Portable

Apple Sued Over Scratchy iPod Nanos, Motorola Miffed
More details about Jason Tomczak’s class action against Apple for releasing defective iPod Nanos have emerged on The Inquirer’s site.
In the action, started in a San Jose district court, Tomczak alleges that the iPod Nano’s easily-scratched screen renders the display unreadable and thus breaches state consumer protection statutes.
Tomczak alleges that Apple kept on shifting the Nanos even when they knew that there were problems with the design and by failing to recall the MP3 players, the company “passed the expense, hassle and frustration of replacing the defectively designed Nanos along to class members”.
The plaintiff alleges that with Steve Jobs whipping the Nano out of his pocket in a TV advert, Apple led consumers to believe the machine was durable.
Tomczak argues that even this simple act could lead to a scratched screen, claiming that the resin used in the product was not as thick and strong as in previous iPods.
The plaintiff wraps up his case by alleging that Apple knew about the dodgy quality problems before release but, “fierce competition on the digital music industry” compelled them to release it anyway.
Motorola miffed at Nanos
Things aren’t looking too happy-clappy for the Motorola’s iTunes music phone either, with analysts Bloomberg reporting that it may not be performing as expected.
American Technology Research analyst Albert Lin noted that as many as six times more customers are returning the Rokr phones than is normal for new handsets, and Motorola Chief Executive Officer Ed Zander said he is disappointed with the phone’s marketing and plans to fix it.
“We got off to a little bit of a rough start”, Zander said last week, “People were looking for an iPod and that’s not what it is. We may have missed the marketing message there”.
Ironically, things haven’t been helped by the iPod nano appearing on the scene straight after the phone’s launch, with the ultra-small pocket rocket holding 10 times the amount of songs for half the price
You can’t blame Zander for being a bit miffed after Apple invited his company to be the first to launch an iTunes phone and the immediately stole their thunder with the Nano announcement.
Pocket-lint.co.uk reported that he exclaimed “Screw the nano!” in a previous statement which was later receded.
Motorola is reported to be launching a new series of phones to tailored around music in the future.
Pocket Lint
The Inquirer
24 October, 2005
Nuvi: Garmin’s Mini Marvel Offers GPS, MP3 And Audio Book
Quickly earning a We Want One Now Please accolade, Garmin have announced the nüvi, a feature packed GPS travel assistant the size of a deck of playing cards.
Packed into its diminutive dimensions (3.87″ W x 2.91″ H x 0.87″ D, 5.1 ounces) is a portable GPS navigator, Audio Book Player, traveller’s reference, and MP3 player.
Songs can be loaded onto the SD card using drag-and-drop.
Sporting a 320 x 240 pixels (3.5″ diagonal) 64k TFT touch screen display, the nüvi’s built in GPS provides automatic routing, turn-by-turn voice directions, and finger-touchscreen control via a built in speakerphone.
For the easily bored traveller, the nüvi packs in an MP3 player, audio book player from Audible.com, JPEG picture viewer, world travel clock with time zones, currency converter, measurement converter, and calculator.
Garmin are claiming that the built-in lithium ion battery offers between 4-8 hours of battery life.
There’s also optional language and content support from software packages such as the Language Guide and Travel Guide.
The Language Guide
The Language Guide uses data provided by Oxford University Press and provides a multilingual word bank, phrase bank, and five bilingual dictionaries.
With the guide, travellers can look up and translate more than 17,000 words or 20,000 phrases per language with a text-to-speech interface letting users talka da lingo.
Travel Guide
The optional Garmin Travel Guide has a ton of travel information on tap including reviews and recommendations for restaurants and tourist attractions.
The information is integrated with nüvi’s GPS functionality, so that hungry drivers can be guided to the nearest eatery, with the nüvi’s text-to-speech functionality keeping eyes on the road.
The nüvi comes in two flavours:
nüvi 300
Sold exclusively in Europe, the nüvi 300 comes with approximately 200 MBs of internal memory for storage of supplemental maps, MP3s, and audio books (available from Audible.com). Pricing to be announced.
nüvi 350
This top of the range configuration contains full European mapping and is compatible with the GTM 10 FM TMC traffic receiver, making it easy to calculate new routes to avoid snarl ups.
The nüvi 350 comes with an A/C charger and provides around 700 MBs of internal memory for storage of supplemental maps, MP3s, and audio books.
Garmin have only announced domestic US pricing so far, with the North American versions (pre-loaded City Navigator NT maps of the US, Canada, and Puerto Rico) retailing for the rater precise amount of $969.22 (£555, €810).
Availability is expected sometime in November 2005.
Garmin
18 October, 2005
Google Is 7; Asteriod Impacts; Blackberry 8700 – A Teenage Tech News Review
Happy Birthday!
Here’s a news item that probably slipped through the mesh, as it was quite low-key: Google is now 7 years old! This came as a bit of a shock to me in a way, and it probably will to you too: Nowadays, I would find it impossible to live and work as I do without Google. In fact, this one corporation has a pretty good monpoly on my life. I use Google on my mobile to find anything from street directions to the meaning of the word “vehement”. I get my email from them, and of course I use it to browse the Internet. It’s hard for me to imagine, then, that seven years ago, people managed to survive without Google.
I found a screenshot of what Google used to look like on the Internet archive, and although it does obviously look a little old-school, it’s still much the same interface-wise as it is today:
That was at a time when Google was still hosted on the Stanford University servers and had a staff of two. All I can say is that they’ve come a long way.
For me, this is a reminder that I am a part of the generation that has grown up at the same time as consumer technology: The children of tomorrow will grow up taking things like Google and the Internet for granted, and will never be able to experience a world without technology, and so will never fully appreciate it. I personally don’t think that technology will continue to evolve as fast as it has done so far, simply because I don’t think that there is anywhere for it to go. Off the top of my head, there isn’t anything that I can think of that I would really like, but can’t have, because it’s simply not technically possible. Still, time will tell, and I suppose in 70 years time I will be the one saying to a group of grandchildren while they mock me: “In my day, we had to look through books to find what we wanted you know!”
There’s a fascinating history of Google available on their corporate history page here.
It’s in Space, it’s got to be cool. Oh, actually, no nukes, so forget it
In a development reminiscent of the movie Deep Impact”, scientists have revealed a few ideas about what to do in case of an imminent asteroid impact. Their ideas just aren’t as cool as those in the movie though in my opinion: I mean, come on, you need a few nukes in there to make it look cool! Ah well, never mind, I just hope that in case of there being any danger of an impact, the scientists responsible will find some way of saving us. There have, afterall, been a fair few objects that have come close in history, and the dinosaurs can surely (or rather not) testify that sometimes, these things do actually hit Earth.
“Batman’s Blackberry”, but I still want one!
The story on the new Blackberry 8700, due to be released “in the neighborhood of December of this year or very early 2006,” hit this week. Having previously reviewed a Blackberry 7100v, I am very keen to have a play with the new phone. Apparently, it sports a 312mhz processor, which will hopefully make the browser a viable option for browsing anything but the most minimal of Web pages. We shall see, now all I have to do is get my hands on one ;-)
Admittedly, the styling does remind one of a phone tailor-made for Batman, but then it’s kinda cool anyway, and the screen looks like it’s going to be great! The screens on the 7100 and the 7200 were already some of the best seen on mobile phones, and so I have high hopes for the 8700. I bet Robin’s already got one, lucky sod! The rest of us will have to wait until December.
30 September, 2005
Pocket Informant Review: Pocket PC (4/5 Stars)
Pocket Informant 2005 is an integrated Pocket PC application that replaces the built-in Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, Notes, Journal programs and adds a Timeline view.
Loaded with customisation options, the program lets you dabble with just about everything and anything you can see on screen – typefaces, font sizes, font colours, categories, category colours, icons – the lot!
Although this seem a bit like overkill, the different screen sizes and resolutions available on PocketPCs means that controlling font sizing can come in very handy.
So, how does this do-it-all Personal Information Manager (PIM) shape up? Let’s take a closer look.
Calendar
The Calendar view offers a host of different views, displaying one day, seven day or whole month views on one screen, with the Agenda view presenting a user-selectable number of days of appointments in a list format, with the option to filter out ‘free’ days.
New appointments may be added by tapping and holding on a day’s title bar. Double-tapping on an entry opens its detail screen for viewing, editing or adding alarms.
Regularly recurring meetings can be set up as templates to speed up text entry (e.g. “Going to pub.”)
As soon as an event has passed it is displayed in italics, making it easy for the easily confused to see what events are remaining in the current day.
As with all the components in the Pocket Informant suite, a global navigation bar sits at the bottom of the screen, offering instant access to diary views, contacts, notes, to-dos and filter and search options.
Contacts
The Contacts screen opens up with a tabbed alphabetical row along the time allowing nifty access to contacts.
Inputting new contacts is straightforward enough, with the program auto-filling in frequently-entered text.
A whole host of fields are available to include every possible detail of your new contact, with the option to associate mugshots with contacts, and assign multiple categories.
The search facility is particularly clever, with users able to specify that the program looks for entries that start with the search text or for entries that contain the specified text.
Once a number is located, it can be dialled IR, Bluetooth, DTMF or Serial.
Naturally, there are options galore for listing contacts, including First/Last name, Last/First name, providing a picture list, and grouping by company, department, city, state, country, and category.
Tasks
As you might have guessed by now, the Tasks interface comes with a shedload of options, with entries being sorted/grouped by category, importance, priority, progress, completion, or date.
There’s the usual filtering and grouping options available, with users able to set up nested hierarchical tasks.
Tasks may be dropped on others to establish relationships, child tasks can be created by tapping and holding on a task and the hierarchical display may be expanded or collapsed.
Tasks can also be set to repeat with nagging reminders and start and completion dates entered.
Notes
Here’s where we were very disappointed.
Unlike the simplicity of Palm’s ‘Memos’, the handling of notes is a real half arsed affair in Pocket Informant – the display is a real dog to get around, and everything seems needlessly complicated.
Sure, the improved text formatting is a nice touch, but finding, organising and categorising notes seems a needlessly tiresome chore.
I hope the Pocket Informant developers – who have a well earned reputation for listening to their punters – take a long hard look at how programs like Agendus on the Palm handle notes and learn from their experience.
Conclusion
Apart from the clunky horror of the Notes interface, it’s easy to see why Pocket Informant has become the most popular PIM application on the Pocket PC.
The program does an admirable job of making it easy for users to search find, organise and display content on the small screen of a Pocket PC and provides excellent value at $29.95 (~€24.5~£16.50).
With its extraordinary amount of user-configurable options, the program can be tailored to fit individual requirements, and with ample power under the hood, it can easily grow with the user’s needs.
Although the sheer range of options can confuse new users (us included), the intuitive, usable defaults make it easy to get started with the program.
Whether many users will ever get around to discovering the true power of the program is another matter, however.
We still think, however, that it’s the best PIM application available for the Pocket PC with only the poor support for Notes preventing it getting our very top rating.
Digital-Lifestyles score: 4/5
Price: $29.95 (~€24.50, ~£16.50)
Buy now online at PocketGear – Special Offer $22.95 until 30 Sep.05
Further information Pocket Informant
26 September, 2005
Resco Explorer Review: For Pocket PC (5/5 Stars)
With Pocket PCs offering more and more storage space and applications shunting files all over the place, it’s getting increasingly difficult to manage the data held on a handheld device.
With the default Pocket PC File Explorer being as powerful as a tired gnat, Resco Explorer 5.2 could prove a godsend for Pocket PC users keen to keep their devices in order.
Offering built-in file viewing, ZIP file support, encryption, storage card formatting, FTP capabilities and a Registry editor, this fella is like a supercharged file browser on steroids.
Serving up an arm-long list of features, Resco manages to combine the functions of a host of different applications and meld them into one sophisticated, do-it-all, integrated solution.
It may have a ton of power under the hood, but thankfully you don’t need a degree in Advanced Boffinery to get around the program.
Resco’s simple two-pane interface and hierarchical file structure makes it easy to rummage through Pocket PC files and folders (including those stored in ROM and on storage cards), and perform a range of basic actions via a menu, icon bar or tap-and-hold menu – just like a desktop PC.
Files can be encrypted from within the program (and from a desktop applet) enabling data to be organised and secured within the same interface. Neat.
Network support is built in, letting users browse the files of connected machines, and there’s also HP Mobile Printing support (via an optional free download), FTP support, tap-and-hold menus for beaming (via Infrared and Bluetooth) or emailing any file, drag-and-drop of files and folders as well as storage card formatting.
Add to that the improved support for compression – letting users save files at different levels of compression – and a new Today plug-in providing on battery status and free storage/memory and you’ve got a Five Star application that is an absolute must for all Pocket PC users.
Highly recommended.
Digital-Lifestyles score: 5/5
Price: $24.95 (~€20, ~£13.50)
Buy now online at PocketGear
Further information Resco Explorer 5.2
22 September, 2005
Virgin Launches UK Music Service This Week
Sir Richard Branson will be slamming the virtual champagne against the good ship Virgin Digital UK as another digital music service slides down the slipway on September 2nd.
Virgin’s new service will serve up over a million tracks, available to punters through a subscription and a download service.
Subscriptions will start from 40p (~US$0.70, €0.58~) each day, with permanent downloads costing 79p (~US$1.15, €1.4~) upwards, but Ipod owners needn’t apply as the service uses Windows Media, which goes together with iPods like chocolate and cabbage.
Sir Richard Branson, ubermensch of the Virgin Group, set his PR spin machine to eleven: “With a strong music heritage behind us, as a record label and a retailer, Virgin has a huge advantage, and platform to launch a digital service that will become the ultimate destination to buy, stream, burn and enjoy the best the music world has to offer.”
In an already crowded digital download marketplace dominated by iTunes, digital music services are hard-pushed to dream up compelling USPs, but Virgin claim that their service aims to “redefine” the digital music experience with a wallet-opening combination of features and consumer elements.
Virgin Digital UK is set to serve up a mix of digital music store, music club subscription service, streaming radio, powerful digital music and portable device management tools, along with a collection of music-discovery gizmos.
Developed in-house, the service is a collaboration between Virgin and US digital music provider Music Net and ramps up the feature set with additional track info, musical recommendations with phonetic search, comprehensive artist biographies and a ‘Related Artists’ feature which serves up information about the influences, collaborations and recommendations of similar artists.
To big up the launch of the service, Virgin will host exclusive performances from Bloc Party, The Dandy Warhols and The Cribs on September 2nd, with another 150 London-wide live performances in the pipeline, providing exclusive content to the Virgin Digital site.
Virgin are offering two subscription services; Basic £9.99 (~US $17.8, €14.6~) or Premium £14.99 (~US$26.7, €22~), with individual tracks available from 79p (~US$1.15, €1.4~) per song.
Virgin Digital UK
31 August, 2005
Fujitsu Announces LifeBook T4020 And Stylistic ST5032 Tablet PCs
Fujitsu LifeBook T4020
Claimed to combine the “convenience and familiarity of a notebook with the powerful and versatile functionality of a slate Tablet PC”, Toshiba’s new LifeBook T4020 comes with Intel Pentium M 740 or 760 processors beating inside its swish silver and black casing, with a swivel-tastic 12.1″ XGA display offering a 160 degree viewing angle.
The Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005-powered convertible Tablet PC comes fitted with a 56K V.90 modem, Ethernet and Atheros Super AG or Intel PRO/Wireless 2915ABG Wi-Fi connectivity, with the option to add Bluetooth.
Paranoid types can also purchase an optional fingerprint sensor to keep prying eyes away.
The laptop comes with a rather miserly 256 meg of RAM as standard (upgradeable to 2GB), 40GB Shock-Mounted Hard Drive and one Type I or Type II PCMCIA card slot fitted into its 11.5″ x 9.3″ x 1.4″ dimensions.
Fujitsu Stylistic ST5032 tablet
Running on Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005, the Stylistic ST5032 tablet PC comes in two sizes, with customers able to choose between the 12.1″ XGA and 10.4″ indoor/outdoor displays.
The super slimline silver beastie (12.77″ x 8.66″ x .88″) weighs in at 3.5 pounds, boasting an Intel Pentium M 753 processor, a shock-mounted hard drive and built-in TPM, a dedicated Smart Card slot and a biometric swipe sensor (on 12.1″ display models only).
There’s also a nifty dual mic array with noise cancellation software, 60 GB hard drive, built in 56K V.90 modem, 10/100/1000 Ethernet LAN, Bluetooth, Intel PRO/Wireless 2915ABG Network Connection (Tri-mode 802.11a/b/g) and 512 meg RAM.
The PR blurb
“As enterprises increasingly rely on vast numbers of mobile workers, they require a mobile computing platform that is easy to deploy, maintain, and service,” frothed Paul Moore, director of mobile product marketing at Fujitsu Computer Systems.
Cranking up his PR offensive to eleven, Moore continued, “Fujitsu offers a broad array of mobile solutions with the features, security, flexibility, reliability and ease of integration these companies need – all at competitive prices”.
Prices for the Fujitsu LifeBook T4020 start at US$1,599 (£888, €1,300) and US$2,499 (£1,390, €2,030) for the T5032. Availability is to be announced.
Fujitsu LifeBook T4020
Stylistic ST5032 Tablet PC
25 August, 2005
Virgin Radio Adds Another Podcast
After an encouraging response from listeners, Virgin Radio has announced that it will be making its Sunday afternoon programme ‘The Tim Lovejoy Show’ available as a podcast.
Virgin first experimented with podcasting earlier this year, with the ‘The Pete & Geoff Breakfast Show’ making Virgin Radio the first UK radio station to offer a podcast of a daily show.
The service, launched on the 9th March 2005, now receives 85,000 downloads a month.
Lovejoy’s sports and entertainment show is broadcast weekly from 4pm to 7pm, and Virgin have said that they’ll make the “best bits” available for consumers to download to their MP3 players from 28th August.
iPod-toting fans of the show will no doubt appreciate the new service, although they may not be pleased with having to put up with adverts for the podcast’s sponsor, Nivea, popping up throughout the download (see: ‘Podvertising’ Supports Virgin Radio Daily Podcast)
James Cridland, head of strategic development for new media at Virgin Radio was enthusiastic about the potential for podcasts, “The response shows us that people are more than willing to have a play with the technology if the content is good enough”.
“It also allows them to listen in at their own convenience if they don’t fancy getting up at 6am,” he added.
Cridland has stated that the radio station was also looking to make more of its content available as podcasts, describing the delivery method as “a great mechanism to get people to trial our flagship shows”.
Virgin Radio Podcasts
25 August, 2005
PMR 1.8″ Hard Drive 1st, Claims Hitachi
Toshiba claim a first with their release of what they claim is the first commercially released Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR) hard drive.
Measuring 1.8 inches, the incy-wincy drive can hold 40Gb on its single platter, providing around 10,000 music tracks, or 25k photos. Running with the oh-so-memorable OEM name of the MK4007GAL, it weighs in at just 51g and measures 54mm x 78.5mm x 5mm. They plan to release a two platter version, the MK8007GAH, which has 80Gb storage and only an extra 3mm thickness, next quarter.
They’re also using the drive to make their Gigabeat music player sexier. The introduction of PMR technology into the Gigabeat F41 not only gives them 40Gb of storage, from a previous 20Gb, but lets them shrink the thickness by 3m.
Drives like this are becoming more important as digital media moves further into the mainstream, and consumers digital appetites expands from music to video. With the drive being this small it will fit into really compact devices like mobile phones.
How does it work its magic? Today’s drives typically use Longitudinal Magnetic Recording (LMR). In simple terms, the difference between the two is LMR has the magnetic field pointing either left or right, while PMR has them pointing up or down. This helps to achieve higher and more stable recording densities, and in turn improves storage capacity. The images from Toshiba should help make it a bit clearer (if you happen to speak Japanese).
While the theory of PMR has been around for a number of years, Toshiba has taken 1-2 quarters longer than they’d expected in getting the MK4007GAL to market.
Toshiba roadmap with PMR appears impressive with their 3.5in PMR drives giving 1Tb of storage in Q4 2006/Q1 2007. They estimate that PMR should give their 0.85″ drives 6-8Gb per platter.
It is generally thought that all hard disk manufacturers will move in this direction in the pursuit of ever higher storage capacities.
17 August, 2005
Laptops Being Packed By More Holidaymakers
Feebly posing as some sort of independent study into the portable computer use, a recent US survey commissioned by Intel reveals that 34 per cent of respondents or their families have taken a laptop PC with them on vacation, with just over half likely to take a laptop PC on a future vacation. Oh that’s lucky … aren’t Intel involved with laptops in some way?
The survey, conducted by Harris Interactive discovered that the three most popular uses for a laptop PC while on holiday checking personal e-mail (72 per cent); playing movies, music and games (56 per cent); and gathering trip information online (45 per cent).
Despite being on their happy hols, 43 per cent used their laptops for of checking and sending work-related email.
The growth of compact, wireless-enabled laptop PCs [cue: another plug for Intel Centrino here] and hotspots have made it easier for globe trotters to taunt their office-bound chums back home with beach photos, as well as keep in touch with work, news, sports and grab local information.
“The survey results show that mobile technology is making it easy for travellers to research destinations, be entertained and stay in touch with family and friends while away from home,” said Ralph Bond, Intel consumer education manager, rudely cut out before another plug for Intel Centrino products could be delivered.
The survey also discovered that Hawaiian shirt-toting holidaymakers rated a long battery life (62 per cent), lightweight design (58 per cent) and Wi-Fi (55 per cent) as the most valuable features for a holiday latop. Wow … isn’t that what Centrino’s good at?
Of course, seasoned PC users have dragged laptops around with them for years on end, with many of the early adoptin’ cognoscenti choosing to travel even lighter by using PocketPCs/smartphones for keeping in touch while away from home.
With the growth of iPods, digital wallets and teensy weensy portable hard drives, keen photographers no longer need to lug around a laptop to back up their images, while Wi-Fi enabled PDAs – like the Palm LifeDrive – mean that travellers can access the Internet in-between splashes of sun tan oil and leave more room in their bags for essentials.
Like beer.
We would have provided you with a link to the survey but the page on the Intel site is 404ing.
21 July, 2005