This Week in Mobile Tech Manor #72: HP Glisten is Here

Another week has come and nearly gone and that means I get to share the past week with you. My home office, aka Mobile Tech Manor (MTM), has been a busy place as I have gotten back into a normal routine following the big CES trip. I’ve been playing working with a lot of gear as usual including a couple of new gadgets that have come through the door. HP sent over an iPAQ Glisten, and I’ll share some thoughts about that. Come on in for a spell and let’s talk tech.

In the door

Two little gadgets came to roost in MTM this week, a mouse and the HP Glisten smartphone. I finally got tired of repeatedly cleaning the trackball in the Mighty Mouse I’ve been using with the MacBook. I may be in the minority but I actually like the Mighty Mouse and the way the trackball worked as a scroll wheel, at least when it worked. I didn’t like the constant cleaning of the ball as it kept getting dirty and binding up. It made sense to replace it with a mouse with no moving parts.

The Magic Mouse (these names get confusing don’t they?) is expensive, but I am already convinced it is the best mouse I have ever used. The multitouch surface has just the right amount of sensitivity, and I find scrolling by touch with the Magic Mouse works even in programs where the trackball in the older mouse did not. It fits comfortably in the hand, and it works so well I am even using it while mobile. Prior to getting this new mouse I would always use the trackpad on the MacBook while mobile, but I like using the new mouse even better so I am carrying it with me.

I am just getting started experimenting with configuring the mouse using MagicPrefs. That’s the free utility that allows configuring just about every facet of the Magic Mouse so that it works exactly as desired. There are a lot of options that I have to test before I get it just right. I find it amazing that the Magic Mouse accepts up to four finger touch. It does, and with MagicPrefs I can use multi-finger taps to trigger different actions. It is frankly awesome, and adds so much control for such a simple addition.

I did have a scary moment after adding the Magic Mouse. The mouse cursor went dead at one point and when I went to the MacBook trackpad to get control back I found it was dead too. That left me with a Mac with no cursor control, kind of hard to use. I rebooted to get it back and while that brought the trackpad back to life, I was confronted with the dreaded “no Bluetooth hardware detected” scenario. It’s kind of hard to get the mouse and external keyboard working when the MacBook thinks there is no Bluetooth on board.

I had experienced a similar issue once before, and it required rebooting with Command-Option-P-R to get it back. That worked like a charm and the problem hasn’t happened again. I believe I caused this problem, as I was trying two different mouse utilities and I think they were both fighting over the mouse. It’s all good now in any event.

Yesterday the FedEx guy brought an HP iPAQ Glisten to test and I’m just beginning to try it out. I can already tell that the hardware is top-notch, as the phone looks and feels very well made. I especially like the keyboard on the Glisten, and I had my wife (the Crackberry) try it out and she liked the keyboard, too. The phone feels good in the hand, and call audio quality is very good.

The Glisten is available in the U. S. through AT&T, so I popped my iPhone 3G SIM card in it before first boot. It is getting good 3G speed, and I’ve also tested the Wi-Fi which works well.

The Glisten has a 2.5-inch AMOLED screen (320×240), but it’s a resistive touchscreen. That means it’s not a great touch input device, and you have to use the fingernail to get clicks to register. That’s why it comes with a stylus in a silo on the bottom of the phone.

To be honest it feels a bit strange to have that small touchscreen and the big keyboard. It seems like it should be operated without touch, but the fact is touch must be used to do certain things. Windows Mobile 6.5 uses the two soft buttons on the bottom of the screen to do many things, and since there are no hardware buttons associated with them the touchscreen must be used. The soft buttons are pretty small and they can be really hard to press using the fingernail. The stylus is always available, but it’s no fun pulling it out, tapping once, and putting it back.

That sums up the user experience so far with Windows Mobile 6.5. It looks a lot better than previous versions of WinMo, but at times the interface is even harder to use than those older versions. That’s backwards but it’s the way it is. Maybe I’ll get used to the WinMo 6.5 interface with more time, but right now it feels very awkward to use.

That is the best way to describe it, now that I think about it. Awkward. Like the honeycomb program screen. It is not very configurable and it feels like I have to scroll forever to get to the bottom of the screen to find the program I want to execute. Even preinstalled apps are awkward to use. When I tried the new Windows Mobile Marketplace for the first time it was just an icon and not the actual program to access the Marketplace. It had to download and install the Marketplace, and that felt wrong. It’s part of the OS, there was an icon for it, but the program didn’t really exist. It’s like it was not complete.

I’ll be covering the Glisten more over time, these are just my early impressions. I feel strongly that WinMo 7 better get released pretty darn quickly, as I am not very impressed with 6.5 so far. WinMo 6.5 on the HTC HD2 was darn nice, but that’s because the HTC Sense interface hid WinMo almost completely.

Program of the week

My program of the week is not new, but it was updated this week and is even better. SnagIT for Mac is still in beta so it’s free for now, and it is simply a great utility. It takes screen shots that are second to none given the control the program provides over the process. I am more impressed with it every day I use it, and that’s the mark of a great program. I love the way the snapshot interface sits on the side of the screen waiting for the mouse to hover over it, which opens it up. It is elegant and easy to use, and now when I move back to SnagIT on the Windows side of things I get frustrated. I wish they would make the Windows version work like the Mac version. Maybe some day they will. Hear that, TechSmith?

e-Books of the week

I was thrilled to pick up two new James Patterson novels, as he is just about my favorite novelist. The two novels are not his usual fare, with one being a fantasy novel and the other sci-fi. Witch and Wizard is his newly released novel that was co-authored with Gabrielle Charbonnet, and it tells the tale of a brother and sister team with unusual powers. It’s a story along the lines of 1984 with magic thrown in, as the New Order takes over the country and does bad things to the good citizens. The tale is lively and entertaining, but it was very unfulfilling for me. It is the first novel in what will be a series, and while I love a good series there is one rule I insist on. I expect each novel in a series to be a self-contained story, with each subsequent novel adding to the overall grand story. This is not the case with Witch and Wizard, with the novel ending in the middle of the story, and with the phrase that is a pet peeve of mine– “To be continued”. It just stops in the middle, and it frustrated the hell out of me. I expected more from James Patterson.

The second James Patterson e-book I read was also written with another author, Ned Rust. Daniel X: Watch the Skies is a romp of a story dealing with big, bad, smelly aliens, and the alien hunters who are after them. It is irreverent, funny and entertaining. I enjoyed it far more than the first novel. It is also completely different than Patterson’s other work I like so much, and I wonder if these two books are really Patterson’s writing, or if his valuable name is just on the covers. Hey, it sure seems that way.

Wrap-up

That’s the week as it went down, and this one is coming to a close. I have a business trip to San Francisco coming up soon, but until then it is business as usual. Take care and drop back by next week and we’ll do this again.

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