GSM Rules

Well, most of the time.
Since my posting about temporarily switching from the Treo 600 to the Motorola V600 (" Smartphone struck dumb"), I've been asked by two people if I needed to phone my cellular provider to activate my old phone. One of the advantages of GSM is the SIM card. The SIM card has the telephone number and even phonebook entries. All I did was switch the SIM card from the Treo to the Motorola and turn the Motorola on.

Treo up and running

I finally got Treo restored, but all my data is not there yet. It now appears that Treo Butler was probably not the culprit, but more likely shareware program called ToDo2.

I'm also not too happy about BackupBuddyVFS
Professional - it was not a cheap utility and the restore just didn't work properly - I may be contacting their support...

My relationship with my previously trusty Treo has soured somewhat, not helped by the fact that using a normal flip cellphone was so much easier...

To be fair

Just to be fair - the software which I blamed in my last Blog Entry as having crashed my Treo (Treo Butler) may not have been the only culprit, or may not have been responsible at all. I had loaded a shareware program called ToDo2 and a freeware program called ToDo Archive just a day or so before - any one of them (or a combination) could have been the cause.

I also complained about Treo Butler on the website where I downloaded it, and was contacted by the developer the very next day to try to resolve the problem. Unfortunately after the hard reset there is nothing left on the Treo to debug.

Smartphone struck dumb

Okay, now I've run into one of the major problems with having a handheld computer and a cellphone integrated on the same device.

Last night I upgraded a utility program - Treo Butler, to version 3.4. I have been running earlier versions since just after I got the Treo. This time a minute or so after I had run the program the phone began making a low-pitched tone and froze. The only way to stop it was a soft reset. From there this just got worse. The noise persisted, so I hard reset the Palm (like Format C: in DOS) and tried to restore from a backup. The backup software, which I has restored from before, got to a file and then just reset the Treo. So I had to check the log and restore from after the file it choked on, a painstakingly slow process. After all of this, the Treo made that continuous tone on the first dialog and froze. After a few more hard resets and attempted restores, I was close to throwing the dumb smartphone against a wall.

Fortunately my cell service is GSM, and I had my old phone handy, so I
could just switch the SIM card to the old phone (after recharging it all
night). The handheld wasn't that simple. The Tapwave Zodiac was pressed into service temporarily. Fortunately Both the Treo and the Zodiac use a SecureDigital Card, so I was able to recover some of my data onto the quick
replacement.

For now at least, I'm back to carrying two devices...

Not quite bleeding edge

Firefox 1.5 has been out of beta since November 30th, and I've only installed it today. Of course my favorite (favourite) Firefox Extension, PrefBar, has not been updated for this version yet...

What about the games?

So I mentioned the Sony PSP was an excellent gaming console but what about the games?
I have five games, three of which I play more than the others.
Need for Speed Underground Rivals is one game I didn't expect to like that much. Instead, Need for Speed is the game I play the most - probably because I have managed to win a lot of the races.
Ridge Racer, on the other, hand has beautiful graphics for the racing locations and tracks, but I have yet to win a race - starting in 12th position is a big difference from starting in fourth position in a three lap race.
Then there is Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories. This is one of the most popular PSP games to date. The game content is rather amoral but the game opens an intriguing universe to explore. It is a relatively difficult game - or at least I find some of the missions rather challenging - having to try several times, and getting "Wasted" each time before completing a mission. At least you are not totally stuck, as you can go off and take part in side missions or just explore the dangerous city. My character was exploring the dock area, looking for hidden packages (collect enough hidden packages and you get additional items available to you, from guns to motorcycles). There happens to be a strike on there and some of the strikers took exception to his presence and wasted him. Next time he went down there with a baseball bat and turned the tables on the attackers...

The other two games are Namco Museum Battle Collection & Wipeout Pure.
The Museum Battle Collection is a bunch of arcade games which just don't grab me.
Wipeout Pure is a Sci-Fi racing game, but I just haven't been able to get into it.

Sony PSP - one month later

Well, I've only logged about 15 hours for the month, as I don't play every day (too much else to do with my time). I have been mentioning the Tapwave Zodiac a lot, but that's because I'm playing with the software part of it. The Sony PSP is an excellent gaming console, and the games on it simply blow away the Zodiac.

With the 2.50 firmware upgrade, there is a usable web browser for the built-in Wi-Fi, so I can check my Google Mail, or Yahoo - really useful. Setting up the PSP to access a WEP encrypted wireless router was really simple. I still want to try one of the multiplayer games over the internet - once I'm good enough at a game that I won't get totally creamed...

As for video, I've watched a few movie trailers which I've downloaded, and the 4.3 inch screen is excellent for personal video watching. Apparently most of the major movie picture studios in Hollywood are planning to release their movies in the UMD (Universal Media Disc) format - there is a whole schedule of release dates for movies like "Batman Returns" and even "The Matrix" in this format.

I've also downloaded some pictures so I can change the wallpaper every now and then. As for music, I haven't really bothered - I'm sure it's a capable music player, and the latest firmware update, 2.60, adds support for Windows Media .wma files.

So far I'm quite happy with the Playstation Portable, and when I see the games coming down the line (like Sims 2), hopefully there'll be more R&R hours I can spend playing games on it.

Zodiac Recommendation

Would I recommend buying a Tapwave Zodiac?
Well, unless you really have the money to spare, I wouldn't recommend buying a new one. There is no longer a Tapwave Inc to back the warranty.

Instead I would recommend a gently used (and not too old, because of battery life) "pre-owned" Zodiac. Also, if you can afford it, go for the Zodiac 2 which has 128MB of RAM (which is not funky NVFS )

Used Zodiacs are available on eBay

New Zodiacs can be found at gp32z.com

Why free?

Why is Microsoft giving away Visual Basic Express and other Development languages in the Visual Studio Express Suite (that is, apart from any conspiracy theories).

There are a number of Editions of Visual Studio 2005, and the Express Edition is the most limited (it's really basic).

The other editions, according to this link are:

Visual Studio Standard Edition
Visual Studio Professional Edition
Visual Studio 2005 Team System

So, why the free Express edition? Simple, apart from trying to attract first time programmers and hobbyist programmers to Visual Studio .Net. There are still a large number of hobbyist programmers using Visual Basic 6. This is one way Microsoft is trying to entice them to get into .Net Development. They will of course need at least the Professional Edition to develop full blown applications, but the Express Edition is a free introduction.

Microsoft gives away Visual Basic!

Well, Visual Basic (.Net) 2005 Express that is.

It was announced some time ago that Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition would be free (MS's attempt way to counter MySQL, FireBird and all the other free database engines).
Now Microsoft is giving away the Express Editions of Visual Studio free for one year.

Of course there is a catch - these development tools will only run on Windows 2000 SP4, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista (previously known as Longhorn).

The free Visual Studio Express products which are available are:

Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition
Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition
Visual C# 2005 Express Edition
Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition
Visual J# 2005 Express Edition

Multimedia in my hand

No, I'm not talking about movies on ridiculously small cellphone screens or the Sony PSP and UMD format movies. Instead, I'm referring to the Tapwave Zodiac Palm with it's incredible 3.8-inch display (480-by-320 pixels and 65,536 colors).
I simply copied an AVI file (a recorded episode of a "Lois and Clark") to a directory on the SecureDigital Card and the freeware TCPMP (The Core Pocket Media Player) played it without a problem.
The test of course will be how long the Tapwave Zodiac can play on one battery charge.

Two Flavors

(or - two flavours, for non US English readers)

It was only today that I learned about the 2 different models of Xbox 360

Xbox 360 Full System including 20GB Hard drive etc (see GameSpot)

Xbox 360 Core System (stripped down, no extras) - also see GameSpot

Interestingly enough, the Sony PSP also comes in two flavours: with and without the Value Pack

Microsoft does a 360

Microsoft has done a 360 degree turn on its plan of domination with the XBox 360 according to this article in My Way News

Didn't take you for a gamer

That's been the response from two different people after I mentioned that I had bought a Sony PSP. What does a gamer look like?

All I know is that despite the amoral story line, GTA LCS
(love these acronyms!) is one incredible game to play on the PSP. It's really challenging, and forces you to think ahead, you'll get "Wasted" if you don't.

So, I in my alter-ego as a gamer I browse around in PSP411, 1UP and GameFAQs.

Still, this guy is someone I'd really call a gamer.

Getting around it

I managed to HotSync my Tapwave Zodiac 1 with a Windows XP VMWare Virtual Machine running on a Windows 2000 partition. Why would I want to do this? Because the Palm Desktop software which comes with the "Zod" is almost certain to clash with the Treo's Palm Desktop. There are other reasons as well, like keeping the same Palm user name for the Tapwave Zodiac so my registered software will run on both. I can only use one handheld device at a time (I'd use more if I could), so I'm not going to buy another set of the registered software I use. For other family members Palms its a different story - I buy another license.
By the way, Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 lacks USB support which effectively rules out doing things like this.

Goodbye, C Drive

I managed to mess up my second machine. Updating Debian Linux was taking ages, even though I have a fast Broadband connection. The Synaptic updater was not very friendly, and kept asking hard to understand questions. I got to thinking "Fedora Core 4 Linux's updater (called yum) is far more friendly."

Then, just to prove how unfriendly it is there was some warning message about updating LILO, but it said not to answer yes if there were other Operating Systems on the PC. There are a number of others, so I said No, which apparently wasn't the right answer. After the next reboot Debian Linux was no longer working...

Now I needed another Linux Distro, preferably one a bit more up to date than Debian Linux sarge - but not as "cutting edge" as Fedora Core 4 - because of hardware limitations on my older PC.
I looked at the highly rated SUSE Linux but the hardware requirements were to heavy. I also looked at Slackware Linux but a review said it needed configuration files to be hand edited.
Finally I downloaded Ubuntu Linux 5.10.

8:00 pm
I installed Ubuntu Linux 5.10 but initially it wanted to install the GRUB Boot Loader - which doesn't work with XOSL, which I use to boot between the multiple Operating Systems - Windows XP, and 3 separate instances of Windows 98 (don't ask why). Anyway, I fiddled around for a bit but couldn't get Ubuntu Linux to boot so eventually I left it for later..

Okay, to continue the saga. Now when I booted into my main Windows 98 partition it showed Drive D: as Drive E: and an unreadable FAT partition as Drive D: This unreadable FAT partition on Compaq Presario Desktop was possibly a bootable Linux partition - so deleted it with Partition Magic 8 from bootable floppy.

To be continued...

(Sorry, General, no cell phone stuff to blog about - you could have a look at Mikan Moblog or MobileBlog.)

General question

Today I got asked the general question: "What is that (Tapwave Zodiac) you were blogging about?"

I apologize for assuming my reader(s?) would know what I was referring to.

The Tapwave Zodiac is fairly unique, a Palm handheld computer crossed with a gaming console. There are two Zodiac models, the Zodiac 1 and Zodiac 2, and all that separates them are their storage capacities (32MB and 128MB, respectively) and their colour (grey and black). The Zodiac has a 3.8in, 480 x 320 16-bit color transflective LCD. The screen is surrounded by an anodized aluminum shell that gives the Zodiac a solid, robust feel. On either side of the screen are stereo speakers and the controls: a console-style analog joystick, and on/off and Home buttons on the left-hand side, and a circular cluster of four game buttons on the other.

The above is adapted from a review in the Register

According to this PC Magazine review from June 2004 "The Zodiac 1 is not a perfect fit for the traditional business PDA user. But for anyone else who wants to play games and stay organized, the Zodiac is an entertaining device worth checking out".

Unfortunately Tapwave, the company which made the Zodiacs, is no longer around. There is still a rather active support community, Tapland.com. Games - mostly freeware or Open Source - are still being made available for the Zodiac, and the Zodiac 2 version with accessories regularly sells for over 300 US dollars on eBay.

Firefoxed

A few months back I thought I was quite happy using the Mozilla Suite instead of Firefox.
Now I've realized that somehow I've switched to mainly using Firefox. It must have been when I reached the stage of customizing Firefox with just the right set of Extensions. One of the other factors was when the security updates were coming thick and fast. Firefox would advise me of an update whereas the Mozilla Suite wouldn't. Also keeping both browsers up to date on four machines, with two of them having more than one flavor of Windows was just getting too much.

Yet another handheld!

Yes, another Palm handheld. This was a deal I just could not pass up on eBay. I'd always wanted a Tapwave Zodiac. Instead of the more expensive Tapwave Zodiac 2 I got the Tapwave Zodiac 1. The only difference is the color and that the Zodiac 2 has more RAM, almost 100MB more.
The Tapwave Zodiac 1 handheld - it calls itself a "console" - has a different default launcher from standard Palm launcher. Its slightly easier to understand than Sony's Jogdial driven one on the Sony NX60, but you don't have the option of switching to the default Palm launcher. As well as being a Palm computer the Zodiac has a dedicated graphics card and features gaming console type controls.
If I hadn't played Ridge Racer on the Sony PSP before playing Stunt Car Extreme on the Tapwave Zodiac I might have been more impressed. Then again this game comes free with the Tapwave Zodiac.

Handheld of a different sort

Okay, so now I got me a Sony PSP (PlayStation Portable).
The morning after I got it I went through buyers remorse. Since I bought it on eBay I couldn't return it. What the heck am I doing with this gaming device (the value pack didn't come with any games, just demos)? It can play music sure, but I got 2 other devices which do that too. As for movies - a movie is something I want to sit and enjoy watching with someone.
Anyway, I also got the "Ridge Racer" game - also on eBay and for an extremely good price, and it arrived today. After 5 minutes with that game I don't feel so bad. The gaming experience was incredible - graphics, sound, speed.
Even though I'm not really a gamer (the last PC game I bought and played was "Redneck Rampage" - I enjoyed it more than Duke Nukem 3D), and I don't fit into the target demographic for the Sony PSP, I'm hooked.
So what if it can't sync with my contacts or appointments..