Recently in Gadgets Category

Over a month ago, I blogged about having lived with my HTC Desire for a week. And my overall impression was positive.

Now having lived with it for 6 weeks I can say that I love it as much as it is possible for a man to love a small inanimate object without straying into the realms of perversion.

Since then, one of the main search engine queries that has lead visitors to that page is "HTC Desire close down apps".

This issue is not specific to the HTC Desire but common to all phones and computing devices running Android. Android, unlike Windows or Windows Mobile, does not appear to require or assume that Apps will be closed down when you have finished using them. When you get used to this, it's actually quite liberating. Most apps will simply sit in the background consuming little or no resources ready to pick up where you left off when you come back to them.

With the HTC Desire's 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon it quite happily copes with a high number of most well written apps without slowing down, hanging or crashing.

However, there are people (mostly Windows users) who feel a crippling, OCD like compulsion to close down apps as soon as they're done with them. And then there's the people who download the dodgy, badly written apps that will hogg resources and slow their devices down.

The answer is simple:
 

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Last week I upgraded my Orange mobile phone from the HTC Touch HD to the HTC Desire.

I've spent 6 days living with it and given it, and the Android Operating System, a thorough run down.

The HTC Desire phone itself is a good looking device with the brightest, crispest screen I've ever seen on a phone.The screen is slightly smaller than the Touch HD I'm used to but none the worse for it. It's still plenty big enough to  use for browsing the web, viewing pictures and even watching videos.

The phone signal reception of the Desire is noticeably better than Touch HD. The building I work in is in a very poor signal area but the Desire regularly has sufficient signal to surf, text and make reasonable calls.

The optical trackball is unobtrusive and easy to use. Although if you're a regular user of physical trackballs on existing phones it might not give you the same usability.

It does, unfortunately, lack permanent phone "pick up" and "hang up" buttons, which can be aggravating if you've strayed from the phone screen during a call.

The Desire's processing power is superb. Even with a large number of Apps running, I've noticed very little lag or delay and playing videos on YouTube etc is often better than on my laptop.

Cameras have histroically been a weak point on HTC / Android phones but this one is very usable. It's not on a level with the Samsung I8910 or my old Nokia N95, but certainly better than any of the Android phones my friends use and on a par with the Touch HD at the very least.

This is my first experience of a phone running Android. I've had phones running Palm's OS, Symbian 60 and, my recent preference, Windows Mobile. My view to date has been that the versatility of Windows Mobile with all of the freeware available online provided the best smartphone solution.

Android (version 2.1 runs on the Desire) is a very slick, good looking alternative, though. It runs incredibly smoothly on this phone and integrates superbly with existing Google, and other web,services.

I have an irrational dislike of anything Apple so haven't even picked up an iPhone. However, Android shows the benefit of a similar closed development system with a single point to find and purchase apps, without having to give your bucks to Mr Jobs. I've kitted the Desire out with a number of free apps that do just about everything I could need. And they've made it even easier for me to use social media services such as Twitter and Fourquare.

There are a couple of significant problems, both of which will be familiar to users of existing Android phones.

The battery life sucks. With reasonably heavy use I've found it's dying by about 11am, after just 5 hours. Even with normal (for me) use it's only lasting until about 5pm. I'm having to travel everywhere with the USB Micro lead it uses so I can charge it constantly. This compares to the Touch HD where, with normal use, I only had to charge it overnight or with heavy use it'd last until I got home at 7ish.

The second is Android's inability to close down apps when you've finished with them. This may be a large contributor to the heavy use of the battery and seems very odd, coming from a Windows Mobile environment. Apps appear to have no option to "exit" or "quit", you simply switch to something else. You end up having to download and app just to close down other apps. And yet, despite having these apps running in the background, Android doesn't appear to fully multi-task.

Overall, however, this phone has added even more "smart" to my smartphone experience. I found over the weekend that my need to use my laptop for things like IM, Twitter and internet browsing has dwindled to next to zero.

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Built in obsolescence - producing a product with a planned lifetime - occurs for many reasons. Things used to be built to last, now they're bult to last just long enough. But it has its problems. Mainly that the product may not play to required time scale.

I have a HTC Touch HD and it's one of best phones I've ever had, probably the best phone available bar its successor, the HTC Touch HD 2. I'm due a free upgrade through Orange in 2 days. My Touch HD broke down 2 days ago.

Under my insurance plan with Orange I've just received a brand new Touch HD. In 2 days I can upgrade my phone and be the proud owner of 2 brand new phones, all thanks to HTC's slightly out of sync obsolescence. However, I may use the fact that I have a brand new, undented, unscratched phone to allow me to wait until the Touch HD  2 comes to Orange (what is taking Orange soooo long? T-Mobile had it ages ago.)

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This morning, the hard drive on my Philips Freevents MT2400 PC failed. Completely. I was going to say "suddenly" but I'd be lying. It's been hinting at it for months and I've done bugger all about backing all my stuff up. Mug.

Anyway, I've been out and bought myself a brand new hard drive, unplugged the old one and whacked the new one in its place. The processes that followed were not as simple as I'd hoped they would be.

Firstly, installing windows. The Philips Freevents MT2400 comes with Windows XP Media Edition 2005 pre-installed. I managed to find a set of installation disks for this and, thankfully, the Serial Number is on a sticker on the side of the desk top. So I figured it'd be easy to re-install Windows from those disks. And it is, in theory.

In practice, half way through it asked for the SP2 Installation CD, which wasn't included in the set of CDs I had. There are 2 resolutions to this:

1. I downloaded the SP2 file from microsoft.com (a self extracting installation file). I ran the file  then when the installation process asked for further input Ignored that and copied the contents of the temporary file (from the C: drive) to a CD. I then used that as the SP2 Installation CD.
2. "Slipstream" the SP" pack with the XP installation discs.

I went for Option 1, mainly because I wasn't aware of Option 2 at the time. I would recommend you go for Option 2, it's much easier (I believe).

This will take several hours. At the end of this process, you should have Windows XP installed on your machine.

There's much more work to come and I'll update this entry as I get chance.

'T other day I bought me missus a new flat screen TV for our bedroom. An LG 32LH2000. One of those over there ->

(In fact, if you wanted to click on that link and purchase one of those it'd be really nice. The commission on that type of sale would pay for the hosting of this site.)

It is a superb TV (and I'm not saying that just cus I'd like you to click on the ad and buy one). It looks good; sleek, curved and thin. The picture is excellent, to my uneducated eyes; none of those problems you're supposed to look out for on flat screen TVs. You know, when the picture moves fast, the black / colour contrast, etc., etc.

The TV has another good feature that allows you to turn down the backlight to save energy. It's sold as an Eco feature but we find it makes the TV much easier to watch when the lights are off. (I'm honestly not trying to sell this TV to you, there is a point to this. But if you should want to buy one, doing so through the advert above would be reeeaaallllllyy nice.)

We had problems the other day using the remote control for the Virgin cable box (ours is a Samsung SMT-2110C). Couldn't get the remote to work at all for ages, next night it was working fine. This continued for days. The Samsung Virgin box was working fine (the buttons on the front worked fine), the remote was working fine (checked it with the box downstairs) but the Samsung Virgin box wasn't receiving the signal.

By a process of deduction we finally figured out that everything was OK except when the Eco saving feature was activated and the backlight turned down.

So finally, we have arrived at the conclusion that the Eco feature that turns down the backlight on the LG TV interferes with the infra-red signal from the remote control to the Samsung Virgin cable TV box. Can't tell you why.

Anyways, the above is probably incredibly boring unless you happen to own both an LG 32LH2000 (or, probably, and of the LG LH2000 series) and a Samsung SMT-2110C Virgin cable TV box. The whole reason for this blog post, and the overly technical references to the equipment involved, is to help anyone else that might have the same problem who is searching the internet for the reasons via Google, Bing etc.

It is possible, though, that this could affect and remote control (apart from that of the LG TV itself ).

The Kodak 5300 All in One printer is, in virtually all respects, an excellent printer, scanner and copier. One that I would heartily recommend to anybody. With 2 exceptions...

Ink Cartridges

Everybody sells ink cartridges these days. 
Supermarkets, small computer shops, even the odd corner shop.

HP Cartridges, Brother Cartridges, Canon cartridges. Every bloody cartridge except Kodak. If you want a Kodak cartridges you're going to have to visit an electrical retailer or maybe even a computer specialist. And in most cases, that's not a shop within a short drive.

Price per page printed may be advertised as low, but if it takes £20 worth of petrol to get the ink it increases the price somewhat.

Bloody Bad Design

Believe it or not, Kodak appears to think you need ink in order to scan documents.If you let a printer cartridge run out the printer will give an error message. Whilst that error message is showing the printer will not function at all.

So, if you want to scan a document you're going to have to drive out to PC World, or Curry's or Comet over on that soulless out of town retail estate and pick up a cartridge.

Message to Kodak

In conclusion, if you want to make your printer next to perfect simply increase the number of smaller local retailers that stock your cartridges and solve that infuriating design fault. Allow the scanning function to be used when the only problem with the printer is a shortage of ink.