
all the memories
dr-dos was my favourite dos. at a time when dos applications were short of memory it could be safely configure to have 720k of base memory available for applications. that and netwars running across peer to peer network. :-)
119 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Aug 2006
i've been using a dumb phone since 2010 or so as my main phone. battery life was the main reason tbh. but as i went through a nokia asha 302 and now a nokia 3310 from 2017 they served me very well. i added a few java apps to spare my smartphones battery life. i use the smartphone for media player mostly. now they're turning off 3g and the 4g dumb dumb phones don't run java apps. so i'm just about done with them now sadly. the new dumb phones are just too dumb.
it needs space inside the case for the pi probably with some sort of replaceable 3d printed lid so you can cut holes to some of the ports you want available outside the laptop. right now i'm thinking of getting an old psion and connecting it to a pi with a powerbank in a case via serial
today dublin bus tweeted a pic of 10 phones passengers left behind. half were dumbphones and most were ancient nokias. they last forever and are near indestructible. i use one myself. i see them still in use by people who also carry smartphones.
so if and when nokia put out a new phone i'll probably be there waiting to buy one. no smartphone other than symbian for me: 1) lasted more than a day on battery. 2) could be depended to bounce off the ground unbroken 99 times out of a 100. 3) had a brilliant comfortable keyboard instead of virtual crappy ones. ymmv.
i installed pcs pentiums ii and iii's into pizza shops. the flour covered the motherboards and smelled like bread. as long as they were left on the fans kept spinning. the shops were warm and dry so it never congealed onto fans and jammed them.
also had a 386 in a machine shop office above work floor in early 90s. they kept blowing due to fine metal dust from work shop that found it's way up to high office and into power supply. we eventually put the base unit in a pair of tights with a hole cut into leg which hung over the floppy drive. never gave trouble after that. wouldn't work with an air cooled pc though... looked silly but it worked.
the netbook was running xubuntu, also tried lubuntu but stayed ultimately on xubuntu in the end.
browsers eat memory. their biggest weakness. run a browser for 3-4 weeks on a system that is up 24x7 and see how that memory lasts. on the netbook i needed to restart the browser to free memory 4+ times a day as it started to slow down. using midori sorted that mostly but for wacky reasons theregister site makes it crash hard. the new 64bit arm would probably be beefier than the ancient atom but i don't see it solving the memory problem with the browsers.
don't get me wrong, i'll be buying one but if there was one feature i wanted to see upgraded it was memory more than anything else. with 2gb i could easily see me replacing current wonky laptop at home as main system.
debateable, but to me programmable means i can use itself to program it. the ios platform needs a real computer to write the programs. a real omission to my mind as it is powerful enough to have some level of programming built in.
but then i was spoiled by having a psion organiser in 90s which allowed me to write apps in opl on the device.
1gb of ram isn't enough. i used till last year an ancient netbook with 1gb as my main system. web browsers need more. 2gb would be better but i suspect 3gb would be needed before it stops hammering virtual memory. you can use lite browsers. midori, qupzilla, but those have sites they won't work properly on or just crash when loading.
i'll still buy one when i can find a shop in dublin selling them. the added bt and wifi is most welcome as it frees up usb ports and reduces space it needs without those been occupied.
i use a nokia asha 302. a nokia feature phone with qwerty keyboard. runs java apps so albite for ereader and midpssh for ssh, jmirc for irc. opera mini handles web, rss and email for me. it has wifi so saves a bit on data when around the house. tough as a brick and fantastic battery life. even found a java app for google maps but it doesn't have a gps but gives access to maps.
different ways it could go
* make the same hardware like the original palms but with updated ports for newer usb connectors, memory cards.
* i would still love a b&w lcd version over a colour version. even an alkaline battery option.
* don't want a camera and mic on it.
* would need bluetooth option for some connectivity but could live without wifi myself.
* an ir port with enough range to control tvs/dvd/etc., what was the app that allowed you to copy tv remotes to buttons you drew on screen?
* a proper docking option. one thing i miss with all my mobile devices since is a good dock. press a button and it synced a tonne of useful information back and forth.
* new software that works with windows mac AND linux
* don't want to store info in cloud
just my 2c
when i had a palm pda the dock was such a useful addon for syncing and charging the later models. it's odd that with the terrible battery lifes of modern smart phones that they are shunned so much. plus with all the weather/stock/slide show apps it can be a constant stream of info beside your main computer.
me i'll stick to my crappy new nokia feature phone that needs charging once a week. :-)
on the iphone 3g i can use ibooks, which is a crap ereader. too slow and unresponsive. not worth getting a new iphone for the increasingly restricted walled garden. pity amazon killed stanza as that worked ok, share file on desktop and download over wifi.
i have all my books on android but am getting tired of google's increasing efforts to shove g+ down my throat. it's ereaders operate the way i want. copy files to a sd card and go. as has been mentioned by one kind person firefoxos can also work this way. that's enough for me to jump to the platform.
if i want to use it as an ereader can i just copy a ton of files onto the memory card or does it need to uploaded into the cloud and thus be a pain in the arse when away from data?
tired of iphone and android and if it worked offline as an ereader would be very interested in getting one.
the only ones i have seen are those which the mobile providers are providing for free as upgrades to people on contract. and a civil servant whose department had all their blackberries replaced by winphone devices.
i've set up one of these and it was a horrible horrible device. the user has since smashed it with a hammer he hated it so much.
i used to have to build a windows system every few months just to run nokias software updater. a real pain in the ass. people who are using expensive phones are more likely to be using operating systems other than microsofts. i didn't want windows on my then mac systems or now linux systems. it was one of the things that drove me away from symbian.
of course android is not perfect either with both my samsung wanting windows kies software to update the firmware and my sony xperia wanting similar windows crap to do the same. is it so hard to understand that people who use android might not be fans of ms?
the e71 is where nokia went wrong. for me anyway.
on paper it seemed ideal. better than the e61i it was replacing;
* support for more than 2gb of memory cards and more memory
* fm radio
* camera flash
* standard 3.5mm head phone socket
* longer battery life.
* faster cpu
and then i used one for a while;
* global search was painfully slow if the phone had lots of information. around a minute to start as it preloaded all the data to 'speed' up searches.
* headphone socket mounted on the side so that it damaged the headphones i was using when i put the phone in my pocket crazy person that i am.
* fragile, i dropped mine within a week of getting it and the keyboard popped out. it went back in ok and never happened again but after the sheer indestrucibleness of the e61s...
* shutting down all running apps and rescanning my memory card for media everytime i ejected it to copy stuff on and off. and no way to turn that off. annoying.
* and adding a not required by irish law camera click in firmware update made me give it away and promise to never buy nokia again.
these days i use a samsung galaxy pro. nice!
i don't have a problem with the kb used by a file but i often have a problem reading pdfs on ereaders. sure you can zoom in and scroll but that can be annoying and time consuming. a java app called briss does the job of trimming of excess margins. just my 2c.
it as a by product trims off a few kb.
one of the reasons i love my olpc so much is the handle. the first laptops i used had handles but somewhere along the way they were eliminated.
these mobile devices are going to me moved around a lot. a handle wouldn't go amiss on some of these. even just a generic connection slot for people to add one might win a few sales.
i'd even be happy with a lower powered version that eliminated wifi and colour screen. let it have blue tooth and use that to connect to a phone in a pocket that can share it's wifi and 3g. a bit of software could do that on most modern phones.
the psions i had back in the 90s and early 2000s were the 3a, 3c, 5, 5mx and could last a week on 2 aa batteries. averaged about 40 hours a week on the series 3s and 20-25 hours on the 5s.
it's tragic that 17 years after my psion 3a that modern phones struggle to have the capabilities of it's software.
as for keyboards. i liked the psion 5 but prefered the case and shell of the psion 3 series. the battery case hinge allowed you to grip it with forefinger and middle finger while using the thumb on the keyboard. and with your other hand i could get nearly 30wpm while walking around warehouse typing serial numbers and notes into it.
it's never going to be a major player but a small percentage of the market with loyal customers can be very profitable as apple has shown. most of the accountants and architects i meet who had psions would be rushing to get one as nothing has compared to their design excellence. the fact he sold all 2000 of the variants he made should show that.
yet i can't watch tv shows like bones or castle with seeing how super fabulous the crappy winpho7 is? this weeks castle episode had the lead take a picture and email it with beautiful close ups of him sending via outlook. wtf?! i was sending pics via email from my nokia n70 6 years ago. could have done it on my 3650 before that but the images were crap and data too expensive.
how much are they spending to advertise this crap again?
and as for nokia helping their sales numbers? nokia hasn't been able to write good software for 3-4 years. people aren't going to hand in their current symbian devices and replace it with winpho7 in any great number. most people i knew with symbian had gone symbian because they didn't want a winmobile device.
i've said it a million times but i'd rather pay for a bbc tv licence than the irish version. at least the bbc puts out dozens of tv shows that i am interested in.
but i have zero interest in apple devices. hate itunes!
will be interesting to see if how much money this brings into the bbc. they're not perfect but have a lot of fans around the world.