Cragnet

The idea of a large tablet device is nothing new to me because I used to have a small 5" touch screen pc running windows XP home. For playing back videos it was okay but pretty useless as an internet tablet because it needed a usb wifi or 3g dongle to provide any connectivty. I now have 2 android phones a HTC Magic and Hero. I really like android and feel its potential can grow beyond a phone either to a desktop or notebook computer. When I saw the Archos tablet I was interested because there was finally a large screen android device. QVC had a deal on recently to try the tablet and return if not happy. Normally I am not bothered by such deals but as I was interested I took advantage of the offer. Whilst waiting I looked online for reviews or any kind of hacking. Now some might say that this where my issue started but please read on. Gareth over at mobiletech addicts also got an archos where you can read his experience here . There is also the podcast here where you can hear his

Excuse the lame title but this has really been a long wait. You may ask am I referring to the review or a phone that I can finally get on with? Well the answer is both. I had always decided to avoid Android because I wasn't impressed with the lack installation space available and because you cannot install applications onto the SD card. After beginning to get numb over Nokia and their poor release of the n97 plus the boredom of the e75. I thought that I would take a punt at android and get a phone. As there was now more choice over the g1 I was looking at either the HTC magic or hero. Again because I didn't want to spend too much and because I thought a Google version of Android would be better than HTC's implementation I purchased the magic. At first the experience was great because I wasn't running out of space for installation. The phone worked smoothly and I enjoyed having a central location for application installs just like on the iPhone. However what I did find

Another story online about o2s inability to say how much unlimited web data really is. http://ping.fm/HrI7w

Due to delays in the n900 and the lack of software both in this and the Palm Pre application catalog I decided to purchase a HTC Hero. There was some hesitation wondering if I could easily transfer my original HTC Magic software over where kind soles on Twitter indicated this should be easy. I opted to get the sim free version from carphone warehouse. Setting the phone up took a couple of hours as I had over 100 applications to reinstall. Thankfully from entering my Google credentials the app market recognised what I had purchased and allowed me to download and reinstall the apps again. Overall I am happy with the phone and find it a lot more responsive than the magic. This is no doubt helped by the additional RAM available for the Hero. The other difference is the application installation space is smaller than the magic. However the changes that HTC have done to Android including built-in exchange support and the sense UI make this one hell of a phone. Also the multi touch on the brow

As part of the excessive usage on unlimited web for O2 in addition to the text warning you get a letter. The letter was from the Credit and Risk department. I called them up to try and find out some more information and whilst it was a pleasant conversation the information again was conflicting to what I was told the previous week. On this occasion I was told the make of phone was irrelevant and the fact that I was using my HTC Magic instead of the E75 I got on my new contract. The issue was still the amount of data that I had downloaded. If you can recall it had been 6 gb the previous month where there was no issue. This month it was 1 gb and this is what had triggered the cease and desist text and letter. During my conversation I said I liked to manage my bill so I am not over using my allocated allowances. Bearing in mind the Internet is defined as unlimited web with an excessive policy where you cannot tether the phone to a PC, use VOIP or stream video/ audio and dow

When I was young I can remember going to the newsagents and asking for a ten pence mix. The shop owner would count out ten sweets (or the equivalent) and I would hand over ten pence and then have a bag full of sweets. Back then you knew what you would you get when you paid the money and would be able to sort out any problems should there be a sweet missing. Today shouldn't be too dissimilar in that you pay for service and you either get it or you don't. There are always issues with the quality of service thus you have to look at the terms and conditions. Now take O2 where I have been a customer of theres' for a number of years. I pay so much a month I get 600 minutes and 500 texts. If I use them the usage decreases until it gets to zero then I start paying. I used to pay for their data bolt on called data max at 3GB a month where I knew I had up to 3GB of data allowance. Through being made redundant and reducing costs I decided to go to O2 simplicity where I was told t

The HTC Magic has been driving me mad today. It has taken me over 5 minutes to write a tweet to the extent I ended up slapping the phone through frustration . Although this calmed my nerves I ended up looking at cooked roms for the phone hoping it would speed it up. After advise from people on twitter I downloaded a recovery image to put phone into a mode where I could back it up to SD. I also used the Astro file manager to back up my apps as well to SD. Then using Linux ( Ubuntu 8.10) I re flashed the phone and went upon my way restoring it. The Asto File manager was bad in that it would allow me to bulk select all apps for backup, but I had to individually restore the apps back onto the phone. Further even though I had restore the apps individually the market application would not acknowledge this. This means I would not be notified of any application upgrades unless I reinstalled the application via the market place. This, coupled with the phones failure to sync agai