Hi-tech

With the amount of time I spent evaluating technologies, I am I can start writing my own column! Yikes. I just spent another 3 hours evaluating Windows Mobile 6 and Apple's latest iPhone firmware 2.0.x. To sum up: get the iPhone or iPod Touch if you don't need to type constantly and can "suffer" without Flash content on the mini-Safari.

The Windows Mobile 6 is basically a striped down version of Windows. And in attempting to browse the Microsoft site for software list and all, very user un-friendly in terms of finding information. Everything still looks so "Windows". Not elegant, some even look like DOS-era interface.

Apple's website on the applications available for iPhone and iPod Touch are so elegantly laid out; very logical and concise. To boot, the price is right! Many applications are free. And you might pay a range of 0.99 to 6.99US per application compared to Windows Mobile application of over 19.99US at least.

I just downloaded multiple applications for my iPod Touch. Spanish phrases as we are invited to be in Barcelona in December this year, Windows Remote Desktop, VNC remote desktop (now I can remote my Macbook Pro from my iPod Touch in my bedroom. Hee hee. Bloomberg market info; IM+, a multi-IM client which I can now connect to MSN, iChat all in the little device. Flashlight, I can turn my iPod Touch into a flashlight and also strobbing in case I got lost at night and require assistance; A Chinese/English dictionary and Wikipanion for term lookup. All for FREE.

I also tried the mail program built in. Good for checking emails but if I want to response, I look for a keyboard.

A new iPhone 3G can have all the same functions and then for the obvious - Phone. As of last week, the street price for an iPhone 3G in China is about RMB4,800 (CAD753.00). A month ago, the iPhone 3G in China is about RMB9,000. What a drop in price! In HK, it is selling for HK$8,500 to HK$10,000. RMB and HK$ is roughly the same with 1RMB = 1.3HK. If I were to get one, I want to be sure Steve Jobs and company has sorted out the connection problem with this new phone. Customers were complaining about drop calls and lost of connection to 3G network. Traced back to a chipset made in China. Haha, go figure. A firmware upgrade was pushed out. Since then I have not heard anything; but with Apple you never know.

O yeah, one neat thing about the new iPhone 3G is that it has Chinese handwriting built-in. So I can write the stroke of a character and it recognizes the proper character. Neat!