tomputer

I’ve been paying attention to the market for portable internet enabled devices recently as I’ve been wanting a device that allows me to read news feeds, browse the web and manage emails while away from home. Most of the devices I’ve seen so far have been frustrating to use for one reason or another. I have a Windows Mobile handset which is fine for reading short plain-text emails or checking train times but anything else is likely to lead throwing either the handset or myself from the top of a very high bridge! At the start of the year I  bought a Nokia N800 “internet tablet” but soon found that the screen was still not a high enough resolution, and there was a lack of thrid-party software (which was impossibly difficult to install anyway). I fount the N800 just too slow and clumsy when browsing web pages or scrolling through RSS feeds. I came to the conclusion that I don’t want to make do with a “mobile internet” experience, I want the full internet (including ajax, flash etc) but in a portable form-factor.

Six months ago a friend bought an Asus EeePC 701. He soon returned it becuase he found the keyboard too cramped and the 7″ screen too small, but I was sold on the concept. Asus have since saturated the market with a plethora of devices and model numbers which  serve only to confuse the consumer but the latest model, the EeePC 901, is significantly improved from that first model and I think has the potential to be just what I’m looking for. The important features for me are:

• 9″ screen
• 1024 pixels wide so almost all webpages will fit without horizontal scrolling.
• Intel Atom mobile CPU running at 1.6GHz - low powered and cool running.
• 802.11b/g and n WiFi and bluetooth built-in
• 1.3megapixel webcam,
• 20GB solid state disk (SSD) if you go for the Linux option, otherwise 12GB so no moving parts and better battery life than a conventional hard disk.

In fact, it’s claimed that with some clever CPU performance management it’s possible to eek out 8 hours from a single charge.

So, just over a week ago I bought one, and put the N800 on eBay. I’ve been playing with the Eee901 for a while now, I’ve used it on the train, taken it when I went away for the weekend and shown it to several friends and colleagues. So far I’ve been very impressed with the hardware, design and build quality but disappointed with the Xandros Linux operating system. However, I made one big change yesteerday which has completely transformend the Eee901 and resolved almost all of my concerns. More on that in my next EeePC post…

I installed two nice utilities yesterday to enhance the functionality of WindowsXP explorer. The first - QTTabBar - adds tabs and groups to explorer. Tabs in explorer are just as useful as tabs in a browser as it prevents having loads of windows cluttering the task bar. Folder groups add the ability to group frequently accessed folders together so they can be opened in tabs with a single click in the same way as tab groups in a browser. As a developer this is really useful as one of the first things I do every day is open the same set of folders for my code, server, database etc. Note the slightly confusing installation procedure of having to first install, then log off/on to windows, and finally having to make the toolbar visible from the “View > Toolbars” menu in any explorer window.

The second utility by the same developer - QTAddressBar - is a new address bar that provides breadcrumb functionality so that each folder in a patch can be clicked to jump straight to that level in the path. You can also traverse the folder tree by clicking the arrow between folder names and using the popup folder tree rather than navigating up the tree and then back down a different branch. This is really a clone of the Vista address bar but is really handy to have in XP.

Both of these utilities play nicely together to provide a much friendlier more productive file explorer.

[via lifehacker]

I’ve finally finished sorting through all the photos from Italy last week. I started out with over 500 and got them down to a slightly more sensible 250ish. Highlights are now up on flickr.

I ordered an HTC S710 last week (arrived Friday) on the BT Total Broadband Anywhere package. It’s a Windows Mobile 6 Standard smartphone (no touch screen, but a nice slide-out qwerty keyboard). I’ve used the PocketPC OS before on PDAs but never on a phone and so I had the obvious concerns about running a version of Windows on my main handset. Initially the responsiveness of some of the menus seemed a bit slow and accessing some of the common features like “compose new message” seemed more long-winded than I’ve been used to (I’ve been exclusively a SonyEricsson user for the past few years). After a few days use I’m starting to know my way around the menus though, I’m finding ways to customise the interface with shortcuts and I’ve installed a few new apps to provide the functionality I want.

I plan to post more feedback on the S710, Windows Mobile 6 and any useful software/hints/tips over the coming weeks. If you’re interested, you can view all S710 posts or subscribe to a feed.

Disclosure: Yes, I happen to work for BT, but I’m not directly involved in the Total Broadband Anywhere project and the opinions expressed here are entirely my own. 

With my main desktop PC at misbehaving (taking longer to boot, and randomly freezing) I took the opportunity over the Christmas break to do a rebuild (no comments about my choice of OS please!). All my data is stored on a separate partition from the OS and I have backups to a network drive of all my valuable data anyway (photos, music, video, docs etc) so it was just a case of wiping the C:\ drive and reinstalling all the apps. The main XP resintall only took about 20mins but it took another day and a half to install the updates and reinstall the apps I use.

First url I visited after reinstalling the OS? http://www.getfirefox.com.

I have a tendency to install and try out lots of new apps and utilities when I see them so over time my PC ends up cluttered with stuff that gets little or no use. After the rebuild I decided to only reinstall apps when I missed not having them. Very quickly I found there were a few utilities that I use frequently and really increase my productivity so here are my picks of windows utilities I can’t live without:

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