ApoTheTech

Lately, I’ve been reading a lot about the HP mini 1000. Sure, it is getting quite a good response from the technology bloggers. But, are they hiding the truth from the common man? I was able to play with recently released HP mini 1000 and here are some you-will-either-hate-me-or-love-me facts:

Trackpad: Even after receiving so many complaints from the HP mininote 2133 users regarding how difficult it is to use the trackpad, HP did nothing to enhance the trackpad. They could have atleast move those buttons to the bottom of trackpad.

TOO much form over function?

Poor battery life and you cannot do much about it

The HP mini 1000 comes with only 3-cell battery. So, why am I complaining so much? There are many netbooks there in the market that come with just 3-cell battery. Well, at least they can easily upgrade to 6-cell or more but the mini 1000 can not do it. This is because the battery is there beneath the casing. This makes it almost impossible for the HP or the 3rd party manufactures to release bigger batteries in the future. So, the users potential users of the mini 1000 must keep it in mind while buying this 3-cell netbook, which would only give them around 1.5-2 hours of battery life.

Wrist-rest space

You may think that the keyboard of the mini 1000 is big enough to type on nicely for hours. Your thinking is wrong then. You cannot type for more than 10mins on it even if it sports one of the best keyboards one can have in netbooks. One cannot type on it for a long due to small wrist-rest space. Continue reading “HP mini 1000 – TOO much form over function?”

Finally, we have a Pendometer application, which uses HTC diamond’s Accelerometer. This application is made by lightsailpro, a talented guy at xda-developers(see this)

–It uses HTC Touch Diamond’s built in Accelerometer.
–Only .Net CF 2.0 is required (comes with Diamond).
–You can pause and reset the step counter.
–It displays steps, distance, calories and time duration.
–You can use the Hide button to save battery.
–You can set the step length and calories per mile value.
–You can save, delete and view the historical data.
–The historical data is stored in Microsoft SQLCe compact database.
–It can play the sound when the step is detected.
–It can sound an alarm when the set distance is reached.
–Briefly tested with the US unlocked version of the Diamond and Sprint version of the Diamond.

The author has pointed out in his thread that you must hold the device in vertical position for it to work correctly.

Who says no body cares about Palm OS? Folks at Resco have released updated version of Resco Explorer 2009, which comes with myriad of enhancements:

• ‘Folder Sync’ — a technology allowing you to keep files synchronized between two folders. The synchronization works on any mounted drive, being it a card or a network drive. Explorer can use a number of technologies to ‘mount’ new drives — LAN (SMB shares), Bluetooth or FTP.
• Improved network support. The changes concern SLL and preservation of the file attributes, for example.
• Card check — Resco Explorer contains a card scanner, allowing you to detect damaged file systems on the go.
• Tar/bzip2 support and zip integrity checks.
• All those who need to work with txt files will welcome the support of large files crossing traditional Palm barrier 64K and other text editor improvements.

Tar/bzip2 support? This feature is not there even in the Windows Mobile version. The windows mobile version supports rar and zip compression formats. I hope to see the tar and bzip2 support for the Windows Mobile verison too.

Go to Resco Explorer 2009 for Palm OS product page

Today, Creative has made Vado HD Pocket available for sale. It is so lightweight and enough to fit easily in a pocket, purse and palm of your hand. It was up for pre-order late last month, but now this is finally on sale. The MSRP sits at $229.99, but it is available on Creative’s own webstore it just for $199.99. Here are specifications of this device.

• HDMI connectivity.
• 8GB inbuilt memory.
• 2-inch LCD screen.
• USB connector for easy exporting.

Now you can manage your passwords, credit cards, PINs and other secure information on your BlackBerry, with the same confidence you’ve had in eWallet on all other mobile platforms!

One of my favorite Windows Mobile application is now supported on one more platform. In case you don’t know, the eWallet is now available for iPhone, Palm OS, U3 flash drives, windows PC and of course, Windows mobile. Amazing platform support. Is not it? This useful software costs just $29.95, which is nothing against the protection it provides to your data.

Go to product’s homepage

Every year, SPB conducts a survey in which it asks the various mobile enthusiats some questions to know the current trends in the mobile phone market and what they like/dislike. It also brings out some very interesting facts like 56% people will like to buy the same gadget they currently own!

Here are some other great facts:

• The majority of survey respondents are still male (95%), 57% of them are aged between 19 and 35, and 58% have at least a Bachelor’s degree
• The majority of Spb Survey respondents are from North America and Western Europe
• About 17% of respondents are students, 17% work in the field of mobility, and an amazing 68% are ‘device fans’
• Brand-wise, HTC smartphones have the absolute leading position, being the brand of choice for over 49% of all Spb Survey respondents. HTC is followed by HP with nearly 6%, Asus with 5.5%, E-TEN with almost 4%, Dell with a little over 3.5%, Nokia and Samsung with 3%, Qtek with 2.6%, MiTAC with 2%, Toshiba, Sony Ericsson, Palm, T-Mobile, and i-Mate — each at around 1.5%, and Fujitsu Siemens with O2 XDA at about 1%. All other brands ranked below 1%
• The single most popular mobile device model is HTC TyTn II, followed by HTC Diamond, and HTC Touch Pro. Among the top ten most popular smartphone models, only one is a non-HTC device
• Surprising 27% of all respondents use a second SIM card
• 62% of respondents would buy a device of the same brand, and 56% claim they would even buy the same model
• Among the best things about their devices, 69% of respondents first put the looks (design), 68% — the availability of built-in Wi-Fi, 47% — business features and big screen, with the ‘price’ placing 8th in importance, and ‘music platform’ — last
• The top two aspects most disliked in devices are ‘Low memory’ and ‘Weight’
• The majority of respondents upgrade to a new device once in every two years
• Most respondents user their smartphones first for business — then for entertainment
• 31% of respondents use Push Email
• 80% backup their data
• Nearly 80% of respondents use software they paid for

read complete results here