That’s it. I can’t handle the stupid Endgadget podcast feed updating 60 items as new every time any one of them is edited anymore.
Unsubscribed.
Monthly Archive for January, 2006
OK, last one of these. Opera on the left, Pocket IE on the right.
For all its heralded support of CSS, I was really surprised to see Opera not render the header image, while Pocket IE did.
Really annoying - Opera wouldn’t let me scroll until the entire page was loaded. Bleh.
Again, the bigger (ugly) fonts and inability to hide the address bar leave less space for readable content on the small screen.
I’m going to have to call this one 3 out of 3 in favor of Pocket IE. I’ll keep Opera installed, and so some more playing around with it, but probably not for long…
Again, Opera on the left, Pocket IE on the right.
Here’s the page I view the most on my mobile device with a browser - Bloglines Mobile.
The ordered/bulleted lists don’t appear indented correctly in Opera - they do in Pocket IE. Also, the font size is larger in Opera, meaning you can fit less on the screen. And I couldn’t find a way to hide the address/nav bar in Opera without going to full screen.
Tabbing between text entry fields (while inputting my email address and password for Bloglines) doesn’t work in Opera, while it does in Pocket IE.
The down nav button scrolls a link at a time in Opera, while it scrolls a page at a time in Pocket IE. This is actually one thing that really annoys me about Pocket IE, but I’ve learned to work around it using the tab key to go from link to link, and the down arrow to page down. Much more efficient for reading more than one page of text. With Opera, I couldn’t figure out any way to scroll down a page at a time without using the stylus on the scroll bar (a two handed operation).
Again, Opera, I wanted to love you, but you’re just not doing it for me… 
In honor of today’s release of Opera for Pocket PC, and as part of my testing it out, here are side by side screenshots of Opera and Pocket IE (Windows Mobile 2003) rendering Google’s home page. Opera on the left, Pocket IE on the right.
Yup - Opera’s still ugly. 
Button text and address bar fonts are atrocious. Who uses Courier in a UI anymore? The page wrapping feature doesn’t work nearly as well - see the cut off text? Yes, there’s a little horizontal scrolling in PIE, but that’s particular to this page.
Opera still just feels ugly, and very “beta”. Oh, and a 5.5MB .cab file install? Way too much space to take up for a browser. And no option for a desktop installer - you have to be comfortable copying the .cab file to your device and running from there to install.
I really wanted to like you, Opera, but this first impression just didn’t do much for me..
Go get it:
Opera for Windows Mobile Pocket PC
The Smartphone version has been out for ages, and frankly, I wasn’t that impressed with it on my SMT5600. But I’m willing to give them another shot, and I can’t wait to give this a whirl on my EVDO Samsung i730.
Pocket IE really isn’t all that bad (though I do miss the small improvements that the Windows Mobile 5 version has), but if Opera can do a decent job of performance and not making everything look like garbage, it may just become my mobile default browser. I’ll keep you updated as I try it out.
I think this is the first WiFi Skype-enabled phone device I’ve ever seen that doesn’t look like, well, total crap:
No info on when it will be available, beyond Q1 2006, but you can sign up to be notified by email when it’s ready. Depending on the price (say, not more than $99), and how decent the color screen and interface look, I’m practically sold.
The Results, originally uploaded by JoshB.
Bridget had to replace the ONT, because the first one was only giving us 200Kbps down (2Mbps up), but the second try was the charm. With the new ONT, I was getting close enough to the quoted 15Mbps download/2Mbps upload speeds of my package to be happy.
Fiber broadband speed bliss!
For reference, the page Bridget always uses is www.speakeasy.net/speedtest, using their San Franciso server. She says that all of their other servers aren’t fast enough to accurately test Fios speeds.
Links to:
Baseboard Mounted Ethernet Jack, originally uploaded by JoshB.
This is the jack that Bridget installed in my office. The CAT5e cable runs down through the office floor (had to drill) into the garage, and then through the exterior wall out to the ONT.
Links to:
Fios Power Supply and Battery Backup, originally uploaded by JoshB.
The power supply had to be mounted inside the garage, as well as the attached battery backup unit. The battery should be good for 8-10 hours in a power failure, and needs to be replaced about once a year at a cost of $22.
The battery backup is necessary to keep phone service running in the event of a power outage. With copper, line voltage is provided by the same line as the phone signal, but you can’t provide power over fiber optic line, thus the need for a battery backup.
If I put my wireless router on a UPS, I could theoretically also still have fiber broadband connectivity during a power outage. I’ll have to test that one out.
Links to:
ONT, Fully Wired, originally uploaded by JoshB.
Here’s the ONT (Optical Network Terminal) fully wired up.
Note the copper wire along the outside of the shielding for the fiber optic line. It’s a line trace wire, so they can probe/test for broken lines, and see what’s connected where on the back end. Clever, and necessary, since fiber optic line can’t transmit voltage for these purposes.
Links to:
TinyScreenfuls Feed (this blog)
