Distant Parts

I’ve always been a fan of large monitors, and until recently my experience has always been that bigger is better.

I’ve had a Dell 2405FPW (24″) for several years now, and it’s a big improvement for me, even over the 20″ screen of my old iMac.

With the recent release of Dell’s new 3008WFP (more features than just about any monitor out there), I was recently tempted into upgrading to a 30″ monitor. 30″ monitors are still very expensive, but as someone who stares at his computer screen for about 10 hours a day, I’d be prepared to pay the premium, if I got a similar improvement to previous size increases.

Once the monitor arrived, I was simultaneously impressed with physical build quality, and disappointed with a couple of faults in my particular unit. Having had a couple of hours to test it out, the monitor is being returned for a refund, rather than a replacement; partly for the faults, but mostly because it’s not the improvement I hoped for. Key to this is the fact that the pixels are significantly smaller on the 30″ screen than a 24″ ( 100.63 pixels per inch vs 94.34 pixels per inch). That makes standard sized font somewhat uncomfortable to read. Use this helpful calculator to compute the pixels per inch for different screen sizes.

I do really like the extra screen pixels, but as most of my usage is text oriented (surfing, reading and coding), I can’t compromised on reading comfort.

Where a 30″ is better:

• Photos - they look gorgeous
• Google Earth - again, gorgeous
• HD video editing - didn’t try this, but the extra screen area allows for 1080p videos plus toolbars etc
• People with much better than average vision. My eyes are slightly better than 20:20 with glasses (confirmed by an optician two weeks ago). If you’re a fighter pilot, or a bird of prey, buy a 30″ screen. If you’ve got the vision for it, large spreadsheets and long documents will look much better

Where a 24″ is better (for those with normal vision):

• Anything text based - most user interfaces assume a certain size of text, and whilst you can usually up the font size, things rarely scale without compromise (buttons, graphics not scaling etc)
• Web development - Scaling up the fonts for readability usually distorts the layout of web pages to some degree, as images don’t normally scale. Whilst I do test the impact of larger fonts on my site, it seems like bad practice to develop at font sizes other than the browser default
• Gaming - Much more support for 1920×1200 than 2560×1600, and less strain on graphics cards too

It’s a pity there are no commonly used resolutions between 1920×1200, and 2560×1600. Something like 2160×1350 in a 27″ or 28″ screen would probably be perfect for me. Extra resolution, without having to squint, or pretend you’re in an IMAX cinema.

Alternatively, I need to wait for the world to move to resolution independent user interfaces, but that doesn’t look like it’s happening any time soon.

In the spirit of all the other 2007 lists out there, and to try to make up for my recent lack of posts, this is going to set of eclectic lists of things I should have mentioned during 2007.

Gadgets I liked:

• Nokia N95 - still love it, especially with the v20 firmware, and recent apps such as Google Mobile Maps with GPS support, and the emTube video player. By far the best phone/PDA I’ve ever owned
• Xbox 360 Elite - So many good games this year on the Xbox 360, and since I got a good deal on a new Elite, it was well worth upgrading from my old Premium to get the larger disk and HDMI video output
• Topfield TF5800 PVR with the MyStuff interface - I’ve had this over a year, but it keeps getting better and better. Massively customisable, and it allows the download of recordings, ready for backup onto DVD with no loss of quality
• Nintendo Wii - Just over a year old, overhyped and short of games, but worth it for parties, and the quality games are starting to come. Can someone please do a better Golf game than Tiger Woods 08?
• Fuji F31fd camera - Got this at a bargain price to replace my old Fuji F10. Wonderful picture quality for the size. No compact I’ve seen comes close in less than perfect light. Fuji should stop wasting their time on higher megapixel cameras, and just offer an upgraded F31fd, with added RAW support, SD card slot, image stabilisation, histogram, and exposure bracketing. They could name their price
• Sennheiser HD595 headphones - Not cheap, but so comfortable, and they sound great. By far best headphones I’ve ever owned
• Sennheiser CX300 headphones - Cheap, and sound fantastic for the money. Great for train journeys
• Mac mini (with Core 2) - This has been my main system for almost 6 months, as I’m waiting for a new Mac Pro to be released. I struggle with the 2Gb of RAM, but otherwise, it’s a fantastic desktop system; fast and super quiet. If Apple discontinue the Mac mini in the foreseeable future (as the rumours keep suggesting), without introducing a suitable replacement, they’re completely crazy
• ASUS EEE PC - Don’t own one of these, but a friend does, and I’ve used it quite extensively. Love the price and the build quality. Firefox runs so much better than I thought it would. Release an updated version with a 9 inch screen, integrated bluetooth, and running the Xubuntu version of Hardy Heron, and ASUS will have my order in a heartbeat. A similar device with the lovely form factor of the Palm Foleo would be great too (just don’t copy the Foleo’s crippled software or internal hardware)
• Joytech Tri-link HDMI switch - Affordable, nicely priced, and intelligently designed (with a nice IR extension cable). A painless way to add a couple of extra HDMI ports to my TV
• Lenovo 3000 N200 - Purchased for my Aunt who was looking for a budget laptop. Available with XP (instead of Vista), came with 1Gb DIMM (instead of the usual 2x 512Mb), friendly system restore software (including backup to bootable DVD), and a Pentium Dual Core processor based on Intel’s modern Merom core (basically a slightly cut down Core2Duo). The build quality is better than most Dell’s I’ve experienced, and at £399, it was serious bargain. Added an extra 1Gb DIMM, and you can’t go wrong if you’re looking for a budget laptop.

Games I liked:

• Portal - So clever, so funny, so short
• Super Mario Galaxy - Nearly as inventive as Portal, but much bigger
• Excite Truck - Best Wii game in the first half of 2007. A little too random at times, but plays like Sega Rally crossed with Stunt Car Racer
• Forza Motorsport 2 - A little sterile, but so smooth and realistic. It’s an automotive sandbox, and I’ll be playing it for years. And yes, I do have a chipped Shadow Blue Golf GTI in the game
• Endless Ocean - The most relaxing game ever invented. Animal Crossing under the sea, without the commitment to keep visiting every day
• BioShock - Love the art and the architecture. The rest of the game is pretty good too
• Sega Rally - Totally unrealistic, but so much fun. A pity that it didn’t seem to get the attention it deserved. Had the great track design that was always a feature of classic Sega coinops
• Project Gotham Racing 4 - Just the right mix of fun and realism. So superficially similar to Forza, yet so different too. Which I prefer depends which day you ask me. Would love them to bring back the Edinburgh track from PGR2 as downloadable content
• Call of Duty 4 - Best multiplayer game of the year. It’s like a tighter, more focussed version of Battlefield 2
• Colin McRae: Dirt - This feels like Project Gotham of rallying to me. A lovely balance between fun and realism. It deserved more praise than it got. Extra bonus points for including the Pikes Peak Hillclimb too
• SEGA Presents: Touch Darts - Bought this in preparation for a stag night I was going on, and it managed to help me appreciate a sport I previously knew almost nothing about. You don’t need to be a darts fan to appreciate this little gem

Software I liked:

• Mac OS X Leopard - Nothing revolutionary, but since Tiger was pretty good, big changes weren’t needed. I love Spaces, Safari 3, Quick Look, and Time Machine
• Safari 3 - Deserves an entry of its own. It’s now my favourite Mac browser (narrowly beating Camino). It seems to leak a little memory, but it’s fast and stable
• Ubuntu - I seriously considered switching from Mac to Ubuntu this year. In the end, Leopard’s polish, and some of Ubuntu’s rough edges put me off, but given a choice between Windows and Ubuntu, Ubuntu wins hands down
• Google Earth - A bigger time sink than Wikipedia, and that’s saying something. Love the new flight sim mode
• TextMate - This has been my main text editor for over two years. I probably don’t even use 10% of its features, but even so, I’ve more than had my money’s worth
• VideoReDo - Although it’s a Windows only program, this powerful MPEG2 editor is fantastic for chopping the ads out of recordings made on my Topfield PVR. The new TVSuite version even authors and burns the DVD for you
• Google Maps on N95 - GPS support, the new My Location feature, and high speed data over HSDPA make this a tremendously useful tool
• emTube - Brilliant YouTube app for S60 phones
• VMware Fusion - Windows, Mac and Linux together on one machine; wonderful. Instead of multiple machines in my office, I can just buy one powerful Mac, and host anything else I need inside VMware Fusion. Brilliant for testing new OS installs too.

Disappointments/irritations:

• Internet Explorer 7 - Fixes lots of IE6 bugs, but introduces lots of new issues, along with a new and particularly horrid user interface. If it had replaced IE6 more quickly, it would have been better, but for now it’s just another broken browser to support
• Firefox 2 on the Mac - I want to love it, but despite many clean installs, it’s just not as stable as Firefox 1.5 was. I don’t care about new features right now, just please improve the stability
• DRM - Some positive movements this year, but not enough. There’s no future in providing a worse service to paying customers than freeloaders
• Apple’s treatment of its customers - Bricking iPhones, expensive ringtones, no Mac Pro upgrade, no mid range desktop Mac, expensive hardware upgrade pricing (insulting RAM prices etc), censoring legitimate discussions on your support forums. Sort it out, or I may have to reconsider defecting to Ubuntu
• The Sony PS3 - The lack of games, inept handling of the press, loss of backwards compatibility, confusing hardware variations, etc…
• Windows Vista - What were Microsoft doing for 5 years? XP with some extra eye candy shouldn’t have taken so long, and should have worked better. I’m recommending everyone I know to stick with XP, or move to Linux or the Mac. This XP review sums it up very well
• Palm Foleo - The physical form factor was so right, but the crippled internal hardware and software were so wrong. Add in the high price, and Palm were right to can it. Combine the best bits of the Foleo and the EEE PC, and you’d be onto a winner
• Windows Product Activation - I’m happy to pay for a legitimate Windows licence, but I don’t want to be treated like a potential criminal just because I reconfigure my machines more often than is usual. Virtualisation makes this even annoying. I had real trouble getting a single Boot Camp install of Windows XP to validate in both Boot Camp and VMware. One OS install, one physical machine, but I had to fiddle around with mac addresses, and call Microsoft several times to get this working. Not a good experience for a paying customer, who just wants to test websites on Windows (for the benefit of Microsoft’s other customers). And as IE7 isn’t available for Windows 2000, that’s not an option either. Any more problems and I’m moving to Wine

Quick thoughts on the UK iPhone launch:

Positives:

• The contract is 18 months, not 24 as some had suggested
• Including the Cloud connectivity is very clever. It partially compensates for the lack of 3G
• The included data plan fair usage limits of roughly 1400 web pages a day translates to about 0.5-2Gb a month (depended on the web page size they’re assuming). That’s competitive with T-Mobile and 3’s data tariffs

Negatives:

• The tariffs (£35 to £55) are too expensive, given the phone costs £269 and it’s an 18 month contract. They should have offered £25 to £45, or at worst £29.99 to £49.99
• No 3G. Despite the WiFi bundle, this is a big deal. Steve Jobs is wrong about the tradeoff they’re making of battery life vs data speed
• The killer quote was from O2 regarding EDGE coverage: “By launch we’ll be north of 30% and build from there”. EDGE is slow enough. If that coverage is going to be patchy, it means relying on GPRS. Oh dear…

So a bit of a mixed bag, but not enough to tempt me away from my N95. I wait the iPhone 2 with interest

For me, Apple’s new iPod touch is like selling a Ferrari for $20,000, but only installing a fuel tank with a 2 mile range.

It’s such a great device, but the lack of Bluetooth kills it dead for me. I wouldn’t mind, but it’s such a silly omission.

Living in England (rather than San Francisco), the world outside my house isn’t blanketed by free WiFi. If the iPod touch had Bluetooth, I could connect it to the web via HSDPA through my N95. Without that feature, Safari on the iPod is only useful within my home.

I’m heartbroken that Apple have come so close to a must have device, but have blown it for the sake of a cheap Bluetooth chipset. And it’s not as if there’s a partner like AT&T to blame.

p.s. If you just want a media player, or you live in San Francisco, get your order in now and join the inevitable waiting list

For almost 2.5 years, my main desktop computer has been a 20 inch iMac G5 (1.5Gb of RAM), running Mac OS X Tiger. It’s been a great machine, but for quite some time I’ve been struggling with its relatively slow CPU and the 20 inch screen.

I’ve been dreaming of a new Mac Pro with OS X Leopard, dual Harpertown processors (8 cores in total), and a 30 inch screen. No such beast has yet materialised, but I was starting to get desperate. Then I came up with a plan:

• Remove my Mac mini from its home in the living room (to be temporarily replaced by a laptop)
• Upgrade my Mac mini from a 1.5Ghz Core Solo, with 1Gb of RAM and a 60Gb disk, to a 1.83 Ghz Core 2 Duo, with 2Gb of RAM, and a 160Gb disk
• Use the upgraded Mac mini as my new desktop (with my Dell 2405FPW monitor), and sell my old G5 iMac
• Upgrade the Mac mini to Leopard on release
• When Apple release a new machine that I want, return the Mac mini to my living room, with the benefit of its upgraded specification

So far the plan has worked out very well, and some interesting points emerged from the experience:

• I opted to install the Intel T5600 processor. I wanted a Core 2 Duo as they are 64bit (unlike the Core Duos), and seem to perform significantly better than the old Core Duos. The T5600 supports Intel VT, unlike the slower T5500, and the only thing it misses is the slightly larger caches on the faster Core 2 Duo chips. Apparently this has a negligible effect on performance. Also, at 1.83GHz, I was comfortable that heat wouldn’t be an issue
• Mac minis are not designed to be opened. It’s the most fiddly PC building job I’ve ever done; I managed to break a thin plastic cable clip, and didn’t manage to get things working again (with the aid of insulating tape) for several hours. I’m never opening the Mac mini again
• The upgraded mini feels much quicker than my old G5 (it’s supposed to be twice as quick, but it feels like more than that). Even the GMA950 graphics card isn’t a problem for me. Expose runs beautifully, and that’s my main graphics heavy application. I no longer feel in a hurry to upgrade to a Mac Pro
• The mini is super silent as a desktop. It can be heard, but only just
• My Dell 24 inch screen is much nicer than the 20 inch screen on my old G5. Maybe I don’t need a 30 inch screen after all?
• Two days before I rebuilt the mini (but after I’d ordered the parts), Apple upgraded the Mac mini to Core 2 Duos, with the lower specced machine using the same T5600 processor as I chose for my upgrade. So my machine is almost an official specification. And the entire cost of the upgrade (including £75 on eBay for the processor), was about the same as Apple would have charged to upgrade their new base Mac mini to 2Gb of RAM and a 160Gb hard disk (I went for a Hitachi disk, in case anyone is interested)
• Being an Intel machine, I now had the option of running Windows in Boot Camp or virtualised. More on this in another post, but in brief, this is a killer feature for me
• Moving your files and preferences to a new Mac is a much nicer experience than migrating between Windows PCs. Just copy across your home directory, and that’s pretty much it

On Friday night I had the chance to play with a Nokia 6120 classic for 10 minutes or so, and here are my quick impressions.

The 6120 classic is a very small HSDPA Series 60 phone. Basically a very stripped down N95, which is no bad thing. Because of this, I’m going to compare the 6120 classic to my experience of owning an N95.

N95 features missing from the 6120 classic:

• GPS - GPS is getting better on the N95 with the new Assisted GPS feature. However, it’s still more of a nice to have than an essential feature in my view
• WiFi - This is a significant loss, but is mitigated by the presence of HSDPA
• Infra-red port - Not a big issue in 2007
• TV Output - How many people actually use this in the real world?
• Micro SDHC card support - 2Gb plain MicroSD in the 6120 classic vs 4Gb SDHC (and maybe higher) in the N95 - See the comments

Important features shared by both phones:

• HSDPA - Super fast data. You’ll never want to use GPRS ever again. Note that you’re going to need an “unlimited” data package to make proper use of this feature
• Series 60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 - lovely mobile optimised WebKit browser
• Bluetooth 2.0 - Fast data transfers, and A2DP for audio
• Audible hiss on the headphone socket - I’ve heard this on all four N95s I’ve played with, and the 6120 classic was no different. Not a phone for audiophiles
• A navigation pad - A tiny joystick, as used by many phones, is a deal breaker for me

Other differences

• Physical size - The 6120 classic is a super small phone. Photos don’t do it justice. It’s very very thin for a candy bar phone. The N95 is like a brick compared to the 6120 classic
• Button size - The numeric keypad and the nav pad on the 6120 classic are good, but the buttons surrounding the nav pad are a little too small for comfort
• Build quality - The 6120 classic is very solid, and feels much better made than the N95. Annoying, given the N95 is a lot more expensive. I worry about my N95 being damaged by keys in my pocket, whereas the 6120 classic felt like it would have no such problems
• Screen size - The 2.0 inch screen on the 6120 classic is noticeably smaller than the N95’s 2.6 inch screen. The small font size in the N95 web browser (which I use) is about the same size as the normal font size on a 6120 classic
• Camera - The 6120 classic is passable with a 2 megapixel fixed focus camera, and 320×240 video at 15fps. Not a patch on the quality of the N95 though. I took the same photo with both cameras, and the N95 shot was clearly much better
• Speakers - Both the N95 and 6120 classic have very loud speakers. The only difference is that the N95 is stereo, and the 6120 classic is mono. Given how close the N95 speakers are, this is a very minor point
• Stealth - No one would ever guess the 6120 classic is a powerful smartphone; it looks just like a standard Series 40 Nokia phone
• Price - My friend who owns the 6120 classic got it for £29.99 on a £15 a month Three contract (18 months). By way of comparison, an N95 on a £20 T-Mobile contract is £249. That fits with Nokia’s suggested sim free price for a 6120 classic of 260 Euros (£176). I’m not sure if that includes tax, but as a comparison, the N95 sim free is still going for around £450. That’s a huge difference

In summary, the 6120 classic is a seriously impressive phone. I’m not going to swap my N95 for one, but if I was looking to buy an N95 now, I’d struggle to justify it over the 6120 classic. WiFi, GPS, the bigger screen, and the better camera are definitely worth having, but I’m not sure they’re worth £250 extra.

See the All About Symbian 6120 classic Review if you want more detail and photos of the 6120 classic.

Ordered by date acquired, with :

1. PalmPilot Professional - faulty, so I only had it for a few days
2. Psion Series 5 - never found a real use for it. Plus it was expensive, and the rubber skin started peeling
3. Palm V - slim, and beautifully made
4. Casio EM-500 - starved of RAM, but such a gorgeous screen for its time
5. Palm IIIxe - Cheap, rugged, lots of RAM
6. HP Jornada 568 - liked the flip down screen protector
7. Sony Ericsson P800 - weird but promising. Felt like an alpha product
8. Handspring Treo 600 - lovely build and software integration. Pity about the voice quality
9. i-mate JAM - great form factor, but unstable, and poor telephony
10. Dell Axim X50v - great screen, super fast, dual memory cards. It’s just a little too large
11. Nokia N95 - see my review

Eleven PDAs in 10 years, and still the search continues for my perfect device

I don’t have an iPhone

I have never touched, or even seen a real life iPhone

But based on all the comments out there, I’m going to offer my personal opinion anyway

At a high level Apple have done an amazing job. It looks like a killer iPod, and the slickest phone I’ve ever seen. But for me, the devil is the detail. Many of the details below come from this great Macworld article and Engadget’s review

Annoying things I could live with:

• 2 megapixel camera
• No video recording - a silly omission these days
• No 3rd party apps
• No landscape keyboard - hopefully there will be a software fix soon
• No support for memory cards
• No Flash support
• Non-standard headphone socket - what was the point of a non-standard 3.5mm socket?
• No MMS - this is 2007, not 2003
• No VOIP - annoying, but understandable
• No instant messaging - taking things too far in my view
• No GPS - if Apple add this, please make a good chipset. Fast acquisition really matters on a phone
• No MP3 ringtones - I want to at least be able to upload MIDI and WAV files. Why should Apple force me into some walled garden? It’s like deciding to stop supporting MP3 music. So much for no DRM Steve

Critical issues:

• No 3G - needs to be fixed before it arrives in the UK, otherwise the iPhone is dead to me
• Network restricted - if I can’t have it in the UK on a decent unlimited 3G data tariff (Three, or T-Mobile right now), I’m not interested. Ideally I’d like it sim free. And, yes, I’m prepared to pay a premium. O2, or worse Vodafone, will not be considered unless there are massive changes to their data tariffs
• Limited bluetooth support; no A2DP or OBEX - this lock really cripples the iPhone for me. I need the ability to transfer files and sync over bluetooth. My N95 is great at this, and it’s a non negotiable feature. A2DP would be nice as well
• Can’t be used a modem - not acceptable

The good news is that all the issues above are fixable. The question is will Apple fix enough to tempt me away from my N95?

For those of us who are never satisfied with our current PDA, I can thoroughly recommend the following sites:

PDAdb.net is Windows Mobile only (no Symbian), but is fantastically comprehensive otherwise. I’ve wasted many hours searching in vain for my perfect PDA.

Steve Litchfield’s 3-Lib hosts a great comparison of all the Series 60 Symbian smartphones. I’d also recommend his Grid comparison (which includes some Windows Mobile devices), and his All About Symbian site for general Symbian news.

In September 2006, I posted my thoughts about the announcement of Nokia’s N95.

A few weeks ago, I actually bought one, so I thought I’d follow up with my thoughts in my usual format. So you’re aware of my background, I’m coming to the N95 as my first S60 device, having previously used a Samsung D600 phone, paired with a Dell Axim X50v PDA.

Negatives:

• The build quality isn’t stunning. The slider wobbles a bit for a start. Nowhere near as good as my old D600
• The screen feels like it would be easily damaged by coins or keys in a pocket. This is in contrast to my D600, which after 18 months of abuse, is still in almost perfect condition
• For complex PDA work, the N95 really feels like it could use an alternate form of input to the numeric keypad (slideout keyboard or touchscreen)
• The battery life isn’t great (two days of normal use for me). But to be fair, I didn’t expect anything else
• The range of software is rubbish compared to Windows Mobile, and having to deal with unsigned apps is a pain
• My N95 had a loud hiss on the headphone socket, and has just been sent off for replacement. Hopefully I’ll have a replacement soon

Positives:

• The connectivity is wonderful. Having 3G, HSDPA, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 2.0 in one device is a revelation. This is the first device where I’ve ever felt properly connected wherever I go
• The builtin web browser, is the best mobile browser I’ve ever used, with the exception of Opera on my N800. Browsing on my N95 is better than Internet Explorer or Opera on my Dell Axim
• It’s a very good phone. Not a PDA with some passable phone functionality, but a genuinely impressive phone, with great reception and voice quality
• The size is just perfect; small enough to never be a burden, yet large enough to make it useful PDA
• Great quality photos and video from its camera
• While I had issues with its headset socket, I’m blown away by its speakers. They sound great, and are very loud for a portable device. Obviously they can’t perform miracles, but I’ve happily wandered round my house getting ready to go out, whilst listening the N95 play my favourite MP3s from the pocket of my jeans
• The N95 uses a nice big d-pad to navigate its menus, rather than the horrid tiny joysticks used on lots of phones (manufacturers: please note that I refuse to buy any phone with a tiny joystick)
• It syncs beautifully with my iMac over Bluetooth 2.0. Calendar, tasks and contacts all sync across. Who needs an iPhone?
• Google Maps over 3G is great. If they could just add support for the builtin GPS, it would be almost perfect

Conclusion:

It’s far from perfect, but it’s the best smartphone I’ve used yet. I had planned to carry my X50v along with the N95, but so far I’ve been happy to leave the X50v at home. Wikipedia and Google Maps in the pub, and Gmail while queuing at Marks and Spencer are my current killer apps

And as for the fabled iPhone, I’ll consider it when Apple bring out a 3G version with third party app support, but until then, I’ll be sticking with my N95