Author: jamesclay

Posted on

Silver or Black

After my personal mobile phone gave up the ghost I decided it was time to get a new phone. I have a Nokia N73 through work though so haven’t been entirely phoneless. But I need a phone for personal use.

I discounted the iPhone almost immediately, in the main as a) the phone was expensive at £269; b) the phone plans were expensive with the cheapest one at £35 per month; c) you can’t use the iPhone as a Bluetooth modem which means that I couldn’t use it with my laptop; and finally d) it uses EDGE and not 3G which means that even if I could use it as a modem it would be very slow and internet on the phone would be slow.

I quite like the Nokia N73, but I have one of those and I don’t really want two!

I did consider the N95, but with rumours of an N96 and wanting something with a slightly better battery life, I decided to go with a different phone.

After much thought and looking, I decided to go with the LG Viewty. I went with T-Mobile as they are one of the few UK mobile phone service providers which allow you to use the phone as a modem with your laptop and I wanted that over a separate USB 3G Modem.

Alas when I went into the shop they were out of stock. So I ordered online, only to make a mistake with my bank details so when they made the charge to the card it was refused! After phoning and correcting the mistake I found out that the phone was now out of stock, but would be back in stock soon.

Ten days later I get an e-mail saying that the black one would be back in stock soon, but the silver model was available now.

Silver, I didn’t know it was available in silver.

A quick internet search revealed that the silver model was newer, hmm, choices, silver now or black later.

Well after thinking about it for a couple of minutes I decided to go with the silver model. Phoned T-Mobile to let them know, when they told me…

“the black one is back in stock”

Aaarrrgh, silver or black, silver or black.

Decisions.

Choices.

In the end I decided with the silver one, as it was newer.

Hopefully it may arrive today, but it should be here by Monday. Only problem I have is I will need to get another memory card format as it uses Micro SD whereas my other phones have or use Mini SD or Memory Stick Duo.

Posted on

Mobile Web

BBC’s Click has a nice article on the mobile web.

It is estimated that just one in five people with phones that are able to connect to the net actually do. But the iPhone, however, is having a profound effect on the willingness of its users to go online.

Read more.

Posted on

New Browser for your PDA

There’s a new browser for mobile devices providing a desktop experience on your windows mobile smartphone or PDA. Symbian and other platform editions are on their way.

The makers claim that it is the first mobile browser fully compatible with technologies such as asynchronous Javascript and XML (AJAX), Java, and embedded Flash.

Currently it’s a free download for US users only.

More info at: http://www.skyfire.com/

Posted on

Can I Scan?

If you connect an all-in-one printer/scanner/fax/copier type device to the USB port of an Airport base station, you will only be able to use the printing functionality of the all-in-one from a computer. This is the same regardless whether it is the older 802.11g Airport Extreme, the newer 802.11n Airport Extreme variants, the Airport Express and even the new Time Capsule.

Airport Express

It is not possible to use the scanning function of any all-in-one printer connected to the USB port of an Airport base station – and this limitation applies to all makes and models of all-in-one printers.

You will not be able to use the scanning functionality unless the all-in-one is connected directly to the computer.

Some all-in-ones are not compatible with the Airport base station and therefore no functions will be available.

Also you can not connect an USB scanner to the USB port of an Airport base station either.

From KB-article
The USB port is for connecting a printer, not for other devices.

From KB-article
remember that base station printer sharing is for printing only

The key question that some are asking is, can you connect a scanner or an all-in-one to the 802.11n Airport Extreme Base Station?

On this page on the new base station it is quite clear that you can plug in a USB printer or a USB hard drive, it never mentions a scanner, which to me is pretty obvious that you can’t plug in a scanner.

It also says

AirPort Extreme and the Mac- and PC-compatible Bonjour networking technology let everyone in the house, office, or classroom take advantage of one centrally available printer.

In the same way as the old base station it relies on Bonjour for printing and Bonjour doesn’t support network scanning.

So can you use a USB scanner or the scanning capability of an all-in-one with an Airport base station, the answer is a resounding no.

Posted on

Wearing out…

Do you know I think I may need to replace the batteries for my aging G4 PowerBook.

In their prime they would last at least three hours sometimes longer.

Today the first only lasted just over seventy minutes!

Batteries do wear out and I think I may need new ones or is there someway of refreshing old batteries.

At £89 apiece for new ones, I think I might try and see if there is a way of refreshing them.

Posted on

Why can’t I print?

So today I needed to print some documents for work tomorrow and would my Canon MP600R print? No it would not!

It was only while I was doing the washing up that I remembered that my Canon MP600r was wireless and of course I had only recently changed my 802.11g wireless network.

So of course I had to reconfigure the MP600R to join the new wireless network. Alas you can’t do this wirelessly, nor using the control panel on the printer itself. You need to connect via USB and then configure (on a Mac) via Printer Setup Utility.

Though usually this is a straightforward process, I had real problems today. Though I could change the settings I could not actually add the printer. In the end it actually froze my iMac and I needed to hard reboot. Once this was done I found I could add the printer.

Then of course I now need to check I can print from my other computers.

Posted on

Airport Express Working

Since my 802.11g Airport Extreme stalled I have had in place running instead my spare Airport Express.

It’s been working fine and internal file transfers have been very fast (for 802.11g) and I have had no problems.

Hopefully it will stay that way.

Posted on

It’s alive!

My Nokia N73 usually behaves itself.

It rings when someone calls.

It uploads photographs to Flickr when asked.

It will even let itself be used as a 3G modem.

It’s a good little phone.

But!

And there is always a but, sometimes it decides that it’s going to do what it wants and have some fun.

Today was one of those days.

I received a text, it appeared that my phone had taken one of the photographs I had taken, created a MMS and sent it to a recipient in my address book.

Later in the day it decided to upgrade my Jaiku presence without me asking, fair enough.

I tried to play a video clip with it, it told me it didn’t have enough memory.

Okay, so I exited the video application and left the phone alone.

Ten minutes later (obviously bored) my phone  decided it wanted to watch the video and started playing it!

I wouldn’t be surprised if it phoned and ordered pizza for itself.

Nokia N73

Posted on

Which 3G modem for the MacBook Air?

So you have finally decided (after much thought) to get yourself a MacBook Air, well its really nice, thin and though it might break it is really nice.

Now you know it doesn’t come with integrated 3G, but that doesn’t matter as you’ve got a 3G USB modem.

Ah.

Well.

There’s a slight hitch, you see there’s a good chance that your USB modem won’t fit.

More on Engadget.