Nerd Life

I'm on a train right now (typing this into TextPad) and I'm sort of realizing that the WiFi ubiquity I have been experiencing for the past few weeks was actually an illusion! :-/

It all started last month when I bought a new laptop with built in WiFi. It's the kind of gadget you just can't leave unused, even if it's hidden deep inside the machine. You know it's there and you just gotta check it out.

I thought the cheapest way to give it a try was to buy an USB WiFi adapter and plug it into my desktop. So I went for a Netgear USB key and quickly set up an 'ad-hoc' network between my laptop and my desktop. (For the record, the laptop uses an Intel "centrino family" WiFi chip.)

The other way to go would have been to buy a standalone WiFi access point, maybe even one that's merged into an ADSL modem. This would be called 'infrastructure' mode. I thought ad-hoc and infrastructure were basically the same, except I would not have had to turn on the desktop to act as an internet router everytime I wanted to access the Internet from my laptop. So I decided I'd simply go the cheap way.

Well... I was wrong.

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I was going to say all kinds of nice things about my new laptop, like "wow not a single dead pixel on that wide screen!" or "3 to 4 hours of autonomy, I had lots of less powerful devices that lasted less..." Yeah, however I can't really get to this euphoric state as long as that bluetooth implementation keeps bugging me! >:(

The laptop is a Compaq Presario X1000 (more precisely: X1005EA if you need to know) with integrated Bluetooth support. It runs on Windows XP. It's still not clear to me to what extent XP actually supports Bluetooth. Anyway, the computer comes with a piece of software called "Bluetooth by hp 1.4.1 Build 3" which in turn, installs a Bluetooth driver provided by WIDCOMM.

I can see this in the device manager which shows a "Bluetooth Communications Port (COM5)". That's the WIDCOMM driver and it is reported to function normally.

Now, in order to get something done with this "wireless COM port", it looks like I have to use the "Bluetooth by hp" software. However, that one keeps reporting that no bluetooth device is detected and advises to check if it is connected and functioning properly.

I've been wondering for a while if that meant that there is no peer bluetooth device to communicate with... but no, it really seems that the bluetooth manager can't find the WIDCOMM virtual port! :(

Does anyone have a clue on this? Anyone using that "bluetooth by hp" software? Are there alternatives available?

Sendo has unveiled more of its Sendo X in a press conference today. Let's tell it as it is: that smartphone totally rocks! It's even better than what we could expect from previous announcements.

Of course, in this industry, product cycles are very short, so it's only going to be a matter of months before someone (Nokia?) comes out with something better (I mean a better smartphone, not an experimental device like the 7700! :>>).

The Sendo X should be priced around 500 € (unsubsidized) and actually includes pretty much everything you could wish from a smarphone: compact, true phone form factor, normal keyboard, color display (176*220*16), integrated camera with flash, recording and playback of video (15 fps), sound, music, support of standard formats (mp3, mpeg...)

And of course, it runs on Symbian + Series 60 with Java/MIDP support.

One thing I was pretty unsure of until now, was if it was possible to connect a stereo headset for mp3 playback as an alternative to the built in accoustic system. Not only is it possible, but the headset is provided in the box! B)

The other good news is that the device supports SD cards up to a 1GB capacity and beyond. That's exactly what you need to store the mp3s you want to listen to and all those sound/video recordings you're going to make. Even better: the SD cards are hot swappable! B)

Actually, the only drawback I could find so far is the lack of support for SD/IO.

Also, I had written before that many pocket devices were going to converge soon and this time has definitely arrived (it only lacks an emebedded GPS! :> ) However, I stated that we'd still want PDAs with larger screens and a pen interface to take notes.

Well... the fact is you don't need to take notes no more! Just record or picture the info! You'll process it later anyway. ;) Moreover, when you really need to enter text (for email for example) you can always use T9. (That is for western countries with limited alphabets... :>>) However, for massive emailing, you'll probably want to get the external keyboard accessory. Plus, stylus technologies aren't so reliable anyway!

I am glad I managed to wait that long to replace my aging PDA and phone, because the SendoX is definitely going to replace them both at the same time, with increased efficiency on all my previous plans! ;D

Can't wait! Gotta check availability in France. :)

Palm Tungsten

All the first PDAs on the market had keyboards... Remember the Sharp organizers? The Psion Series 5?

Then some day, the Apple Newton and a little later the PalmPilot introduced a new form of input device: the stylus! Since then, virtually all PDAs adopted that form and the ones who didn't (like Psion)... eventually died! :(

The funny thing is that lately, the keyboard equipped devices seem to have started a massive come-back! Sony and Handspring were the first. Today PalmOne has a keyboard on half of their new models. And the Pocket PC powered (well the Windows Mobile 2003 powered) devices will probably follow shortly.

The reason for this trend is a shift in the PDAs main usage. A few years ago, PDAs were used nearly exclusively as a date book + an address book on steroids. But today, they are also used to edit complete Word or Excel files and more importantly: to communicate!

PDAs have become an efficient way to check and reply to email on the move, as advocated by RIM with the Blackberry. There is no way you can bear repeatedly writing emails without a keyboard!

As I said before, the survival of the PDA species is bound to developing real competitive advantages over the smartphones. The keyboard may be one of them... but again... Nokia has already thought about this issue [Link gone] twice!

Just stumbled upon yet another funky IE6 "bug" (if I may say so...

When you want to automatically refresh to another page, you send a header that looks something like:

Refresh:0;url=http://blah.blah.blah

The funky thing is that if that header exceeds the maximum size of 263 characters, IE won't do the refresh!

Okay there's got to be a limit, but why so low? And why "263" ??

No need to say, auto refreshes work fine in Firebird with headers much longer than that.

I guess this is why you still need to put some dirty message underneath like 'if nothing happens, please click here! :/

PS: Please don't tell me to use a Location: instead. This would make it impossible to set cookies.