Author: Portfolioso

Seven Months with A Droid: What Could Have Been Improved

July 11, 2010

Computer/ Tech Related

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What sucks, in bulleted form, to get to the point:

  • It’s heavy
  • It’s slow. The 550MHZ processor is pretty awful when loading javascript intensive webpages. It’s almost painful to browse the web on the Droid, even on WiFi (forget about Verizon’s 3G ). Half the time, my menus lag and the UI can be pretty jerky at times. I am blaming the sluggishness on Android 2.1 which is pretty slow. When 2.2 comes out with an improved Dalvik VM and V8 as the javascript engine, it will be much faster.
  • The keyboard slider thing gets loose over time, so it flops around like an asshole.
  • The back of the keyboard slider has plastic wrap on it, which bubbles up over time
  • The keyboard is cramped
  • Sometimes the GPS doesn’t connect unless you reboot the phone. I returned mine and got a new one and the GPS worked better, so it might have been a hardware problem, but it still happens at times.
  • Battery life is eh, but aren’t all smartphones? So no negative points here.

I still love it because it’s the only Verizon phone that does raw Android these days. And I don’t like the Droid X, Droid 2 or HTC Incredible, so I’m happy for now. I’m still jealous of the Nexus One because it’s sleek, but Google botched the launch of that phone. I would have done it differently (and better).

Posting From the Boonies

July 11, 2010

Useless Update

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If you read my blog today, the posts were written yesterday and autopublished because I’m far away from civilization in the middle of nowhere. Last time I was here, there was no 3G and poor cell service. Surprisingly, the towers were upgraded and 3G is available now, so I’m writing this from my Droid. The 3G speeds are pretty bad though. I’m good for about 500KBPS.

Anyway, I’m out this bitch because we just lost power from a storm, so cya in the real world in a few.

Thoughts on Making the Switch From Firefox to Chrome

July 11, 2010

Computer/ Tech Related

4 Comments

I always used Chrome as a secondary browser. Firefox was always my main one and if I needed another browser with separate cookes (so I could log in to two gmail accounts, for instance), I’d use Chrome. But Firefox 3.6 is behind the times and with 4.0 beta 1 looking fucking hideous, I temporarily switched to Chrome as my default browser until Mozilla releases and/or gets their shit together with Firefox 4.

But you really need to spend time using a browser to understand it inside out. Here are a few of its quirks that annoy me that I never noticed because I used to use Chrome so infrequently:

  • The preferences dialog is confusing as hell and poorly organized
  • You cannot middle click to open links in a new tab in chrome:// pages (plugins, bookmarks manager etc)
  • There needs to be a custom print dialog box and a print preview
  • There needs to be a native proxy support, not use the IE/system proxy setting dialog
  • You can’t clear browsing data on exit.
  • Memory usage sucks. I have like 9 chrome.exe processes running.
  • There’s some funkiness going on with selecting text on pages sometimes. It’s slightly annoying
  • You can’t open files from the browser. You need to download them first. This is more secure, but its annoying when you want to open a torrent from the browser. With Chrome, I need to download it first then click on it.
  • Firefox has a huge advantage for the location bar. I hate how you can’t control what pops up in the location bar. It searches history over my bookmarks.
  • It never seems to remember my window preferences / always opens windowed instead ofmaximized(maybe a beta issue?)

Other than that, it’s better at rendering pages. It’s faster. Its UI is clean. That’s enough to make me happy for now.

Uh, on the second though, those are a lot of quirks / things that annoy me. If Firefox ever gets their UI problems sorted and boosts browser speed, I’m running back to it.

Saturday Song of the Week: Shawn Anthony – Good Stuff

July 10, 2010

Music

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Introducing something you’ve never heard of before! I was watching an old episode of Entourage and this played as the boys walked into Ari’s office. I had to look it up since it wasn’t anything big.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm0blIz10dg

It’s a mix of SKA and Hip Hop, but the reggae-ish music is catchy. It might be a little repetitive, but whatever. You also get a, mediocre yet catchy guitar solo at 2:43. It wasn’t available on the interwebs anywhere and there are a few skips in the video, so I had to pick it up in iTunes.

Oh and ladies, I’ve got that good stuff.

iOS 4 Multitasking is Full of Shit

July 10, 2010

Computer/ Tech Related, Rants, Useless Update

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It’s not real multitasking. It pretty much pauses the app in the background and focuses on the frontmost app. Plus, Apple needs to approve it in the App Store and if they don’t like what you’re doing (such as connecting to servers in the background), they can kill it.

In addition, let’s examine the footnote. The App needs to be rewritten for iOS 4 to take advantage of this. Therefore, it requires the programmer to update the software. On a Droid, you can just multitask anyway with old and new apps.

I had a complete ramble about this a few week ago, but WordPress was an asshole and lost it. I also have no energy to rewrite it.