Jim's blog

I wandered in to a Vodafone reseller to get a new SIM as I had mislaid my camera and wanted to get one for my spare.



A bit later I walked out with a new plan, new SIM, and a Nokia N95.



Having wondered what all the fuss was about with do-it-all phones I am now coming to grips with one that does more than I understood when I bought it - including an f.m. radio receiver.I am now across downloading music onto it in several formats and have several add-on applications for the GPS.



Main thoughts to date:



The GPS is a con. Under perfect conditions it works but has poor reception ability even in the middle of a big open park. It takes a long time to lock onto satellites and loses lock as I walk along. I walked across a park this morning with 5 satellites showing on the GPS data tool and none of the apps could get data. I have disabled other GPS assisted modes.



I still don't walk down the road with ears plugged up listening to music (or the radio).



Battery life is nothing like the "up to" numbers in the specs. If I do anything apart from keep i t on standby I need to charge it daily.



The cheap USB charger I bought on Trademe for $5.50 is unable to charge the battery when it is completely flat. That may have something to do with the current available from the USB port without device drivers loaded that enable full power output but I'm not sure.

And I am finding out that the cheap battery I bought off Trademe for my u770 doesn't have a good charge capacity. A couple of days ago I took my camera out for a walk and found the battery was flat even though I have hardly used it since I last charged it. Back to the original Olympus one and more care to ensure that it is topped up regularly.

Another excellent article by Bruce Schneier on how our thinking on security makes us take illogical steps to prevent attacks similar to previous ones rather than focussing on how to best protect ourselves in a more general way. We are more scared of events that are statistically unlikely to occur than events like plane crashes and terrorist bombs that are extremely unlikely (in most parts of the world).

It got me wondering about how the US governments response to the current financial crisis is like their response to 9/11. Is the massive cash injection that they are trying to get through Congress a knee-jerk response that will cover one of the cracks until the next crisis arrives in an unexpected form? What really needs to be done to protect the world's population from this kind of event?