I got a 500GB Iomega Home NAS device a while ago simply because it was cheap. I needed a bit of networked storage so I could share things no matter which of my machines I was using, and it seemed to fit the bill.

Unfortunately, it sucks. Royally. Mangled SMB packets, random destruction of the domain, all manner of badness. Then I happened across a nugget of information. The firmware it ships with (K104.W11) is just rubbish, and the latest update (K108.W15) is even worse. However, an older firmware (K102.W11) is much, much more stable. Go figure.

Officially you can't get the older firmware any more. But unofficially, you can if you know where to look. So if you're having trouble with your Iomega Home NAS being crap, try reflashing it with this:

http://download.iomega.com/english/storcenter_home_fimrware-k102w11.bin

The misspelling of "fimrware" is deliberate, just so you don't think to try and correct the link. Anyway, it might make all your woes go away. It does say that it makes it incompatible with OS X leopard, but I'm not sure how that's the case if it's just using standard SMB. I think it's the automagical device discovery tool that's not Leopard aware, but the OS already comes with the findsmb command which does exactly the same thing. Suck it and see. It's dead easy to reflash with the latest firmware if necessary anyway.

Of course, it's going to end up getting compared to the iPhone a lot. It looks just like it to the untrained eye. It's actually slightly smaller than the iPhone, and the iPhone users who've seen it have commented that it's a much better size. Oh, and it comes with an optional faux-leather flip-front which is very effective and looks pretty good, too.

Widgets

So onto the phone itself. The first thing you notice is the widgets screen, which is the primary focus of the website blurb. You can customise your touchscreen! Why you'd want to, I'll leave as an exercise to the reader, but there it is. Now, I'm a minimalist so the only widget I have constantly open is the clock. If a clock were included in the main screen, I wouldn't use any. However, if you regularly switch profiles or use the phone as a full time MP3 player, you would do well to open up the relevent widget and place it suitably.

The widget interface is friendly enough, with the vibrate motor giving a satisfying 'boing' feel to the opening and closing widget bar. Dragging widgets about can get a little fiddly for fine tuning position (I'm a bit obsessive about things lining up). Still, it certainly wows people, and I love the way message alerts appear with a little pop so they're nice and noticable.

Buttons and Controls

There are a number of buttons around the device to manipulate hardware functions. The most used will be the one on the top, which is the Hold switch. It works really well, being slightly recessed to prevent accidental pressing but responds quickly when you need it. Locking and unlocking the phone is simplicity itself, which may not sound like much, but after fighting with 'menu-*' all this time it's a breath of fresh air.

Down one side are the volume buttons. These allow you to set both sound volume and vibrate strength on the widget screen, call volume on calls, and a myriad other things. It also doubles up as zoom, scroll, and all sorts depending on context. At the other side is the familiar camera button. This is a 2 stage press affair for autofocus/shutter release. It works better than any other camera release button on a phone I've ever used, and I've had a K800i. Really nice, solid feel.

Finally, there are the front panel buttons. The left and right buttons are just the call/hangup buttons (the hangup doubling as a power button). The right hand button is also the global cancel button, taking you back a whole step when pressed, right up to the widget screen. Finally, the shortcut button in the middle has a variety of uses. When on the widget screen, it allows you to pop up five 'shortcut' items, including messaging, the main menu, web browser and camera. This really doesn't give any advantage of just going to the menu the normal way because they are all top level items anyway, so I don't really understand that one.

The other thing it does is unlock the touchscreen for in-call features. This includes popping up a keypad for DTMF tones, putting calls on hold, switching between calls and looking up items in the phonebook. Not sure why they didn't just use the existing hold button for that, either, really. Still, a big button right in the middle is hard to miss. Probably just a usability thing.

Touchscreen UI

The touchscreen UI tries to emulate the functional usability of the iPhone by providing big, friendly areas for fat fingered phone users like me. It's a nice, solid interface that doesn't suffer the spurious pressing and fannying about of previous Samsung touch-sensitive devices. The reassuring confirmation of a slight buzz from the haptic response system also makes it a more usable and all-round friendly UI.

Most of the UI works incredibly well. Scrolling is handled well, things don't tend to trigger at the wrong time. The ability to navigate by icons or words is simple as the menus and controls of all the various applications are well laid out an sane.

Except for anything in the settings menu. I don't know what happened there, but they've really gone to pot. The only reliable way to scroll through the settings is to use the volume rocker as a scroll button. Click and drag scrolling just doesn't work reliably on those screens. Maybe a firmware update later will fix that, because the same scrolling works perfectly on the folder or message browsing view.

The virtual keypad is a work of genius. There is no virtual QWERTY keypad like the iPhone, but there is a context sensitive T9 compatible phone keypad that provides just the right controls for the situation. Again, the haptic response makes entering text that much easier, and the buttons are large and reliable. I make no more or less typos on this device than on any phone with a real keypad.

Call Handling

What is there to say about call handling? Well, it handles calls. The sound quality is excellent, the reliability is good. It all works, really. It is a little bit of a pain to have to unlock the screen and press the keypad button to get to the DTMF tones when phoning call centres, but it works well and doesn't mess about.

One thing I did note is that multiple-call handling is excellent. Having handled 3 simultaneous calls on it, I never once had the usual panic of not being sure exactly which call is active, or which any particular control would operate on. This is helped by the screen being able to show three or four call details, and allowing you to simply press your finger on the call to be manipulated.

Data Handling

The blurb claims that this phone delivers up to 7.2Mb/s on a suitable 3G connection. I don't know about that, but I got 386Kb/s out of it at home which means it's actually suitable as a short-term broadband replacement should my connection fail. It seems pretty reliable, being able to get a connection of some sort (be it 3G or GPRS) just about anywhere. It's failed in a couple of places where other people were also having trouble, so I didn't worry about it.

As a side note on data handling, I set up my Nokia 770 and my Macbook to use it as a modem. They both work just fine using it as a high-speed dialup modem. Top stuff.

Messaging

The messaging on this phone is adequate. Works well, no problems. As good as any other phone, really. I have no complaints at all about its SMS and MMS abilities, and the UI is as friendly and sane as the rest of the phone. Good stuff.

On email, though, the phone really shines. There are more options than you can shake a stick at, including selecting how much of each message to get, what to do with it after getting, and full SSL/TLS support. Also, and this is a joy, it allows you to delete messages from the phone, and optionally delete them from the server as well. This means I can just get my phone to grab messages marked as 'New', and then delete them from the device without having them disappear from the server.

Camera

I'll admit to not having used the camera very much. I don't really 'get' camera phones. I have a perfectly good little Canon I can carry about when a tiny camera is required. Anyway, this thing has a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash (ugh!) so I had a quick go.

The controls are well laid out, anyway. It's easy to get to whatever option you want. The button, as I mentioned, is solid and responsive. The autofocus also seems to work really quite well even in low light. My only complaint is that the picture quality is a little too soft. There's obviously too much noise reduction going on, even in well lit photographs. Also, I couldn't find any macro mode, but have successfully focussed down to about 3" so it might not be needed.

Expansion and Java

This phone is as expandable as any 'ordinary' (as opposed to 'smart') device. It can take microSD, although the Orange branded device comes with an 8GB card to start with. It can also accept standard Java midlets. This is been well thought out, as ordinary programs integrate well with this phone even though it has no keypad. This is achieved by a virtual keypad that appears at the bottom of the current Java application. By default it displays a set of cursor keys, a select button and two 'soft' buttons. Press another button, and a simplified alphanumeric keypad appears.

One particular thing that impressed me was integration with Opera Mini (the only Java app I install on all my devices). I loaded it up, loaded a page using the built in controls, and absent mindedly tried to use my finger to drag the scroll bar. And it worked! Impressive stuff. I assume that Opera have put support for touchscreen devices into Opera mini. However it's done, it's impressive to have it work so intuitively.

Summary

As I've already said, I recommend this phone to just about everyone. If you want a phone that has all the features of a modern mobile, with the look and feel of an iPhone, get this. It might take a little getting used to if you've never used Samsung phone before (it's really very different to the Nokia and Sony Ericsson standards).

More recently, the phone companies changed their tactic. You could phone up and request a PAC, but rather than offer you goodies to stick around, they'd just give you one. You then had a choice; let it expire, or use it to try and find a decent deal in a harsh marketplace.

Thankfully, yesterday Orange proved that the tides is changing once again. They called me, out of the blue, and said that my contract expires in 2 months. They offered me, right there and then, a free upgrade to any handset I chose and a substantially better value tariff. So I did. The fact is, I didn't actually want to leave Orange this time because they are, in my opinion, the best operator at the moment. However, they didn't know that, and I'm more than happy to let them ply me with free stuff to keep my custom.

So taking advantage of this generosity, I chose the new Samsung F480 Tocco, their new iPhone-alike with more features than you can shake a stick at. I was a bit dubious, a fan as I am of simplistic devices that do exactly what I need and no more. The X820 has been an absolute dream in that respect, being both completely reliable and having a very good feature set. So here I am branching out toward the world of shiny things without keypads.

Another reason I stick with Orange: they deliver promptly, and when they say they will. Unlike, say, O2, or T-Mobile. My new shiny device arrived promptly the morning after the night before, right on my desk where I could play nicely with it. I mean, where I could get on with my work and leave it until lunchtime ... *ahem* ...

So initial impressions, then. Excellent. I was worried about build quality, but no problems there. I was worried about touch screen sensitivity, and no problems there. I was worried about typing directly on to a touch screen, but again, no problems at all. The new "haptic response" system (i.e. a little buzz when it detects a click) means you get definite tactile feedback from the touch screen, which is both novel, and an amazing boost to usability.

Feature-wise I'm not very demanding of a phone, but I know what I like and I know what I don't. The T9 system is good, the touchscreen is just responsive enough, and the menus are logically laid out. The only complaint I can find so far is that the scrolling is upside down. The iPhone gets it right; move your finger down, and the screen scrolls down. The Tocco goes the other way and acts as if you're dragging a scroll bar, and it doesn't always realise that you're not clicking on the items you're dragging over. Still, it works well enough after a couple of minutes.

I'll use the phone for a bit and probably stick up a more detailed field report later. Until then, hooray for toys!

First up was Blue Öyster Cult in the tiny village of Holmfirth, made famous by being the setting to Last of the Summer Wine. The venue was certainly peculiar, being as it was a half renovated play house with scaffold and steel fencing supporting half the structure and a peculiar sloping floor. Still, it was a decent enough place and the sound was fine to my ear, so I was ready for some rock.

Given that BÖC released their first album 7 years before I was born, I think they can be referred to as "old school" quite legitimately, and the show reflects this. As Ian (whose idea it was to go to this gig) pointed out, when the band started out a live show actually meant more than just playing a selection of songs from the album and going home. And it shows. 10 or 20 minute versions of classics like "Then Came The Last Days Of May", "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" and "Godzilla", complete with duelling guitars, massive 4 guitar riff fests, drum solos and alternating vocalists. Top stuff.

So after all that, what could follow it? Well, a Friday night in Stocksbridge, steel centre of Sheffield, to see Mostly Autumn on the weekend prior to the release of their new album, Glass Shadows.

After finding possibly the single most distant venue in Sheffield, and standing around for an hour drinking a well kept and surprisingly cheap Farmer's Blonde from Bradfield Brewery, the band took to the stage. They played a good selection of classics and new material, which was great for me. Hearing songs from a new album live before you've even taken the album out of the shrink wrap makes them all the more special, and owning the album 3 days before general release makes it even more so.

Overall, the new album is a bit less proggy, a bit less folky, but definitely Mostly Autumnal. It's a solid release that surpasses the sometimes half-baked Heartful Of Sky, with none of the songs particularly disappointing (although one or two bring out puzzled expressions and exclamations of "What the... ?!", but in a good way) Still, overall a win, and a great couple of gigs. More like that, please.

This got me thinking. One of the criticisms levelled at Apple is that you can "only" use Apple parts in Macs, and these parts are expensive. This is absolutely true, aside from the falsehoods (e.g. 3rd party RAM and hard disks). But the fact is, you actually can buy Apple parts for it. I just popped into my local shopping centre and walked out with a new laptop PSU as part of my normal shopping. I can't think of any other laptop brand that has the same level of availability of parts or accessories.

Of course, if your Toshiba laptop PSU explodes for some reason (manufacturing faults occur in all brands, Apple included. No fanboys here, ta) you could buy some 3rd party "universal" adapter from your local electronics retailer. These will probably work as well as 3rd party mobile phone chargers; adequately for a while but with half the working lifespan of an original. Or, of course, you could call the Toshiba spares line and buy an original, but that won't be cheap and you'll have to wait for it.

I don't have any particular deep or philosophical point to make here. It's just that somebody actually said, when my laptop PSU died, that I'd "be stuck buying an expensive Apple replacement." And yes, I did. But it has a full year's warranty and it took 30 minutes to drive over and pick one up. I like that.