Nokia: ‘we prioritize antenna performance over physical design if they are ever in conflict’

Nokia’s looking to ride the mojo of any negative fallout from today’s Apple press conference, slipping out a rather fascinating statement this afternoon. The gist of it is that Espoo’s keen on letting everyone know how much blood, sweat, and tears they’ve poured into perfecting their antenna design strategy over the years, going so far as to say that they “prioritize” it over the physical design of the phone if they need to in order to optimize its call performance — an opinion moderately different from the “we want to have our cake and eat it too” philosophy espoused by Jobs today. In closing, Nokia acknowledges that a “tight grip” can mess with the performance, though they say they’ve done a bunch of research on the ways their phones are typically held so that the antennas are placed optimally. Interestingly, there was a stink not long ago about the severe signal degradation some E71 users were seeing when they placed their hands on the lower rear of the phone — but you can’t win ’em all, we suppose. Follow the break for the full statement.

Continue reading Nokia: ‘we prioritize antenna performance over physical design if they are ever in conflict’

Nokia: ‘we prioritize antenna performance over physical design if they are ever in conflict’ originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 16 Jul 2010 16:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Foxit Reader 3.0 Released

This article was written on November 24, 2008 by CyberNet.

foxit reader 3.jpg

arrow Windows Windows only arrow
Adobe has struggled with the performance of Acrobat Reader for quite some time, and that’s the main reason I’ve always found myself using the free Foxit Reader. Plus the fact that they’ve always offered the PDF reader as a standalone executable has meant that I can carry around the application on my USB drive. In the end, however, it all comes down to the fact that I can start Foxit in under 2 seconds.

The best part is that they keep making the software better and better. The latest release, Foxit Reader 3.0, includes Firefox support, an improved selection tool, a thumbnail panel, and more. You can find a full list of what’s new here, but these are the ones I wanted to highlight:

  • Enticing Multimedia Design
    Now users can not only play multimedia in Foxit Reader, but also are empowered to add, edit or delete multimedia files with the incredible Movie Tool and Sound Tool.
  • Thumbnail Panel
    Shows thumbnail images for each PDF page and allows users to quickly view relevant portions of a PDF file. Now users can navigate through PDFs with page thumbnails.
  • Layout Panel
    Lists PDF layers in the document, allows users to control the display of some certain content areas.
  • Awe-Inspiring Foxit OnDemand Content Management
    This new add-on enables users to organize, share and collaborate on documents and forms online. Users can upload from Foxit Reader or send documents with ease. Advanced features include workflow driven document sharing, revisions of documents, CollabRoom for group collaboration.
  • Firefox Support
    With Firefox Plugin, users can view and work with PDF files loaded in Foxit Reader with Firefox web browser.
  • Improved Select Text Tool
    Not only used for selecting text, but also enables users to add most types of annotations, including highlight, strikeout, underline, squiggly, replacement, etc.
  • Better Annotation Control
    Allows users to align and center multiple annotations on PDF pages, including Notes, Drawing Markups and Typewriter Comments.
  • Advanced Toolbar Control
    Completely rearranges the toolbar layout and allows users to easily customize the tools that appear in Foxit Reader.
  • Transferrable preferences Settings
    Foxit Reader creates an INI file to save user’s preferences settings so that it can be easily kept and transferred. Users can keep their own settings and don’t have to configure them when Foxit Reader is updated or moved.

Get Foxit Reader 3.0 for Windows

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CyberNotes: Speed Up File Transfers

This article was written on August 21, 2007 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Time Saving Tuesday

Vista File TransferTransferring files from one folder to another, or from computer to computer is something most people do on a regular basis. Have you ever thought about speeding up the process by using a file transfer utility? They’re similar to the download managers in your web browser, except they’re made to be used all around your computer.

The best part is that the two free programs that I mention below replace the built-in Windows file transfer manager. You can still use Windows Explorer just as you normally do, but anytime you try to copy, paste, or move files, these apps will do the dirty work for you. Not only that, but both programs will pick up where they left off, should you shutdown your computer in the middle of a transfer, or need to stop it for some reason. Heck, you can even pause the transfers and resume them later on!

–Copy Handler (Homepage)–

This is probably my favorite of the two programs this article covers. It has an insane number of options (over 60) that you customize, doesn’t require any installation, and is open source. One of the reasons that I love this program so much is that you can adjust the number of simultaneous transfers, and once that number is hit it will queue up the rest for later on.

After you download the ZIP folder and extract the contents, the first thing you’ll want to do is register the DLL. This will ensure that Copy Handler replaces the built-in transfer manager for Windows:

Copy Handler

Then whenever you go to transfer a file you’ll be presented with an extremely compact file transfer window (left – actual size), or you can open a more detailed window full of all the stats that you crave (right – click to enlarge):

Copy Handler File Transfer Window Copy Handler Detailed Status Window

Then if you want to try and speed things up even more, or want to change how something works, just head on over to the options where there are plenty of things for you to play with:

Copy Handler Options

There is one downside to this program, and it’s that it isn’t actively developed any more. The last update was provided back in October 2006, but luckily it still works great on Vista. The developer is currently looking for a sponsor so that he can continue the development on Copy Handler.

–TeraCopy (Homepage)–

This application is similar to the Copy Handler above, but I saw it on Lifehacker recently and it also piqued my interest. I gave it a whirl and found it to be much simpler than Copy Handler. It doesn’t really have anything for you to configure, and what you see below is essentially the entire application.

TeraCopy

You’ll be notified if an error occurs while in the middle of a transfer, but TeraCopy will continue working on the other files. That way one bad file doesn’t screw up the entire batch of files being transferred.

–Overview/Benchmarks–

You’ll only notice a large speed difference with these file transfer utilities if your moving or copying many files, or really big files. To give you a quick comparison of the differences in using these I transferred 85 images over the network that totaled 114MB. Again, the differences aren’t that large, but if you’re moving around a few gigabytes of data these utilities could possibly chop a few minutes off of the transfer time.

  • Copy Handler – 58 seconds
  • TeraCopy – 1 minute
  • Vista (with Performance Pack) – 1 minute and 3 seconds
  • Vista (without Performance Pack) – 1 minute and 14 seconds

Note: Default options were used in each of the applications.

If you find yourself frequently moving large things around, these apps could be priceless to you. Of the two, I would recommend Copy Handler to anyone that is a power user, and TeraCopy for anyone looking for a simple replacement for what’s built-in to Windows.

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Halite: A Small BitTorrent Client

This article was written on July 26, 2008 by CyberNet.

halite.png

arrow Windows Windows only arrow
I’ve been a big fan of uTorrent for quite some time mostly because of its small size, but there are a lot of features it has that I’ve never really needed. For example, how often do you look at all of those fancy graphs in uTorrent? If you feel the same way then you might want to checkout the Halite BitTorrent client.

Halite is a simple stripped-down BitTorrent client without the frills of uTorrent, but it comes packed with stellar performance. When downloading a file using Halite it used up no more than 8MB of memory, which is just a little bit less than uTorrent. Download speeds are also on par to what I get with uTorrent for the same files, which is probably one of the more important things.

Overall I’m pleased with how Halite handles itself, and I’ll definitely be using it more from now on. If you’re on Windows this is a great solution, otherwise you can checkout some of the other cross-platform BitTorrent apps that we’ve covered.

Download the Halite Bittorrent Client [via Lifehacker]

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Google claims Froyo has the world’s fastest mobile browser

You heard it here first, folks. Google has just come out with the strident claim that the web browser in Android 2.2, aka Froyo, is the world’s fastest for mobile devices. Having implemented the V8 JavaScript Engine that’s already made an appearance in its desktop Chrome browser, Google’s reporting JavaScript performance that’s somewhere in the vicinity of two to three times better than what you can get from previous Android versions. We’ll give this geek cabal some style points for the double equals sign up top, but will certainly be putting its bold assertion to the test in the very near future.

Google claims Froyo has the world’s fastest mobile browser originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 May 2010 11:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Comodo Registry Cleaner

This article was written on January 23, 2009 by CyberNet.

comodo registry cleaner.png

arrow Windows Windows only arrow
Keeping your Windows Registry clean is something that can be quite a chore. Comodo, who happens to make an incredible free firewall tool, also has a free registry cleaner that not many people know about. One thing that I love the most is that you can download the typical installer, or you can grab the portable format that requires no installation.

When it comes down to features there isn’t much explanation needed. Here are some of the features and benefits the site lists out though:

  • Improves the health and performance of your computer – Comodo Registry Cleaner conducts a deep scan of your registry to remove corrupt and unnecessary entries that are causing system slow down and other errors.
  • Start-up Manager – Comodo Registry Cleaner contains a built-in ‘Start Up’ manager which allows you specify which programs are launched when you start your computer.
  • Simple and Easy to use – Fast ‘One-Click’ scanning and a user-friendly interface make it easy for even non-technical users to keep their computers running in peak condition.
  • Your data is safe – Comodo Registry Cleaner performs a full back up of your registry before every scan. This means that you can quickly roll-back your Registry to its pre-scan state if the removal of an entry causes problems.
  • Timetable scans to run when you choose – Registry Cleaner features a customizable scheduler that lets you timetable scans according to your preferences. Perhaps you wish to check your system first thing in the morning – maybe you prefer once a week in the middle of the night. Choose the time that’s right for you and let Registry Cleaner take care of the rest.
  • You’re in control – granular configuration of settings allows you to create custom scans and means the application will scan your system according to your preferences – not the other way around.

In the past I’ve used CCleaner for most of my computer cleaning needs, and it’s always done an incredible job. The only thing is that CCleaner doesn’t focus on just the registry… so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that it wouldn’t be as thorough as some dedicated registry cleaners. Comodo ran some tests to compare its product with those of the competition, and theirs wins hands down. Sure the tests are run by Comodo, but they do provide all the information and installed software for their test machine.

comodo registry cleaner comparison-1.png

You obviously don’t have to believe their comparison, but it’s not like they are trying to sell you their registry cleaner. It’s 100% free, and doesn’t even require an installation. So you can be your own judge… just remember to backup your registry.

Comodo Registry Cleaner for Windows

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OpenOffice.org 2.3 Features

This article was written on September 05, 2007 by CyberNet.

OpenOffice 2.3 OpenOffice.org 2.3 is on the home stretch with the first Release Candidate being made available today. It’s been over 5-months since OpenOffice.org 2.2 was released, and I’m sure most users will be welcoming this update with open arms.

The release notes for OpenOffice.org 2.3 isn’t exactly easy reading, and so I went looking through the OpenOffice.org Wiki for some info. That’s when I stumbled upon their draft of the press release which mentioned several of the more notable features in 2.3. To make it a bit easier to follow I’ve put them in a list format:

  • Charting component (available for use throughout OpenOffice.org)
    • A new chart wizard
    • Enhanced 3D chart designs
    • Replacement colour palettes
    • Additional axis options and scaling
    • Improved toolbars
    • Flexible data sources
    • Improved data editor
  • OpenOffice.org Writer (word processor)
    • Create Wiki pages with a new filter (example of a page created with it can be found here)
    • Documents aligned to the center of the window rather than to the left
    • Language guessing of unknown text, which provides better spelling recommendations
    • Simple Mail Merge now allows the saving of the merge to a single document
    • Support for ODF specification soft page breaks added
    • Pages are not being centered
    • Changed link behaviour in Writer (Ctrl+click for opening links)
  • OpenOffice.org Calc (spreadsheets)
    • Default print settings have changed to suppress the printing of blank pages and to only print the selected sheets
    • Additional simplification of shortcuts
    • Improvement of various functions
    • Changes to context menus and dialogues
    • Improvements to import filters
    • Modifications to toolbars
    • Enhancemed AutoSum feature
  • OpenOffice.org Impress (presentations)
    • Performance improvements
    • The ‘move along curve’ animation feature has been re-introduced, giving ‘cartoon-like’ abilities to presentations.
  • OpenOffice.org Base (databases)
  • OpenOffice.org Draw (diagram creation)
    • Improved exporting to HTML/web by adding support for exporting the images to portable network graphics (PNG) format
    • Provide alternate text for image maps and layer titles and descriptions.

Interestingly enough most OpenOffice.org users had little to no urge to make the jump over to StarOffice when Google started offering it for free. I thought the idea of more clipart and included templates would have been more than enough to entice new users, but that didn’t end up being the case.

As of right now OpenOffice.org 2.3 is scheduled for release on September 12th or 13th, and with the numerous improvements it will be well worth the upgrade. Oh yeah, don’t forget to improve the startup time of OpenOffice.org by following the info Bob posted in our forum.

Download OpenOffice 2.3 RC1 [via Ghacks]

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Make XP Look Like Vista with WindowBlinds 6

This article was written on August 06, 2007 by CyberNet.

Stardock just released WindowBlinds 6 Beta, which is a huge milestone when it comes to skinning. This version adds a host of great new features for both Vista and XP users, with the most notable thing being the blur effect. Why is that so great? Well, it’s available for XP users as well as Vista users, so you don’t have to spend a fortune on a new operating system if you just want it to look good! Here is an example of the blur effect on Windows XP:

WindowBlinds 6

Aside from that there are also a host of options available in WindowBlinds 6 so that almost all aspects of your operating system look exactly the way you want it to. Here are a bunch of screenshots I took of the configuration screens (click on the thumbnails for a fullsize version):

WindowBlinds 6 Configuration WindowBlinds 6 Configuration WindowBlinds 6 Configuration WindowBlinds 6 Configuration WindowBlinds 6 Configuration WindowBlinds 6 Configuration WindowBlinds 6 Configuration

All of those screenshots were done while running WindowBlinds 6 Beta on a computer that is several years old and has an integrated graphics card. I don’t get all of the pretty effects that some of you can have (one example is that I only see an outline of a window when I move it around the screen), but as you can tell the blur effect still works. And as far as performance goes…I noticed no difference running WindowBlinds when compared to not running it. I really don’t know how Stardock does it.

Here’s a list of features currently available in WindowBlinds 6 Beta:

  • Animation overlays
  • Blur glass effects on both Windows Vista and Windows XP
  • User created sub-styles
  • Full font control
  • Explorer backgrounds
  • Complete Windows Vista skinning (including a sidebar skinner)
  • New Leo skin (that’s what I was using for all of the screenshots)
  • Faster performance
  • And much more!

When the final version of WindowBlinds 6 makes it out the door there will be 6 brand-new skins created by the Stardock Design team. There will also be a SkinStudio 6 Beta released soon so that skin developers can start taking advantage of the new features.

If you want to try out WindowBlinds 6 Beta you’ll need to have an ObjectDesktop subscription. Any users that purchased the standalone version of WindowBlinds 5 after February 1, 2007 will get a free upgrade to version 6 when it is released, so you can buy that now and rest easy knowing you’ll get the next major upgrade when it is available.

I have a strong feeling that we are going to see some great skins being developed for WindowBlinds 6, and this application will take XP’s skinning abilities to a whole new level with the added effects. Now I can’t wait to give this a shot on Vista to see how well it purs! :)

Source: Stardock News

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Office 2008 for Mac Release Date Pushed Back

This article was written on August 02, 2007 by CyberNet.

Office 2004Mac users were supposed to be getting the newly redesigned Office 2008, but as it turns out the development team hit a snafu. Now the release date for Office 2008 on Macs is getting pushed back from Fall 2007 to January 2008. Yes, all Intel Mac users running Office 2004 have about 5 more months that they will be putting up with the sluggish performance because of running it with Rosetta.

The new target date of January 2008 will put the release just in time for Macworld, which is where all of the biggest Apple fanatics gather at the same time. So what was the cause for the delay? Craig Eisler, the Microsoft Mac Business Unit’s General Manager, said:

There was no one thing that caused the push—it was more of a perfect storm. The switch to Intel processors, the switch to different tools in the development stream, the switch in formats with Office—all of it presented different roadblocks for the team, and we wanted to make sure we could address all of those issues.

If you look at the release history of Office for Windows vs. Office for Mac you’ll find that the Mac version is typically released 6 to 8 months after the Windows version. Office 2008 is going to be one of the longest delays between the Windows and Mac versions coming in almost a year after-the-fact. Technically it is a year and two months if you count when Office 2007 was released to businesses.

Current Mac users will need to use a file converter that Microsoft offers if they want to open Office 2007 documents. However, that only handles Word and PowerPoint documents.

Alright…I’ll close things up with some screenshots from Office 2008 running on a Mac. These were taken back in January, so some things have probably changes since then:

Office 2008 for Mac Office 2008 for Mac Office 2008 for Mac Office 2008 for Mac Office 2008 for Mac

Source: Ars Technica and TUAW

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PCWorld ranks AT&T tops in 3G performance test

PCWorld ranks AT&T tops in 3G performance test

We all have something of a need, a need for speed, and while most won’t have an opportunity to go all Maverick on some MIG-28s somewhere over the Indian Ocean, we can do our best to get the quickest wireless on offer. Last summer, when we stacked the top four mobile broadband cards against each other, we found that AT&T came out on tops for peak performance, and now nearly a year on PCWorld has come to the same conclusion, finding that Ma Bell offers upload and download speeds that are twice some of the competition. The seven page test splits everything out by city and goes into more details than we’ll tire you with here, but do note that all this testing was done in urban areas, so don’t forget to double-check the coverage map before you sign the next 24 months of your life away.

[Thanks, A. Dewan]

PCWorld ranks AT&T tops in 3G performance test originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Feb 2010 12:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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