That's the main problem with Andy to begin with. EACH FREAKING RELEASE IS LIKE A FULL ON OS UPDATE RATHER THAN A FIRMWARE UPDATE.

I mean, come on. Fagmentation much?

NITDroid devs are also to blame for being all "oh the new code is shiny" rather then just get 1.6 working. But, heck, they're geeks lol.

I'm under the impression that if they know the words "backtrack" and they know it runs on the N900, they'll be less stupid then you'd think.

But the Internet has always exceeded my expectations in that respect. Without fail.

Anyway, toyed around with Navit yesterday, and while the latest SVN + QT painter is phast, it does not have libgarmin. Which is sad.

Oh well.

This post has been edited by Eiraku: Jul 5 2010, 09:03 AM

As for me, even if I was gonna get a new smartphone, I don't think the N900 will ever be sold. And as long as I have it, it will continue to be tinkered with. I mean, can you ever stop tinkiering with Linux lol. Worse comes to the worse it'll become the basis for my car-puter

Well, it cannot be sold anyhow - or I'll get into hot soup with me dad ("You did what with my friend's gift?"), never mind the fact that it's mine now.

As for Maemo development, most Maemo devs are old timers and stallwarts, having lived with NITs even as the smartphone world evolved around them. If Meego is gonna be crappy, I don't think they're going anywhere.

If it isn't, they're gonna make it run on the N900 anyway lol. Unless the N9 is sho goooood that it blows everything out of the water for a few years.

Plus, the N900 is prolly the last NIT to use resistive tech, and that's gonna keep some people around as well. Also, the faster Maemo dies, the faster Nokia is gonna consider making the whole thing Open Source, which is only gonna attract more indie devs.

Anyway, just dropped my hardy N900 a few minutes ago, and as my very last epikcase holder tabs snapped, I also snapped and went straight onto eBay to get an Otterbox. It would've been easier if I did THAT to begin with, I would've saved 60 bucks (5 friggin epikcases + shipping)...

There goes my "FUN TIME" budget for the month.

Now for the long, torturous wait for it to arrive.

Adeh, resin case where are you when I need you the most?

This post has been edited by Eiraku: Jul 5 2010, 10:28 AM

One more possibility, your're running 64bit Windows of any flavour lol.

A few UK online shops have it, but they're either out of stock or extremely overpriced (I mean, I want to get s resin case BECAUSE it's cheaper than an Otterbox).

Join me and wrap your N900 in memerang skin...

Anyway, the lack of wonderous apps aside (which now that I think of it, the only real ones I need actually is Garmin/Navit, a proper finance app, a decent native image editor (GIMP is blardy slow) bluetooth remote ala SailingClicker and DocsToGo with PDF and Powerpoint), I think the N900 is settling down to be my primary device quite well nowadays.

Considering I installed a tonne of apps I NEVER used on Symbian, though I do miss a few.

My N900 is getting to be quite stable lately, and well personalized due to all my mods. Though better battery life and decent portrait support wouldn't hurt, which I hope (fruitlessly I know) PR1.3 will bring to the table.

Silicone = yes cheaper but lembik like heck

Resin = 30£ at some online stores = compare with $25 I got my Otterbox. Ebay cheaper (but not by much, try 10£) but seller unreliable

Capdase Soft Jacket, the original one (actually it's more like a high quality version of the rubber case) = RM30-40? But Capdase website has NONE listed for the N900

Epikcase Rubber Case = Abt RM10 each, but 2 months I broke 5 already

So, silicone + soft jacket + screen protector = Around RM90 already.

That's the same price I got the Ottercase for (plus shipping and all), and keep in mind Ottercase is also silicone + hard rubber + screen protector as well, only it's all three at once.

Only problem is the screen protector in the Ottercase package is utter crap, but thankfully I have my own.

So, I do think "way more more more more cheaper" is an relative overstatement here. Unless the Otterbox breaks in a month, that is. IMHO anyway, and YMMV.

Unless somebody brings in the resin case for RM60, in which case the resin case wins by default.

This post has been edited by Eiraku: Jul 7 2010, 03:13 AM

I would do so myself, if ONLY the Mugen battery worked better. I personally cannot stand the jumpy battery indicator. They sort that out and it's all golden.

it's a great alternative to Picasa, shame I can't resize pics. Though as you well know Picasa < PaintDotNet and I'd like an photo/picture manipulation app of at least PDN's level.

Hmm, I prefer Garmin actually for it's speedtrap POI handling and the fact that I can hack in Japanese voice instructions. Shame is, for the price of a dedicated Garmin unit I can get a second hand 5800 (which also does Garmin AND other things, lol the irony).

But an iPod touch as a car unit... Hmmm... I didn't know IPTs have built in GPS, I thought iPhone only?

Also, Glogarchive does SMS archiving pretty well, though it saves them into CSV format.

I have unexplainable reboots from time to time, but very rarely. Say once every week at most? I had a bunch when I tried playing around with SmartReflex, I leave it off now (worse battery life, very rare reboots).

The lag generaly went away when I bumped up the bottom end of my CPUfreq to 500. For some unknown (yet somehow very obvious) reason, limiting the gap between the bottom limit and top limit of the CPUfreq seems to increase responsiveness (ie. 250-850 is laggier than 500-850). And IINM the voltage saved by using 250 over 500 is not that much.

Also, I have hacked the responsiveness of the CPU governor (see the "increase responsiveness" section of Maemo.org's Overclocking wiki) = faster respose, at a very slight battery life hit.

Of course it still lags when I launch and use HAM lol.

@chicaman: Battery life is 60-80% of what the 5800 had, depending on load and usage. But considering that it's 100% faster (interms of raw speed anyway) with the same battery cap (the very same BL-5J actually); it's a fair trade off, woudn't you say?

And you can always buy spares, or like me, carry around an arsenal of USB battery packs of different caps to velcro to the back of the N900 (a 2200 mAh charger practically DOUBLES usage time, as far as my personal tests show).

If you need numbers:
Heavy use = 5-6 hours
Moderate use = 12hours to 1 day

This post has been edited by Eiraku: Jul 7 2010, 02:09 PM

Community FOS (free and open source) apps mostly, also some apps ported from Debian Linux, some apps running in full LXDE through Debian chroot, and some apps in ovi store.

There's like, a few hundred apps that you can install and run.. Nothing even close to Andy or Apple app store, but it does its job.

Check the FRONTPAGE for details.

There's also the gDesk way: saparate configs for landscape/portrait. Meaning you have totally saperate landscape and portrait screens, that you can mod to your hearts content. This should be in line with the Maemo way.

Advantage is, nothing has to be changed, besides providing support for this saparate portrait mode and provisions for a saperate config.

Disadvantage is you have more work to do setting up the desktop - susun landscape AND THEN susun portrait - but the N900's meant to be fiddled with amirite?

8 desktops is fine with me lol, but remember you can turn some off. You can have 4 in landscape and 2 in portrait.

Yes it's gonna be hard work with 2 SETS of desktops, but it would prolly be the most easy to implement, next to pure rotation (like the rotate bug already does - cuts off your desktop in half lol).

But yeah, it's not for everyone. YMMV.

Being so open, whether it lags or not is actually dependant on what you do with is (unless you get a lemon unit).

Even stock and unmodded, lags are not frequent unless you run more than 6 browser windows at once, and refrain from adding CPU hungry apps to the multi-tasking mix.

Overclocked and modded, my unit hardly lags at all, even with about 16 browser windows open. But with it's desktop grade OS, it's all over if it starts shifting things from RAM into swap/virtual memory - a reboot once in a while clears this up and it's as good as new.


This post has been edited by Eiraku: Jul 7 2010, 11:52 PM

Have you ever wished that the dashboard (task manager) was EVEN more useful? Ever wished you could launch programs, choose windows, close windows and open websites at the touch of a button? Want more then just 4 desktops? Want to use the camera button to alt-tab through your apps like you could on windows? Not afraid of editing config files and fiddling around with x-term?

Then come on down and get modified-hildon-desktop from here: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=53651

That is, if you're not running it already (which I doubt is true with the xterm-addicts here).

MHD has sure come a looooong way since the version I used back during the PR1.1 days. Back then it used to lock my desktop up in portrait all the time lol. I've been holding off installing it again for a while - simply because I knew once I installed it...

... I can never live without it any more.

Again. Sigh.

It does have some small bugs though. Trying to squish it with Matan as we speak.

---

Added on July 8, 2010, 4:09 pmTo RPG heads, Exult has just been released. This, plus GemRB (the baldur's gate engine port) is pure win for a long day with little to do.

This post has been edited by Eiraku: Jul 8 2010, 04:09 PM

Add the repo, refresh AppMan, choose modified-hildon-desktop install.

AFTER that only install the 9 screen thing through x-term (dpkg). The 9 screen thing NEEDS MHD.

I VNC to my pc all the time, though it's NOT unfailable. Have not tried logmein, and r-desktop is a no go because there's no real working RDP on Vista Home Premium (patches don't work).

I've heard that r-desktop works far better than VNC, however.

There's also uRemote for uTorrent, uses the web interface for torrent remote control.

If it goes straight to zero, YES it's a battery problem. My battery guage is jumpy, but it has never gone straight to zero.

Just sms, some calls and music player a bit = 1-2 days, depending on how much musc playing and if you're playing through speakers/headphones. Also, 3G sucks power, stick wth 2G unless you need speedy data (or like me, open multiple browser windows - 2G can only reliably open one at a time).

But from what you're telling us, it sounds like a confirmed case of lemon battery. AP set or Ori set? Just try to get the battery replaced if you can. There's no real way to check, really, except for low battery life.

I once got a K750 which had its battery baloon up and die (killing the phone with it) after only a few hours of purchase. A shame it didn't explode (or I would have enjoyed suing SE Malaysia).

And it was an Ori set too. Which was just lol.

This post has been edited by Eiraku: Jul 9 2010, 11:07 AM

Save yourself the agony this time and get an orignal Nokia battery. You pay more, but at least you have a good 1 year warranty too fall back on.

Ultra VNC (the one I'm using) works fine on Win7 (or so they say). If your running XP or non-home Premium versions of Vista/7, r-desktop/r-desktopcli is arguably a better choice.

I'm running Vista home premium, which means I'm stuck with VNC. Which is fine and all, except r-desktop has better scaling and I'm stuck with scrolling up and down my display lol.

You only have to setup your target pc for DynDNS, setup the router to allow connections and voila. There's a great guide on google, just search "variableghz vnc guide".

This post has been edited by Eiraku: Jul 9 2010, 11:41 AM

Ultra VNC is freeware last I checked, and has loads of features. But do try r-desktop and report your findiings back.

You have white full casings sold online edi, if you're into that sort of thing and rajin wanna mod hardware.

Besides, most disks have far less cap then advertised anyway. In the microsoft world, they define 1gig as somethins that is NOT EXACLY 1 billion bytes (or something) while disk manufacturers stick to the traditional conversion scheme which states that it's EXACTLY 1 billlon bytes. So a 32GB disk might not show up as 32GB at all.

Though I dunno if the same thing applies to flash drives, and if linux reports storage cap the same way as Windows.

This post has been edited by Eiraku: Jul 9 2010, 03:16 PM

It even runs my Japanese flash "fun-time" games, though it has issues handling swf with linked mp3. Anybody know how to get around that?

But desktop "fun-time" games on a mobile platform, we've gone a looooong way indeed.