This article was written on October 23, 2006 by CyberNet.
Over the weekend I decided to buy myself a Logitech MX Revolution mouse which was just recently released. Those of you who have heard of the mouse before have no doubt seen the steep price tag that goes along with it. Yep, this mouse retails for $100 but you can find it at most places, like NewEgg, for around $90.
I was strongly discouraged by the price as well but when I was rummaging around our local Best Buy electronics store I noticed they had one on display. I played around with it and was remarkably amazed at how well it fit my hand. Best Buy was offering a $10 gift card with the $100 mouse so I coughed out the money to make the purchase.
When I brought it home I was very impatient to give it a try but I did what every good person should do and let it fully charge. While waiting I thought I would get the needed software installed so that after the charging was complete it would be ready to go. I was infuriated to find out that the SetPoint program said it was not Vista compatible! The box and website both say that it is compatible with Windows Vista and I guess it is but you can’t use the software…which makes many of the cool features useless.
As everyone knows I am very much a software tester and love to try things that say they don’t work, so I went ahead and installed the software anyway. Turns out the software completely works with Windows Vista despite them saying that it doesn’t. The features are the most amazing that I have seen on any mouse.
First-off, there are 7-buttons which are all completely customizable using the software that they provide. There are the standard back and forward buttons that are located on the side of the mouse but you’ll also notice the secondary scroll wheel located right below those. By default that is set to utilize the application switching program that is included with the SetPoint software. It lets you switch between open windows faster than anything I have ever used before by displaying a popup window located underneath the mouse cursor:
The top/main scroll button is also extraordinary in a different way. It doesn’t have the standard middle-click option set by default which is something that I never used anyway. Instead, if you push in on this scroll wheel it will switch modes between click-to-click and free-spin. The click-to-click is exactly what you’ll find on most mice where it partially rotates and then “clicks” into position. There is also the free-spin mode which lets you rotate the scroll wheel with nearly no friction (a.k.a. no clicking).
The click-to-click is actually my favorite because it can be configured to automatically switch between the two modes. If I am just scrolling slowly it will use the click-to-click but if I start to go a little faster it will shift to the free-spin. Since I can manually switch between the modes it will also remember which mode I am in for each application. That way I can use free-spin in Microsoft Word but have the mouse set to click-to-click when using PowerPoint.
The button located below the top scroll wheel is used for searching by default. Just highlight a word in any application and press that button and it will perform a Yahoo (can also be configured to Google) search in your browser. This is one of those buttons that you don’t think you would use until you actually have it! If you end up not using it then just configure the button to do almost anything you would like:
As you can see in the screenshot above there is also the option to configure the buttons on an individual basis for programs. This comes in handy because in several of the applications I use the forward and back buttons are typically useless, such as in Mozilla Thunderbird. For that program I set the Forward button to create a new email and the back button to delete the currently selected email, which are both done using keystroke assignments.
The mouse is also rechargeable so you don’t have to worry about going through the batteries like water. Judging by the power meter I should receive 4 days of use on a single charge…which is good in my book.
I’m not sure how this will stack up for the gamers out there because I don’t really play games. There are several settings in the options though that are related only to game configurations:
I understand that you might be skeptical about purchasing a mouse that costs $100 because I was too, but it is one of the best investments that I have made when it comes to computer add-ons. The charging station is separate from the USB receiver which is actually really nice because the wireless receiver is half the size of a typical flash drive…making it portable enough for me to use with my laptop as well as my desktop. So if you have enough money laying around I would highly recommend picking up this mouse.
Note: The Logitech MX Revolution is also compatible with Mac OS X but I only have Windows machines so I was unable to test the mouse with it.
This article was written on April 17, 2008 by CyberNet.
It seems as though Apple has been getting a lot of good publicity lately, and it’s definitely got to be helping their sales. The latest example is a benchmark and usability test done by the reputable Popular Mechanics lab. They tested two laptops and two desktops where half were Mac’s running Leopard and the other half were PC’s running Vista. Here are some of the specs they mention on the machines:
The Gateway One PC had a processor that runs 400 MHz slower than its iMac competitor (not a heck of a difference in this age of dual-core chips), but it also had two extra gigabytes of DDR2 memory. In the laptop category, our Asus M51 had a 2.2 GHz processor, compared to 2.4 GHz for our MacBook. But the Asus had a larger screen, a more sophisticated graphics card and an extra gig of RAM.
When it came to usability they received user feedback from both operating systems regarding design, ergonomics, and more. In the end both operating systems came out nearly equal in terms of usability, with only a slide edge being given to Mac OS X. When it came to performance, however, Mac’s seemed to dominate the board:
iMac ($1499)
Gateway One ($1800)
MacBook ($1299)
Asus M51SR ($1299)
Startup Time
28.7s
1m 13s
41.6s
1m 51s
Shutdown Time
4.0s
44.3s
3.9s
25.4s
Install MS Office
4m 17s
6m 25s
2m 57s
4m 46s
Install Adobe CS3
31m 44s
25m 45s
34m 54s
21m
Launch Browser
3.3s
6.3s
–
–
Launch Word
4.2s
5.2s
5.3s
6.2s
Launch Photoshop
4.0s
5.5s
4.1s
5.2s
Launch Photoshop*
21.36s
40.0s
16.2s
25.5s
CD Rip
3m 35s
3m 35s
5m 49s
3m 9s
* This was a stress test where three video sources (a YouTube clip, a DVD and an .avi file), DivX encoding, instant messaging, Word, Adobe Acrobat and a spyware scan were simultaneously running when trying to launch Photoshop.
I would say that the comparisons are pretty fair since they are judging a consumer’s out-of-box experience, but I don’t know that this could be viewed as an accurate Vista vs. Mac comparison. It’s very likely that both the Gateway and the Asus came loaded with all kinds of bloatware that slowed down the PC horribly… particularly the startup and shutdown times. Looking at the Gateway One homepage I can see that it comes preinstalled with the entire McAfee Internet Suite, which isn’t exactly known as the speediest program.
Popular Mechanics took the correct route in their review though. They never really considered it a Mac vs. Vista matchup, but instead a Mac vs. PC. I do recommend checking out their entire review, which includes a lot more detailed benchmarks than those listed above.
We’ve seen a lot of innovation in the consumer point-and-shoot market over the past year or so, from capturing homemade action sequences at 1000fps to shooting 720p video underwater. Many of these innovations are borderline overkill, like 12 megapixel sensors wedged in behind cheap lenses, so we’re happy to report that, despite its impressive specs, the latest superzoom shooter from Panasonic is respectable all the way through. The DMC-ZS3 doesn’t offer any crazy features that are completely unheard of elsewhere, nor does it suffer from any rock and roll-style excesses for the sake of arbitrary “world’s greatest” claims. It’s just a solid camera, but at $400 is it the sort of thing you want in your pocket, capturing your family’s precious moments this summer?
This article was written on October 04, 2007 by CyberNet.
As it stands right now there are not many Vista-compatible firewalls available. PC Tools is coming through by not only offering one, but they are even making it free! A comment by bloodsugarwilksm convinced me to try out the new Firewall Plus 3.0 that was recently released, and before I get into some of the details I want to say that this firewall works with Windows XP, 2000, and Server 2003 in addition to Vista.
We included Firewall Plus 2.0 in our list of free antivirus, anti-spyware, and firewalls post that was done back in April, and even then it was the only Vista compatible firewall available. Now they have reached another big milestone, but you won’t notice any difference in the interface.
–What’s New in Firewall Plus 3.0?–
The PC Tools developers made changes where it matters most in a firewall: under-the-hood. Here’s a list of what’s new in version 3:
New Smart Application Rules Firewall Plus now incorporates a set of new smart application rules, designed to make it simpler and easier for you to continue working with minimal interference from your Firewall. Technically, using the Application Rules, you can create a heuristic set of rules that control how applications are allowed to connect to the Internet/network and their permissions on your PC. If an application attempts to connect to the Internet/network and there are no corresponding rules, Firewall Plus will allow you to choose how the application should behave.
Stealth Mode protection Firewall Plus provides you with extra protection via its Stealth Mode feature which enables your system to appear invisible to other computers in the network. When in Stealth Mode, your computer is able to make connections to other computers in the network, but Firewall Plus will prevent other computers from connecting with yours.
Data Validation using SPI (Stateful Packet Inspection) Firewall Plus validates data using SPI – stateful packet inspection – in which it performs a protocol handshake and if successful allows data transfer, otherwise all traffic is blocked – ensuring no unauthorized data is transferred onto your computer.
Application protection Firewall Plus offers additional application protection by guarding all the applications on your PC from unauthorized access. Enabling this option will shield applications on your system from other applications attempting to take control of them and potentially use them for malicious purposes.
–What I think about it–
I’ve always been a big fan of the Comodo Firewall because of its exceptional performance and outstanding protection, but I give a lot of credit to PC Tools for creating a very strong competing product. Firewall Plus takes up a mere 5MB of memory on my Vista machine, which I don’t feel bad dedicating to something as important as a firewall.
By default Firewall Plus is configured to show notifications that are stripped down to only the information casual users would care about. If you’re a power user that likes to see every little detail then there is an “Expert” mode in the settings. Despite being a power user myself I have found that the basic notifications are nice, clean, and setup so that you can quickly respond.
Am I going to use it myself? Actually I think that I will at least until something better comes along. My heart is still with Comodo, but I’m a bit weary running a beta build of their Vista-compatible version, which has been causing some blue screens of death for some users. I’m guessing that Comodo 3 will be out within the next month or two, and at that time I’ll reevaluate my firewall needs. Right now, however, Firewall Plus is what’s protecting my PC.
–Screenshots–
I’ll go ahead and wrap things up with several screenshots of the different areas in Firewall Plus 3:
This article was written on September 11, 2007 by CyberNet.
Time Saving Tuesday
I’ve come across a lot of great feed readers before, but I don’t believe any of them match up to a new one that I was introduced to by Pieter in the CyberNet Forum. It’s called Newzie (Windows-only), and it has a strong focus on making feed reading as easy as possible. I wasn’t quite sure how good this would perform when I first started using it, but I quickly fell in love with the features it offered.
Many of you may consider discarding this post simply because you’re content with the desktop feed reader that you’re currently using, or maybe all of your feeds are on an online reader. Newzie has things that I’ve never seen before in a feed reader, and I can guarantee that some of them are sure to impress you. So at the very least scroll through the article and checkout the screenshots…you won’t be disappointed.
Oh, and I should mention that the interface definitely reminds me of iTunes!
Click to Enlarge
–Feed Organization–
One of the most unique things with Newzie are the various methods available to organize your feeds. Of course it has the standard tree view that most desktop feed readers have, and you can create as many folders and subfolders as you would like.
More uniquely, however, is the time-sorted view that shows the most recently updated feeds first. It groups feeds in update intervals, such as 30-minutes to 1-hour, so that you can view the most recent news first.
There are also a few "folders" that are created by default which can be used for temporary storage. These are the "My Favorites" and "My Readings," and together they let you breeze through all of your feeds quickly. You can then come back to the news of interest when you have more time.
–Viewing Feeds–
In terms of feed viewing there are three different modes available:
Report View – This is often referred to the "River of News" view because it shows one story after another in their entirety. If it becomes hard to read that way you can always contract the posts, and then expand them as needed.
List View (Top) – This is similar to what you’ll see in an email application with a subject-only view above the content of the posts.
List View (Side) – This is also like an email application, but the list is placed on the side of the content. Widescreen users would probably prefer to use this method.
And don’t worry about the oversized buttons located at the top of the application. I originally thought it was a huge waste of space, and then I saw a button that collapsed the header down to almost nothing:
–Quick Read–
Newzie makes it extremely easy to scan your feeds without actually having to read them. One of the ways it does this is with its unique hover window that is displayed when your cursor rests over a feed in the sidebar. It shows you how many unread posts there are in that particular feed, when the last article was written, the last time it checked for updates, and the titles of the last 5 articles. I love when tooltips like this are actually made useful.
–News Bar–
This is like a stock ticker, but for your news. Anytime you hover over the News Bar, it will pause so that you have time to take action on the item(s) that are currently scrolling across.
–Today Panel–
There is a highly configurable Today Panel available in Newzie for those of you that don’t like the News Bar. This isn’t quite as compact, but it can show more information.
–Search & Filters–
There are several more advanced search features included with Newzie that help make it so great. Besides being able to search your feeds for text, you can also filter your subscriptions in using special commands that have been created. Here are some examples:
title:cybernet – Searches the title of feeds for matches.
updated<5day – Finds feeds updated in a specific period of time.
priority>60 – Finds feeds that are within the specified priority interval.
More information on how these work as well as more examples can be found in the Newzie help file.
–Monitor Sites, too–
Just when you thought Newzie already did everything, it goes and does even more! Not only can it aggregate all of your feeds into one central location, but it can also check websites to see if there have been any changes made.
There are several different options for choosing how the websites are monitored, such as looking for the addition of keywords, text being inserted, hyperlinks being added, or new images appearing. Or you can just go the old fashion route of monitoring every aspect of the website to see if it changes.
When you view a site that has been changed, Newzie will automatically highlight the changed portions so that you don’t have to try and figure out what’s new. Now how cool is that?
–Stats–
Newzie tracks what you read and how many items it brings in each day. It then puts it all together in a pretty bar graph so that you can realize just how addicted you are to the feeds (obviously my stats aren’t all that extravagant in the screenshot since I started with a fresh profile for the review):
–And More–
I think that I touched on almost everything that Newzie can do, but there are still some other things that might appeal to you. For the sake of being thorough I’ve included those additional features here:
I found it to be one of the fastest-updating feed readers available (in terms of checking feeds for new content).
Browse your feed items in a slideshow fashion. This is cool, but not something I can see myself using.
Minimize to the System Tray
Keyboard shortcut customization
Assign priorities to feeds
Change the rendering engine (uses IE by default)
Setup keyword watches on your feeds
You can monitor IE favorites for new feeds
You can add feeds from a Bloglines account
Some of you may still prefer the online feed readers such as Bloglines or Google Reader, but I have to say that this is hands-down the best desktop feed reader that I’ve used. It’s packed with features and focuses heavily on making reading feeds an effortless process. I highly recommend this desktop feed reader to all the news junkies out there!
One last effort. A slow, but firm, shove of the chips. All in. Palm’s only hope to save a company once synonymous with smart handheld devices: the Pre. Their eyebrow raised, daring you to call. They flip. Full house. Respectable. Decent. Impressive even. But not the highest hand.
That’s not to say that the phone isn’t good, because it is. The software has quite a few interesting innovations that push the concepts of what people can do with smartphones, like Google Android when it debuted—only better. The market needs this. The industry needs this. We need this. But the hardware? Cheap. Flimsy. Dangerous even.
I’ve used the Pre as my main device for a week, forwarding my number through Google Voice so I could see what it was like living with it. I was able to pull my contacts from Facebook and Google into the phone quite easily, despite the Pre not supporting syncing to OS X Address Book, so it was a near-seamless transition. Sprint reception is unfortunately bad enough at my house to give me horrible voice quality, but not bad enough to drop calls. The device felt great in my pocket and in my hands, and the text and email notifications are informative without being intrusive. Other than trying to be discreet when I went to my usual exotic locales—the supermarket, Costco, restaurants and San Francisco—there wasn’t anything incredible to note. In short, it’s definitely a capable smartphone, one that I would have no problem using full time.
THE HARDWARE: Screen It’s the best multitouch screen we’ve seen yet. Pre’s screen is smaller than both the iPhone and the G2’s, but has the same 320×480 resolution that equals both, which means the pixels are just more compact. Watching the Dark Knight on both phones showed that the Pre was just slightly crisper, and just slightly nicer than on the iPhone. Though, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell unless you had each side by side. It’s like the difference between a $2,500 TV and a $2,000 TV. Unless you had both in your living room or looked at them one after the other, you couldn’t see a difference.
The black bezel also provides a great contrast to the screen, bordering it with an eye-soothing darkness that makes images pop that much more. At maximum brightness, it doesn’t seem as bright as the iPhone, but is bright enough to be just fine under the sun. The glossy finish makes it slightly harder to see if you’re worried about glare, however. In everyday indoor use, the screen is a tiny bit bluer in color temperature than the iPhone’s—either not something you’d notice or a matter of preference.
But the multitouch! I can’t tell if it’s because there’s a better CPU backing it up, or a better digitizer, or if it’s just better software, but the touch is more accurate, more responsive and just plain better than the iPhone’s. The invention of a ripple effect where you press the screen is genius, and goes partway to solving the chronic problem of passive feedback—whether or not the OS knows you’ve pressed the screen. I say partway, since the phone occasionally still doesn’t register your clicks, even when the ripple appears.
Multitouch is glorious
Screen is bright, bezel provides great contrast and overall holds up nicely to the iPhone
Body and Build The first thing you’ll notice as you slide open the Pre is the absurdly sharp ridge digging against your palm. Nowhere—not on the iPhone, the G1, the G2 or any of HTC’s other smartphones—has a phone been so threatening to the integrity of my skin. If you’re pushing up screen from the bottom of the phone, as you’d instinctively want to do, prepare to get sliced. It’s just that irresponsibly sharp.
To be fair, Palm instructs you to open the phone by placing your thumb on the screen itself and pushing up. Fantastic plan, except for the fact that it’s a touchscreen and by placing your thumb on the screen you’re actually moving stuff around. It’s a kluge; a solution thought of after the fact to salvage a horrible hardware design decision. Even if you do things Palm’s way, the top manages to catch occasionally while sliding open, especially if you’re pushing slightly above or below the middle of the phone.
Maybe I’m being a perfectionist here, but this is the one biggest flaw in the hardware; one that’s not a dealbreaker, but really detracts from the overall experience.
The rest of the body, thankfully, is not nearly as bad. But it’s also not spectacular. The two halves of the device come together fairly tightly, but not tightly enough to prevent you from being able to twist the top and bottom like a plastic Oreo cookie. It’s one of those small things that are inconsequential, but extremely annoying to people who own the phone—like the back battery cover requiring you to pry off three different points in order to get it off. Or the microUSB connector cover that takes fingernails and a blatant disregard for having a permanent hole in the side of your phone in order to remove it.
Despite these issues, while closed, the phone feels just right in your hand. It’s thicker than the iPhone, but rounded like a polished stone and shorter than you’d expect. If Palm had just been able to make the Pre feel and look less plasticky, the closed-state exterior would be almost perfect.
Build quality is only so-so, and feels plasticky
Bottom edge of the phone is way too sharp
Keyboard It’s not good enough for a smartphone. Each of my thumbs take up the width of four keys, ensuring that only a fingernail approach would get me anywhere near accurate typing. It’s a very Centro-like key layout, and each individual key feels slightly too rubbery and sticky to be pleasant. Each key offers lots of resistance and doesn’t depress quite enough to get a good tactile feel while typing quickly.
After using the Pre for a week, I’m able to get a respectable word-per-minute rate on the keys, but the fact that there’s no word prediction—the kind that saves your ass on the iPhone or Android G2—negates some speed you may have gained from using a hardware keyboard. The fact that each physical key is 30% or so smaller than a virtual key on the iPhone should illustrate to how difficult it is to hit the buttons accurately, and how much better typing on the Pre would have been if there were better auto-correction. What the Pre does do is make very very minor changes, like “teh” to “the” or “isnt” to “isn’t”, but that’s only this side of nothing.
It’s a hardware keyboard
Keys are too small, plasticky and don’t give enough feedback
Battery Life On most days, with heavier than usual usage, I was able to make the Pre last just about the entire day. Going from 8AM to 9PM with at least 20% battery left should be no problem. The only time I ran the battery down to zero prematurely was the one day where I was doing heavy testing and had AIM on, which currently has a buggy implementation that sucks more power than is necessary. It’s at the very least on par with the iPhone 3G and G2 battery life, and is way better than the G1’s.
Camera It’s a 3-megapixel camera, but when it comes to actually taking pictures, it isn’t any better than the G2 or the iPhone. Like most cheap-o cameras, photos are fine with ample sunlight, but in low-light conditions pictures become grainy—even when using the “flash” on the back, it’s only barely tolerable.
Camera doesn’t suck
THE SOFTWARE Web OS Here, if I may extend my card metaphor, is where Palm laid down four aces. The OS is really where the Pre shines, and manages to create a coherent internet-based platform that’s even more “connected” than Google Android.
On the whole, the OS is quite pleasant looking—with slick icons, a 5-app launch bar and a three-screen menu system that houses all your applications. The bit of the phone under the screen is a gesture area, which you can use to go back a screen (swipe left) or launch apps from the launch tray (swipe up to the screen). The rest of the gestures are the same as the iPhone’s, except the concept of swiping an app up, off the phone, to close it.
It’s too bad the home screen is so much wasted space. There’s just nothing there except for the five apps on the bottom. Palm’s main idea is to keep that area free; free so you can swipe through the app “cards” of the things you have open, free so you can pull up a Universal Search just by typing, and free so you can open the phone by putting your fat thumb on the screen. But this just means you can only quick-launch five apps from the home screen, forcing you to either go into the launcher (+1 click) or start typing the name of the app you want and hope Universal Search brings it up (+ a bunch of clicks).
There are a few particularly commendable features. The little notification bars on the bottom of the phone for new emails, texts, system actions and song changes are wonderful, and can be dismissed with a swipe. The swipe is also slightly different than on the iPhone, allowing you to just delete list items without having to confirm them. The font they used for emails also seems fat and generous without being overly large, and allows the same five emails to be visible at once as on the iPhone.
A lot of time and care and great ideas were put into this OS
Dialing is somewhere where Palm’s reliance on Universal Search becomes an over reliance on Universal Search. To dial a contact, you either have to pull up the contacts app and manually scroll down to the person you want (there’s no alphabet shortcut) or start typing. So, when you have hundreds of contacts, your only reasonable choice is to use the search. There isn’t even a “favorites” screen of any kind; Palm just gives you a retro speed dial feature where you can map numbers to particular keys on the keyboard—a clumsy solution for speed dialing.
Speaking of Universal Search, it does actually work quite well. It’s the same concept as on iPhone 3.0, searching your contacts, apps, Google, Google Maps, Wikipedia and Twitter for whatever you type. Searching is actually faster than the iPhone’s search, but only because it doesn’t also search emails, or calendar entries or your music. So that “Universal” in Universal Search isn’t quite so Universal.
Universal Search for contacts works well
Dated speed dial implementation
Syncing to Facebook and Google Contacts via Synergy works flawlessly, and merges contacts from both services together so you don’t have duplicates of contacts floating around. A manual merge or a manual split can solve any quirks from this function quite easily. Synergy also combines your SMS and IM conversations into one window, so you can seamlessly text someone and then switch over to IM when he reaches his desk. Synergy’s basically just an easy way to make sure services like Google have your data (Contacts and Calendar) pulled down into your phone automatically.
Facebook and Google sync keeps you connected, but may populate your phones with a bunch of people you don’t actually know
A lot of fuss has been made of the Pre’s ability to multitask, and for good reason. It works. Launching a new app is just a matter of hitting the Center button (the gray button on the front), and opening something from the launcher or the tray. The new app pops up as a new card, pushing your currently running programs to the side. Pressing the Center button again pops up all your cards, which you can then flip through to find the app you want. Sliding the card up, off the screen, closes it.
Opening multiple apps at once really does slow down the phone enough to be noticeable. In fact, if you’re doing something particularly intensive, you’ll actually notice your music stutter, which we’ve never experienced once on the iPhone. Ever. The problem with giving you the ability to open a lot of apps at once means you need to police yourself and close them when they’re not in use. But it’s damn well worth it. Being able to view a PDF, then flipping over to Messaging answer a text, then over to Music to change a song, then over to email to tap out a quickie—that’s computing.
Multitasking works well, but it’s up to you to figure out how many apps your phone can take
It’s interesting that launching apps takes one extra click as you fire up the Launcher, and that the Launcher itself only has three pages of apps to use. It’s better than the one long page that Android has, but not quite as generous as the iPhone’s 9 pages. That one extra tap doesn’t seem like much, but over the course of the two years that you own your phone, that’s many seconds lost with extra taps.
Palm makes one of the first mistakes of UI design by not having text under the icons in the Quick Launch bar, making you guess at what each app is. The good news is that you can swap apps in and out from the launcher, so you probably know what those apps are, since you put them there.
Also, the actual act of launching the app is a little frustrating: When you tap an icon, the launcher disappears and all you see is the home screen, as if you did something wrong. You don’t know whether or not your app has opened successfully until it has. Seeing a totally blank screen or some kind of splash screen come up first before the app is running (like the iPhone, once again) would be a better solution.
The Launcher only has three screens, and requires a lot of scrolling to find your app
The home screen’s Quick Launch only holds five apps, but you can customize them
Music and videos, on the other hand, are handled well. The extra man-hours of getting the Pre to pretend that it’s an iPod for iTunes to sync was well worth it. All the proper files, with their metadata, make it over just fine; playlists too. Videos appear in the Videos app, and your song files can be searched and sorted from inside the Music app. What doesn’t seem to be supported are the ratings or play counts in iTunes. And although you can check the box in iTunes to initiate Calendar/Contact sync with the Pre, they don’t actually make it over to the phone.
So it’s not a perfect implementation. DRM tracks from iTunes aren’t syncable, of course, and you have to leave the Music app open at all times, in the background, for your music to play. That concept seems more than obvious on your PC, but becomes somewhat of an oddity on your phone. You’ll find yourself accidentally closing your Music app more than once.
As for video, it’s essentially what you’d imagine a barebones video player to be, supporting MPEG4, H.263, H.264, MP4, M4V, 3GP, 3GPP, 3G2, and 3GP2—more video codecs than the iPhone (surprise, surprise), but not more than other phones in this class. It does the job, there’s seeking and aspect ratio fitting, but it’s nothing special.
If Palm continues to ensure iTunes syncing capability, it’ll ease the transition for people with large iTunes libraries
App rundown: • Google Maps is actually better on the Pre than it is on the iPhone, loading blocks and scrolling around being much smoother than we’re used to • Sprint Navigator (by TeleNav) is an excellent port of the same program you see in other phones—the GPS works smoothly, like in the Google Maps • Doc View and PDF view are capable enough PDF and Word viewers • There’s an alarm clock, but no stopwatch or world clock; you can download a Weather app from the App Catalog • The photo viewer works the same as the iPhone’s, with swiping gestures, and can upload directly to your Facebook account • The browser works off the latest WebKit build, and is fast and snappy; it should be about as good as iPhone 3.0’s browser, since they both use WebKit • Backup works much like Microsoft’s My Phone, storing your contacts, calendar and tasks, as well as app and system settings on your Palm profile; it comes with the phone, and is useful if you ever have to wipe or replace a lost phone • YouTube quality is just as good as any other phone, even if it does seem to take slightly longer to bring up videos on the Pre
First party apps are solid
The App Catalog is pretty bare at launch, with Pandora, Sudoku, Accuweather, AP/NYT, the Classic Palm OS emulator, Connect 4, Spaz (Twitter client), Tweed (another Twitter client), a Stocks app and some various other utilities. Their respective download screens have ample information, including links to the developer’s home page and support pages, as well as ratings and reviews. Once downloaded, the apps behave like any other native apps on the Pre, and can be multitasked just fine.
All the apps in the catalog now are made by developers with a closer association with Palm, so they get access to the native libraries. Why haven’t they opened up the SDK and allowed everyone to use native libraries instead of just web tech like HTML/Javascript? I don’t know. When it comes down to apps, lack of open SDK is why the Pre is currently inferior to the iPhone or Android. Under this plan, we’ll get a small percentage of good, solid apps, and a bunch of apps that aren’t living up to their potential.
The App Catalog has a handful of decent apps already, but the fact that Palm is singling out only trusted developers to write software for the Pre isn’t a great sign
Now for the miscellaneous complaints. The lack of a D-Pad on the phone forces you to always tap where you want, even when the list item is just one notch lower than the one currently selected. Copying and pasting only works in text fields where you can write, not when reading emails or SMS or web pages.
VERDICT
Think of it like this. The software is agile, smart and capable. The hardware, on the other hand, is a liability. If Palm can get someone else to design and build their hardware—someone who has hands and can feel what a phone is like when physically used, that phone might just be one of the best phones on the market.
I’m bored of the iPhone. The core functionality and design have remained the same for the last two years, and since 3.0 is just more of the same, and—barring some kind of June surprise—that’s another year of the same old icons and swiping and pinching. It’s time for something different. The Pre may have hardware that’s worse than the G1/G2, but the whole package—the software and the hardware—isn’t bad. It’s good. It’s different. That’s something we can get behind. I can’t wait to see what Palm gets dealt in their next hand.
Impressive start to an OS that should form the base of some quality phones in the future
Hardware quality is lacking, and feels flimsy and plasticky compared to the G1, G2 and the iPhone
UPDATE 7pm Pacific: Most major media outlets have now published their official reviews of the Palm Pre. Wired’s Steven Levy found it to be a good-looking, intuitive, capable, powerful phone. Battery life is dreadfully short, but he reports that multitasking rules: Wired.com Product Reviews: Multitasking Pre Brims With Power, Potential
Times tech writer David Pogue confirmed to Wired.com that the review, published on the Hyderabad-based Financial Chronicle website, is his.
Although it’s an early draft, it’s clear that Pogue likes the phone. He calls it “an elegant, joyous, multitouch smartphone that seems intended to be ‘iPhone, remixed.’” With the screen turned off, its hardware reminds him of a “stunning, featureless talisman.” On, the webOS operating system is “gorgeous, fluid and exciting.” He likes its removable battery. And his conclusion makes it clear he’s all over it:
So do the Pre’s perks (beautiful hardware and software, compact size, keyboard, swappable battery, flash, multitasking, calendar consolidation) outweigh its weak spots (battery life, slow program opening, ringer volume, Sprint network)? Oh, yes indeedy. Especially when you consider that last weak spot might be going away. Verizon Wireless has announced that it will carry the Pre ‘‘in the next six months or so.’’ Can you imagine how great that will be? One of the world’s best phones on the best U.S. cell network? If the story of Palm’s rise from the ashes really is like a movie plot, then that twist will give it one heck of a happy ending.
It’s not clear how this review wound up being published so early, but readers on Twitter are already all over the story.
It’s impossible not to be at least a little impressed with the MacBook Air, but who can spend almost $2,000 on that laptop? The solution? The MSI X340, a $900 MacBook Air. And it’s a great idea…in theory…
First, let’s focus on what the X340 gets right. It’s a 13-inch (16×9, 1366×768) laptop that weighs just 2.86 pounds with its 4-cell battery. It measures .78 inches at its thickest point and .24 inches at its thinnest. (The MacBook Air measures but .76 inches at its thickest point and .16 at its thinnest.) In real life application, the X340 seems a tad bulkier than specs might reveal because the tapering isn’t as dramatic as the Air’s. But it’s still thin.
The 1.4GHz Core2 Solo processor is quite a bit faster than your average Atom, and its HDMI I/O port and draft n Wi-Fi are a welcome addition to such a tiny machine.
OK, now for the bad stuff.
The keyboard feels dreadful. Not only are the keys…mushy…the center of the keyboard literally bends while you type. It’s frightening to watch and extremely disconcerting as you wonder if they next keypress will greet your fingertips with a charged circuit board.
As for the remainder of the machine, it doesn’t feel much better. The only way to describe the plastic body is “cheap.” Not only does the glossy black finish reveal a strange, flecked iridescence under light, tap on the palm wrests with your knuckle and something about the hollowness of the pitch assures you that it could easily crack under a moderate amount of pressure. Molding the trackpad into the case…that was a bad idea. The surface simply doesn’t feel lacquered as a working trackpad. Literally, it feels unfinished, like someone on the assembly line went on break instead of gluing on the proper touch sensitive rectangle.
When you hold the Air, it’s an incredible sensation not just because of its size but because of how sturdy it feels at its size. The X340 misses the pleasure of this dichotomy and gives us what I’m willing to wager is the most fragile laptop I’ve ever put my hands on.
Performance Believe it or not, while the X340 is burdened by Vista’s heavy footprint, it’s quite usable. General navigation seems infinitely faster than running Vista on a true netbook, like the Dell Mini 12. The benchmarks support the fairly fluid experience of the OS. The X340 is clearly closer to a netbook than the MBA in performance, but that performance gap between netbook and X340 is definitely noticeable in your general day to day experience of loading apps.
The X340’s graphics chip is the Intel GMA X4500MDH. All you really need to know is that this architecture is nowhere near as good as NVIDIA’s 9 series stuff, like the 9400M. And it’s not powerful enough for heavy gaming (the 9400M is already scraping the barrel pretty hard). You can see the two platforms side by side here:
Still, MSI claims that the system can handle smooth 1080P playback. Can it? In a word, no. Neither HD web content (like Vimeo) nor 1080P MPEG4 played back smoothly on the system. The Blu-ray quality MPEG4 probably never broke 15fps.
In reality, the X340 performs up to most of my expectations (since I never believed it could handle 1080P clips anyway). Just don’t expect it to be some sort of dream multimedia machine. In that regard, the X340 is like a netbook on steroids—fine for general use, just not juiced up enough to handle the next tier of graphics-intensive operations.
The battery lasted 1 hour, 43 minutes – ouch* You could probably stretch the life beyond two hours with a few tweaks, like gimping the processor or squinting at the screen, but if you’re planning on watching a movie during your next flight, it’d better be from the 90-minute Pauly Shore Archives. *MPEG 4 playback, Wi-Fi on, screen at full brightness, “balanced” performance. You can purchase an 8-cell battery that should hit 3 hours for a bit more weight
The Sad Conclusion I should be thrilled with the X340. It’s lighter than many netbooks that have smaller screens. While not as tailored as the MacBook Air, hey, it’s damn close. It also runs Vista at a reasonable speed.
The problem is, I just can’t look at this machine, as thin and light as it may be, and feel good about dropping nearly $1000 to make one mine. If the X340 were much cheaper (unlikely) or sturdier (quite feasible), there’s a good chance I’d be thrilled in this review. I just can’t imagine showing this machine off to a friend, or getting extreme satisfaction when pulling it out of a bag. And if I’ve lost those attributes, I might as well settle for a somewhat thin full-blown laptop for less money, or a very light netbook for even less money.
But if you’re looking purely for the lightest way to fit a 13-inch screen into your bag that’s waaayyyy cheaper than the Air, and you only want to use a computer for 1 hour and 34 minutes at a time, then I’m not stopping you.
The folks over at UMPC Portal have gotten a hold of the SmartQ 7 internet tablet for a nice, long review. The MID, which has a 667MHz Samsung ARM S3C6410 CPU, 128MB of RAM, and 1GB of flash memory, seems to handle its basic tasks — MP3 playback, light browsing, PDF viewing, and viewing / editing documents fairly well. It also apparently has a pretty great battery life, and can stay juiced in standby mode for over three days. The tablet (which is somewhat reminiscent of the yet to appear in the wild CrunchPad) does, however, have plenty of drawbacks — a touchscreen that often responds incorrectly, limited RAM and storage, and a bunch of other limitations we’re used to associating with MIDs in general. There’s a video highlighting some of the SmartQ 7’s apps after the break; hit the read link for the full review.
We’ve been seeing plenty of ASUS’ newest, and possibly most attractive netbook — the Eee PC 1008HA Seashell — around here as of late, and the slim model’s gotten plenty of solid reviews in the UK, where it’s already available. Nobody can talk about the ‘shell (as we refer to it) without praising its handsome exterior, and with good reason, too: even if you’re not a fan of a curvy, thinned-out approach, it is most definitely refreshing to see a netbook that doesn’t just look like… every other netbook. We decided to take the newest ASUS for a spin, comparing it to the netbook we’re friendliest with — the HP Mini 1000 — to see how they stack up against one another. Could we swim through the blackened, dark abyss of netbook confusion and emerge with a clearer sense of ourselves? Does clarity come at a cost? Can the 10.1-inch Seashell fulfill all of our netbook dreams? Join us after the break for our musings.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.