bradKELLETT

Fever List View

The premise of Fever is simple: your current RSS reader is full of unread items that you’ll never get through, you can’t keep up with the volume, and you don’t want to add more subscriptions for fear of compounding the problem. Clearly, Fever is aimed at RSS ‘power users,’ and people with only a few subscriptions should probably save themselves the effort and stick to a simpler solution like Google Reader or NewsGator. That said, can Fever really live up to the premise of saving you from second inbox overload?

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This review was originally slated to be published on MobileBurn, but scheduling difficulties meant we had to pass it over. It could be of use for some though, and it is a pretty great device, so I thought I would publish it here. Read on for all the details. Note: Click on the photos to enlarge. When I get a chance, I will add a few more live shots. Continue Reading

I was contacted the other day by one Ori Katzin, who shared his detailed impressions of the recently released Samsung SCH-U620. With his permission, I am going to share his thoughts with everyone here, as it is an interesting real-world perspective of the handset. Click below to view the full text. If you wish to contact Ori, please send your message to me through the usual means and I will forward it to him.

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I took the plunge yesterday and installed Windows Vista Home Premium on my notebook, and overall I am relatively impressed. I have had the betas sitting around for some time, but never installed them. My notebook is my full-time work and pleasure computer, so I did not take this move lightly. I am not going to write a massive review, there is plenty of that around the internet, but I will note down my impressions so far.

Pros

• The new effects are nice, and not too intrusive.
• I completely agree with Greg Hughes, everything does run considerably faster. I have been having performance issues with Outlook 2007 since the betas, but finally it runs at a normal speed. Unlike Greg, I do run Aero Glass.
• The Sidebar is nice, but see below in the cons section for my issues with it.
• Flip 3D is mainly eye candy, but I like it.
• The updated user security model is welcome, and even being a power user, I think I will still get some benefit out of it. The administrator authorization boxes are very intrusive though, blacking out everything on the screen but the dialog box.
• While Vista seems to take longer to start up, it resumes from sleep and hibernate much faster than XP.

Cons

• I am not convinced about the Aero Glass look. It is nice, but the way window title bars go black when they are maximized doesn’t sit well with me.
• Windows Media Player is ugly, ugly, ugly with Aero Glass. Way too much transparency.
• While it is nice, I feel the Sidebar could have been better implemented. I am a fan of sidebars, but the one included with Windows Vista can look quite messy, as sometimes gadgets don’t seem to line up well. I also hate that you can’t resize gadgets or the Sidebar itself. I’ll be running with it for a few days, but I am not sure if it will be a permanent fixture. I used an application called Desktop Sidebar some time ago, and it was a much better solution.
• I cannot for the life of me work out how to undock toolbars from the taskbar. I used to run with a toolbar docked to the side of my screen with the quick launch bar and my desktop icons in it, but I now can’t do that.

I will probably add to this list over the coming days as I discover new things that I like and that annoy me. The above is not a comprehensive list of all the pros of Vista, just the things that make me say ‘hmm, that’s nice.’

Driver support has so far been quite good. The only problems I had were with my notebook’s built in camera and the 3.5mm sound jack not working, but a quick visit to the HP site to download different drivers fixed both problems.

The Nokia N73 has been a bit of a roller coaster for me. When it was originally announced and I wrote the story for MobileBurn, I didn’t like it. It just looked funny to me, and I wasn’t really interested. Here we are though, five months later, the N73 has been released and I have one in my hand – and I love it. Read on for my initial impressions/mini review of this powerful multimedia handset.

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One handset that I have been very eager to get my grubby mitts on is the Nokia E61. This is Nokia’s first bar-style handset with a QWERTY keypad, and has a spec sheet that certainly aims to impress. Lucky me, the UPS man showed up on my doorstep this morning with a package containing a shiny new E61, click on to read my initial impressions/review, and post any questions you may have in the comments.

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A few days ago, I was sent a Nokia 6280, and since then I have been using it as my full-time handset – setting aside my N90 for a while. The best thing I could say about this device is that I have mixed emotions. Read my mini-review after the jump.

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