SteelSkin.net – The Ramblings of Chris Nutt

I wandered into town today to see the Samsung Galaxy Note in the ‘flesh’. I have been intrigued by the Note for some time. Smartphones have reached a point where the phone aspect is just a small percentage of the value of the device. A good smartphone is your; walkman, video player, sat nav, portable computer, messenging device and phone. The Note takes this one more step and extends/adds in notebook and tablet. This thing runs at a higher res than most tablets and has a proper Wacom stylus not just a nasty resistive/capacitive job. So that’s why I went to see it, what did I find?

Firstly compared to my late 2009 Acer Liquid the Note is slick as Terry Thomas. Now I don’t have an S II or equivalent device so it might just be my muggle eyes being amazed. The stylus works great and the screen is fantastic. However it was locked in a stand, so I could neither judge the size for holding nor the  weight.  It is however extremely tempting. That 5.3″ display would make SatNaving and video playback amazing. It also uses both GPS and GLONASS the new Russian sat system. So you get double the amount sats to position you with.

In context: Just before Christmas I sold my Laptop to my Mum. I just didn’t use it, it was bulky compared to my phone and so much slower to start. I don’t like 9-10″ tablets they are just to big and too heavy. If I have to rest something on my knees why not just buy a netbook? No 7″ tablet has wowed me. The Note makes most look second rate, but I would expect that for £500+ of portable everything goodness Vs the £200 Archos 80 G9.

So it all comes down to do I want a do it all device or should I split between a Phone and a Tablet, where neither is a real beast.

I just picked up a new set top box. It’s the Echostar HDS-600RS. In terms of features the box is amazing and compared to it’s conventional peers it is pretty good and responsive. However I am not used to normal set top boxes anymore.

For over 2 years I’ve been running PlayTV for my PS3. I unfortunately live in a low signal area and years after launch no HD or Sat HD version is on it’s way. I’ve seen my mates VM Tivo and I thought I was prepared for the massive backward step in interface PVRs have even today.

Really I am not, I have gotten used to things just happening quickly and beautifully. Why in all these years is there not a decent PVR platform that doesn’t require a PS3 or a full blown PC to run is beyond me. Seriously how slow and laggy are these boxes, no wonder people are leaving TV. The devices they use to access TV are RUBBISH.

As much I didn’t like the guy, Steve Jobs would never stand for this shit. Hell Bill Gates didn’t either and neither did Sony. Why the hell can’t Humax, Echostar or Samsung get their asses in gear and bring out a Android/Linux/WindowsEmdded/Meego box? Slap in a half decent ARM CPU, wifi and tuners and booom!

But no, it’s like they want Apple to come in and take all of their stuff.

I use Opera at home. It doesn’t work so great in our corporate network at work, but lovely at home.

However there are two services I like to use; Zootool and Amazon Universal Wish List.

Rather than just drag the button to the side, I copy the link text and use QuHno’s Buttonator to make Opera integrated buttons. In the screenshot above I use the Star for Zootool Lasso and the Plus Sign for Amazon. This keeps them discreet, but always accessible.

In my opinion that is a lot of truck placed in either the next big thing or we’ve always done it this way so why change. Look at the anger and debate of the whole concept of a ‘Post PC era’ or an end to native apps. It is ludicrous.

As computing has evolved not only have the existing machines gotten faster, but lower and lower end devices have become computing systems. The same goes for access to computing content. Computers used to be the size of rooms and only governments or very large firms could afford them. Now when the desktop PC became the next big thing it was said that those old room size machines were relics of a bygone age. However this just isn’t true, the servers we use to Google things are the size of rooms and we couldn’t afford them. When windowing OSs came out that was allegedly the death of command line. However most of the world’s internet infrastructure is still command line driven and what is Google search if not a command line interface for the internet.

The more devices we have that are computers, the blurrier the lines become until eventually a term like ‘smart’ added to the start of a device category is redundant. I’d say the ‘digital’ in ‘digital camera’ is now redundant. Like wise we will have ‘smart wallets’, ‘digital bus stops’ and so on, but in the end the redundancy will disappear, but the forms will not. Just because a new form comes along, it does not invalidate the old form, but it might invalidate a version or model.