Nokia 5800 XpressMusic (Tube)

Nokia unleashes iPhone's most dreaded rival on 2nd October '08; Nokia 5800 Tube. The first

 touchscreen phone from Nokia.

Lets get to business straight.

Features and some details:

> Symbian OS (5th edition)

> 3.2 inch bright Sensor Display with a resolution of 640x360 which gives a better resolution then iPhone

> WiFi which makes web browsing a better experience given the high resolution, bright display

> Comes with 8GB microSD card and is expandable upto 16GB

>  Regular 3.5mm audio jack unlike the 2.5mm audio jack in the previous model of 5800, making it possible to connect almost all models of headphones without the adapters

> Two input modes, Thumb and Stylus

> 3G

> Competitive price (middle class phone and not premium class)

> 3.2 Megapixel camera with Karl Zeiss lens and double LED flashlights.

Now that we have spoken about the great

 promising features that the new Nokia 5800 would come with, lets also look at the possible flip sides:

> How stable would the 5th edition of Symbian (OS 9.4) be?

> Symbian applications for 1st, 2nd and 3rd editions are not compatible with each other. 

Would these applications made on previous platform be compatible with the 5th edition? Probability is very very meagre since the 5th edition is for touchscreen OS.

> Previous 5800 does not have that great an audio output on the speakers (atleast when

 compared to N73). Would Tube live up to the expectations?

> How stable would it be? Though E65 was not the first 3rd edition OS 9.1 phone, it really disheartened the end consumer by its performance. Both the phones have a 128Mb RAM. How much can Tube be trusted, especially when its the 1st phone on the new platform?

> Its a multimedia phone, but given the infantness of the OS, how quick or slow is it to respond to images, videos or music?

> Looking at the current pictures available, the menu looks pretty simple and fair. How lucrative is it? To what extent is it customizable, if at all it is?

Discussions and Opinions are highly appreciated. Please leave your comments.

Windows Vista home Basic - After A Year

I bought my laptop last year (HP Compaq Presario V6000) and it came preloaded with Windows Vista Home Basic. I was excited as Vista was new and different. It was something else altogether then the XP that I had been using all the while.

I must say, it did turn out to be different. Its slow, uses a lot of RAM and keeps freezing. (I need to reboot my laptop every now and then). Since Vista was new and had just come in, I expected it to have a few gliches and give me some problem, but problem is what I was facing every day. In the first month itself, it crashed thrice, third time being the worst where the Recovery Manager wouldn't work as well. I had to take it to HP service Center to get it up and running again.

Thats when I learnt that I need to create a Recovery Disk (for such situations), first thing when I start using Vista. Well, the sales rep failed to inform me on that.
Anyways, I haven't been too happy with the performance of Vista (though its the Home Basic version which is the lowest in the league, Ultimate being the most power crunching version). I have an AMD Turion 64x2 processor (1.6Ghz) with 1GB Ram, and with this config, trust me, XP works amazingly well.

I was expecting things to be better after regular downloads of the updates from Windows, but to my surprise, with every update downloaded and installed, my laptop runs even slower. This is what I learnt later, Vista needs a lot of Ram and 1GB (which i have on my laptop) is just not enough for it, not even for Home Basic. And I agree to that, my laptop crawls, crawls to such an extent that it seems  I am running XP with a 256MB Ram.

When I compare it to my desktop, which runs XP Professional and has a 1GB Ram, with the Intel Pentium 4 processor, I would give double the rating to my desktop then to my laptop. First thing I realised after buying the laptop with Vista Home basic, is that it wasn't as responsive as XP. And with time, after installing all the updates for Vista, I find it even worst. It just gets more slow, to put it in other words, it gets older with time and more inputs..

I have also installed the Service Pack 1 for Vista, hoping that to do some good, but to no gain. It is still the same, except that it doesn't crash anymore. But it still eats up the Ram to the max, to such an extent that I am left with no option but to reboot my laptop. And this happens atleast twice  everyday (of the 6 odd hours that I work on my laptop)

Worst news came to me when I decided to downgrade to XP Professional. I was suggested against it by an IT Professional, stating that it would be really difficult for me to get all the drivers for my laptop is I have to install XP.

That killed it (killed me)

I regret being hasty while buying my laptop with Vista Home Basic pre-installed. I should have rather waited for some time, checked what are people's experiences with it, read more reviews regarding its performance before choosing Vista. I should have opted for XP on my laptop as well.

Rating: 4

Acer Aspire One - Netbook

I recently laid my hands on the Acer Aspire One netbook, like they call it now. I have to say I was impressed. Had heard and read a lot about the Aspire One on the net, but it never got me interested because of Linux, 512MB Ram and it had 8GB SSD and not HDD. Though SSD drives respond and perform faster then HDD, but what use is it when there isn't much memory space for you to utilize.

However, the One that I got a chance to try, came with Windows XP Home, had a 1GB Ram and 80GB HDD. Now that sounded good. I anyways never expected for these netbooks to have a dual core processor, not so soon atleast. Maybe we would have them soon on these netbooks. But the Atom 1.6Ghz processor thats loaded on One, was very impressive. It responded well and could handle multiple applications at the same time without much of a problem. I was running some documents and spreadsheets while I was downloading from the net via WiFi and playing music as well. All at the same time and seriously,  I would say that the responsiveness of One was impressive.

Harcore gaming ofcourse is not something you can get from One, so I wouldn't suggest gamers to think about buying One, rather any netbooks for that matter. But if you are someone who needs to be connected most of the times and who travels a lot, I would advice One over any other netbooks currently. I have checked EEE Pc, Wind and even the most recent HP Mini-Note but One gets a two thumbs up when comared to the others.

Audio output on the internal speakiers is fair for the kind of device One is, and ofcourse if you want better, you have the Audio Out jacks on the side. Playing movies from the hard drive or from an external Memory card was no issues at all. It was smooth and clear without any kind of jerks in the frames.

Acer claims the battery life to be about 3 hours on the 3 cell battery. Well, it lasted me just over 2 hours. That could possibly be because I had a lot of things running at the same time. But none-the-less, that was fair. Acer claims that the 6 cell battery which is available for One (optional) gives a 6 hour life. I would love that kind of battery life but I will still stick to the 3 cell battery. Simply because the 6 cell battery makes One a little too heavy and its a little too protruding from the back. It makes it a little incovinient.

One thing that One misses out on is Bluetooth. I don't know why was that difficult for Acer to have a Bluetooth added to One.

Overall, I was pretty impressed with Aspire One and its performance over the other netbooks I have laid my hands on.

GOOD:

Looks, size, weight, Windows XP, 1 GB Ram and 80GB HDD, 2 memory card slots, more economical then other netbooks, webcam.

BAD:

No Bluetooth, fair battery life.

Comments are very much appreciated.

Asus P527

General:

I own one and seriously I regret buying it. Not something I expect from a business phone. Its slow, keeps freezing, WiFi would not get you through to internet and browsing on GPRS is just too slow.

64mb Ram doesn't seem to be enough. I wish it had an option of upgrading the Ram like you have in your computer.

Network:
Network signal is weak as compared to other phones. While I would still have full network on my Nokia N73 in my basement, it would be less then half or at times even Zero on Asus P527.Quality of sound while on a call is not that great. I face a lot of distortion and crackling while talking on the phone.

Connectivity:

It boasts about WiFi and GPRS but that just remains boasting. I have, till now, have very rarely been able to get through to the internet via WiFi. And whenever I can connect to the internet, the speed is so so so slow that I get tired and shut the net browser. On GPRS, its not that great a news aswell. Its way to slow, even if I don't compare it with any other phone, I will still say it is way too slow. No use..

Bluetooth is just fair. Data transfer rate is slower then the phones that you have these days, but can be adjusted with.

Multimedia:
Volume on the call is good enough, but the volume output for music is not appealing at all. Earphones are not good aswell. They start hurting in just a few minutes. And since the earphones are with the 2.5mm jack, it is really difficult to find a better set. Does not have an equalizer and the quality of music is not at all great.

Playing videos on Asus P527 is not satisfying aswell. Videos in WMV format don't play smoothly at all. The frames would freeze for seconds together and the audio would crack. While playing a video I cannot change to the full screen mode, it freezes. This is also majorly because of the 64mb Ram that it comes with.

Office:

It does have Office Mobile application, but then frankly, while I was using it, it was more frustrating than handy. It was too slow in responding.

Overall:
The phone looks good and has a good body finish. Numeric keypad comes handy, especially for those who do not like tapping the stylus on the cramped keyboard, but then thats not all that one looks for in a phone right..? Main criteria is always performance and that is something thats missing in the Asus P527.

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