if connected

My other half’s old Nokia phone is stuck in headset mode so she can’t hear any calls. Happened after 8 month old Zachary had had a little play.

She Googled the symptoms, as I’d recommend everyone to do, with any tech problem. If there’s an actual error message, even better.

Anyway, there are 28,500 results for: “nokia phone stuck headset baby.”

Online you’re never alone with a problem. My favourite comment, “mine kept doing this eveytime my baby girl gave it a suck!! worked once it dried out.” Main suggestion if that doesn’t work – hasn’t for us – are to clean the connectors at the bottom with an old toothbrush. We’ll try later on when she returns with the problem mobile. For now, it’s still good for texting.

I just received an email from a software developer — not Apple — that went as follows:-

You are receiving this email because you gave xxxxxx a go a while ago and we noticed you haven’t been back for a while. Since you left, xxxxxx has gotten much better, with the incorporation of…

They’re right. I did install xxxxxx and I also stopped using it and uninstalled it. Apple has to be sharing details. Creepy. And for what? This was/is a free app that I tried.

Doesn’t matter how fast a gadget or a PC’s components are on paper. All that matters is how fast something feels in use. Examples:

• Writing a letter on a PC is only faster if the user types faster than handwriting. Give someone an unfamiliar azerty keyboard and the same PC will feel slow.
• Crashes don’t just lose data, they slow users down even if no data is lost, as users have to re-launch apps or reboot.
• Same kit can behave at different speed. This laptop shuts down in between 30 seconds and two minutes in Vista. But in Mac OS it takes just 8-10 seconds.
• iPhone feels fast as it shows a stock image of each application while the app loads. There’s also no hourglass to remind the user that something is happening slowly.
• Having to slide out the qwerty keyboard on my Windows Mobile TyTn then typing an SMS, takes longer than tapping on the iPhone keypad to send a short SMS.
• Nintendo DS games automatically remember what stage a player is at; PSP games often don’t. Or on resuming, many PSP games force players to go back to a checkpoint. The gameplay repetition that results makes the PSP feel slow.
• Downloading a game in the latest PS3 OS software feels faster than it did. Why? It’s now possible to download in the background and for the console to auto-power off when the download finishes. Result: user doesn’t have to sit and wait before being able to turn off power. Download still takes the same length of time.

All users care about is how fast something feels. Not what the hardware specs say.

Normally, when I suspect a hard drive will die soon, I stop using it. On this laptop I need to keep going as it’s the only up to date laptop I have just now.

I hate having to remember to back up in this kind of situation. A back up is never up to date enough when drives fail. But as this is a Mac it’s different. I’ve just set up Mac OS’s built-in backup software, “Time Machine” with Apple’s special WiFi “Time Capsule” drive. Set up was simple: there are few options and it just seemed to work.

It back-ups automatically every hour without me needing to remember to do anything. This is an instant win over the PC’s (good) Symantec Ghost backup app. Even better, the laptop is usable throughout: back up is so unobtrusive that I have to check the Time Machine settings to see whether a back up has happened.

I can’t recommend Time Machine just yet. Until I try to recover files, I haven’t really tested a backup app. Problem I suspect that will hit me if this Mac fails is that I will likely need another (recent) Mac to access the backup as Time Machine is only available on the latest version of Mac OS. If so, it’s no good for me. I doubt my Panther-running Powerbook or my XP, Ubuntu and Vista PCs will be usable. Oh well. We’ll see.