Andy’s Blog

I’ve found myself in the market looking for a decent Smart Phone – that is, one running Windows Mobile – and not the Symbian OS that Nokia prefers. The main reason for this is work; we develop for Windows platforms, including Windows Mobile

The main goals are:
 - Email
 - Messenger
 - Development Test Platform
 - A phone!

Ideally, I want Wifi onboard, otherwise I’ll be hammering GPRS / 3G all the time when I’m at home or in the Head Office …

So, the two I’ve been looking at are:

 - Treo 750v (Currently only on Vodafone, but can always get one sim free somewhere ). No Wifi though.

 - Fujitsu Loox T830 (Not cheap, but packed with features – inc GPS!).

Trying to find places locally to actually have a look at each of these before I make my mind up …

I think we can safely say that the insanity of what is known as the January Sales has started already.

I was out yesterday (Boxing Day) getting a new brake light bulb, and was absolutely floored at just how many people were rapidly buying up anything and everything they could see.

Why is it people assume Sales = Value? And why do people always buy things that they really don’t need …

Well, it’s Christmas Day, and I’d just like to wish all my readers a Merry Christmas.

Got a white one of sorts up here in Scotland … not snow though. Frost!

I hope everyone has a good day

Over the course of my career, I’ve tried a number of different Remote Desktop Tools – specifically for assisting remote users with technical problems. Unfortunately, in most of these cases you can not use the Microsoft Remote Desktop Client (which is otherwise EXCELLENT!), due to firewall restrictions and such.

There are load of these tools out there – such as GotoAssist, WebEx and so on. But I have always found them to be far too expensive. Many of them don’t even publish pricing on their website which is even more disturbing!

Enter stage left: TechInLine.Com.
These are new guys on the Remote Desktop scene, and although their current offering has a few draw backs (moderate refresh rate), their pricing means they come out high up in the stakes as far as I’m concerned: $19.95 per month. That’s it.
I’ve been making the most of a 15-day trial with them, and I’m fairly impressed; it’s an excellent tool, it works well – traverses all the firewalls that I’ve got access to without a problem.
The only down side that I have encountered is the refresh rate could do with being a little faster, especially if you are working on a super fast Internet connection (why not sacrifice a little more ).

But, overall, very good – and certainly worth taking a look at!
Better than VNC, not quite as good as RDP in my opinion – and the price doesn’t hurt at all.

I’ve just received a follow up e-mail from Logitech.

They have closed my support case, and “Escalated” it to their development team in order to get a fix.

Temporary solution? Uninstall SetPoint. Unfortunately, this means you don’t get to use any of the additional programmable buttons. However, I have found a way round the problem – simply edit the XML configuration directly – it seems they load it happily, but don’t save it. Nice.

I’m not holding my breath for a patch anytime soon!

Well, I’d say it’s official. Christmas is almost upon us once again. 10 days to go …

Suppose I should send the cards about now…

Sounds like a good movie - no? Ok, maybe you are right, probably best not to

Well, a week or so ago, I bought a new mouse – my old Logitech optical mouse started to die – not bad after four years intensive use.

Well, I settled on a Logitech MX Revolution – which uses a scanning laser to calculate movement instead of a red diode, and so can be used on pretty much anything with much better precision. All in all, an excellent mouse except for one thing.

The Drivers. SetPoint as it’s known.

This has to be the worst, most buggy piece of crap I have come across.

1. Check for updates promptly told me “No New Updates”. Manually visiting their site proves it is wrong…
2. It doesn’t remember my settings. Oh yeah, something as basic as SAVING AND LOADING CONFIGURATION has flummoxed those experts at Logitech. The software has presets for different applications – I don’t want that, I want a common configuration, so deleted them all. Reboot, and guess what; all the programs are back! So far their tech support has asked me – twice – to install the latest version. So far I’ve pointed out to them – twice – that I have ALREADY tried that.

I’m starting to regret my purchase now; the hardware is excellent. The software is utter rubbish.