Some days are just crap 'til the end

Yep, it's been one of those days.

Yesterday. Now there was a great day. That was a day by the end of which I was filled with complete satisfaction. Everything went well yesterday.

Yesterday I wore a frock (this is almost unheard of, you understand), and I looked Damn Hot (for a 46 year old). Work was awesome, because I fixed more problems than usual, everything went well, and I ate lunch with the Bursar - a charming man who flirts outrageously with me!

Today, on the other hand, was a disaster. Well, not BP-oil-spill disaster, just low level, nothing-bloody-works disaster. I've been testing Windows 7 in school, and I'm coming to the conclusion that we'll be an XP school for a while longer. I mean, it's easy at home - if a piece of software doesn't work, I'll browse the web and find something, usually better, which will do the same job. The financial commitment we've put into our software in the school is monumental, and there never IS a freebie replacement (except for Ranger - you just wait, your time is coming...)

But worse, my phone gave out on me today.

Yep, the 5800 had a bad day, too. Actually, it's been a bad nearly-week. Last week, I think on Friday, I was messing with some software on the phone (Wifi stuff, I think), which hung up, so I flipped out the battery, waited a second or two, and put it back in. This is pretty standard, it takes all power from the machine, usually allowing a clean reboot. But the phone refused to boot up beyond the large, friendly "Nokia" logo. I power cycled (battery out and back in again) a couple more times, but still nothing happened. So when I got back home I slid out the SIM and shoved it into the old N78, much to Lizzy's disapproval - after all, I'd let her have that phone when I moved on. I don't know why she's getting quite so cross, it's not like she actually makes any calls on it. On this I called O2, with whom I have my contract, and who have, in the past, been able to help me with some technical difficulties. Their suggestion was to take the phone to the nearest O2 shop, if I didn't want to send it off and wait for a repair. In fact, since I didn't know if there was an O2 shop in Farnborough, the guy suggested that a Carphone Warehouse would be able to fix it for me too.

As it happens, I slipped out both the SIM and the memory card when I moved over to the N78, and, just for the hell of it, I decided to try to reboot the phone one last time. To my surprise and delight, it booted up fine. So I powered it down, inserted the SIM and powered up again. Yes! So I just clicked in the micro-SD, and all went well for a few days. Until Monday. Same again, although this time I wasn't messing about with any software. So I thought I'd pop into the Carphone Warehouse on the way home and see if they could suggest anything. Sadly, because I bought the phone directly from O2, Carphone W don't have any information for me, and wanted some kind of proof of contract - which I could get, except that my phone was hung up!

Once again, when home I slid out both cards, and rebooted. And it did. At this point I began to wonder if it was the SIM or the SD card which was causing the problems. And because the phone failed again today, I was able to check this - the SD card.

So I thought to myself - I have been messing with a load of software recently (you know how it is, you install a bunch of software, look at it, decide it's useless, and if you remember, you un-install it again), so I thought - I'll take it back to factory settings, and completely erase the memory card.

To my surprise (and NOT delight), while this totally buggered my nicely setup interface, it left a whole bunch of settings still in the phone. In addition to which, it rendered parts of the "home page" as it's called, unworkable. Tapping on the dialler refused to bring up the numeric keypad so I could call anyone. Tapping on the contacts icon did nothing. None of my shortcuts showed, and on trying to edit them so they would, I was told there were no configurable shortcuts for my chosen theme.

Having found that there is an O2 store in town, I resolved to go there directly after school. Sadly it turns out that 3 days ago the shop shut for 3 weeks for some renovations - Oh, I could have cried! So I stole the N78 again, and made the call. I was prepared to risk the wrath of Lizzy for a week or so in order to get my phone back to O2 for the fix.

Only... I don't need to! After much messing round, I finally got one of the lovely people to give me the REAL reset to factory settings keypresses. Just in case you need to know, it's *#7370#. This really will reset to oh-my-god-this-is-so-exciting-I've-just-got-a-new-5800, right out of the box, true factory settings. So just make sure you really want to do that. I was able to make a back up first, so I could bring back my contacts and calendar information.

You see, it didn't take much to cheer me up in the end. You know I don't mind starting from scratch. It's quite a lot easier, sometimes, than trying to fix the problem when everything you try fails completely.

So although I'm still no nearer sorting out many of the problems in school, at least my communication woes are currently settled.

Constitutionally incapable of making up my mind

OK - after the horror that was online dating, I've decided to move on to my first love - gadgets. Sure, men have their uses, and I'll probably pursue that avenue later, but at the moment, I've no time for dating, because the gadgets are calling...

I remember, some years ago, writing an email to PC Pro, telling them what I wanted, and asking why someone hadn't developed it yet. What I wanted at that time, was, essentially, a Palm, but with the ability to phone people on it, and also browse the web. I seem to remember my friend, Martin, telling me to wait 6 months, because he thought Palm were going to announce something which would seem to be what I was waiting for. Well, in the absence of any actual cashy money, I waited, and Palm, in due course, announced the Palm W. I do believe the W stood for wireless, and it's possible that it would connect to a wifi network. I'm not sure, because the reviews were not good, so I didn't look too far into it. And anyway, it didn't have a phone. I think I remember that you could get a "sled" for it which would allow you to shove a sim into it, and use it as a phone. The whole thing, then, would look rather like the mobile phone "bricks" from back in the 90's. The word "sled" was what I remember finding on a search of the interwebz for this device and its accessories.

I found this new device annoyingly underwhelming, especially as Palm had been so brilliant in the PDA market previously. And people like Sony had produced the P900, which, while expensive, seemed to have all that I wanted. So, the all in one device waited a bit.

Now, about two and a half years ago, I bought, at great expense, from eBay, a Sony Clié PDA. This second hand device cost me £150, which was at the top end of what they were selling for. Had I been more inclined (and less susceptible to the ghastly panic at the end of the auction) I might have waited it out, and managed to get something similar, but it would have cost maybe £30 less. The whole package, at the time, seemed like a pretty good deal. It did include the GPS receiver and all the necessary software for installing GPS on the palm, along with the car-cradle in which it would sit whilst you were driving. After all, I've got to be the only person in the whole Universe who doesn't have a GPS! OK - maybe there's a tiny bit of exaggeration there... But still no phone. However, it would pair nicely with my Nokia 8310 (using IR), and it had wifi built in. And yet Nirvana seemed just beyond my paupers fingers...

Moving on to 2009. There are at least 15 million devices out there which will do it all. Although they're usually phones which will allow a limited web browsing experience, there seems to be a bit of a trend to try to make this a less limited deal. Look at the Nokia N97. Although the reviews of it are less than glowing, it's certainly providing the all-in-one experience. The HTC phones are providing a similarly checked list of features (although I gather their keyboards are a little nicer to use). In fact, since I started this post, Nokia have been outed, with a large and embarrassing leak about the new Internet Tablet, which also doubles as a phone - so they had to announce it early. It's called the N900, and is, apparently, AWESOME! However, it's also going to cost upwards of £500 unless you get a contract for it. Not, I suppose, that this is such a bad thing - I've been pleased with the contract on my N78.

But I've rambled long enough. About 2 weeks ago I purchased, for a ridiculously small sum, a Nokia N810 Internet Tablet. How ridiculously small, I hear you ask? Well, both Play.com and Amazon UK have the device available for just short of £130. Pennies short, I'll concede, but DAMN, how cheap is that?

So, the device arrived. I thought; it'll be just like a palm, it's got wifi but no phone, but maybe it'll browse the sites I haven't been able to get to on the Clié.

Turns out I was wrong. Oh, sure, I can browse the sites I couldn't reach on the Clié, and no, it doesn't have a phone. But it's NOTHING like the palm. Everything works. No messing, it just works. No installing interesting third-party drivers which cost a fortune, and aren't necessarily guaranteed to work, it just works.

This device (and the new N900) come with an OS called Maemo. Dumb name! But that's where the stupid stops. This is a little Linux distro, and thus you can write your own programs for it. Give me some time, and I'll borrow my brother's "Programming In Python for Dummies" manual, and knock you up a killer app. Assuming I can think of one which doesn't already exist.

Because this is where the stupid steps in again. Nobody knows that this device and OS exist, except a bunch of geeks who don't seem to mind it being a secret. Nokia, apparently, didn't advertise the Internet Tablets very much, and anyway, since Nokia make phones, I'd been perplexed as to why these tablets came with no sim socket. After all, there's not THAT much wifi available in the UK. I wasn't, clearly, the only one perplexed at this omission. These are some of the reasons I was able to get my fantastic new toy at such a great price.

So, the device here, fully charged, connected to my wifi and browsing the web. I'd asked my brother (also has an N810) which apps he'd recommend for download, and he'd started me off with FBReader - "Google it!" he ordered. And then, without meaning to, I'd clicked a link on the desktop of the gadget, and found myself at a site called Maemo.org - Wonderland! It was like discovering that the last 7 years of Palm idiocy had all been a dream, and I'd woken up to find that they were still the leaders of the PDA world (you guessed - I'm a bit of a Palm fan). I browsed through their catalog of, as far as I can work out, completely free apps, written by the fans for the N800 series, and downloaded a handful of applications which seemed interesting.

Oh, there I go, rushing ahead of myself! I'd connected the keyboard to the N810 with the same ease with which it had connected to the N78. In fact, the N78 connected with ease to the N810, allowing me to use the 3G capability of the phone, should a wireless lan be unavailable (as so often happens in my brother's house!) This is why the tablet didn't need to be able to connect to the internet via it's own 3G - you can just use your own phone. Yeah, early adopters would have found this a rather expensive route, but since I've had my phone for a year, and the N810 was so incredibly cheap, it's proven a sound financial move. Well, sound in as much as any gadget I want to buy will no doubt have my mother's eyes rolling, and her favourite phrase popping out "You don't need it!"

Favourite applications for Maemo? I think, at this point it would have to be a combination of Nokia 770 Video Converter (on the PC), teamed up with mPlayer on the tablet. Then there's Numpty Physics, a frustrating game I can't work out how it's supposed to be played. I did get a copy of something very close to Bejewelled, a sudoku game and a minesweeper game. Oh, and visit garage.maemo.org, too.

And do you know what? This wonderful experience has shown me that I don't really want an all in one device after all. I love the portability of my phone - it'll tuck into bits of my clothing (although not quite as invisibly as the 8310), and I love the huge screen of the N810. While the N900 looks like a really exciting machine and the internet buzz being so enthusiastic, it's a chunky beast and so I think I'll stick to my duo. It's a far cry from connecting the Palm and the 8310 with infrared and using a GPRS connection to send emails!

N78 Enchanted

I've got to carry on with my praises of the N78. I expect you've worked out now that I'm a little bit of a geek, and gadgets are my catnip. Yes, I admit, I drool over photos of the iPhone (I'm a girl - what can I say?), and the HTC range have me reading reviews like a woman possessed.

However, now I've found my gadget, I've decided that I'm going to find the best software I can. And I have to tell you, it's no easy task. Unlike palm software, which is written for just the one OS, there seem to be many flavours of Symbian. Just point yourself at MySymbian and you find that they have 6 places to shop for what appears to be 6 different types of symbian! OK - I'm a novice (although this isn't as unique as you'd think, what with me trying out new Linux builds on my Asus eee) and maybe a lot of these are very similar - what do I know?

As usual - and this could end up being a huge whine - the inventory of built in apps is a bit sad. No, it's a lot sad. The calendar is, as I mentioned before, barely adequate. It's not completely useless, but since this machine is really going to replace, not compliment, my palm, it's got to be really good.

I started by searching the interweb for "symbian calendar" and after following a few links, found myself a couple of likely looking contenders, Handy Calendar by EpocWare, and AquaCalendar which appears to be by Pocket Torch. I decided to install them both, and within a few days I'd decided that they were both pretty good pieces of software.

Handy Calendar starts with a month view at the top, showing the appointments for today at the bottom of the screen. Each appointment for a specific day is shown as a dot on the month view, so you can see quickly how full each day will be without having to navigate to the day. There's a decent amount of space under this month view to show the current/selected day's events. I liked this, because it means that I can see most of the appointments I'm likely to make in any one day. For each day highlighted there is a little "busy bar" shown, which gives me a visual representation of how much of the working day my appointments take up.

If I want to make a new appointment (as opposed to Reminder, All day event, Anniversary or Task), I can just start typing it in with either my bluetooth keyboard, or the T9 keyboard on the phone. There are 4 tabs at the top of the page, and as soon as I've finished editing a field, I can move to the next tab along by pressing the right key on my 5-way navigator. The little pictures are clear on the tabs, allowing me to see, easily, where I am.

If I want to make a recurring appointment which will wake me up every morning at 06:30 EXCEPT on Saturdays and Sundays (I have the girls for that task), I can do that. I know, as my brother pointed out, I can make a recurring appointment every Monday to wake me, and another one for every Tuesday, and every Wednesday etc. But what a fag! Is it really unreasonable of me to want to be able to do this in one go? The whole point of getting a PDA is that you want it to help you organise yourself (unlike a real PA, who I'd pay to organise me!) and make it easy to do so.

I haven't explored the package in very much depth, but it's definitely replaced the on-board calendar program with ease.

AquaCalendar starts with a similar view, although the space available to show the appointments for the selected day is quite substantially smaller - somehow, despite all my efforts to show this in a different way, the best I can now view is 3 lines (very small) of appointments for the selected day. I thought I could view more when I downloaded the app, but something I did has managed to leave me with a view of daisies all over the screen, and unless I tell the software that I want it to show me words on the days of the month, that's what I get. I've tried telling it not to show me icons, but that has no effect. I can also get appointments to repeat on specific days of the week, rather than all of them.

I liked the way that AquaCalendar allowed me to edit the background colour of the display, and that an icon can be assigned to each appointment (aha! This is how I got a screen full of daisies!). Unfortunately for the writers of AquaCalendar, this is all window dressing, and since I can't get the main display to show me what I want, all the colours in the world aren't going to make up for it. Although I’ve got the functionality I wanted, it’s clunky to add your appointments (you have to press the options button, choose new, then decide which type of appointment you want, at which point you can start typing in the details. Although there is a similar “tabbed” style interface, you have to press back to finish editing the tab you’re on, and then you can move to the next tab. The pictures at on the “tabs” are not very clear, so you need to be there to work out what it is you’re editing. That’s not a real drawback, just a comment.
So after my 14 day trial, I’ve made my choice.
While I liked AquaCalendar, I preferred Handy Calendar, because, pretty colours and icons aside, it’s important to be able to view my daily grind as easily as possible. So today I purchased Handy Calendar. Oh, and there’s a price difference – Handy Calendar costs $39.95, where AquaCalendar costs $24.95. And they’ll add VAT in for you too!
Now what I want is a shopping list program which allows me to enter a number of items into it, and check them off a check-list to be displayed while I shop. I used Handy Shopper (no relation!) for Palm, which was a great bit of software. So far I’ve found just 3 pieces of software claiming to work on Symbian s60v3, but one of them doesn’t have a trial version, one of them I couldn’t get to install, and the third I couldn’t get to download. Although only $9.99, I’m not going to buy a program without having a good trial first.

Saying Goodbye to Palm

It is with a sigh of sadness that I say goodbye to Palm. I've given up the struggle, and have gone, neither the iPhone nor the WinMob route; I chose a Nokia N78 running Symbian.

I took delivery of my little gem just over 2 weeks ago, and apart from sending a couple of things (notably mobipocket documents) from my Sony Clie TH55, I've barely touched that worthy old device since.

And I have been faithful! I've struggled for months, now, trying to get my aging device to run more modern software, accepting that I may notice a small reduction in speed.

I tried to upgrade to a better browser, following all the advice and instructions on the web. Sadly, despite every effort (I tried to install Java for Palm in order to continue on and install Opera Mini) I have been forced to continue my web browsing habits using NetFront. It's not even that this is particularly dreadful, unless you try using a site like YouTube, or even Google Calendar, neither of which will work on my old device. Pop over to either of them on the new phone, and you're in!

What I like best is that so far, with a couple of initial hiccoughs, the phone has worked as required. The obvious is there - I can make and receive calls (when Vodafone finally saw fit to release my number). I feel this is a pretty fundamental requirement for a phone of any type. Then there's the web access - a little shaky setting up the connection through my wireless LAN, but that's now set, and I can browse the web. In fact, I've not found anything I can't do on the internet - that said, I've not gone far yet.Google Maps, downloaded and installed, and works.

It will even work with my wireless home network, something I have trouble doing with the version on the Sony - sometimes it might just work, more often I'll be told that I need a data contract to run the program. Goosync works, similarly, either with the wireless network, or with the 3/3.5G connection, and I have my calendar synced. I like the downloaded version of Google Mail better than I like the installed mail application.

It's this whole "It just works" feeling I'm enjoying most. I unfold my bluetooth keyboard, press any button on it, and it's automatically connected. OK, it took me a little while to set up the web access, but I don't feel that a couple of hours investment in learning how to get the most out of my new device is time wasted. After all, I've been a palm fan for the last 10 years, The point is that while I could get my palm and the keyboard connected, it took a bit of a song and dance to do so. And then, when I’d finished using the keyboard, I’d have to remember to go back into the wireless keyboard program and stop the keyboard, before I was able to turn off Bluetooth.

There were all sorts of things which didn't work well – I was never able to get the Frogpad keyboard working consistently well. In fact, more often than not, it wouldn’t connect at all. Despite the claim on the Expansys web site that the Frog would work with Palm, the drivers were not included in the package, and on download they were flaky. There was an option to pay an extra £25 for a driver which would work, but I don’t know about you, I need to know that this will work before I’m prepared to fork out that kind of money on something which should have been included in the original package. Moving on to the N78 – once paired with the Frogpad using the wireless keyboard program, all I have to do is turn it on, and it’s connected. I feel an overwhelming urge to use the American “Booyah!” at this point!

On the, very slight, downside, the built in calendar program is a bit lame. I actually do want a calendar program which will allow me to create just one appointment, and repeat it weekly on certain days - I'd rather not be woken on Saturday morning by my normal weekday alarm! I'm sure that, upon searching, I'll find an excellent replacement. After all, given just how much money I’ve spent on Palm software over the years, it should be clear that I’m not averse to spending a little to get what I need.

There is another downside – the case is astonishingly easy to scratch, and the front, after being pressed up against my not-that-grubby-thankyou ear has a constant smear of grease over it.

In defence of Palm's legion software writers, there have been some astonishing pieces of software written for the Palm platform. For example, TCPMP is a superb piece of software, and genuinely plays videos with a level of control of which I can only dream on the Nokia. DateBk has exactly the right level of control for a calendar application, Filez is a truly excellent file manager, and FXPilot is wonderful for taking on holiday with the latest exchange rates.

So to the tireless, endlessly imaginative, think-outside-the-box, Palm software writers I give my thanks, for producing some of the most useful, inexpensive and brilliant software I've ever used. Can you see why I sigh?