Two posts ago, I was talking about the virtues of my new Rogers HTC Dream phone, and while it was good, and I was enamoured with the 3G speeds after using an EDGE BlackBerry. After about a month of usage, I found my self avoiding using it. I tried to love Google’s Android OS, and despite its charm and open stature, I found it lacking.

It was slow, the keyboard was awkward, and everything aside from Calendars, Mail, and Contacts required manual synchronizing. The lack of a notepad application by default was also very annoying.

Enter my new 16GB iPhone 3GS. Its fast, light, intuitive, and now eliminates my iPod touch, which makes it one less device to stuff into my pocket. I was also shocked at just how fast I am with its keyboard. I’d estimate that I am about twice as fast on my iPhone as I was on my blackberry, and about three times as fast as my HTC. Thats a pretty big statement, the HTC and blackberry both have physical keyboards, which means that tactile feedback isn’t everything for touch typists such as myself.

I’m glad I made the switch to iPhone, my only regret is that I didn’t do it sooner. Now this may not be forever, since I was late to upgrade, I’ll have access to the HTC Dream for a while, and in the future, I may go back. But for now, I love my iPhone.

Rogers White HTC Dream

Android, Google’s Open Source OS for smart phones has finally come to Canada in the form of the HTC Dream (T-mobile G1 in the USA). Roger’s Android phone features some changes from the default Android 1.5 (Cupcake) OS that makes it unique to Canada, most notably, built in support for ActiveSync, allowing you to get push email from a Microsoft Exchange server.

There are some caveants, the most important being, if you want to use your Rogers HTC Dream with an Exchange Server, it must be running Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 with Service Pack 1 applied. In our testing, we discovered that HTC has formatted their https commands differently than the iPhone, and other ActiveSync devices causing a “Sync Protocol Error” to be displayed on the phone.

Overall, I quite like the device, and I am quite fond of its ability to run an SSH client full screen, and allowing me to use the 5 line qwerty keyboard to control servers and routers that I need access to remotely.  Web browsing is also nice and fast thanks to built in HSPA 3.5G support (7.2Mbps download, 2Mbps upload).  The built in mail client is very similar in operation to the Apple mail client that comes with the iPod touch, and iPhone.  I really like the built in Calendar’s ability to sync with Google Calendar, as well as exchange, showing the events in both calendars in different colors. This allows me to keep my personal calendar separate from my work calendar.

As expected, all of the Google apps really shine on Android, Maps, Talk, Youtube and Mail all work seamlessly with Google, and are activated with the very first setup screen when the phone is started up for the first time.

The Rogers version of the HTC Dream comes with a 2GB micro SD card already installed in the phone.

So far, I’ve only had the phone for 6 days, I’ll be posting a more detailed post on the phone after I’ve had a chance to use it for work for a month.

Post a comment if you have a question that you’d like me to answer.

I’ve had a couple of small hiccups with the integrated intel video and my widescreen monitor, but this is nothing new. A quick installation of ’915resolution’ and I was up and running in widescreen once again. The built in Intel graphics work very will with the integrated compiz fusion graphic features enabled by default. Hardy Heron exibits a level of polish that is on par with OSX. The extra graphical features are not of the gee-whiz variety, like OSX, they provide a pleasing and integrated level of animation into the desktop.

Aside from being an LTS (long term support) release, 8.04 boasts several updated packages and enhancements including:

• GNOME 2.22
• Firefox 3 beta
• Pulse Audio
• Policy Kit
• Transmission
• Brasero
• KVM (virtualization) now integrated into Kernel 2.6.24
• iSCSI Support
• Active Directory Integration
• Memory Protection
• Wubi
• Xorg 7.3

You can read more about these new features, and try the Beta out for your self by visiting the realse info page.

I’m very excited about seeing what the final release will look like once its available on April 24th.

I origionally switched to Linux over 10 years ago because my modest hardware could not keep up with Windows, and I was rewarded with a reliable, stable, and responive system. Fast forward 8 years and I am now a very satisfied Ubuntu user, however, I have never been a fan of desktop enviroments such as GNOME and KDE. I normaly prefere something very light weight such as WindowMaker.However, I found a way to keep a “mostly default” Ubuntu install with a light weight desktop. I had used Xfce a couple of years ago while experimenting with Redhat 8,9 and Fedora, and I quite enjoyed it.

Xubuntu delivers a light weight desktop on Ubuntu, prefering light weight applications, and also utilizing ubuntu repositories. Ubuntu is nice, and works very well, but I just don’t like GNOME, or its heavy memory usage. I’m also cheap, and I do not like spending a lot of money on hardware. Requiring less than 192Mb of RAM, Xubuntu is now running on my main desktop, laptop, and office desktop. Its also running on my backup home workstation.

So if you are finding Ubuntu a little heavy on your machine, give Xubuntu a try! Switching from Ubuntu to Xubuntu is quick and easy, and if you do not like it, you can easily go back.

To install Xubuntu from Ubuntu type:

sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop

Enjoy, if you have any questions please leave a comment.

Note: This is the desktop version of Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a community developed operating system that is perfect for laptops, desktops, and servers. Whether you use it at home, at school or at work Ubuntu contains all the applications you’ll ever need, from word processing and e-mail applications, to Web server software and programming tools. Ubuntu is and always will be free of charge. You do not pay any licensing fees. You can download, use and share Ubuntu with your friends, family, school or business for absolutely nothing.Version 7.04, named “Feisty Fawn,” adds the Ubuntu Studio, a multimedia editing and production suite, to the distribution.

The page is gone now, and is currently still available via a google cache, but not for long. Groklaw has a screenshot.

via digg

What applications are on your top 10 list?

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I’m not holding my breath about seeing this north of the 49th, hopefully, us Canadians will see something before the end of the year.

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If you want to install and use Thunderbird 2.0, here is your quick and dirty guide:

The first thing we need to do is download Thunderbird 2 from Mozilla, save it to somewhere you will remember, the default is your Desktop under Ubuntu. This brief how to will assume that you saved the file to your Desktop.

Open a Terminal Session (applications -> accessories -> Terminal)

cd Desktop

tar zxvf thunderbird-2.0.0.0.tar.gz

sudo mv thunderbird /opt/thunderbird2

Now we have Thunderbird installed, but we do not have an Icon to launch it, we need to add one. I like to keep icons for Firefox and Thunderbird on the top Panel, beside the system menu, these instructions will work if you choose to create a launch icon on the desktop.

1. Right click on the top launch bar, select “add to panel”
2. Click “Custom Application Launcher” on the pop up window. (If you chose to create an Icon on your desktop, right click your desktop and select “Create Launcher…”)
3. Set type to “Application”
4. Name: Thunderbird 2.0
5. Command: /opt/thunderbird2/thunderbird
6. Next, click on Icon, and scroll down until you see the Thunderbird icons, choose the “mozilla-thunderbird.xpm” icon.
7. Click “OK”

And thats it. Enjoy Thunderbird 2.0!

My A100 uses an ATI SB450 soundcard, which worked out of the box in 6.06, 6.10, and the early beta stages of 7.04. From what I can see, this problem is related to the release kernel not detecting the sound card model correctly.

After searching the Ubuntu forums, and Launchpad, I found this fix posted by Ubuntu forums member “djails“:

sudo rmmod snd-hda-intel

sudo modprobe snd-hda-intel probe_mask=8 model=auto

After running the above commands, your sound card should now work, however, these changes are not permanent, to make the above changes permanent, add the following line to the bottom of /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base:

options snd-hda-intel probe_mask=8 model=auto

After applying these changes, all components of the Toshiba Satellite Pro A100 appear to be working, including the built in wireless card.

If you need help with your soundcard, or Satellite Pro A100, post below and I will do my best to help out.

Automatix adds an easy to use interface for installing 3rd party packages that are not maintained by Ubuntu, or the Ubuntu community, these typically consist of commercial packes such as Google Earth, Windows Media Codecs etc.

Here is the quick and dirty way to get started with Ubuntu Feisty Fawn (7.04):

1. sudo apt-get install python (if you do not already have python 2.4 installed)
2. wget http://www.getautomatix.com/apt/dists/feisty/main/binary-i386/automatix2_1.1-3.5-7.04feisty_i386.deb
3. sudo dpkg -i automatix2_1.1-3.5-7.04feisty_i386.deb
4. automatix2

Follow the directions on screen and enjoy. Please note that Ubuntu Feisty Fawn, 7.04 is currently beta.

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