (and the third on E4), Americans has already completed the season last week. All that crap about C4 'apologising' repeatedly to viewers and claiming to be making up to us by bringing season two "forward" is rather ironic don't you think?
Then there were the viral 'Hanso foundation' ads that BT placed during the two episodes, which is sort of a 'bonus' for is here. I hope no one wasted their time calling the freephone. But if you want to here it is: 0800 66 66 40 And that blurb about M:I:III that nobody cares.
You know I don't spend a lot trying to groom myself. I am lucky that the whole 'Metro-sexual' male fashion phenomenon is dying off, slowly being replaced by the scruffy look of 'indie-rock'. Sure the cast on Lost do look scruffy, but man, 44 days in and they still look fine. Except perhaps the fat guy after a month and a half trapped in a desert island has yet to lose any weight. Didn't the producers watch Cast Away?
Doctor hero's hair still looks finely manicured while Shannon appears to have a personal hair stylist. They all look beautiful, even the damn dog. Apart from fatty of course, but who gives a shit about him.
Flashback, as I like to nickname the irrelevant series, continues where season one ended with the totally unlikeable cast trying to figure out the alpha male. This time reluctant hero doctor tries to wrestle the lead with an Independence Day style presidential speech only to be hit back by wise ass Locke. Nice one.
It isn't a great start. With much of the relevant content of the first episode being repeated in the second episode of the night, you have to give props to Channel 4 for deciding to telecast the two episodes back to back, just like when season one was first shown. Of course when I said relevant content, I meant what is actually happening on the island.
As usual flashbacks feature aplenty with the first episode delving deeper into hero doctor personality. He has hair this time. It is sort of relevant this flashback but only just. The second episode goes into Michael's past (don't you just hate this character?). Flashbacks can be good thing though as it gave me time to watch some of When Lineker Met Maradona on BBC One.
But still I find myself wanting to know what the fuck is going on at that island, which explains why we are all hooked to this series. It is fairly disappointing that there aren't anymore polar bears of giant dinosaurs (security features), but I am quite intrigued by the mysterious Hanso Foundation.
Lost season two, Channel 4, Tuesdays 10pm
Technorati tags: Lost Lost Season Two Channel 4 Hanso Foundation
Then there were the viral 'Hanso foundation' ads that BT placed during the two episodes, which is sort of a 'bonus' for is here. I hope no one wasted their time calling the freephone. But if you want to here it is: 0800 66 66 40 And that blurb about M:I:III that nobody cares.
You know I don't spend a lot trying to groom myself. I am lucky that the whole 'Metro-sexual' male fashion phenomenon is dying off, slowly being replaced by the scruffy look of 'indie-rock'. Sure the cast on Lost do look scruffy, but man, 44 days in and they still look fine. Except perhaps the fat guy after a month and a half trapped in a desert island has yet to lose any weight. Didn't the producers watch Cast Away?
Doctor hero's hair still looks finely manicured while Shannon appears to have a personal hair stylist. They all look beautiful, even the damn dog. Apart from fatty of course, but who gives a shit about him.
Flashback, as I like to nickname the irrelevant series, continues where season one ended with the totally unlikeable cast trying to figure out the alpha male. This time reluctant hero doctor tries to wrestle the lead with an Independence Day style presidential speech only to be hit back by wise ass Locke. Nice one.
It isn't a great start. With much of the relevant content of the first episode being repeated in the second episode of the night, you have to give props to Channel 4 for deciding to telecast the two episodes back to back, just like when season one was first shown. Of course when I said relevant content, I meant what is actually happening on the island.
As usual flashbacks feature aplenty with the first episode delving deeper into hero doctor personality. He has hair this time. It is sort of relevant this flashback but only just. The second episode goes into Michael's past (don't you just hate this character?). Flashbacks can be good thing though as it gave me time to watch some of When Lineker Met Maradona on BBC One.
But still I find myself wanting to know what the fuck is going on at that island, which explains why we are all hooked to this series. It is fairly disappointing that there aren't anymore polar bears of giant dinosaurs (security features), but I am quite intrigued by the mysterious Hanso Foundation.
Lost season two, Channel 4, Tuesdays 10pm
Technorati tags: Lost Lost Season Two Channel 4 Hanso Foundation
Labels:
Reviews
Thursday, April 27, 2006
The console formerly known as Revolution: Wii
I am speechless.
Not that I care though as I will still be getting it. But still. Wii??? WTF!
I don't know what is more baffling, Nintendo Wii or the fact that a fat old git can bed a hot secretary.
Not that I care though as I will still be getting it. But still. Wii??? WTF!
I don't know what is more baffling, Nintendo Wii or the fact that a fat old git can bed a hot secretary.
Labels:
Video Games,
Wii
Sick
Migraine. Cold. Flu. Sore throat. Coughing fits. This week, summed up. Thank you very much.
Thank god for another bleak bank holiday weekend.
Hardware Review: HTC Wizard (O2 XDA Mini S)
Well, I finally balked and traded in my mobile for a HTC Wizard. After months of juggling around two devices I think I find it best to own a single convergence device like I did when I still had my imate Jam. The problem with the Magician however was its non-existence one-handed OS style which was why I got a traditional mobile instead after a year of usage. However with the Wizard running Windows Mobile 5.0, with its built-in QWERTY keypad and soft keys (something lacking in WM5.0 mobiles like the MDA Compact II and Eten M600), I honestly believe I have found the holy grail of smartphones - that is until Palm works its ass and release a GSM Treo 700w. It isn't as intuitive as a traditional mobile but it is an improvement.
Of course the first thing I did was update the ROM (with Microsoft AKU 2, which brings push e-mail to the Windows Mobile device). This essentially turns the Wizard into a Blackberry like device. Fortunately for me I have no need for such a slaving e-mail solution. The ROM update also sped up the device, although it did bring a couple of feature 'bugs' like the useless battery icon. Still the device worked straight out of the box, and then straight after the update. The new ROM is stable enough that I didn't have to soft reset even after two days of extensive usage. A record!
The Wizard isn't much bigger than my old i-mate Jam. It is notesably fatter, uglier and heavier but it is comfortable due to the rounded shape. While the Jam always felt like slipping out of my hand onto the concreate pavement, the Wizard felt more secure. The battery life is amazingly good for a Microsoft device and close to twice that of the Jam. The screen is the same size as the HTC Magician at 2.8". Even my spare Jam screen protector fits perfectly on this device.
Just when you thought you couldn't see smaller stylus, HTC decided to give the Wizard an even smaller retractable toothpick. Fortunately it is a little thicker than most toothpicks you find in Chinese restaurants. The telescopic stylus is accessable from the bottom of the PDA which makes no sense at least until you flip the mobile side ways into keyboard mode. I also like how the fact that it uses a standard miniUSB cable to charge and sync. I have an abundant amount of these cables lying around literally around my room as does Jennnifer, so at least I don't have to bring my charger to Brighton all the time.
The Wizard and its keyboardless cousin, the Magician (L)
The camera is driven by the usual crappy 1.3Mp CMOS sensor that also powered the Magician. I am sure going to miss the 2Mp K750 camera which was actually useful for a mobile. Until then I will keep my compact digicam handy. The Wizard takes mini SD cards (yet another flash memory format) and came with a 32MB card. I am lucky enough to obtain a 256MB for free so the 32MB is confined to backup duties. My 1GB SD card can now be retired to its permanent home in a digital camera. Regarding the many mini SD's doom prediction, it was not a long time ago when I first got a m505 (one of the first PDA to use SD card). No other device uses them and dooms were predicted for the new flash memory format and now look what happened. The same could happen to the mini SD format.
The Wizard appears to run much faster than a WM5'ed Axim x50v, which is shocking considering that it runs on a 200Mhz OMAP850 processor. The Axim on the other hand has a 624Mhz XScale. Of course the Wizard was built from the ground up to take advantage of WM5.0 including the type of Flash ROM that requires the file system to work properly so it isn't really a fair comparison. With a slower processor however, gaming could prove troublesome to some people. Armed with a DS, I never intended for the Wizard to be a gaming device so I didn't install much games save for Bejeweled!, Gamebox Solitaire, Snails and the F-Zero/Wipeout inspired Flux Challenge.
DS Lite: for pure gaming, Wizard: for things like getting work done
ActiveStink as usual do not work straight out of the box. It took me a while to realise that Zone Alarm was the culprit as ActiveSync 4.x seems to have problems connecting through firewalls. With WM5 devices now connected as a TCP/IP network device, I am sure it will be easier in the future to sync via WiFi or Bluetooth PAN. For now though I just have to shut down Zone Alarm before connecting the device, as it will just block the flow of information, at least until I have time to troubleshoot Zone Alarm.
I wish Microsoft would simplify the sync routine and understand that this is a mobile phone first and a computer second. People do not have the time to even troubleshoot their PC anymore let alone their mobile phone connection. I long for the days when all I need to do to sync was press that little HotSync button on the cradle and it gets the job done.
Update (2 May 06):
I installed ActiveSync 4.2 Beta and while it is faster to sync compared to 4.1, the issue with firewall is still there.
Pros
Improved battery life over the HTC Magician
Speedy enough running normal application (and pretty quick after overclocking)
Retains mini USB sync/charge slot
AKU 2.0 improved speed
QWERTY keyboard
Quad band
802.11g support
Persistent storage
Cons
Pretty ugly
Still uses 2.5mm 3-pin headset jack
Silly telescopic stylus
Only 24MB of RAM available during boot
AKU 2.0 brought a useless 2 bar battery indicator
Near useless camera
Wish list for future product based on similar platform:
Improved camera (or get rid of it altogether and price the device cheaper)
VGA screen
Increased RAM availability (64MB)
5-10 bar battery indicator
A faster processor (540Mhz XScale or 300+Mhz OMAP)
UMTS support
A thinner and maybe slightly more elegent case design
Technorati tags: Windows Mobile HTC Wizard imate K-Jam T-Mobile MDA Vario QTek 9100 Dopod 838 o2 XDA mini S
Of course the first thing I did was update the ROM (with Microsoft AKU 2, which brings push e-mail to the Windows Mobile device). This essentially turns the Wizard into a Blackberry like device. Fortunately for me I have no need for such a slaving e-mail solution. The ROM update also sped up the device, although it did bring a couple of feature 'bugs' like the useless battery icon. Still the device worked straight out of the box, and then straight after the update. The new ROM is stable enough that I didn't have to soft reset even after two days of extensive usage. A record!
The Wizard isn't much bigger than my old i-mate Jam. It is notesably fatter, uglier and heavier but it is comfortable due to the rounded shape. While the Jam always felt like slipping out of my hand onto the concreate pavement, the Wizard felt more secure. The battery life is amazingly good for a Microsoft device and close to twice that of the Jam. The screen is the same size as the HTC Magician at 2.8". Even my spare Jam screen protector fits perfectly on this device.
Just when you thought you couldn't see smaller stylus, HTC decided to give the Wizard an even smaller retractable toothpick. Fortunately it is a little thicker than most toothpicks you find in Chinese restaurants. The telescopic stylus is accessable from the bottom of the PDA which makes no sense at least until you flip the mobile side ways into keyboard mode. I also like how the fact that it uses a standard miniUSB cable to charge and sync. I have an abundant amount of these cables lying around literally around my room as does Jennnifer, so at least I don't have to bring my charger to Brighton all the time.
The Wizard and its keyboardless cousin, the Magician (L)
The camera is driven by the usual crappy 1.3Mp CMOS sensor that also powered the Magician. I am sure going to miss the 2Mp K750 camera which was actually useful for a mobile. Until then I will keep my compact digicam handy. The Wizard takes mini SD cards (yet another flash memory format) and came with a 32MB card. I am lucky enough to obtain a 256MB for free so the 32MB is confined to backup duties. My 1GB SD card can now be retired to its permanent home in a digital camera. Regarding the many mini SD's doom prediction, it was not a long time ago when I first got a m505 (one of the first PDA to use SD card). No other device uses them and dooms were predicted for the new flash memory format and now look what happened. The same could happen to the mini SD format.
The Wizard appears to run much faster than a WM5'ed Axim x50v, which is shocking considering that it runs on a 200Mhz OMAP850 processor. The Axim on the other hand has a 624Mhz XScale. Of course the Wizard was built from the ground up to take advantage of WM5.0 including the type of Flash ROM that requires the file system to work properly so it isn't really a fair comparison. With a slower processor however, gaming could prove troublesome to some people. Armed with a DS, I never intended for the Wizard to be a gaming device so I didn't install much games save for Bejeweled!, Gamebox Solitaire, Snails and the F-Zero/Wipeout inspired Flux Challenge.
DS Lite: for pure gaming, Wizard: for things like getting work done
ActiveStink as usual do not work straight out of the box. It took me a while to realise that Zone Alarm was the culprit as ActiveSync 4.x seems to have problems connecting through firewalls. With WM5 devices now connected as a TCP/IP network device, I am sure it will be easier in the future to sync via WiFi or Bluetooth PAN. For now though I just have to shut down Zone Alarm before connecting the device, as it will just block the flow of information, at least until I have time to troubleshoot Zone Alarm.
I wish Microsoft would simplify the sync routine and understand that this is a mobile phone first and a computer second. People do not have the time to even troubleshoot their PC anymore let alone their mobile phone connection. I long for the days when all I need to do to sync was press that little HotSync button on the cradle and it gets the job done.
Update (2 May 06):
I installed ActiveSync 4.2 Beta and while it is faster to sync compared to 4.1, the issue with firewall is still there.
Pros
Improved battery life over the HTC Magician
Speedy enough running normal application (and pretty quick after overclocking)
Retains mini USB sync/charge slot
AKU 2.0 improved speed
QWERTY keyboard
Quad band
802.11g support
Persistent storage
Cons
Pretty ugly
Still uses 2.5mm 3-pin headset jack
Silly telescopic stylus
Only 24MB of RAM available during boot
AKU 2.0 brought a useless 2 bar battery indicator
Near useless camera
Wish list for future product based on similar platform:
Improved camera (or get rid of it altogether and price the device cheaper)
VGA screen
Increased RAM availability (64MB)
5-10 bar battery indicator
A faster processor (540Mhz XScale or 300+Mhz OMAP)
UMTS support
A thinner and maybe slightly more elegent case design
Technorati tags: Windows Mobile HTC Wizard imate K-Jam T-Mobile MDA Vario QTek 9100 Dopod 838 o2 XDA mini S
Labels:
Mobile Phone,
Reviews,
Windows Mobile
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