So, I bought a fruity fondleslab a couple of a weeks ago, a client wanted me to research the possability of porting something.
But I have to say the thing itself is really rather crap. It does a few things very well, its easily the best shiny digital photo frame I've ever played with, but its rather low resolution for the obsessive photo geek, and really grinds to a halt with my 15mb jpegs (oh, and of course no RAW support for me).
Web Browsing..... It does certain light weight sites just fine, but go on something like hexus forums and its slow to scroll down, really slow. Ok so I'm jaded with my expectations, I spend most of my time on very high end workstations / laptops, the joys of visual studio's demands on PC hardware mean web browsing is always quite fast, but still, go on to something on say engadget with comments turned on, I DARE YOU. You get greated with a scrolling set of chequered spots. Want to scroll quickly through that technical article your reading.... Good luck.
Email. Useless, its just a big blackberry with all the limitations, OWA gives better user experiance. I need a good spell chequer as some might have noticed I've somewhat strong dislexia, nope, nada.
Flash, or Java runs half the bloody web I use, I only realise how much when its gone, gone gone, and now I'm all out of flash.
But HEY HO, you don't browse the web, you browse the App Store, because theres an App for That! Its probably free and monolithic, but still. So you download the TED app say, and think "hmm before my flight I'll set this list to download" leave it plugged in and bingo, it goes to sleep, no background downloading allowed for that app, st. jobbs doesn't favour it. So you have to then go in to the settings system. An inchoriently arranged uselessly labeled set with no tooltip or similar extra information, no F1. It turns out that you change the option to turn off the screen, for turning off downloading too....... Intuitive.
So the keyboard, why, why why why why why (these were written by hand, not copy n pasted) does the shift key effect look ****. Why not change the CASE of the characters not just a slightly subtle thing you won't be able to see because your fingers (assuming you've learnt to type) will be instrinctively hiding them from you. Its full, one button on your mouse, retarded, thats what.
Then the app store, why do I have to log in twelvety times to download a free app?!
Then the reliability, its piss poor, we're talking windows 98 grade stability here. Wifi, that spans access points, Oh. I hope you don't mind turning the slab on and off again (not even just the wifi stack) everytime I want to change between them. Thats not going to piss you off at all, say if your in a hotel, which is a likely environment to want a portable fondleslab type thing, also odds are roaming is too damned expensive on 3g so the WiFi must work. It doesn't.
Screen rotation, the photo frame is about all a fruity fondleslab is good for, but it cocks that up even more, it gets confused, you think "hmm I must have hit lock rotation" but no, you didn't, you toggle the lock rotation, no good, you turn the device off and on again (hmm this reminds me actually of mac OS 9) and bingo, it works instantly........ Stupid thing.
Also the Wifi antenna is useless, my P series picked up 15 wifi networks, the iPad 3. Meaning in my hotel suite I could only use it in about 30% of it, and crossing between the study and the bedroom ment reseting it because of the wifi AP bug....
And you can't even easily wedge it for watching iPlayer in bed when your TV is on the fritz, because the magcover thing is useless, its almost always the worst viewing angle and surves only to reflect as much cieling light in office environment back down as possible.
So why all the fuss?


LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks
Reply With Quote






