Work stuff

Well, not everything is fully negative in things that really matter. Just got word that I get a new work contract for about 2 years forward (and a little pay raise even! w00t). Now you might ask why only 2 years, but I work at place with mostly externally funded projects so they can't promise much more than that in one go. But if it goes like before the contract will continue again. Unless I find something by that time, but I enjoy doing what I do, quite flexible work hours and the work place is not like some ordinary plain and boring office, but who knows...

Nokia N73 software update hurdle

I don't know what to now, bang my head on the wall or what. I've been trying to get my N73 phone firmware updated for quite a while now as there have been a update available for ages already. Problem is I have this SIM locked phone (with Sonera) and well, the operator lags a bit with letting people update their phones and I refuse to pay for something I can and should be able to do for free.

So, being prepared for another no-updates-for-your-product-code situation I checked the software update. And lo and behold! Version 4.0812.4.2.1 is now available for me (my old software 3.something so old as hell).

Anyway, I'm mostly Linux only, I have a W2k computer mainly just for playing Eve (as the cedega crap won't run on 64-bit only x86), fortunately the Nokia updater has run fine before... but oh nononono... just so they can fuck with me a bit more the updated requires XP or Vista now. ARGH.

Cute laptops and silly reviews

I'm planning on getting myself one of those cute small laptops, an Asus Eee PC 901 or MSI Wind. Trying to decide witch one to get is hard, so I've been reading reviews here and there.
Anyway, the text on this site is... I don't if it's funny or if I should cry or what.. "With 1GB of RAM in support you can even have two or three programs open at any one time and not encounter any major problems unless you want to watch video, in which case it's best to close other programs - particularly memory heavy apps like Firefox and OpenOffice."

How come you suddenly need terabytes of memory to do something ? I've typing this on a laptop with 256MB of memory (with 32MB dedicated to the crappy integrated S3 Savage), running Firefox, Evolution, Pidgin, Empathy and couple of terminals on a GNOME desktop. And in the background there is mysql, postgresql and apache. Ok, I do have 210MB of swap in use, but that's still way under 1GB of memory.

Sigh.. I miss the good old days when 8MB was enough to run just about anything.

Fleamarket bargain !

Heh, sometimes you get lucky. Got a Playstation 1 with a game for 3.5€ :) Not bad.

play.com DRM free music

It was very nice to hear the play.com has started selling DRM free mp3s. I've been using them for some books and DVDs (much cheaper than here in Fi). Too bad the DRM music is UK only... I hope they open it for rest of Europe.

The Nokia N810

I got my N810 a bit over a month ago now and been using it daily. Ever since I got it, it has been very stable, no need for any reboots or anything in a while. Uptime is a nice 31 days now.

Look and feel
The look and feel is very good, I like the brushed metal front. It also feels very solid. Speed is very good, interface is much more responsive than on the old 770, the extra 200 or so Mhz really helps, as does the double amount of memory.

GPS
GPS works ok, only the initial fix took it's time but that's expected. After that it been working just fine.
The default Map program is pretty basic. And unfortunately to get any proper routing out of it you need to pay, and then it would still be quite useless as you can't save your track. (For openstreetmap purposes). But Mapper(or maemo-mapper) is very good replacement.

Misc
What else.. the screen is as good as on the 770, no change there, touch feel is a bit different but not that much. The default theme is ok, but I don't understand why every OS release need to have different themes, I liked old ones and I would prefer to use one of them still.

Software
Skype is now supported and Gizmo should support video calls. I haven't tested any of those yet as almost nobody I know uses any of them that much, almost all are on MSN only. Pidgin is ported so I can chat with friends, would be nice to have pidgin as a default install. And now with the beta update of rfcomm it's possible to use other protocols from the integrated IM framework. Been using MSN with it for a while and it work nicely.
I just tested a video call with Gizmo on windows (Version 4 is no longer a beta, yay!), works quite nicely. Video quality is a bit bad but ok.


The browser is no longer Opera but instead Mozilla based and now heavy ajax sites like Facebook finaly work ok (same with the latest OS2007). And such useless things like youtube works with the new flash.

Interface
The new transparent desktop applets look very good, but they take much more space now and the RSS reader won't display a preview anymore, just the title. Also the speed contact only displays as many as can fit, for me that's only two, not very nice.
The interface is now much more thumb friendly, it's pretty ok, but not consistent with all apps and sometimes the interface feels a bit cramped with BIG buttons. I would have liked to have the OS2007 adaptive style for the main menus back.

Keyboard
The keyboard is ok, as good as one can get in such a small space. Some special characters are in odd places but otherwise pretty ok. But I miss the cursor pad on the side as I'm used to the 770. Some say they have a problem with using the top row but I haven't noticed anything, must be my fingers or that I'm typing with the tip of my nails as I'm used to on my N73 with it's small buttons.

Anyway, I'm happy with it :)

N810 discount code works!

Yay, the N810 is finally available in the Nokia online store and the discount code works (for Finland at least)