Quote:
Originally Posted by nrapallo
If it's backlit and has color, I'll buy one too...   |
Oh yeah! Backlit, color, touch-screen, wifi, bluetooth, usb, SD, standard headphone jack, mike jack, minimal-functional-fast OS.
I'd mimic palmOS apps (Memos, Calendar, To-Do, Address) because I need something that syncs, add a Sketchpad w/alarms, add an FBreader that handled bookmarks, tables and CSS. Decent on-screen keyboard, or handwriting recognition.
Screen Rotation! Auto-Bluetooth pairing. Good network manager (like WICD.) Good movie player, good music player. Guess I'd add a good browser (Tear?) and email client. And I'd be done. Well, maybe a PDF reader, although I dislike PDFs. I'm not a game person, beyond FreeCell.
The Smart Q7 could actually accomplish most of this, if the manufacturers would hire some decent programmers. The hardest part of all this, oddly, seems to be making decent PIM applications. GPE really doesn't work, is awkward to use and is a b**ch to sync. There are a couple of other suites, but they're incomplete and also a b**ch to sync.
It's strange to me, because all the pieces are
there!- PIM: Palm, like 15 years ago developed simple, useful apps. No one has cloned them! Why? Why do frickin' engineers always seem to make the interfaces. Have you ever tried to use Evolution? Gah! And GPE has no energy in its team. That said, OSMO looks good, but doesn't sync or allow individual entries for appointments. And without screen rotation, it doesn't fit properly on the Q7, or any machine that insists on wide-screen.
- Sketchpad: Ancient Palm apps: BugMe, Diddlebug. I can get alarms, I can get paint programs -- I cannot get the two combined. Have you ever used such a thing? It is so dang useful. It's one of the few things that keep me using my d**ned Treo. (see syncing, above.)
- FBReader: nearly there, but focus has shifted to the Java port. I expect it to die the death. Bookmarks, tables and CSS have been in the works for what seems like years.
- Keyboard: Nokia 770 onscreen keyboard is decent, but there are better models out there (things like CellWriter, or hex keyboards.) Even the Q7 keyboard is laid-out alright, but blocks the apps! There's no reason it shouldn't float over the app, and be translucent and movable.
- Movies: mplayer port for the Nokia 770 is fast, accurate and excellent. The Nokia doesn't have the video hardware that the Q7 has -- but no one has made any tweaks to use it. Imagine how good it could be!
- Music: MPD works great. Sonata is my favorite front-end. Pretty light resources, too. Already on the Q7. As a bonus, it's network aware.
- Browser: Tear is supposed to be great. Dillo would be great if the developers would stop being complete geeks. Midori is alright, and the Q7 has flash enabled (kludgeishly.)
- Email: well, I use gmail, so I could lose this. But claws is supposed to be excellent.
- Screen rotation. Available for years. Disabled on the Q7.
- WICD is the default network manager on the Q7, works well.
- epdfview is about the lightest PDF viewer, next to xpdf -- but neither work too well without a keyboard that includes Fn keys.
I think I get worked up like this because it's all
possible -- but folks who can make it work, don't. Look at something like the gnome network manager being used on Mer. GNOME! On machines that have 128 MB of memory (at best.) I'm not dogging on the Mer guys, they're doing awesome stuff with little resources. And I'm sure that it'll all work in a few months -- they're doing smart things like using a smaller X server, etc. It's just -- I don't get why people keep making the same mistakes over and over again. So many competent, capable people... How can you build a Q7, then not make it work properly? Or make a
beautiful little machine like the Nokia 770 and then
abandon it, never letting it work to it's potential?
Okay, rant over. I know why it happens, and so do you.
My Q7 should be working when I get back to Honolulu -- I'll try to overcome all this stuff by reading Mr. Google and solving whatever I can. But I can't develop apps, so I will never have the whuffie to get people to change stuff.
m a r