The reason this is cool is because it allows you to use Google’s most used features without being online, but what it affords Google is far more comprehensive. Gears technology allows Google to pre-define and work out the kinks on keeping its mess of services synched up correctly with local applications. Sure, for now that’s web browsers and web pages, but there’s no limitation anywhere which states that the sync target isn’t an application instead of a browser. This suggests that its the synching which is more important to Google than the offline usage aspect, though that’s a feature which should not be discounted. It will be some time before everyone is always online, so offline access is critical to Google’s success.

Google’s also got another trick up its sleeve which it hasn’t seen fit to shine a spotlight on. You thought that the Google Phone, T-Mobile’s G1 Android phone, was cool. Wait until you see Grand Central. Grand Central is an access provider which Google bought last year and has not yet publicized significantly. In fact, its still in private beta and there are no signs that it will be coming out of the closet any time soon. What does Grand Central do? Its a single point of contact system which focuses around a phone number. The service gives you a number and you can add any number of phones to that service. Once added, you can control when and how people reach you and when and how the phones connected react. 

Its not clear what Google plans for Grand Central and how it might fit into the grand scheme of things, but it is a compelling additional notch in Google’s already battle-tested belt. Grand Central could very well be a component of an everything or nothing play which leaves all other contenders on the field. Take Picasa, Google Gears, a desktop application compatible with Mac and Windows, Google Sync, and Grand Central and you have an all-in-one data powerhouse which can handle your internet access, search, email, contacts, agenda, images, feeds, voice mail, phone calls, and back it all up while offering you ubiquitous access. Its not hard, then, to imagine a cheap netbook with 3G network access or tethered to a Google/Android phone (more are coming, I assure you) and a Google-specific Linux distro designed to take advantage of all of these features. 

If prices of netbooks aren’t compelling now, wait until you get a deal which includes unlimited wireless internet. My guess is that the sweet spot will be US$99-250 for MIDs to 10-11″ netbooks. Does this mean that Google’s taking over the world as we know it? Yes and no, depending on who you talk to. If you ask the nuts, sure. Google’s been trying to wrest freedom from our already tenuous grasp since day one. If you ask me (and you are reading this), then the answer is no… with concessions. Google is very clever. It will pretty much own the internet in 10 years, but not alone. It will be owned by a largely loosely compiled group of open source advocates who have been eyeing this prize since Steve Ballmer started gloating about Microsoft’s position years ago. 

More specifically, with the way that Google has positioned how it uses and leverages technology, there will be a number of sources for Google’s almost assured dominance, and this is clever because it almost completely bypasses Anti-Trust. Android is Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS) so, technically, Google doesn’t own it. Email is ubiquitous, and Google makes no claims that its Gmail or nothing. In fact, Google has been opening Gmail up further and further since it started, making it pretty damned compelling. Docs: There’s no real competition, but Google’s not exactly vying to stop it, either. The same goes for Calendar, Sync, and Picasa. When you buy a WinMo phone, it won’t work with anything but Outlook on Windows. Hmm. Everything from Google works everywhere. If you were Anti-Trust, who’d you look at first?

So, as Sherlock Holmes used to say (despite the fact that he is a fictional character), “The game is afoot.” Google isn’t playing, either. They’re in this to win. They’re already one of the world’s largest companies in what is most assuredly a record breaking time. I can assure you with every fiber of my being that there’s no way in hell (or Los Angeles, if you like) that Google’s going to willingly give up that growth and power position, recession be damned. Mark my words, though. In the next year or so we’ll start hearing about desktop applications, and then you’ll know that I saw the future as clear as day… or at least that I guessed well

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I have to say that I’m very disappointed to hear of this. Apparently, a PR rep at Belkin (not mine, fortunately) has been named as the individual blatantly offering $0.65 per fake review of Belkin products on social product review sites. That’s not all, however, as the fake reviewer was also required to find reviews to competing products and mark the reviews as negative in hopes that it would “delegitamize” them. This kind of baldfaced, scandalous, anti-competitive marketing is about as bad as it can get for people like me.

I’m a blogger. I started PDA Handyman in January of 2001, which means I’ve been doing this for 8 years now. I’ve had large and small readerships (I currently draw around 130,000 readers a month) and I created the site and maintain it because I wanted to carry my love of neat little gadgets to anyone interested in my opinion. With that in mind, I determined early on that I would be careful about how I would review products.

My first rule is simple. If I don’t think a product is of any value to me, I don’t request it from the vendor for review. This is why you don’t see reviews of (much less stories promoting) stupid ass products like USB hand warmers or Hello Kitty mobile phones. Sure, I’ll run up the flag on something stupid to ridicule it, but certainly never to give it any time in the limelight. I request quality products which I think will carry a value over to my readers.

To see, then, that this unscrupulous PR person at Belkin, a company whom I’ve had lots of dealing in the past with, was paying for reviews disgusts me. Later in the piece you will learn that Belkin would also prepare special ROMs for certain devices which would mask any of the known issues those devices were having to skew the results for the reviewer. Since I haven’t reviewed any Belkin products since the Great Mobodojo Revivial of 2008 or during PDA Handyman’s Halcyon Days, there are no Belkin products reviews on the site now.

In case you don’t know, and you likely don’t, PR people who ship out products for review will often open the product, charge it up, and insert a personal note or reviewers guide. It does now raise questions in my mind about who could have done what to anything I have reviewed, though from my experience I’d have to say that the chances of that happening are slim to none. As you know if you’re a regular reader, I very rarely give out 100% glowing reviews. In some cases, like Sony’s nearly unusable Mylo 2 internet tablet, I give very, very poor reviews.

My PR person looked at it and responded thusly:

“That’s a pretty rough review, but thanks for sending along the link. As for the P Series, I will add you to our list, but we have a bunch of requests, so it’s going to be a wait before we can get you a unit. I will be in touch, though, and will let you know as soon as we have one available. It’s a great product and I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.”

As you can clearly see, I didn’t receive a note informing me that due to my unpleasant review of the Mylo 2 I would no longer be allowed to review Sony products. This is because there is an awareness between PR people and journalists which says that you win some and you lose some. PR people are paid to promote a product or a company, not to force a prescribed view on anyone. PR people are also pragmatic in understanding that not everything a company makes will the consumers like. The PR firm just won’t use any of my review in their PR pieces. I do know, however, that someone will come along and smartly decide not to buy something because of what I wrote.

For that, I’m glad. I want my readers to walk away from Mobodojo feeling like they got some value out of their time on the site. The last thing I’d ever want, as I imagine any legitimate blogger would, is to be considered a mouthpiece or a shill for a vendor or vendors. Belkin may need some time to restructure so they can save some face in this disgraceful debacle. I truly hope that they do. They make some good stuff.

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Just so you know right off the bat, we’re not talking US$69 special at Walmart here. This is a US$229 MSRP piece of crafted espresso machine. Well, mostly crafted. The key to the perfect cup of cappuccino is the concerted effort of a selection of tools and the skill and/or practice of the barista. Each and every part of a well oiled machine must work in harmony for the result to be palatable. So, before I can review the espresso machine, I must first talk of the coffee beans and the grinder. In my opinion, there are only two coffee beans in the entire world. One is Jose’s, a low-cost brand you can buy at CostCo, the likes of which cannot be found elsewhere, with exception to one, 8 O’clock. 8 O’clock’s peerless bean selection, blending, and roasting produces the perfectly rounded selection of coffees from a single bean. (I should note that Green Mountain Coffee is likely the single best coffee bean on the planet, but only within spitting distance of Vermont. I’m convinced that they have roasteries around the country, and not all are equal. We used to shop at the original store in Waitsfield. -TCR.)

Its all in how you grind it and how you prepare it for use. I will not detail coffee grinding here, but suffice it to say that the correct grind is required of the correct bean. You want a mostly fine grind for espresso machines. Once the grind is ready, allowing the greshly ground beans to offer their most flavorful potential, you place it into the filter (that thing with a handle on it), tamp it down just right (it takes practice with your machine to find the right amount), and then secure it to the base of the pressure head. Now, you don’t just turn on the water. You need to heat up the system first. I suggest, for the Café Roma at least, that you let it warm up for about 10 minutes (check the on-board water level first) before firing up the pump.

The Café Roma is a simplified espresso machine designed to be used by people not accustomed to brewing their own coffees outside of a Mr. Coffee or Krups drip machine. Turn the knob left to make coffee, then turn it right to make steam. This means that the Café Roma is a single pump machine. Most machines above US$200 sport dual pumps, but this one seems to work well. I also had an issue with not being able to moderate the steam pressure for preparing the froth, but Breville has managed to figure out a new tip which makes frothing as simple as peeling a pouring the milk into the mug. (I personally steam in the mug I drink from as it warms the mug and makes less to clean. -TCR.)

The Café Roma comes with two double-walled espresso shots, the filter handle and inserts for single, double, and pod, a frothing jug, a tamper and scoop, and a small cleaning tool. One thing I noticed right off is that when the pump is working the deck vibrates and the shot cups start moving around. At my wife’s suggestion, is placed a slightly damp towel under them and no more moving about. Second, when I moved over to frothing it didn’t seem like it was doing anything at first, but it certainly was. Before long my mug was warm, the milk was hot, and the froth was creamy and thick. Extended use has revealed some best practices, but I’m sure its different with everyone. Its also easy to clean and keep together. It has a heated top, like its larger brethren, and the water canister is sizable without being obtrusive. Everything about it and its accessories speaks of pretty good quality, except the tamper/scoop.

It took a few weeks, but now the coffee is coming out nearly perfect. Yeah. Nearly. I don’t know what it is about the Café Roma, but its just won’t make strong coffee. I’ve adjusted the grind, modified the tamping, tried darker roasted beans, even tried several Italian incantations to no avail. I don’t know if its the pressure or the way that Breville creates its pressure head, or how the holes are made in the filter cup or what, but the higher pressure system seems to work fine, it just won’t make stronger, Turkish-style coffee. Feh. Do I like the machine? Yes, I do, and it would be perfect for anyone who doesn’t have the same extreme needs I do when it comes to variance in coffee. I’m not a fan of burnt beans. I like a well rounded, robust, complex flavor, and the Café Roma just doesn’t seem to be able to bring out the more finessed ranges.

I’m pleased to have it on my countertop, though.

* I made up this number. Sue me.

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When Vista was announced, it was reveled that Microsoft’s Windows team was yanking features (including WinFS, their new filesystem baby), and then its system requirements, I knew we were in for a rocky road with Microsoft’s obsession with making Windows more Mac-like. I was far from wrong. Vista has turned out to be Microsoft’s least liked OS ever (even less popular than Windows Me, though not nearly as hated as BOB).

Microsoft even stooped to tricking people into liking Vista by showing them Mojave, a tweaked version of Vista. Now, if they’re willing to modify the system to make all references to Vista become Mojave instead, what else were they willing to change… but I digress. I reported here that I would not be upgrading, and for some time I didn’t, but since Microsoft had sent me a press kit with a copy of Vista Ultimate, I couldn’t resist for long.

My fears, however, were well founded, and even on my powerhouse MacBook Pro, the best rated laptop (not Mac laptop, but laptop overall. If you don’t believe me, check it out in PC World Magazine) for running Windows Vista, I was disappointed. I had stability issues, speed problems, application crashes, random errors, and just general lack of cohesiveness, even after upgrading to Vista SP1. So, I removed Vista and reinstalled XP with SP2 back into my Boot Camp partition. I was done with Windows Vista.

But then… along came Windows 7. Microsoft had been telling us that it had been working on Windows 7. Now, my conspiracy theory explanation is that Microsoft determined that they were not going to finish Windows 7 in time to release anywhere near their announced date and so they were going to have a hard time getting rid of Windows XP the longer people used it. Its at the time, I believe, that they plucked a few concepts from their target OS and crafted a version of Windows Server 2008 with the UI elements from the upcoming Windows 7 to cobble together Vista.

Of course, I could be completely wrong. Interestingly, Vista’s release did quell the dissent which was pelting the intarwebs. It didn’t take long, though, for the issues to start cropping up and people to begin complaning. The complaints from all corners of the computing world that it seemingly pushed Microsoft to announce Windows 7 early. They opened beta testing to more developers, and word started leaking out that, while it looked like Vista, it didn’t work like it. The errors were gone, the UI pains were gone or modified to work better, the underlying core was far more efficient, and it all took less resources to do the same thing Vista had so much trouble with.

When Microsoft released Windows 7 to general beta, I hopped on over to my resource and got a copy. I did not, however, want to install it on my MacBook Pro. I already have a nearly year old install of XP SP2 over there, keep it up to date, and play my Windows games over there. Sure, I use Steam, but I’d had to back everything up and it would be a hassle. My wife just stepped on the Averatec AIO, de-tailing the mouse and gouging the screen, so that was out, so my eyes fell to the Averatec Buddy netbook which came with the AIO. I burned the installer DVD (x86, if you’re interested) image to a disc, plugged in my LG external USB DVD burner, and fired it up.

Total install was absolutely painless. It even archived the XP install into the ../windows.old directory and created a boot loader entry for it. I had previously installed Wubi’s Xubuntu, and that boot entry was retained as well. I should note for details sake that I’ve not booted either, removed them from the boot.ini file and deleted them. I wanted to focus on Windows 7 and nothing else. For posterity, Xubuntu 8.10 worked fantastically well, though I was unable to get the wireless module to compile correctly and was unable to test the webcam. Of course, XFce is a fantastic window manager, but its not resource intensive.

That’s good, too, since the Averatec Buddy netbook sports a 1.6GHz Atom CPU, 1GB of RAM, a 160GB drive, a 10″ 1024×600 display, an integrated webcam, wi-fi and Ethernet connectivity, and SD card slot and an anemic 3-cell 2200 mAh battery pack. Its really no different than just about any other netbook out there and its a repro of the MSI Wind series. From what I can tell, it can even take the replacement batteries designed for the MSI Wind. With less than two hours of battery life, getting a large 9 or 12 cell pack should be a priority. I also wish it had integrated Bluetooth, but you get what you get.

Installation of Windows 7 took approximately one hour, maybe a little less. The process is generally the same as installing Vista, but is cleaner. That may be my imagination. Setup was straightforward, though it wouldn’t accept my key until I entered it correctly (yeah, I’m a dork). W7 intalled drivers for video (Intel GMA950), audio, and Ethernet (everything else is Realtek except the webcam) but was unable to install drivers for the wi-fi adapter, SD card reader, and Buffalo webcam. Installation of drivers spec’ed for Vista was easy, though.

There are a number of improvements to the entire system. I’m not going to get into details in this article. I’ll save that for a full review when it actually ships. I’ve experienced it when Microsoft makes last minute changes to a product after the Beta phase has been passed, so I don’t want to miss anything here. RIght off the bat, though, Microsoft makes it clear that they knew they made mistakes with the Vista interface, so they’ve made nice changes which make it more usable. The first thing you will notice is the intergration of the Quicklaunch buttons, the Start Menu pinning feature, and the list of running tasks all into one neat, clean, tidy, and functional icon.

The taskbar also works slightly differently. You’ll note that the entire Start button fits all the way into the taskbar. This makes the pinned icons or icons from active applications larger and, therefore, easier to see. You can change this behavior by making the icons small (then the Start button protrudes again), add the title, or show all buttons for all windows, just like the old system. The new visual identification system, however, just works better. Its amazing that its taken so many years for Microsoft to get this. Apple finally got it when Mac OS X 10.0 shipped in 2000 and introduced the dock. Linux got it years earlier with various window managers.

The second thing you notice is that everything seems to run faster and more efficiently. One drawback is having to use Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft’s unfortunate choice for a direction for their web browser. IE7 was bad enough, but it could be tolerated. IE8 is just crap. Like most products Microsoft created based on the successes of others (like Firefox), they have taken what is good from them and created overly complicated and unecessarily obtuse versions. Don’t look to IE8′s add-ons to be anything even vaguely like Firefox’s plugins. I installed one for Skype into both Firefox and IE8, and where the former works just fine, the latter still won’t start, and there’s no clear way to get add-ons to start. Feh.

The third thing I noticed was how theming and interface tweaking has changed. Its mostly the same way as it was in Vista, but they’ve added some important changes. For one, you can now select any number of wallpaper images and arbitrarily decide when they change. Aero also apparently requires far less resources to work right. Linux distributions have proven that transparencies can be done easily on low power systems for years (I don’t count it when the console app shows the wallpaper but not the windows which are underneath… That’s just silly). Aero would not run on a MacBook (pre-unibody) in Vista, but will run on an underpowered netbook in Windows 7. Aero isn’t just some silly eye candy, either. There are subtle little behaviors which Aero can perform which improve readability and object identification.

For software, I promptly installed Firefox for web, Thunderbird for email, OpenOffice 3.0 for productivity, and, for the first time ever, Digsby for IM and social networking. All installations worked perfectly and there were no hiccups. Since I was getting the latest versions of them for installation I didn’t need to do any patching. I also went into Windows Update out of habit and gave that a shot, only to get an error. Oddly, two days later it started getting updates on its own. I don’t know why it happened, but it did. There’s been a long history of Windows fixing itself while giving no indications as to how or why. Maybe it was because I rebooted. Overall, everything I installed works just fine. I also installed Skype 4.0 beta and it works perfectly as well.

SIDEBAR: I’m disappointed and pleased with Digsby at the same time. While its very functional and has a lot of great features, it tries to trick you into installing no less than SIX freaking spyware/cashware/crapware titles onto your machine. You can opt out of each one, but its not a no-brainer. TIP: click the Decline button for everything after the first page where its deactivated (you have to install Digsby). I’d rather donate money to the project. -TCR

Working on a small 1024×600 display isn’t hard, either. Windows 7 has some new features which deal with this (or I didn’t notice them in Vista since I never installed it on a netbook). When you drag a window to the top of the display, it automatically fullscreens it. It will also move dialogs so that the buttons are exposed. They also added a permanent Show Desktop button to the far right of the taskbar. Once I had sussed all of that out, I then installed a few widgets. At first, I thought that they just made the widget bar invisible, but then I added more widgets than will fit, and it showed up in the middle of the screen. That’s when I realized you can place widgets anywhere on the display.

I haven’t tested enterprise networking, directory integration, VPN connectivity, or any of the other elements which made working with Vista a pain in the ass, but most of the crap that Vista dished out seems to have been rectified in Windows 7. Of course, its still running on NTFS and there was no sign on WinFS. I think that Microsoft may be on track to fix the problems they created from whole cloth with Vista, but I don’t think there will be a way to fix the growth Apple has made into their territory, and that’s a good thing. Microsoft needs to do a lot of growing up. It will have to innovate in order to remain relevant. Windows 7 is just a start.

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In order to force myself to make time when appropriate, I will list what I have on tap: I’ve got reviews of the hot new Peek email handset, Sony’s Mylo2 MID, Pantech’s new C610 fashion phone for AT&T, and some gear from Kensington. I’m also going to be covering the news which you want to read about. Of course, that’s a given. Then there are the opinion pieces I like to write, though all too infrequently.

Thanks as always for sticking around!

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I don’t see this as a credible prediction. Sure, there’s the iPhone and the new MacBook and MacBook Pro models with the multi-touch, but I think that’s about where its going to go. My first thought behind this theory of mine is that people won’t want to take the trouble. To get to a leptop touchscreen you have to lean over it, which is generally uncomfortable. I don’t know many people who keep their lappy right up in their face, either. Its just not ergonomic, and you end up smudging your screen, and nobody likes to smudge up their glossy lappy display.

Second on the list is that Microsoft is already doing it. In order to assuage people about their future, Microsoft has already unveiled Windows 7 and announced that their Surface PC’s multi-touch technology will be a keystone feature in the OS due in 2010. They even demonstrated it on a laptop. How ridiculous can you get?! The Surface PC is already a joke, and many pundits have called it a giant iPhone. Its really nothing more than a marketing piece which customers like Sprint want in some of their stores to promote goods. That’s not a good basis for a consumer-oriented technology.

Third and last on my list is the lack of functionality. There’s really not all that much you can do with multi-touch unless you start using guestures, which is really what multi-touch is. There are a ot more combination potentials with two or more fingers, but who in the hell is going to remember them all enough to warrant using the touchscreen most of the time. Then there’s typing, which is kind of a staple of data entry. This leads us back around to the tablet concept, and I just don’t see Apple doing that. Microsoft’s own tablet market sucks wind, so why should Apple think that an Apple logo would make it any better.

One technology which is making strides which most people haven’t really noticed all that much is voice recognition, the only thing which will, in my opinion, effectively supplant keyboard and mouse interaction. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Its all Star Trek sounding, but reality has shown that Star Trek really has had an influece on what scientists have been able to create, and touchscreens just aren’t there. I doubt that Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, had a portal into the future, but I think he got it right when he figured on voice control.

Of course, I could be wrong.

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So now, a few hundred hours of therapy and anti-depression prescriptions later we’re able to fire it up again! Bust out your old quandrys and new issues. We take anything and everything. We once had a reader who had searched for a regular handyman find us and ask us about what a re-modeling of his kitchen should cost. We answered him! Head on over to the Contact Us page and click the link to get started!

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Why do I have this job? I cannot tell a lie, but I do what I do because I love gadgets and small gear and I enjoy having such stuff around me. I started in 2001 with PDA Handyman and migrated to the new name in 2007. In the seven years I’ve been online and expressing myself I’ve reviewed at least 200 products. No, not one of those reviews has ever involved gutting a fish, scooping poop, or scraping barnacles, but on occasion I get some really thick and noxious mud slung at me.

I’ve not seen as much mud slinging as I have with the Nokia N95 8GB review I wrote up a few months ago. Its one of the largest, single hit generators on the site since I published it and it has drawn some comments. All of the comments have been negative and many have stated that I should move into another field of interest. I have to admit that I’m a little surprised that, over a phone review, I’m called stupid and its even suggested that my father should have avoided taking part in my conception.

Harsh, to say the least.

I’m not exactly sure what drives such passion about a phone, though I think its more likely about the Symbian OS which is used almost exclusively on Nokia handsets. Its not unlikely that the intense love for Psion PDA devices which are no longer marketed has spilled over onto Symbian devices. Symbian OS is, after all, a direct descendant of EPOC32, the OS used on such legendary mobile computers as the Psion Series 5. There is still a rabid user community, and Symbian keeps that alive.

In case you weren’t aware, there’s also still a thriving Apple Newton user community, though its quite a bit smaller and I don’t hear people calling the iPhone Apple’s new Newton. In the past I’ve written bits Newtons, about my personal collection, and about the people involved, and not once did I ever get insulted. I won’t speculate about the differences between the Symbian and Newton user communities, as such observations would be useless. Maybe, however, there’s strength in numbers?

We have ample historical evidence to suggest that large numbers do have a tendency to try and push their ideals and values on others. That makes my job seem as if I am a solitary mole attempting to move an entire mountain. I’m also painfully aware that The Dojo is not one of the top sites for mobile device news and reviews. Engadget and Gizmodo fight tooth and nail for that distinction, so much so that it even garnered a feature story in a recent Wired magazine.

Okay, they don’t actually review anything. They both adopted the Slashdot model and re-spun it to fit for gadget frenzied 20-30 somethings. Neither site escapes being targeted for their presumptive biases, though. Commentors clamor loudly about both site’s unnatural love of Apple and its products. I myself, don’t shy away from making clear statements about my affinity for Apple and my disdain for master copycatter, Microsoft. I even make a comparison of the Nokia N95 8GB to Apple’s iPhone and note that I don’t see the Nokia as a smartphone.

My reasoning is simple. All phones have calendar and addressbook functions and the vast majority of them are capable of receiving and sending email and text messages. Most these days can even take pictures and videos, have Bluetooth built in, and have some kind of media playback capabilities. You don’t consider Motorola’s RAZR to be a smartphone, do you? Smartphones are Palm Treos, Windows Mobile, RIM Blackberry, and iPhone devices. Most of them have touchscreens and incorporate the extended functionality seen mostly in PDAs.

All of these devices also have some form of a full keyboard and do not require multi-tap or T9 to enter data. This is primarily why I don’t consider devices like Motorola’s Q to be a smartphone. Sure, it has a keyboard, but so does the LG Rumor and I seriously doubt anyone considers that a smartphone. There is an extended functionality afforded to users when you have a touchscreen and a keyboard, the mobile version of a keyboard and mouse on the desktop.

As such, the Palm OS, Windows Mobile (the non-smartphone version), the iPhone, and the upcoming touchscreen version of the Blackberry UI offer a great deal more functionality and developers are free to be more creative. I’d be amazed if any developer thought there was a market for a Word or Excel compatible editor for the Nokia N95 8GB. There is a PDF reader, though. Reader.

Of course, this discourse will likely draw fire, as well. Some people will take Microsoft’s definition of smartphone as writ. Microsoft calls its non-touchscreen version of Windows Mobile its Smartphone Edition. This is a pretty common ploy for Microsoft since the term Smartphone had been in generic use long before Microsoft decided to jump into the pool. As far back as the early days when Qualcomm’s pdQ hit the scene in 1997. Funny story: Qualcomm actually referred to it as a “palm-sized phone”! Really? What phone isn’t? HA!

All that detail, I’ve found, generally causes readers eyes to glaze over, which is why one of the guiding principles of PDA Handyman/MoboDojo has always been that less is more. Get to the point. Don’t tread water when you can simply climb on shore. I hate reading 500+ word stories which are simply re-hashes of press releases, which often contain far too much verbiage as it is, when everything important can be boiled down to 100 words, tops. There is a conflict here, though, in reviewing products.

You can’t just say “It sucks” or “Its sublime” and get away with it. A reviewer needs to impart his opinion to the reader so that the person seeking information about a new product feels that they have a personal, human connection to the product through the reviewer. This is inherently complex and riddled with issues, since each and every person has an opinion about everything and they can easily differ from person to person. I’m sure it would be very easy to locate reviews of Nokia’s N95 8GB which position it as the most brilliant product ever.

I can’t fault these reviewers. They have their own opinion and I respect that. I don’t agree, but I respect it. Its one of the primary reasons why I don’t use movie reviews to determine if I’m going to see a movie. I’ve seen plenty of films which I enjoyed but were critically panned. No, I don’t consider those movies to be art, but if I enjoyed it, who cares about the little plot holes, bad acting, or continuity errors (ahem… Star Wars: Episodes 1-3). I still very much enjoy the battle and action scenes for their vibrancy and attention to detail.

I can easily imagine watching a movie on the Nokia N95 8GB, as well. Its screen is as vibrant and detailed as Luke Skywalker free-falling onto the assassins hovercar in Episode 2. Then again, its slideout standard phone keypad is as cramped as Hayden Christensen’s acting in the same movie.
So, just like the movie reviewers I ignore when selecting a film to view, I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who ignore my product reviews. To the contrary, I’m sure there are people out there who appreciate my reviews. I just wish more of them would note that on occasion.

Am I asking for validation. Sure. I’m human, just like anyone else. Of course, I also still welcome the dissenting opinions, but would like to ask that you leave my father out of it. He’s not the gadget hound I am and wouldn’t really appreciate the value or quality of such a corollary.

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My own personal experiences with Vista have been spotty. I currently have Vista Ultimate installed in an 80GB partition on my MacBook Pro, but I rarely use it. Besides, there’s nothing ultimate about it, just one of the many reasons consumers are unhappy with Microsoft. With the Ultimate version, Microsoft promised that there would be loads of exclusive content available for people who opted to pay the premium for the special version. So far, however, Microsoft has mostly failed to deliver anything except a silly card game, the BitLocker security tool which has dubious functionality, and a series of video-based background images which are useless and drain CPU cycles.

It appears that most people simply want to continue using the reliable software they are already familiar with instead of paying Microsoft a tax to upgrade to Vista which seems to be as widely reviled as Windows Me was in 2000.

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Does it thrill me? Yes. I can say that clearly and without quibble. Does it move me, though? No. It cannot and will not move me like the iPhone does. To give you a clear idea of what it takes to move me, here’s a small, incomplete, unqualified list of things which have (in no particular order): the entire Aston Martin line, the Apple Newton MessagePads, the Original Palm III, NEC’s MobilePro line before the 900c, the birth of my one and only child, a month in the Maine wilderness on Outward Bound when I was 15, Apple’s iPhone, IBM’s ThinkPad line (pre-Lenovo), the Atari 800, the Amiga 3000 with Video Toaster at the Pasadena Community Access Channel.

If you note the theme, these are things or events which were singular to me. If you’ll excuse the events from the list and focus only on the technologies you may detect that there are certain forms and functions which I find seminal. It was NEC who developed a truly usable ultraportable with a true convergence of power and usability, with primary focus on its fully typeable keyboard. The Newton’s and the Palm III speak for themselves as the co-parents of the PDA movement. IBM’s ThinkPad line redefined what a laptop should be. The Atari 800 was, at least in my estimation, the first true integration of gaming and computing with any quality behind it. The iPhone is the epitome of all the lessons everyone has learned about a real pocket companion. And really, who the hell can resist falling in love with an Aston Martin.

Now, when you look at the N95 8GB what do you see? Its just another Symbian S60 device at its core, its really thick, the slider slides too easily, the absence of a better keyboard is very irksome, the directional pad sucks for playing games, and there’s no lens cover for the 5MP camera. Yet, despite all of this, people are clamoring for it. Maybe because there’s so much more to the N95 8GB than the laundry list of failings. In reality, there is. There’s so much to this handset and Nokia has done very well making the S60 version of the Symbian OS work good with one hand. In order to clearly see the quality, I’m going to review each element of it separately.

The Phone

Lets face it. Nokia makes phones. They make some really good ones and they make some abysmally bad ones, but the N95 8GB is not one of the latter. This is, in my opinion, one of the finer smart-ish phones Nokia has ever made. Why smart-ish? I believe that any real smartphone must have a touchscreen and a QWERTY keyboard. The N95 8GB has neither, but it still manages to do just about everything a real smartphone can do. Just don’t get any ideas that you can really manage your email with it.

Everything you’d expect in a mobile handset is here. It has a call history, quality voicemail access, a complete address book complete with in-depth contacts data fields, and it even integrates VoIP technology via its embedded 802.11b/g radio. Where it excels is in speakerphone mode. The device has stereo speakers, one on either side of the top of the unit, and they sound really good. The mic even works so your other party can hear you. The N95 8GB could truly act as a conferencing system stand-in if the need arose.

The handsets VoIP capabilities appear to also be rather cool, though I didn’t get a chance to review them. It does come with GIZMO integration which is a kind of Skype service. I’ve looked over the site and I even have an account which I created a few years back, but I’ve never really used it. Just to put that in perspective, I’ve had about US$12 in Skype credit for the last two years. Its not that I don’t like the idea. I just never use it. I guess I’m a fuddy duddy in that sense. You have a phone, you use it to call people, and they know you by that number.

The Media Player

Let me make this clear right up front. This is no iPod or an iPod killer. I have a 60GB 5G iPod in black which I keep in its case all the time and generally use as a hard drive based media player for my car. My lappy, a MacBook Pro, is my iTunes when I’m not driving. With that said, Nokia has devised a rather good media player. I’m more than a little miffed that they use RealPlayer for video, but I haven’t tried hacking that just yet, nor have I tried to watch any full-length movies on it. I just don’t like Real or RealPlayer. They’ve never been good. Its just me.

Audio and video are separated into two different applications which are converged via the Gallery tool, which gives you a unified look at all of your media-related files. It also doesn’t care whether its on the phones internal memory or on the Mass Storage drive, as Nokia refers to it. You just pick something and go. The N95 8GB not only runs the app necessary to view the file, but it also tracks your moves so when the video or audio is done, you have a back button which returns you to the Gallery. It makes what would normally be something navigation intensive into something smooth and usable.

On my review handset, I was mostly treated to the UK version of the N95 8GB experience. I was able to subscribe to podcasts, download videos from various providers, look at popular YouTube videos, and even gawk (or guffaw) at some included Nokia marketing material. There’s one video called “Snowboard” which really shows off the N95′s audio and video capabilities, too. I don’t know if that file, however, is included with all N95 8GB devices. At the time of this review, the Nokia Music Store was not yet available.

The Game Console

Back when it came out I reviewed the original Nokia N-Gage, affectionately known as the “Metal Taco”, and I did not like it. Nokia sent me two so I could use the multiplayer capabilities and one of them was DOA. Needless to say, I wasn’t too thrilled about the N-Gage over my then hot Nintendo Game Boy Advance. The controls were good and the games seemed cool, especially Tony Hawk, but it just didn’t fulfill the ideals of all components. It was a miserable phone.

However, the N95 8GB isn’t miserable as a phone, though its not that good as a game console. This mostly sources from the controls. Lets face it. Its a mobile handset. It was designed as a mobile handset. It functions as a mobile handset. The controls just suck when it comes to games. I don’t really understand why all these phone makers keep designing their phone buttons all the same way and then expect people to play games on them.

The idea of to stop putting the Select button in the middle of the cursor controller. If that weren’t bad enough, everyone then clusters the Call, End Call, Left Soft, Right Soft, and various other buttons right around it. Density supports convenience in phones meant to be phones, but not on phones also destined to be game consoles. Once the madness ends, then I’ll be interested. Until then, there are few games I would spend a lot of time playing on a mobile handset.

The Camera

First off, understand that I’m am against combining large megapixel cameras into mobiles. Its not right and its unfair to the consumer who has to either settle or demote their desires in order to own a specific phone. I can guarantee you that when people go to buy a phone, their first thought isn’t about the camera. To whit, when consumers are looking for cameras, they aren’t shopping for phones. The addition of the camera is the markets attempt to converge for the sake of sales and could care less about what you think.

With that said, the Nokia N95 8GB comes with not one, but two cameras. The first one is a massive 5MP auto-focus camera with built-in flash which can take video and has a load of features. The second is a .3MP affair on the face of the phone and is included to facilitate video calls (as if there were any). I suppose you can call another N95 8GB, but I don’t know if you need a specific plan. Its also likely that it could tie into the GIZMO system which does support video over IP connections.

Pictures are nice and video is very clear. I’m not a photographic or videographic expert, so I can’t tell you any of the specifications aside from resolution. The flash seems to work very well, but I’m a big fan of no flash shots, since I feel it ruins the natural light. You switch from Image to Video modes via a menu selection. The Video mode captures MPEG-4 and 3GP, and the Image mode captures… images. Yeah. JPEG, I believe.

How It Talks

What I mean here is how it plays with others. I’m a Mac guy, as you likely know (and if you didn’t, now you do), so I prefer that most, if not all, of my toys be both Mac and Windows capable, even better if they can do Linux. In the case of the N95 8GB, it would not initially mount on my Mac desktop. It would, however, work with Windows inside of Parallels and in Vista under Boot Camp. There are several ways for the N95 8GB to talk with computers. Its primary form is through Nokia’s complex collection of desktop communication software for Windows. While the new interface is cleaner than earlier versions, I still find it overly cumbersome for general use. It would be nice if they could develop a Palm Desktop-like integrated environment instead of having the dozen or so little apps they use now.

What I do find shameful is that it takes about 40 minutes to transfer 1.45GBs of music files over a USB 2.0 connection, in both Windows and Mac OS X. This simply isn’t acceptable. I can sync 20+ GBs to my 5G iPod over USB 2.0 in the same time, if not less. I tested in Mac OS X using the Mass Storage setting, in Windows Vista Ultimate under Boot Camp, and on an HP dc7800p Small Form Factor desktop system running Windows Vista Business Edition. Its not the source hardware, its the phone which I believe is causing the delay. I would have thought that Nokia would have more throughly tested this before allowing it to go to market.

The Wrap Up

Back in early 2007 I was listening to the TWiT podcast and Leo LaPorte was saying how he has an N95 that he loves, but was distressed at how short the battery life was. Jump forward almost a year and we now have Tyler from The Dojo with an 8GB version of the same phone, and I can say that the battery life must have improved somehow. I’m not thrilled by the fact that I can run down the battery in a few hours if I try really hard, but even with music and video playing, I’m not doing a lot of damage, unless I’m using GPS. In any case, you should count on having a car charger.

Now, however, comes the hard part. Sure, its easy to review something, but how objective could I be if I didn’t also evaluate the device’s cost, and herein lies the rub with the Nokia N95 8GB device. It’s priced in the US at US$779, just shy of $800. Add yourself a nice leather case and tax if you’re in a state which has one, and you’re talking close to US$1,000 for a phone. A PHONE. Logically, though, that’s the cost from Nokia direct. They charge based on the cost and don’t subtract a subsidy based on revenue projections per user.

How much would you spend if you were to buy each device separately? First, its a really good phone. That will run you roughly US$300 without subsidy. Getting a decent 5MP camera with quality optics will run you around US$200. An 8GB Apple iPod Nano with video retails for around US$250. Total that up and you you come up with $750. Get cases for all of those devices and you’re look at another $150, so $900. Now, total in the cost of having to juggle all of these devices which is really a subjective concept, and you’re talking at least the same cost, if not more, of the N95 8GB.

So, can I recommend it? Sure. Am I swayed by all of its features and just love it to death forever and ever and ever? No. The one thing that kills me is the standard phone keypad. If it just slid the other way and had a little thumbboard, then I’d be all over it and a half. That I could do, but that’s not what Nokia did.

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