car salesmen roundup

Posted on 2011/05/04 by Antony

So, I’ve been to 3 different places to test drive cars (2 dealers and 1 private) in the last two days.
I asked the following questions immediately after finishing the test drive.
The third private seller is by far the most amusing.

1. (dealership) – This dealership deserved the previous blog post.
Me: Did you know the front right speaker is blown?
Salesman: What!, really? Are you sure you were using the CD player correctly?

2. (dealership)
Me: The tires are bald, they can’t be legal.
Salesman: What!, I don’t think so. Let me measure the tread………Oh yea, you’re right!

3. (Private)
Me: Did you know the check engine light is on.
Salesman: Oh, that’s just cause the car is low on fuel.
Me: Did you notice this huge thud when you raise the front driver side window?
Salesman: Oh, that’s probably because I just had the car washed.
Me: Are you flexible on the price?
Salesman: Not really. A dealership offered to give me 97% of my asking price as trade-in-value toward the SUV I want, but I turned him down.
Lets analyze the facts, the online ad I saw was 30 days old. So he turned down the dealership’s offer and is willing to wait over a month in hopes to maybe get an extra 2-3%… whilst also risking not selling it……He’s either an idiot, or a liar. I’m going to guess the second one..

How is it possible that in 5 minutes of test driving I seem to learn more about a car than the owners.

Adventures with used car salesmen

Posted on 2011/05/04 by Antony

No, it’s not what you think. This isn’t the usual dishonest used car salesman story.

So, I’ve been looking to buy a car for the last few months. I do all of my searching online, and only go to test drive a car that I’ve already decided would probably be a good fit. Anyway, I go in, test drive a car, and we walk inside to ‘run some numbers’.

The guy turns on his computer and notices that the icons on his screen (Windows Vista) are huge. He has no idea what’s going on and starts complaining. He calls in one of the other guys and says “what did you do, you made all the icons huge. What did you do! How do I undo it!”

I’m of course chuckling inside, as it’s pretty obvious that all that’s happened is the screen resolution has been decreased. I decide to keep quiet, as they both seem to be passing on the blame. Then the second guy puts his hand on the monitor and does the pinch-to-zoom gesture. No, he was not joking. I quietly muttered “You know this isn’t an iPad, right?”

Anyway, after a few minutes, they gave up, so I offered to fix it for them. I think their response was even more surprising. “Woa! how did you learn how to do that!”
Fortunately, I refrained from replying “By myself, when I was 7.”

GNOME vs Ubuntu

Posted on 2011/04/28 by Antony

With today’s release of Ubuntu 11.04, Ubuntu has officially diverged from the default GNOME.
For those of you who don’t know, in the open source software world (free software) there is no single company that does everything. In Windows, Microsoft creates everything (with possible exceptions of codecs etc..). Apple is sort of a merge of the two. It has a lot of proprietary software, but has also taken a lot from the open source community (X.org, KTHML, CUPS, GCC, openSSH, etc..)

While Ubuntu is a complete operating system, Canonical (creators of Ubuntu) write relatively little code. Sure, they have a few special things in it, but, unlike Apple and Microsoft, they get all of their code from what is called ‘upstream.’ Upstream refers to software developers who write complete program that are then included in operating systems. For example. Firefox is an upstream. Downstream in this case is Ubuntu. People who use Ubuntu aren’t getting Firefox directly from Mozilla. They receive it from the downstream, Ubuntu. If the Ubuntu developers find a bug in Firefox, they can either report it upstream (to Mozilla), or, hopefully, try to fix it and submit a patch (also to upstream). Then, when Mozilla fix the issue, or accept the patch, they will release a new build of Firefox, and here comes the magic – All downstream people will get the improvement. This includes all Linux distributions, but also the official Windows and Mac builds of Firefox. Sounds great right? The code is fixed once, and the benefits are reaped by all. This is precisely why open source works. Why reinvent the wheel. All of the above also goes for the other software in Ubuntu: the Linux kernel, OpenOffice (though now it’s Libreoffice), GIMP, VLC and of course, GNOME.
GNOME plays a huge part of Ubuntu. GNOME is a desktop environment/graphical user interface. By using GNOME, Ubuntu essentially gets a bunch of its code for free. That’s precisely why it was a bit strange that they announced that they’d be replacing a big piece of GNOME with their own in-house Unity. There are many reasons for this, but the majority are philosophical differences of opinion. Basically they wanted a little more control. Sure, there’s more competition now, which can be good, but it means there are less open source developers working together.

Gnome-Shell (which comes with the new GNOME3)

or Unity, now default starting with Ubuntu 11.04

There are obviously quite a lot of similarities, and they both require hardware acceleration. It’s certainly a good time to be a Linux user. GNU/Linux distributions are now not just about stable and secure, they’re also about pretty!
I have been using Arch Linux for a while now, which means I’m using GNOME3. I’m sure Unity will be available in one of the community repositories, but for this I think I’d rather put my trust in the original upstream.

protecting personal information

Posted on 2011/04/03 by Antony

For reasons that aren’t important, I bought 2 cell phones yesterday (rundown, they were for other people).
The sellers were both in their 20s and I contacted them both through craigslist.

One of them worked a technical job at an Engineering firm. The other probably worked at Walmart.
So, the purpose of the story. Both of the phones I purchased had hundreds of contacts, text messages, photos and emails still on the phone.
Are people seriously stupid? The first thing I did when I got each device was do a factory reset. It took me all of 20 seconds to do it. Why aren’t people concerned about these things?

So, a word of advice, don’t just assume the guy buying your stuff will be nice enough to do a factory reset. Do it yourself.

All browsers created equal?!?

Posted on 2011/03/24 by Antony

A statement that hasn’t been true since the release of Firefox 1.0 is now truer than ever. It’s shocking to think, but Microsoft have actually released a good browser (Internet Explorer 9). Now, as expected, this browser only runs on Windows (though they did drop support for Windows XP – due to it not supporting DirectX 10). This is fine, as I still wouldn’t use it, but it’s still a very good thing, as it means that non-technical people who never even thought to upgrade to Firefox/Chrome will have a good internet experience – And that’s a large part of the population. Once people start upgrading, web developers will be able to design much better websites that don’t have to conform to old, broken, IE6 non-standards. Even on some of my webpages, I have a check that says: Is this Internet Explorer? if so, do some stupid simple layout, else, do a cool layout (that’s too complicated for Internet Explorer to figure out). Now with IE9 this shouldn’t be a problem. So, while I wouldn’t use it, it’s still a great thing for everyone. To explain it another way, most web developers want to code a website that works across all web browsers. To do this, they have to only use the web-standards that everyone supports. If you used a feature that Firefox supported, but IE didn’t, you’d get a site that didn’t work on 50% of the population. Not practical. To put this in terms of numbers, there’s a web standards conformance test that everyone uses. It’s called the ACID test. It is basically a site that’s designed to see how well your browser conforms to HTML standards, and gives you a score out of 100. Go here to test out your browser.

Just to give you some idea of scores:

Previous versions (for comparison)
Firefox 3.0 – 71
Internet Explorer 8 – 20

Stable versions
Firefox 4.0 - 97
Internet Explorer 9 – 95
Chrome – 100
Opera – 100
Safari – 100

As you can see, All the current stable releases score >95. This is great, and a couple of points shouldn’t really matter. But, just look at Internet Explorer 8′s score of 20. It’s pathetic. (and to think that Internet Explorer 6 and 7 scored less!).

But what’s almost more surprising is how Firefox is losing marketshare (mostly to Google Chrome). I used to use Firefox for everything. But that’s because back then they were the best, and there weren’t so many options. Once Google Chrome came out, it wiped the floor with Firefox (speed-wise), and, more importantly, they have a lightning fast release cycle. They release a new version of their browser every 6 weeks. They have a really clever way of releasing too, they have a stable, beta, and developer version. Basically, and features that they want to add to the stable build, first get added to developer build. Gradually, they promote features from the developer build to beta, and then to stable. It’s a brilliant idea (and one that Mozilla is now going to copy with Firefox). This is exactly why Firefox has suffered recently. Lets say they add 50 new features for a new version of Firefox. What happens is 47 of those features are great, but the other 3 have some issues. The entire release gets delayed while those 3 remaining issues are worked out. With Chrome, the 47 working changes would get pushed quickly from the developer build to beta and then stable, while the 3 broken changes would stay in the developer build (with an optional flag to enable them). It just sounds so logical. Anyway, because Firefox pushes so many features per release, they are ALWAYS delayed. Something that has allowed Chrome to overtake them. Had you asked me 3 years ago, I would have told you that I’d never switch away from Firefox. Still, I always recommend Firefox to anyone who asks, as it’s got a lot more marketshare than Chrome, and web developers always make sure their site works well with it. If i’m taking an online test, or filling out an important government online form, I switch back to Firefox. Just in case.

I know the past is in the past, and technically now that Firefox 4 is out, it’s fairly comparable to Chrome, but it’s been lagging (particularly in speed) compared to Chrome for over 2 years. That’s a long time. Over those 2 years they’ve lost a lot of users (me included). Many of those users won’t switch back now. Lets hope they can copy some of the good ideas from Chrome and create more competition.

If any of you read browser tests (or benchmarks), you’ll hear the word ‘javascript speed’ tossed around. The inventor of javascript works for Mozilla, so you’d think that they’d do really well….. but you’d be wrong. They’ve been the slowest (not counting Microsot) for years. Microsoft’s IE9 actually beats Firefox 4, which is disappointing. Also of interest, Mozilla copied the javascript engine open source code from Webkit (Safari). So not surprisingly, their performance is going to be very similar to Safari. I asked a Mozilla developer why they chose to go this route. See my previous post here. I think they should have taken Google’s open source V8 code, but Mozilla claim that it was simpler to integrate Nitro.

As a separate, unrelated note, one thing I hate about Firefox is that they don’t prioritize Linux users. The Firefox 4 build has several features (GUI and hardware acceleration) that aren’t yet available in the Linux build. Very annoying. Luckily for me, Chrome does a great job on all 3 platforms. Google has a vested interested in Chrome on Linux because they’re developing ChromeOS (a netbook Operating System based on Linux)

Overtime.

Posted on 2011/03/21 by Antony

I remember when I was a student and was paid hourly. I used to sign up for frequent Saturday shifts. The same went for holidays. I worked 9-5 every day of the 2 week Christmas break, worked thanksgiving, etc… The same happened over the summer holidays. While many of my friends would go home and literally do nothing for the entire months of June, July and August, I would work. I was still able to have a social life. I would just hang out with my friends at night. Some semesters I took classes over the summer break, but I would still work at least 30 hours/week. It just felt good to build up some savings. To be honest, I always wondered what some of my non-working friends did all day. Some of them had a class at 10am, then another class a 3pm, and another at 5pm. But what did they do the the rest of the day…. seriously? I usually had class blocked out perfectly. I has class from 9-1pm, and worked from 1-5pm. I had to take exams at the testing centre at night, which sucked, but still, it was worth it when my paycheck arrived. Still, back to my main point. I worked those extra hours because my hours correlated perfectly with my paycheck.

Everything changed the moment I graduated and was switched to Salary. Suddenly it didn’t matter if I worked 40 or 70 hours in a given week. My paycheck looked identical. My eagerness to work overtime disappeared instantly.Why should I work weekends? Why should I stay late?

Everyone knows to expect occasional overtime. I understand that sometimes there are important deadlines, but where do you draw the line? After 45 hours? 50? 60? how about 70? In reality, most managers have no incentive to protect a full-time salaried employee from overtime. After all, it costs them the same whether you work 40 or 70 hours in any given week. So, if a company can produce more in 70 vs 40 hours of work, and at the same exact cost…. overtime almost seems like an inevitability. I suppose like everything in this world, there’s hierarchy. At the end of the day, a manager (or boss) just wants to report success to his superiors. They want to report that the project is complete/working. They don’t really want to report that they sent their engineers home due to too much overtime, and that they’ll fix it the following morning.

During my last few jobs I’ve noticed that there are 2 distinct types of managers (though obviously various subsets of each).

Manager-1 cares specifically about his employees. He wants to get the best out of them, but doesn’t want to take advantage of them. He wants to treat them fairly, and pay them according to their worth. If a project doesn’t get completed on time, the manager will (unless it’s absolutely urgent) alert his superiors that the deadline was unrealistic, that there were unforeseen complications, and that it will be finished soon. In the event that there’s a problem that’s absolutely mission critical, and requires overtime, Manager-1 will very nicely ask his employees for help, and, most importantly, make up for it later. Whether that is a raise/bonus and/or time off depends on the amount and frequency of the overtime. Not only that, but a good manager will proactively try to prevent overtime from being necessary, usually by either stretching out release dates, or hiring more employees.
Manager-2 only cares about results. You’ll only ever go home on time if absolutely EVERYTHING is finished perfectly. Manager-2 only ever wants to report success to his superiors. He hates to hear complaints, even if they’re extremely valid. If something goes wrong, it doesn’t matter if it’s the middle of the night, or if you’ve already put in 60 hours that week, he’ll call, wake you up, and expect you to start work immediately. You won’t be compensated, and won’t be thanked, as you’re expected to do this sort of thing. Manager-2 likes to take credit for his employee’s work. Worse than that, he ends up believing it himself. Because of this, when a worker complains that he’s done too much overtime, Manager-2 is surprised, as he really believes he’s the hardest working person in the office.

Like most of us, I’ve had both types of bosses before. As you can guess, employees of Manager-1 are much more willing to do overtime, as they know their boss will make it right. Not only that, but they’ll try to make their boss look good in front of his superiors. It’s ironic, but the manager who only values results usually gets worse results.

Fads

Posted on 2011/02/08 by Antony

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt while living in the USA, it’s that Americans love being obsessed about something, and they love going to the extreme.

Not once in England did I see anyone dress up to go to the cinema, but here, each time a Harry Potter film comes out, you can expect it to happen. The same happened for Twilight, Lord of the Rings, Star Trek etc..
But why? Why the need to obsess about something. Interestingly enough, it’s always the same group of people. While you might think that of the 1000 group of people, a subset dress up for Harry Potter, and another unique subset dresses up for Twilight, I’d be willing to bet there’s a huge overlap. There are just people who like to be obsessed about stuff, and dress up for it, so they obsess about lots of different shows. It must give them excitement…. or something.

The same goes for exercise. People here either go to Gold’s Gym every morning at 5am, or eat twelve doughnuts a day. There doesn’t seem to be a medium. I don’t really know anyone who goes to the gym twice a week. It’s either zero or five.
Seriously, what’s the deal with 5am! I’d have to be really, really in need of exercise to put myself through that. In fact, since I moved here I’ve pretty much fluctuated between those two groups. When I was younger I was on the track, cross-country and tennis teams all at the same time. I played tennis five times a week for two hours and ran between 30-50 miles(also each week). Then, later, I took up mountain biking, and would go every night for between 20-40 miles at a time.

So, what do I do now? In a word, nothing. Since graduating from University, I’ve had a desk job, and no reason to train. Before, the practice wasn’t so much for exercise, it was to win. Those who know me know I’ve always been extremely competitive. Whether it’s the final of a tennis tournament, a state championship 800m race, or just a game of scrabble. I just hate losing. That was always part of the reason I trained. In England I was a bit of a strange runner. I ran the 100m, the 1500m, and cross-country. Why didn’t I ever run the 400m. I’m not really sure. Probably because I was lazy and it hurts the most. To this day I’m still not sure what hurts more, the 400m, or the 800m. If you run them correctly they’re both excruciating. Most of the time, during cross-country I would jog along toward the front of the pack,

When I first started taking cross-country seriously, I would just run at school during practice, and that was it. That is, until I lost. I still remember it like it was yesterday. I spent the entire Christmas break running twice a day, usually 6 miles in the morning, and another 6 at night. And I ran fast. And I ran outside, like you’re supposed to, not on some fake treadmill. It’s the hardest I’ve ever trained, and I was only 16. For probably the only time in my life I was able to run a sub 50 second 400m, and a sub 2 minute 800m. Unfortunately, I came back after the break, won, and went back to only running during class time. Of course, it’s not quite that simple. Cross-country was always from September to December, while Tennis AND Track was in January. Juggling both Tennis and Track was a bit of a challenge. I had track from 3-4pm and Tennis from 4-6pm (and on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays I actually had a part time job from 6-10pm… in the CourgarEat at BYU…. Nothing I’m too proud of, but you should never be ashamed of working during school. Believe me, I’ve met some lazy students who lived off of Daddy’s dime, but I’ll leave for another post. Anyway I made some cool friends, and dumped it for a job in computers as soon as I could).

So, back to the original topic of fads. Two years ago P90x was all the rage. I distinctly remember going to lunch (at a fast food place) with a couple of friends. One of them ordered enough food for 3 people, and then complained that P90x was not working. That was the first I’d heard of it, and all experience taught me was that it couldn’t do the impossible.
It seems that the newest exercise fad is Zumba. It seems like a great idea. A ‘fun’ way to lose weight. I already have dozens of friends (though all girls) who are obsessed with it. Seeing as P90x is targeted mostly at males, it was only a matter of time. Still, just as everyone’s obsession with P90x has slowly died down, I expect the same to happen to Zumba. By design, Zumba is repetitive, and there are only so many different ways of jumping up and down. Still, I suppose anything that motivates someone to be healthy is a good thing. Denisse has started to look into it, and it’s interesting to see her check out youtube videos of it. It’s ironic, but the more popular an exercise programme is, the less effective it is to do it in a group. On all the youtube videos there are a couple instructors with literally hundreds of people crammed in together imitating. You can clearly see that there isn’t room for any of the audience to properly imitate. Still, can’t blame them for trying.

Oh Amazon…

Posted on 2011/01/08 by Antony

I love Amazon. Their prices are almost always good, their shipping is free (over $25), and up until now I’ve had native speakers when I called with a problem. That is, up until now.
I ordered a $400 item last week. The package tracking shows it as delivered, but it wasn’t.

Usually I’ve had pretty good luck calling in to Amazon support, but today was a today disaster. First I called. I got a person I couldn’t understand, was put on hold, and later hung up on.

Then I decided to use “Live chat”
Here is a short excerpt.

You are now connected to Pradip Kumar from Amazon.com.

Me:Package was not delivered (as claimed) called, but was hung up on by Amazon CSR.

Pradip Kumar:Hello, my name is Pradip. I’ll be happy to help you. Let me check this. I see that the tracking is showing delivered.

(Notice he tells me something I already know (package shows as delivered), and doesn’t apologize for being hung up on.

Me:yes. but it wasn’t

Pradip Kumar:I’m sorry to hear you weren’t able to locate your package, even though tracking says it’s been delivered. Sometimes a carrier will accidentally scan a package as “Delivered” when it’s actually still on the way. When this happens, the package is usually delivered within the next few business days. If this is the case, the original package would arrive sooner than a replacement, so I’d like to ask you to wait until January 17 in case the shipment does arrive.

Me:fine. but i really needed my package by this week

Pradip Kumar:I understand and I’m sorry about this. I see that it has already shipped and I hope it will be delivered on or before January 17. Just to compensate the delay I’ll refund you the shipping charges that you paid for this order. Will that help?

Me:I did not pay shipping charges

Pradip Kumar:I’m sorry about that information. That was not meant for you. Let me check this a bit further. OK, Antony. I see that the tracking isn’t updated. You’ll receive this package before January 17.

This instills confidence. He’s confused me with a different customer.

Me:It is updated. It shows it was already delivered (on Thursday)

Pradip Kumar:Actually sometimes a carrier accidentally scan a package as “Delivered” when it’s actually still on the way. I’m sorry about that. Your shipment is late, but not yet presumed lost. In my experience, late packages arrive not long after the estimated delivery date. Please wait a little longer, until January 17, before requesting a refund or replacement. January 17 is the waiting period.

Me:We’re not talking about ‘estimated delivery’. The item shows that it actually WAS delivered

Pradip Kumar:Yes, I understand that and I can confirm that the package isn’t lost. It’s on the way. I’ll follow up with you to see if you’ve received the package after January 17. If you haven’t received your package at that time, I’ll make sure to get a replacement or refund for you.

How on earth can he confirm that my package isn’t lost? Even UPS thinks it’s lost.

Me:How can you confirm? UPS shows the package has been delivered.

Pradip Kumar:Will that help?

Me:you claim you can confirm that the package wasn’t lost and it’s on its way, but that’s not possible, you can only see the same tracking information as I have and it shows delivered.

This is where I got disconnected again. Brilliant. Thanks Amazon.

It’s clear you can’t get everything in life. If you want good customer service, it’s going to cost more money, so arguably you can’t blame Amazon, as they’re just trying to keep their prices low. Still, I expected more from you Amazon……

are there updates available?

Posted on 2010/12/02 by Antony

Everyone who knows me knows I love technology. I love everything about it. I especially like the fact that in the last few years most products can now receive updates. Computers always received updates, but not much else. Now I update everything. My computer’s BIOS, firmware for my hard drives, firmware for my TV and AVR (Receiver), my printer, and it goes without saying that I update my consoles, phone and desktop OS.
We live in a world where products can be improved for free and with little effort. Unfortunately there are a few downsides:

Companies know that most people don’t update their hardware, so sometimes they have no incentive to make improvements.
Companies sometimes deliberately ship products with buggy/slow software, because they know they can fix them later with an update.
Updating software/firmware can sometimes cause regressions (meaning it can make your product worse/slower than before the update)
Sometimes a company would rather you buy their next generation product, rather than give you the update for free.

I’ve seen all the the above situations. I have a really great WDTV Live media player. I love it. It has a Sigma SMP8655 chip that has hardware accelerated decoding of everything.

Basically I just plug the device into the TV via HDMI, and then connect a hard drive (that has media) to it via USB. It plays everything. Pretty much any format and all resolutions upto 1080p. Possibly the thing I like best about it is how power efficient it is. It can decode a 1080p film using <5 watts. It goes to sleep when off, and wakes up in around 3 seconds. Unfortunately Western Digital has been pretty horrible with updates. The problem is, Western Digital have releases 6 different versions of the device. The first (WDTV) was a reasonably good media player. The second (WDTV Live), which added more memory, faster CPU, and an ethernet port (with support for youtube, pandora etc..), then a 2nd generation of the FIRST product (WDTV gen.2), then a crummy cheap version that doesn’t play HD (WDTV mini), then a product that’s IDENTICAL to the WDTV Live, but which also adds support for netflix (yes, they screwed all original owners forcing them to buy an entire new device). Now, they argue it wasn’t their fault, as they needed to use a slightly different version of the Sigma SMP8655 that allows encrypted netflix content, but seriously, they should have thought about this earlier, and used the right chip on the original device. You’d think I was done, but no, they just released yet ANOTHER device (WDTV Live Hub). This time with an internal hard drive.

Now, I have no problem with them releasing a new version if it’s substantially different (or improved), as they did by releasing a version with a hard drive, as it clearly caters to a different market (I personally don’t want an internal hard drive, I’d rather stream or connect my own). My problem is that they released the new version with a significantly better user interface. It’s way better. The device uses the exact same chip as the previous WDTV Live plus, so it would be very easy to port back the improvements. They didn’t, and I now hate them. There’s nothing worse than getting screwed for being an early adopter. It’s because people like me bought the original Western Digital devices that they’ve been making newer, better models, yet this is how they repay us?!

Now, I know what Western Digital would say. They’d say “We only have a small team working on media players, we can’t possibly release updates for all 6 products, and have to give our latest release priority.’

The problem is, their argument is fundamentally flawed. A company like Western Digital shouldn’t be making 6 very similar devices. They should be making 1 or possibly 2. Just think of how Apple does things. They’re (by comparison to Western Digital) HUGE, yet they have an extremely small portfolio. They make 1 media player, 1 phone. Now yes, they do make a few different iPods and laptops, but those models are substantially different. Massive differences in size, cost and features differentiate them. That is because the market requires it. Some people want the best laptop for $2000, others want a cheaper laptop etc… Some want a $1000 laptop, but I don’t believe for a second that there is a market for 6 different media players $70, $80, $100, $115, $150, $200. They should have just 2. A version with a hard drive, and a version without. I understand that a company will release new models (usually yearly), but when a company does that, they discontinue the old model, and only sell the new one. They are usually never meant to go head to head with the old model. The iPhone 4 doesn’t compete with the iPhone 3GS. Just look at the wikipedia page for the WDTV. Their models are released a few months apart. The other huge issue with this model is that they’re confusing customers. When someone buys an iPhone 4, they KNOW that the following year, the iPhone 5 will come out. There are no surprises. If WDTV had released a device and said “soon we’ll be releasing a 2nd device that adds this feature” then I’d be fine with it. But the WDTV Live device that I bought was supposed to be their flagship device. Still it does technically do the things I need it to, and has a great hacking community. On the one side, it’s unfortunate that a device built by a company with millions of dollar in R&D budget can be outdone by a couple of guys in their parents basement, but on the other side, I get a better product through hacking it, so why complain!

Yet another mobile phone

Posted on 2010/10/10 by Antony

Those of you who know me know that a little over six months ago I started a new job at HP working on their Web Print Solutions team. Leaving my previous job at a startup meant giving up my old phone (Motorola Droid). It was a great phone. One that I’d only had for about five months. During the transition, I temporarily bought an old HTC T-Mobile G1 with a month to month plan. I had that for two months until HP got me a phone on their corporate plan. Working for such a huge company has many differences vs the average startup. First, they actually produce equipment that you use. Rather than buying everything from other companies, you can order many things from yourself (internally), and save a bunch of money. Because of this, if HP makes a version of something you want to buy, it’s usually expected that you get the HP version. Usually this doesn’t matter, as I don’t really care if my computer monitor is made by HP or someone else. There aren’t going to be too many differences. But, in the case of a mobile phone, the differences are huge. I was only given the option of one phone on one network. Unfortunately for me, the options were both bad. It uses the worst ‘smartphone’ operating system (OS), on the nation’s least reliable network. The reason for the lack of choice? HP builds their own phones, and have only released them for AT&T. It would obviously look pretty bad if HP employees didn’t use their own phones. Now, as I’m sure you’re wondering, “why can HP force you to get a certain type of phone!” Obviously they can’t force you to buy a certain type of phone, but they can restrict what types of phones they give their employees. Due to my job, HP pays for my phone (and plan), so it’s only fair that they choose what it is. Thus, my only choice was to get an HP iPaq Glisten on AT&T.
I am a current HP employee, so I probably shouldn’t be too critical. But I’ll say one thing. They’re using Windows Mobile 6.5, and I believe Windows Mobile 6.5 to be truly terrible. HP, being mostly a hardware (and services) company didn’t have their own mobile OS. Most mobile OS’s aren’t for sale. Apple and RIM won’t licence out their OS for use on HP hardware. So really, there were only 3 options:

Build their own OS
Ship with a licensable OS, such as Windows Mobile (or, more recently, Android and Symbian)
Buy a phone company that already owns its own mobile OS

Which did HP do? Well, they started out doing #2. The problem here is that they were entirely reliant on Microsoft to do a good job for them to have a successful product. As we all know, the iPhone came out a little over 3 years ago, and blew Windows Mobile out of the water. So HP was left with a huge problem. They had an inferior product because Microsoft had dropped the ball. By only controlling the hardware, HP could only do so much to compete against the iPhone (and more recently, Android), so it wasn’t their fault they had an inferior device. The solution? Either switch to Android, or buy a phone company. In July 2010 HP purchased Palm Inc. for $1.2b, thus giving them the very capable mobile OS named webOS, along with a whole bunch of useful patents. Now HP controls both the hardware and software.

So, what does this all have to do with me? Well, since HP now owns Palm (and webOS), Palm phones are now on the approved list of devices for HP employees. This means that I’m now able to get a Palm prē + (in doing so, I’m also able to switch to Verizon Wireless, the best national carrier! hooray for no more dropped calls!). The choice was really a no-brainer. I was given the choice between the Palm Prē or Palm Pixi on either of the available carriers (Verizon, Sprint or AT&T). Obviously Verizon is the biggest/best carrier, and the Prē is clearly Palm’s flagship device (having a significantly superior CPU/GPU over the Pixi). Also worth noting is that the Palm Prē came out first on Sprint. 6 months later, it arrived on Verizon and AT&T with double the RAM and flash memory (512MB RAM and 16GB Flash), redubbed the Palm Prē plus. So by choosing Verizon I not only got the best network, but also the best version of the Prē.

So, how do I like it so far? While it’s obviously miles better than Windows Mobile, I do admit I’m still a fan of Android. Having said that, webOS is an extremely capable OS. To be honest, my major gripes with the phone are actually hardware (read: all easily fixable). The main issues I have with it are screen resolution (480×320, which is very last-gen), and the small screen (3.1″, also last-gen). With all recent Android devices being 3.7″ or bigger, with at least 800×480 resolution, this screen feels a little cramped. Also, the CPU feels a little underpowered. It’s the same CPU as in the original Droid (though it’s underclocked to 500Mhz). And the Droid has obviously since been replaced with the Droid 2. All recent Android smartphones have been coming out with 1Ghz CPUs, and having ‘just’ a 500Mhz CPU is noticeable. Still, two great things are the RAM and Flash storage. Both are as good as any other device on the market (with the exception of the $300 iPhone 32GB). The keyboard is decent, and usable despite being of the small portrait variety, rather than the more common landscape kind. Another downside is the fast that the touch screen is plastic (versus almost all modern smartphones that are now hardened or Gorilla glass).

I actually don’t have too many complaints for webOS. It’s an extremely polished OS with a great user interface (UI). It has clearly been designed to compete with the iPhone. In many ways it trumps it. Multitasking is perfect, and there are a number of great ideas and keyboard shortcuts. Cut/Copy/Paste is great, as is Synergy, webOS’s way of combining contacts from numerous sources such as Gmail, Facebook, Exchange and Yahoo.

The obviously downside to not having sold too many devices is the fact that the Palm App Catalog has only a small fraction of the apps that Android and iOS uers have, but, if HP can deliver great hardware in the coming months, users with flock to it, which will in turn bring developers.

The biggest loser in all of this is of course Microsoft. They’re had nothing good to compete with the iPhone for 3 1/2 years, and because of it they’ve lost HP, Motorola and most of HTC, as customers. Microsoft’s new mobile OS, Windows Phone 7 is set for release this month, which will be the first time Microsoft officially supports capacitive touch screens (disgraceful huh?). Honestly, how does a company with a research and development budget the size of Microsoft’s take 3 1/2 years to catch up with Apple?
I’ll tell you why. Some companies, such as Apple and Google are creative companies. They create something better because they can. Microsoft, being the dominant player in most markets doesn’t need to take such risks. They merely need to maintain what they have without taking too many risks. Then, if a competitor releases a significantly superior product, Microsoft has time to ‘play catchup.’ Obviously this isn’t good for the consumer, as we’re all reliant on the Apples and Googles of this world to provide innovation. I’m getting off topic here, but just ask yourselves why Microsoft fired the Internet Explorer team after they released Internet Explorer 6. Why? Because there was no competition, Netscape was dead. Why did they bring them back to create Internet Explorer 7 (many many years later), simply because Firefox was released. If Firefox had not been released, Microsoft would not have improved Internet Explorer 6. Ever. Ironically, I remember when Internet Explorer 7 was released. Mozilla (creators of Firefox) made the statement “Internet Explorer 7 is the best release we’ve ever made.” (obviously implying that the only reason IE 7 was released was because of the competition they’d created with Firefox).

Will Windows Phone 7 be good? Probably; but it had better be after almost 5 years in development. The problem is, I don’t want to use Microsoft products because you then become tied to a company that only innovates if they have to, rather than because they want to. I really believe that if the iPhone (and Android) had never been released, WP7 would never have existed in its current form. They’d probably still be using a stylus. If WP7 is good, it will all be thanks to Apple and Google.