November 27, 2009 at 4:57 pm
by dreuters (Uncategorized)
I recently purchased an HTC Droid Eris through Verizon Wireless. It was a difficult decision between the Motorola Droid and the HTC Droid Eris. There are a number of differences, of which I’ll list a few and tell you how each affected my decision. They may have the opposite effect for you.
Screen Resolution: The Moto screen (480×854) looks awesome. Side-by-side with the Eris, the difference is unmistakable. That said, the Eris screen resolution (320×480 – the same as the iPhone 3GS) would have been considered excellent a month ago. I don’t watch movies or TV on my phone. The only real video content I watch is video podcasts, and that’s even fairly rare. Nothing compares to the new Moto Droid in this category, but based on my type of usage, my conclusion in this category was that the Moto Droid screen was preferred.
Keyboard: The Moto has a slide-out keyboard and the Eris as only the virtual keyboard. I have an iPod Touch and have found the virtual keyboard to be very easy to use. (As a comparison, I also have a BlackBerry Curve 8900 that I use daily.) I don’t like to have big items in my pocket, so the additional hardware was a negative for me. Obviously, if you’re not a fan of virtual keyboards, the slide-out may be a requirement. In this category I preferred the Eris.
Processor Speed: The Moto has a significantly faster processor than the Eris. Honestly, I wasn’t sure what real impact this would have for me. Reviews that I’d read indicated that people were happy with the speed of the Eris, but I had no real idea how that would play out for me. Heather got an Eris two days before I did and I didn’t feel like it was slow when I was using it so I decided that this wasn’t going to matter too much for my typical usage (phone, email, web, games, photos, basic apps, not much video media). Conclusion was Moto preferred.
OS Version: 1.5 on the Eris vs. 2.0 on the Moto. Obviously, 2.0 is preferred for a number of reasons, specifically including Google Maps Navigation. (FYI, 1.5 has regular Google Maps.) However, the word on the street is that 2.0 will be available for the Eris, possibly even this year, so I decided this category was a wash.
HTC Sense UI: The Eris comes with the HTC Sense UI which is basically a customized interface for Android. It’s excellent. In my brief interaction with basic Android on the Moto and Sense on the Eris, the Eris seemed much better to me. This is, of course, personal preference, but there are a lot of things I like better including 7 customizable home screens (3 on Moto I think), very smooth and integrated access to the phone function, a slew of slick HTC widgets, etc. I’m not suggesting that the base Android UI is bad, I just thought Sense was significantly better. My conclusion here was that the Eris was preferred.
Overall Form Factor: The Moto feels pretty heavy (6 oz) where the Eris feels very comfortable (4.23 oz). The Eris is smaller and feels good in my pocket while the Moto is larger with sharper corners and edges. Again, this depends on how you use/carry your phone. For me, smaller is better so I preferred the Eris.
So after all of that, obviously, I chose the Eris. The primary factors were size, keyboard, and UI. My impressions after living with it for a week and a half are still pretty good. In general, it’s an excellent phone. I’m very happy with Android and I really love the overall usability. The size of the unit is excellent and is easy to carry in my pocket. I will say that the processor speed may be more of a factor than I thought, but it’s not bad. There are times when the phone is slow, but I usually discover that I have something running in the background unintentionally. When I clear that up, the phone is plenty responsive. I’m not sure how this would be different on the Moto, but I suspect it would be less noticeable. I also sometimes notice the performance when rendering web pages, but I’m unsure how much of that is related to the processor speed vs network speed. I haven’t used the Moto enough to compare directly.
Some other basic thoughts on Android in general: The integration with Facebook and Google contacts is impressive. I have also recently become a real fan of Google Voice, which works well with the phone too, as you would imagine. The Android Market leaves some things to be desired, but you can eventually find what you need, particularly if you already know the name of the app you’re looking for.
So far, I think I made the right decision for me.
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August 16, 2009 at 8:16 am
by dreuters (Uncategorized)
Yesterday, my wife and I took our 2 1/2 year old to the mall to see Andy Z. He’s a children’s music singer/songwriter from the Bay Area and occasionally performs at local malls. I know, it sounds pretty lame, but he’s actually pretty good and seems himself to be mildly amused by what he’s doing. If you have a small person in your house, I strongly suggest checking out his website and/or picking up one of his CDs (also available on Amazon.com or iTunes).
At any rate, we get to the mall and discover that it’s not just Andy Z who is playing… he’s actually sort of “opening” for a kids’ Back-To-School fashion show that’s going to happen at the mall. As you can imagine, there are a lot of kids around — and with lots of kids comes lots of parents. And as the showtime approaches, families are sitting down in the chairs surrounding the stage and catwalk. Many of the chairs are occupied by things like purses, jackets, etc as they’re being “saved” for some other family member who’s gone off to by hot dogs and whatnot.
This brings me to the real reason for this post. As my wife and child are waiting for the show to start, a woman walks up with two small children and an older woman. When they sit down, a little girl in the chair behind where they sit politely informs the woman that she’d been saving two of those seats for her Dad and sister. The woman turns to the little girl and says “There are lots of other seats, they can sit somewhere else.”
Are you serious??
I realize that it can be kind of annoying when people save a bunch of seats for people who aren’t there, but this was a kid… at a kids’ show. I thought to myself, “That’s just not right” and decided I had to intervene. I got up and walked over to the woman and politely informed her that the little girl behind her had been saving those seats. Here response: “I don’t care.” Um, what? Again, I’m thinking, “Are you serious?”
I look at her again and say, “C’mon. The girl’s Dad walked away for a few minutes and will be right back. She was saving the seats so they could sit together.” Her response: “I don’t care, they can sit somewhere else.” Wow. At this point, I realize this woman is not going to move so I look at her children and then back at her and I say, “You’re not setting a very good example for your children. That girl was here first and she politely asked you not to sit here and you were very rude to her. Is that how you want to teach your children to behave?”
At that point the woman started to look nervous and avoided making eye contact. She still didn’t seem like she was going to move, so I gave up. Fortunately, I was able to talk to the event organizers and they were able to provide some extra chairs.
Anyway, it just amazes me how rude people are. If it had been the Dad sitting there saving the seats, I’m imagining the woman would have had a harder time just blowing him off.
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June 9, 2009 at 1:36 pm
by dreuters (Uncategorized)
Apple totally pulled a bait and switch on me. I’ve been a Firefox user for a few years now. I switched over to it pretty early on. It was also shortly after I got a Mac. Since I had both a Mac and a PC, I liked the idea of having the same browser (and email) on both platforms, so I became a full-time Mozilla user. Plus, I never really like Safari. For one thing, it’s ugly and for another, it doesn’t seem to be as compatible.
Recently, a friend introduced me to Safari 4 Beta and the wonders of “tabs on top”. I liked it so much that I converted all of my machines (five) from Firefox to Safari 4 Beta. It definitely had some issues with compatibility. Some websites did not render properly.. or at all. But I figured, “hey, it’s a beta, they’ll figure it out.”
So today I was happy to see that Safari 4 was finally released. I downloaded it and installed. Guess what? No more “tabs on top”. Not even and option.
How can Apple do this to users? I know they got a lot of flack for it from the people who hated it, and I respect that. It’s definitely a personal preference. And I could even concede that it would be a good idea to change the default back to “tabs on bottom”. But to remove it completely from the interface with no option to turn it back on even through a hidden pref? And to do it only in the final release after having it available through the entire beta? C’mon, that’s ridiculous.
So here I am, writing this post with “tabs on bottom”. The difference is that is says Firefox in the corner of my screen.
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May 18, 2009 at 3:13 am
by dreuters (Uncategorized)
I went to see Star Trek with some coworkers on the Friday it opened (yeah, I know it opened at 7pm on Thursday). We saw it on a regular movie screen and thought it looked pretty good. I enjoyed the movie but wasn’t necessarily planning to see it again. However, as I thought about it, I decided I’d really like to see it in IMAX. It seemed like a lot of the movie would be really cool on a huge screen. So, I made plans to see it in IMAX at a local AMC theater that I regularly go to in Santa Clara.
At the time I was making the plans, I thought that it was pretty cool that the AMC had installed a HUGE IMAX theater. I wondered how they were able to fit it in the building, but I figured they must have found a way. Obviously, I didn’t think too hard about it or I would have known it wasn’t reasonably possible. But I didn’t think that hard… I just wanted to see Star Trek in IMAX.
When we got to the theater I learned that the tickets had a $5 surcharge ($15 per ticket). I thought, “that’s kinda ridiculous but it’s going to be REALLY COOL!” So we paid the $15 and went in.
What we found was a slightly larger than normal screen. It was NOT what most people have come to know as IMAX and was certainly not worth an extra $5. Sure, we could have just left, but we were there and wanted to see the movie (the other two guys hadn’t seen it yet) so we just stayed.
Apparently, other people are having the same issue with these “fake” IMAX screens. It really seems like it would have been good for IMAX or AMC to inform people ahead of time about what they were getting for their extra $5.
Click here to read a blog post by comedian Aziz Ansari on the topic.
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May 14, 2009 at 9:32 am
by dreuters (Uncategorized)
In the SF Bay Area, the HOV, or “carpool”, lanes require two or more occupants on weekdays from 5:00a to 9:00a and from 3:00p to 7:00p.
I plan my morning commute specifically with HOV lanes in mind. I commute from San Jose to Menlo Park on highways 280, 85, and 101. On 280, the HOV lane starts right where I get on the highway and it continues all the way to where I exit the highway. I drop my kid off at daycare in the morning about a third of the way to work.
Given that, my basic plan is usually to leave my house at about 8:50a so that I can take advantage of the HOV lane while I have the kid in the car. If I leave at that time, I arrive at daycare at just about 9:00a. This is particularly convenient since the HOV lanes are open to regular traffic as I’m leaving daycare by myself.
Here’s what I want to know: Why do some assholes think they can drive in the HOV lane at 8:56a? Do they think they are exempt? I know it’s not because they don’t know what time it is… everyone has a cell phone with network time on it. What makes people think that they are more privileged than all the other people on the freeway? I’m sure they’re the same assholes that use onramp merge lanes as passing lanes and who insist on not letting any cars merge in between them and the car in front no matter how slow the traffic is going.
Ah, the joys of commuting. Speaking of which, it’s 5:00… I’m outta here.
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