A Rambling Geek

Palm Pre In The Wild

The Palm Pre has finally seen the light of day in the US, it arrived into the world yesterday on June 6th. Admittedly it didn’t have the furore that the iPhone received when it launched, the lines weren’t as long but people did queue.

Media response to the phone has generally been positive and yes as predicted it’s been compared to the iPhone both current and upcoming but there is excitement about the possibilities. It’s quite interesting to see the split opinions on the hardware and software. The general consensus is that the case feels a little plasticky, the keyboard takes some getting used to, the volume buttons can be a little difficult to reach when the slider is open and that the lip below of the keyboard is a little sharp. So sharp infact that it can cut cheese as you can see here. However the OS works really well and is seen as the Pre’s strongest feature with plenty of promise.

I’m hoping now the phone has got it’s release in the states we will finally get a carrier and release date over here in the UK. There are some rumours that the phone will appear on O2 and will be available at Christmas. I personally think they will have missed the boat in Europe especially considering the new iPhone likely to be announced on Monday.

Pre US Launch

The Palm Pre will be launched on the Sprint network on June 6th 2009. This is good news for us Europeans because we should not be far behind and we will also get to hear the good and bad news before parting with our hard earned cash.

Personally I think Palm have made a bad move launching it when they have because they essentially have 2 days before any news time they would have being swallowed up by Apple and WWDC. Here’s hoping to a successful launch and a European carrier announcement soon.

Surplus to Requirement

My 9 days of Jury service turned into 8 hours. The 14 cases we started off with soon became 4 with around 100+ people to choose from. I was dismissed on Tuesday afternoon and am now in the clear for the next 2 years. I did get a free lunch out of so that wasn’t too bad, Chili with half and half, it was rather nice. My only regret was I wanted to get on at least 1 case while I was there but alas it wasn’t to be.

Thanks Jesus

Well thanks to Mr Jesus of the Christ family my 360 is sat in the Barking UPS depot and won’t be returned until Tuesday. It’s been an extremely fast turn around for the repair as I’d have got it back in around 10 days had we not had the Easter weekend. Seems they have swapped it for a refurbished console so I’m not getting the same one back. I’m secretly hoping it will be quieter than the last one and that it might be a HDMI console. There is a chance I’ll get my first wish and according to others no a chance for the last. It seems MS do a like for like swap when they repair/replace stuff.

2nd time unlucky

My 2nd Xbox 360 went to the great red light in the sky on Sunday night. I’d been having trouble with it crashing while playing RE5 since Friday. I was seriously considering buying an arcade to replace it because of the crashing and E71 errors I kept getting but thankfully it red ringed so I could arrange to get it repaired. Last time my console RROD’d I just took it back to game and swapped it.

You would have thought this would have been a simple and easy task to send your 360 away for repair, not in my case! To start with I couldn’t raise a repair request for my xbox because there was a problem with my serial number and it kept asking me to dial a 1-800 number which given where I am would cost a small fortune. I decided to give the telephone support a call and logged my fault with them only to be told I had to tell then what colour the light on the power supply was. I hadn’t checked this and being at work when I phoned had no way of checking. Thankfully google came to my rescue so I phoned back and told them it was green. A got a new incident ID and was told they’d email me the packing lablel I needed to print and attach to my parcel.

The email for the packing label arrived very quickly but didnt work. None of the links would work they just kept giving me an error. A short phonecall to UPS and before I’d even said what or who he parcel was for she said “is it an xbox? You need to contact microsoft”. So back on the phone to microsoft who then say they’ll book the parcel in the UPS and they’ll come and collect it in the next 2-3 days. At this point I was rather cross because with it being Easter here in the UK next weekend we lose 2 business days for deliveries and with things going the way they do for me my xbox wouldn’t leave the UK till today at the earliest and I wouldn’t get it back till at least a week on Tuesday. 

I’m happy to report that the parcel was collected on Wednesday morning and arrived in the repair centre in Germany today. This is where it becomes the waiting and hoping game as I’m keeping my fingers crossed that they can repair it in the next 3 days and have it back in the UPS system by Monday night so I should then get it back by Thursday at the latest. Knowing my luck though it will be scheduled for delivery on Friday 10th of April which happens to be Good Friday and most business are closed as it is a public holiday here in the UK.

Pre US Launch

I’m unsure whether to believe this or not but a beta tester has tweeted about the phone and released some interesting info for our American cousins. Seems the phone is going to be released on April 30th on Sprint’s network. The battery life is good as with 8 hours of mixed use it is still going strong. According to the twitterer it will have a relase price tag of $299 on a 2 year contract. I’m just hoping that once it’s out the gate in the states we’ll get some movement over here in the UK. I’m seriously considering if there is an iPhone upgrade in the summer I could buy one if the Pre is still not in sight.

RIP iBook

It is with great sadness I’m announcing the end of the road for my iBook. It’s not died, blown up or anything just now at the stage where I can’t really use it anymore. Given everything it’s been through I’m surprised it has lasted as long as it has.

Through a botched upgrade by me, airport & Ethernet failure, etc it has been a great little machine. To be fair I should have retired it when it got to the stage where machine could never go to sleep and if for any reason it lost power it would take around 5 minutes of restarts and elbows applying pressure on the case to get it started again. The final straw was when the USB Ethernet adapter I bought stopped obtaining an IP address so it’s current been packed away in the back bedroom and I’ll try and get on it at some point and remove all the data I need off it.

So what I am going to do next? Thankfully I have access to a nice HP Elitebook laptop from work so I’m not completely disconnected from the net. Would I buy another Apple laptop, without a doubt as the OS is excellent and the hardware, when it works is great. Currently I don’t have any money to put towards a new machine, especially not a macBook or macBook Pro. What I am thinking of doing is buying a netbook like a Dell Mini 9 and sticking Leopard on there. Two close friends have done this with both of their netbooks and it has been a great success. Doing it that way I’d only have a small outlay of around £150-300 depending on the initial spec and HD or memory upgrades, etc.

I may even wait until the WWDC later in the year and see what happens then as there might be a netbook on the horizon from Apple.

All fun and games

The last 7 days have been very interesting as a Liverpool fan. On a high from our embarrassment of Manchester United our manager has signed a new contract, which depending on how you look at it could be a good thing or a bad thing. I’ve decided I’m going to be optimistic and given our current run of form I think he’s had the wakeup call he needed. Our football seems more fluid and most of all it’s attacking, we’re now going for games instead of trying to score on the counter attack. I’ll be the first to admit this is due to the fact we have to win all our remaining games to be in with a chance to win the premier league for the first time.

Friday though things took a turn for the boring and unbelievable. It was the draw for the Champions League quarter finals and it got off to an interesting start, Villarreal vs. Arsenal, Manchester United vs. Porto, Barcelona vs. Bayern Munich and you couldn’t have written this Liverpool vs. (yes you guessed it) Chelsea. This tie will make it 5 times in 5 seasons we’ve had to play them at some point during the competition since Benetiz took over;

2004/2005 – Semi Final (Garcia goal we won 1-0 and then went on to win it)

2005/2006 – Group Stages (0-0 draws in our group but we went through the last 16, sadly knocked out by Benfica)

2006/2007 – Semi Finals (We beat them 4-1 on penalties after 1-1 draw, lost to AC Milan in the final)

2007/2008 – Semi Finals (Chelsea beat us 4-3 on aggregate)

2008/2009 – Quarter Finals

I’m currently in disbelief at the draw, I just can’t understand how we could draw Chelsea again. Given our current form I’m not too worried about the matches just a little worried that the 2nd leg is away at Chelsea. Though that is probably better for us if we go there with a 0-0 draw, we’d only need 1 goal for the pressure to be on them.

Yesterday was just astounding though I did have the feeling of déjà vu as couple of seasons ago we went through a phase similar to this where we scored something like 25 goals in 6 games. Unfortunately in that season we were out of the title race and were just playing for a top 4 finish. This year if we can keep up our momentum and everyone fit we could stand a good chance. If it turns out we do end up winning I’ll eat my words from January saying we’ll not regain top spot.

4-1! Fourrrrrrr One!!!

Time has just been called at Old Trafford and I am ecstatic to report that Liverpool FC have beaten Manchester United today by 4 goals to 1. I was rather recitant before the start of the match expecting our manager to play a 10 defenders and a goalie. However, we came out fighting with the same guile and determination that we displayed on Tuesday. Tilly and I are over the moon. Well done lads.

A Whole Load Of Nothing

I caught up on the Webcast yesterday by Palm and Sprint and it was a great disappointment. I wasn’t expecting any announcements for the European market but it was mainly just old news spun a different way. The new iPhone is looking more promising.