Qtek 8100 vs. Orange Boston (Android 1.6)

This time I want to write an article honoring my new smart phone, I own since July, 23rd, 2010. It is the replacement of my Qtek 8100 smart phone which I purchased on December, 30th, 2005. Since mid 2008, the "green" and "red" key for answering and quitting phone calls and - the latter - for locking the key pad didn't work any more, so I always had to select these functions from the menus - annoying. Since then, I searched for a worthy follower, which was very difficult. Once you're used to such a good phone like my Qtek 8100 was, your expectations are very high. Most of the phones that are produced today are technical crap, with may be one exception: Apple's iPhone. But that phone has one big disadvantage: its price. The greatest producer of crap seems to be Samsung: Their mobile phones seem to have severe stability problems (i.e., they crash very often and need to be restarted, which seems to be accepted by most customers and is obviously considered to be "normal") and the software has never gone through testing, not even rudimentary testing. Samsung is stingy with updates to their phones and doesn't care about their customers. Once they paid, they're lost. I read hundreds of comments on Amazon and my picture of Samsung turned bad. Similar applies to LG. One of the few smart phone producers that create reasonably products is HTC, but I also coudn't afford one of their phones. However, after reading a lot and searching a lot, I found a good offer of a Android 1.6 driven smart phone at Orange Austria. I got it for "free", so I thought, it it doesn't do its job very well, I could replace it in a few months if I have the money. But my old phone had to be replaced urgently, as described above. The biggest challenge for me was to find an easy and quick way how to transport all of my phone numbers and calendar entries to the new phone. This was the critical point that made most of the current phones unusable for me, because there is no acceptable synchronization software. Transferring all my data was easy: I sync'ed the Qtek with my PC, exported my phone book as a CSV file and uploaded that file to my Gmail contacts - finished. I did the same with my calendar and all my data was not just on my phone but also in the cloud, so I can now edit my phone book and calendar online. That's great. :-) It took me about 10 minutes to achive this task. That's how it should work! After using the phone for almost two weeks, I can figure out its positive and negative properties:

Positive

• If I turn the phone, the screen flips in about a second
• The virtual keyboard is simple to use and offers everything I need
• The touch screen works very well (but I think, iPhone's touch screen is more precise)
• The overall usability is satisfying
• Phone shows how much energy which components are using
• The mechanism to lock the screen is pressing shortly on the on/off button, to unlock you have to press the on/off button and touch the menu button. So, unlocking can't happen unintentionally very easy.
• The phone has a built-in 5 megapixel camera. The pictures taken with it look much worse than the ones from my 2 megapixel "real" digital camera, but hey, it's a cell phone, that's okay. Sony Ericsson phones are known to take much better photos, if that is important for someone.
  

Negative

• The screen that shows the state of the battery shows that only in 10% steps. I've installed an app that shows the state on the screen and it also displays in 10% steps. That might be okay for simple phones or for smart phones with strong batteries, but for a phone where you can empty the battery in less than an hour (by turning on WLAN and GPS), this is not good. Whereby it's worth to notice, that it's very simple to do the calculation (present state divided by design capacity).
  
• There's an alarm clock installed, but it only supports annoying ringtones that I don't want to hear in the morning! There's no possibility to use one of the other ringtones that are used for calls and also there's no possibility to choose a file from the SD card. The app I installed (Alarm Clock Plus V2) crashes regularly, once it crashed even at night, so I need a "backup" alarm clock.
• The camera doesn't write or only sometimes writes metadata like date/time, width, height, and orientation. But it writes geo data... nice. :-/
• It the phone is connected to a PC and the phone is used as a mass storage device, the SD card can't be used on the phone. I know that other phones also have this problem, nevertheless that is ridiculous.
• The preinstalled app for watching photos doesn't react to gestures, instead you have to touch two arrows for selecting the previous or next picture. Alternatively, you can touch the screen so the arrows appear and then - as quick as you can - use the track ball (you have to move around and then click) to switch to the next picture. If you're not quick enough, the arrows disappear and you have to try again.

Despite of some annoyances, I'm very happy with that phone and I don't regret choosing it.

Übersiedlung der Konzernzentrale - Erfahrungen mit den Graz AG Verkehrsbetrieben

Unser Konzern hat eine neue Zentrale in St. Leonhard und heute war für viele der erste Arbeitstag dort. Darunter war auch meine Wenigkeit. In der Früh habe ich mir überlegt, welche Variante ich heute wohl nehmen werde, um in die Arbeit zu kommen. Ich entschied mich, mit der Buslinie 63 vom Hauptbahnhof bis zur Haltestelle Merangasse zu fahren. Nun, das werde ich - zumindest um 7 Uhr 26 - nicht mehr machen, weil das ist nicht so gut für meine Magennerven. Es fängt mal damit an, dass der Bus 3 min vor Abfahrt schon voll ist. Dann kommt er fast nicht aus dem Bahnhofsareal raus, weil idiotische Autofahrer die Kreuzung zusperren. Wieso auch nicht, schließlich wird das nicht geahndet und das Gefühl, erster zu sein (auch wenn man es nicht ist) ist doch viel wert, da kann man doch schon mal ein paar Leute behindern und denen Zeit stehlen. Oder, liebe Grazer Stadtverwaltung? Dann ist es im Schneckentempo die Keplerstraße runtergegangen. 10 min hat der Bus vom Hauptbahnhof bis zum Lendplatz gebraucht, genau so lange, wie man auch zu Fuß braucht. Nun, ist schon klar, in der Früh ist viel Verkehr und dass der durchschnittliche Autofahrer gerne in Kauf nimmt, im Stau zu nehmen, weiß ich mittlerweile auch, das Problem ist jedoch, dass das ja nicht erst seit einer Woche so ist sondern seit Jahrzehnten. Sicher, die Sperre der Annenstraße verschärft die Situation noch weiter. Allerdings hätten die Leute, die die Fahrpläne machen - und ja, ich weiß auch, dass das keine leichte Arbeit ist - dies einrechnen können. Immerhin verfügen die Graz AG Verkehrsbetriebe über relativ genaue Verspätungsdaten, welche man ja verarbeiten könnte. Wenn man denn nur wollte. Offenbar klappt bei den Graz AG Verkehrsbetrieben die Mitarbeitermotivation nicht besonders gut, was wiederum angesichts der Tatsache, dass höhere Positionen in solchen Unternehmen ja politisch motiviert vergeben werden, fast logisch erscheint. Über die seit Monaten nicht funktionierenden Fahrkartenautomaten will ich mich erst gar nicht auslassen, nicht zuletzt weil ich ja ohnehin im Besitz einer Jahreskarte bin. Wie auch immer, der Bus hatte dann bis zur Merangasse 10 min Verspätung und für mich war klar, dass ich diese Relation morgen wahrscheinlich nicht mehr nehmen werde. Nächstes mal werfe ich einen Blick in die Keplerstraße und wenn die frei ist, setze ich mich in den Bus, andernfalls gibt's ja noch die (nicht klimatisierten) Straßenbahnen.

Bin ja schon gespannt, was ich morgen dann erlebe, falls ich morgen nicht ohnehin die Kombination Rad-Zug-Rad nehme.

Windows Server 2008 R2: Who has control?

Last Sunday I started setting up a system for testing some new Microsoft technologies that I am interested in. These are:

• Windows Server 2008 R2
• SQL Server 2008
• Visual Studio 2010

I made a primary partition with 45 GiB on the hard disk that is normally only for data, but it's just a test system that will be removed at some time, so I though it's a good idea to use the faster drive (because the hard drive where my Windows XP and some other operating systems are on, is a not-so-fast PATA drive). I did not want to install it inside a virtual machine because I wanted to know how fast it runs natively. Especially SQL Server and Visual Studio demand a lot of ressources, so I am quite sure this was a good idea.

So, I started installing the operating system - Windows Server 2008 R2. I think in general the installation application is okay so far. When I remembered back in recent Windows clients and servers, the installer told me how long it will approximately need to finish. I have missed this part in the Windows 2008 installer. I have seen that they still haven't removed that poor activation "feature" that makes only problems to people who use Microsoft's software legally (like me) than for those who use illegal copies. If Microsoft thinks that such annoyance helps them increasing their market share, okay. Other operating system vendors think different. Once Windows was up and running, I began to install SQL Server 2008. When I started the setup.exe on the DVD, a message box told me about compatibility problems with my operating system and that I should apply SP 1. But I was a little bit afraid: Will my system still work afterwards? Will it run stable? The message box didn't tell me what could happen. I decided to let it run. As suggested, I installed SP 1 immediately after the SQL Server setup was finished. I tried out SQL Server Management Studio and obviously everything went correct. Then Windows reminded me that new updates for Windows are available. Because I am a good citizen, I let it download and install these updates. Windows wanted to restart and that was okay for me. When it booted up again, there was some message "Configuring updates...". No information on how long it will need, what it really does... Then there appeared a text with a percentage counting up. I still didn't know what Windows does in details, but at least I could estimate how long it will need. When it reached "100%"... no, it did NOT let me log on, it said "Stopping services" and "Shutting down". Then it restarted and the jokes began again. "Configuring updates...", counting up to "100%" and again... reboot! It repeated that procedure three times and all the time there was no information for me what it does or when I will be able to log on again or whatever information that could be useful. Windows just did what it wanted. During that I wondered about the roles of my computer and me. I am used to that I am the master and my computer is my slave. Obviously, Microsoft thinks different about that. If you use Windows, these roles are inverted: Windows does something and you are expected to follow. It is also some kind of behaviour: Just imagine, you want to work with someone together and suddenly this person begins to do something and always says "wait, wait, wait" and you have no idea when you can continue working. Would you like that person? I think it would be a good behaviour of Windows, if it would at least say how many steps it has to complete and how many it has completed already and at least an estimation of how much time this would consume. Then I am able to do something else and are not required to stare at the screen which doesn't tell me much useful.

Next I installed Visual Studio which was no problem. Meanwhile - because staring at the screen is just too boring -, I wanted to watch a video. When I double clicked it in Explorer, I realized that there was no Windows Media Player installed. That's okay I think. Who needs a Media Player on a server anyway? :-) Installing it is easy: I opened an applet in Control Panel that allows me to add Windows features. The feature of choice has the name "Desktop experience", or something like that. It installed Windows Media Player and some other applications and while doing that, it informed me that a restart of Windows would be necessary. What??? I have to restart my operating system because I installed an application? I was wondering. While I was wondering, I opened Firefox and googled for "vlc player", downloaded it, installed it and watched my video.

Unfortunately, it was already late then and I couldn't yet try out the new features, I hope I can do it in the next weeks.

Welcome - Willkommen

Welcome to my first blog! I will use this blog mainly to write about any technical experiences I have during my day. Sometimes I intend to write about personal things too, if there is something interesting. Most things will be in English, but some things will be in German.

Topics I will write about: Software development (Visual Studio, MonoDevelop, C#, C/C++, Vala...), Database related topics (SQL, PL/SQL, T-SQL, SSIS, SSRS...), Windows Client & Server, Linux (especially Ubuntu), Web technologies (HTTP, HTML, JavaScript, XML...)

Willkommen bei meinem ersten Blog! Ich werde ihn hauptsächlich benutzen um über die technischen Erfahrungen zu schreiben die ich während eines Tages mache. Ich beabsichtige auch manchmal etwas Persönliches zu schreiben, wenn's was interessantes gibt. Das meiste wird in Englisch sein, manche Dinge in Deutsch.

Themen über die ich schreiben werde: Softwareentwicklung (Visual Studio, MonoDevelop, C#, C/C++, Vala...), Themen zu Datenbanken (SQL, PL/SQL, T-SQL, SSIS, SSRS...), Windows Client & Server, Linux (vor allem Ubuntu), Webtechnologien (HTTP, HTML, JavaScript, XML...)