Firmware update of E71

On last Friday, I took time and checked with one Windows machine in our office, is there a new firmware version to my crappy E71. And indeed there was. I've been wondering my E71 sluggish usage and corruptive menu graphics, which tells me that there is some serious memory leaking issues in operating system. No reboots could heal that, they tend to come up again and again.

I did firmware update to 210.x and now it remains to see, if it was worth it? Strange thing is that I cannot check version of my phone *#0000# because phone won't display anything.

All this tells you something about the frustration which I am facing with these Nokia symbian smartphones. At the beginning phone was working nicely and fast, but somehow after loaded with two email accounts and some sms messages, everything changes. It's really unacceptable.

iPhone vs Nokia

I am Finnish engineer, I should be pressing towards Nokia innovations. But why am I watching iPhone now? I just quickly previewed WWDC 2009 keynote of iPhone and I must say, why Nokia cannot innovate like this?

There is huge difference between features in Nokia 'smartphones' and iPhone and I cannot see why. Nokia should be able to push more but they don't. Only thing I am still waiting for from Nokia is new Maemo tablet with 3G connection. Symbian is so yesterday.

xubuntu 9.04 on Aspire One

Installation is complete. Now my Acer Aspire One has xubuntu 9.04 running. I installed it from alternate (i386) cd and enabled encrypted lvm. I thought that it could affect performance, but so far I have not noticed such thing.

I jumped around xfce configurations and found out suitable theming and fonts for system. Now everything fits nicely in this small screen. I also updated Firefox theme to foxdie.

So, ubuntu netbook remix was ok, but somehow power computing needs traditional window management.

xubuntu testing

Back from Washington. To compile more omap3 stuff. I also decided to give a try xubuntu in my Acer Aspire One. Will follow up shortly how it's working.

Back to ubuntu

Amazing how fast I returned to gnome from kde 4.2. After experiencing few segfaults in plasma and meeting some garbage in my editor, I was ready to back off. It took additional half an hour to install ubuntu 9.04 and sync my home directory in place and now I am again in familiar gnome.

It's funny, because in days of kde 3.5.2 - I said to everyone that gnome is not for me. Now I am totally opposite with my opinion.

Kubuntu 9.04

Monday morning, before 6 AM - I decided that it would be perfect moment to try out kubuntu 9.04 and KDE 4.2. My loyal and long served ubuntu installation has been in use almost year now and it's time to move on. Last time I did this move, I came back to ubuntu world in few weeks. Mainly because KDE 4.x was buggy for me.

My update strategy is simple. I bought another harddrive on Saturday and removed completely old drive containing ubuntu installation. So in case 'oh, I forgot that...' I can always run back to ubuntu. I think it's worth that 50€ what hard drive costs.

Installation is ready! I let you know.

N810 vs Acer Aspire One

Day before I bought this Acer Aspire One netbook, I witnessed my Nokia N810 internet tablet touch screen failure. I read from tableteer website, that it's quite common problem with N810. Now I am thinking, will I get it never repaired?

My eyes were opening with this Acer, since price and features are worth mentioning. Most things which I missed mostly in my N810, are now possible:

• Standard processor platform (it's just too much to have SDK environment to do cross compiling for some fast code tryout)
• Application pool with decent amount of software. N810 and ubuntu repositories are just not compareable.
  
• Possibility to use Thunderbird with enigmail plugin (gpg emails are requirement for my business)
• Keyboard. N810 has it, but doing some emailing requires just a bit more.

Last thing which should act as eye opener for Nokia is the price. How they dare to ask 500-900 € of 'smart phone', which is not smart enough to deliver encrypted email possibility and to break free from operators cage. Think about it.