Mike Wilks' Blog

I ordered a Nexus One during the announcement event and I’ve had it a couple of days now. I got it to replace my iPhone 3G (not S) which is looking slightly long in the tooth now. Initial thoughts:

Positives

• It is blazing fast compared to the iPhone 3G.
• The screen is much crisper and colours pop more.
• The gMail client is infinitely better than the mail on the iPhone.
• No more 10Mb download limit on podcasts over 3G !
• Voip over 3G with Sipdroid and localphone.com is a killer app. That said SipDroid doesn’t seem to like localphone direct so I need to configure pbxes.org which will hopefully give better results.

Negatives

• I really miss 1Password – hopefully there is an Android version before too long.
• Multi-touch is not there on the standard apps. Not a huge thing but muscle memory keeps trying to do it.
• Bookmark sync with safari is going to take some getting used to not having. That said Crossmarks mobile site as a replacement is working pretty well so far.

I’m currently on the O2 Simplicity for iPhone tariff so I thought I better tell them I no longer had an iPhone. In theory the normal Simplicity tariff has more minutes and texts than the iPhone one but in reality I never get anywhere near using them.  Calling O2 just led to confusion. Once I got across what I wanted to do they initially told me that I should move to Simplicity 20 – but only if I was sure I wasn’t going back to iPhone. Eventually after he struggled with the system for 5 minutes while I was on hold he advised me to leave it as is. If there’s any come back about me being on the wrong tariff I might need to request they listen to the tape!

The phone is unlocked so I guess I need to look through the Sim only deals out there. O2 is not a great signal where I live but does seem to be properly unlimited data (at least they have never complained). I spend at least as much time away from home as at home so I can just about live with 3 bars of 2G at home. Vodafone is a much better 2G signal (in fact we can see the 2G only tower) but has a pathetic 500Mb limit as does Orange. That said at least I could just about get a 3G signal on Orange at home. I really do not understand how they are allowed to advertise 500Mb as unlimited. 3 and T-Mobile are complete non-starters as there is no signal at home. Decisions decisions, my Vodafone 3G data contract is up in a couple of months just to complicate things, the Mifi I use in theory means I need less phone data when I travel.

More updates as I live with the phone a bit longer.

Well it finally arrived and I’ve been playing with it a lot since. I really like OSX but it is taking some getting used to. VMWare Fusion is also fantastic for running the few Windows bits I still need. It’s going to be a while until everything is setup and configured but it is getting there.

There have been lots of complaints online about the screens but the one I have seems fine. The only disappointment is the Wireless Mighty Mouse I bought with it, sub-standard and overpriced in my opinion. On the other hand the external keyboard I bought to use with the external monitor is fabulous.

I ordered my new MacBook at the online Apple Store straight after the keynote and received a delivery date of 3/4 Nov. Slightly annoying but I was going to get one any quicker, right? Well wrong it seems, lots of other online etailers have them in stock not to mention the Apple Stores. I guess I could have cancelled and got one from another source but mine was BTO which you can only do at the Apple Online Store.

Currently the order status is not showing any tracking or courier information but does claim it has been dispatched. I’m going to the Apple Store later to stare longingly at a MacBook, nearest I’m going to get for a few days yet.

Well I resisted until about two hours after Steve’s announcement before I ordered one. 13.3″ 2.4Ghz, 250Gb on its way to me but not for a couple of weeks. I even upgraded the RAM to 4Gb now that Apple seem to have got slightly more sensible about their memory prices. Delivery is going to be a couple of weeks which is a bit of a pain. If I’d realised that I could get the memory upgrade I would have tried to get one at the Apple store.

Gorgeous looks and a pretty good spec aside Apple need to get new batteries for their USD to GBP calculator. There has been much discussion about the prices of new macbooks but the UK prices are even worse than the US ones. It didn’t stop me ordering and I suspect it won’t stop others either – maybe that is the plan.

Roll on the 3rd of November.

Well it seems that the predicted Macbook announcement is coming next Tuesday afterall. I have been drawn towards Apple after buying an iPhone. Coupled with the facts I am getting completely sick of windows and I have discovered that VMWare is a real alternative way of running Windows and Linux means they will have to be really bad to stop me buying one.

I’ve been using MobileMe for a while now and there is nothing really to say. It just works. Sure idisk is a bit slow but other than that I really have no complaints about it. Gallery is still incredibly cool, push mail works, contact syncing is good and I find myself increasingly using the online calendar which in turn means I use my iPhone calendar more.

I’ve been resisting signing up to MobileMe ever since it was announced. I tried to tell myself that I needed a Mac to get the most out of it and that I was perfectly happy with my push Yahoo account. After a brief foray into the Zimbra Yahoo Mail client and getting increasingly sick of the amount of spam my ten year old Yahoo account gets I decided to give MobileMe a try.

Pros:

• me.com push account is great (but then you can get free Yahoo accounts that do this).
• The website application is fantastic.
• iDisk is great when you use multiple machines, much cleaner than my previous solution of manually synching folders in LogMeIn.
• Gallery is an unexpected bonus, I never got around to installing ViewPics and the MobileMe Gallery was just easier.
• 20Gb storage and 200Gb transfer per month seems a reasonable starting point.

Cons:

• There is no synch with either Thunderbird (contacts) or Firefox (bookmarks). I wonder how many people have also installed Safari just to get a way of editing their iPhone bookmarks on their PC (I know I have).
• You can’t play around with the email alias functionality on the free trial. Also the wisdom according to google is that if you choose skip trial you just forfeit your free 60 days.

Really there is not much else wrong with it, sure iDisk is a little slow across the internet but that is to be expected. Even the obvious complaints about secure access are headed off by the IMAP and SMTP servers supporting SSL and TLS respectively. I suspect if I keep using this I may eventually move over to the other (Mac) side completely.

My Yahoo account has now been relegated to a third account alongside my new MobileMe address and my hosted mikewilks.com domain email. The problem with my Yahoo address is I can never ignore it completely, after 10 years there is bound to be some service that I have forgotten that is using it for password resets.