Techno-speak
Aug. 1st, 2010 06:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksI've had my Dell Streak (Android o/s) for a month now, and I have to say it's exactly what I've wanted from a portable device for many years, but which up until now has not been available.
A recent survey of youngsters seemed to indicate that although the mobile phone is a vital part of kids' lives, making phone calls with them is not high on the list of uses to which they are put. Texting and using as an MP3 player are far ahead. Which makes one wonder why the things are still designed primarily as phones.
Well, the Dell Streak isn't. And that suits me, because I doubt that I use a phone, any phone, more than a dozen times a month. And of this I would guess eight of them are at work and three of them are at home. You can use the Dell Streak as a phone, but it isn't designed as one. It's just a little bit too wide (nearly three inches) and a bit too long (about five inches). But as a portable online device, it's brilliant. I could if I wanted use it as an MP3 player. And, of course, there's the ubiquitous camera (with two lenses, just in case you want to talk on Skype or record a vod cast or whatever).
The landscape/vertical mode works as on the IPad, shifting according to how you hold it. This only causes a problem when you are looking at it while lying on your side in bed!
The on screen keyboard is, I admit, just a bit small and fiddly, even in landscape mode. I'm looking for a better one for the Android o/s. However, it pops up and pops down without difficulty. The major "controls" are those three buttons on the right hand side, with the central one the most important. It gives contextual options, depending on what you are doing at the time.
And I haven't quite worked out how it decides what emails to keep and which ones to discard.
But these are minor software issues. I've got an Office emulator, and I've signed up to Dropbox, which effectively gives me documents-to-go at any time. The data allowance from )2 is fine, and the only silly thing is that I have to top up a tenner a month (I bought the machine so it is contract-free) to get the required 'unlimited' data allowance. That means that by the end of the year I'll have about a hundred quid in credit on the phone -- presumably just in time for when I go abroad and the data cost of three quid a megabyte kicks in.
It does have a tendency to freeze if you connect it up to your PC and then disconnect without remembering to cut the communication cord between the two machines through the "disconnect hardware" button.
But in size and weight terms it's perfect. The screen is big enough to be a 'proper' web browser, but the machine is small enough to slip into my top pocket. And the Android o/s really does show what a pile of shit Windows is.
________
A recent survey of youngsters seemed to indicate that although the mobile phone is a vital part of kids' lives, making phone calls with them is not high on the list of uses to which they are put. Texting and using as an MP3 player are far ahead. Which makes one wonder why the things are still designed primarily as phones.
Well, the Dell Streak isn't. And that suits me, because I doubt that I use a phone, any phone, more than a dozen times a month. And of this I would guess eight of them are at work and three of them are at home. You can use the Dell Streak as a phone, but it isn't designed as one. It's just a little bit too wide (nearly three inches) and a bit too long (about five inches). But as a portable online device, it's brilliant. I could if I wanted use it as an MP3 player. And, of course, there's the ubiquitous camera (with two lenses, just in case you want to talk on Skype or record a vod cast or whatever).
The landscape/vertical mode works as on the IPad, shifting according to how you hold it. This only causes a problem when you are looking at it while lying on your side in bed!
The on screen keyboard is, I admit, just a bit small and fiddly, even in landscape mode. I'm looking for a better one for the Android o/s. However, it pops up and pops down without difficulty. The major "controls" are those three buttons on the right hand side, with the central one the most important. It gives contextual options, depending on what you are doing at the time.
And I haven't quite worked out how it decides what emails to keep and which ones to discard.
But these are minor software issues. I've got an Office emulator, and I've signed up to Dropbox, which effectively gives me documents-to-go at any time. The data allowance from )2 is fine, and the only silly thing is that I have to top up a tenner a month (I bought the machine so it is contract-free) to get the required 'unlimited' data allowance. That means that by the end of the year I'll have about a hundred quid in credit on the phone -- presumably just in time for when I go abroad and the data cost of three quid a megabyte kicks in.
It does have a tendency to freeze if you connect it up to your PC and then disconnect without remembering to cut the communication cord between the two machines through the "disconnect hardware" button.
But in size and weight terms it's perfect. The screen is big enough to be a 'proper' web browser, but the machine is small enough to slip into my top pocket. And the Android o/s really does show what a pile of shit Windows is.
________
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Before anything else, abject apologies...
Date: 2010-08-06 08:55 pm (UTC)Which is not an excuse.
I apologise humbly and profusely and abjectly. I'll do better next time, as the trans-sexual halfway through the operations said to the punter.
I'm not one to object to a personal IT choice. (I've never understood why anybody would want a phone that costs more than £30 and does anything more than a phone. But then again, I bought one of the first brick-like "mobiles" at £300 plus rental. Oddly enough, the one feature I miss was the button that told me what my number was ...) If an Android works for you, it's good news, and I'll file the fact away as a "plus."
Since you're still using Windows elsewhere, you might find the following to be useful on your UAC issue (http://www.ehow.com/how_5862299_disable-vista-avoid-pesky-reminder.html). Should you have to do that? No. Not all hardware is designed for people with an IQ of higher than 110; Microsoft, less so.
Please wrap the following comments around a continued apology on the same abject level, but I'm not sure what you mean by "the Android o/s comes on straight away, hasn't frozen except when trying to disconnect from a Windows machine that didn't want to let it go."
I'm just guessing that this involves (a) a USB cable and (b) a Windows notification along the lines of "Safe to remove USB hardware." Presumably a lousy guess. Unless there's some dialog box on Windows that says "I don't want to let go!," or alternatively a directory in File Explorer or whatever that still claims that your Android device is attached, even when it isn't, then I'm just offering the hypothesis that your Android freezes -- whilst not connected to anything any more -- because your Android freezes.
Short of other information, and knowing USB devices (simple ones like pen-drives, slightly more complicated ones like cameras, and not as yet really complicated ones like an Android) as I do, the fact that your USB device (ie your Android) freezes is difficult to reconcile with the assumption that Windows doesn't want to let go. Unless Windows is the Borg. Which is always possible.
On the principle of triage support, I'd suspect the Android OS. And not just because I know the underlying Unixy file system has been susceptible to this sort of thing for the last forty years.
Whatever. That was an extremely obnoxious response; particularly since I asked for your honest opinion. I have no excuses. I was utterly in the wrong.