Daniel Brierton
1
Jul '09

Jolicloud Alpha First Impressions

Category: Reviews - Tags: , , , ,

While I was on holidays I received an email telling me I’ve been Joliclouded! I opened the email with great excitement since I’ve been waiting for this for a long time. After trying different operating systems for my Aspire One, including Moblin v2 Alpha, which I reviewed, Ubuntu Netbook Remix and Xubuntu, as well as the default Linpus Linux Lite, I haven’t found the right netbook OS for me, but Jolicloud seemed like the OS I was waiting for. I was wrong.

In a nutshell, this isn’t really a new OS, it’s just Ubuntu with a blue theme and a Jolicloud program, which quite frankly seemed like nothing but a pretty program installer. I was greatly disappointed… This wasn’t the wonder OS I was expecting. I was expecting to have all my social networks integrated into my desktop, one universal place to keep up with friends on Twitter, Facebook and others. But no, the only social network was the Jolicloud one, which is useless, coz then friends without Jolicloud can’t participate. I also expected to be able to launch my applications from the Jolicloud interface, but that was a no go.

Not all was bad though, the Prism based web apps work well, and Jolicloud adds nice high-res icons for each application, so your not stuck with tiny favicons, and the overall look of everything is nice. Boot time was quick. I can’t quite tell if it was quicker than Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.04 (UNR), but I think it was. The launcher interface from UNR has been tweaked to a solid black, with white borders, and seems to run faster. And My Jolicloud is a Prism app itself, and is quick enough to respond, although freezes up for a second here and there, as Firefox does on a netbook.

Overall, I think Jolicloud is not the OS I’ve been waiting for. Perhaps Moblin will turn out as I want it, or failing that Android will be properly adapted to netbooks. I might track down a build of Android for Atom netbooks (if there is actually any out there), and give it a go soon.


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29
May '09

My First Day With a Mac

Category: Me,Reviews,Thoughts - Tags: , , ,

Yesterday morning I took delivery of my shiny new MacBook. I opted for the low-end aluminium model, it was all I needed and was still an upgrade from my old laptop. The best thing was though, I got it for a mere €940 including shipping. This costs €1199 directly from Apple, so methinks I got a bargain.

As a Windows user all my life, and dabbling in Linux, I thought I’d get frustrated a lot, mainly because I have keyboard shortcuts hard-coded into my fingers. But surprisingly, it wasn’t all that bad. Yeah, I often hit Ctrl-T to open a new tab, or Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V to copy paste, but I was surprised at how quickly using Cmd instead became second nature. I knew using a Dock wouldn’t be a problem and neither would the menu bar, as I’ve used both in Linux, same goes for the Close, Minimize and Zoom buttons being on the left.

The Good

  • Two finger scroll works brilliantly and is much better than a scroll wheel, or using the side of a track pad.
  • The looks of course, both the laptop itself and the OS are beautiful.
  • Finder’s column view.
  • The fact that iTunes actually WORKS in Mac.
  • As I’m typing this I realise I really like this keyboard.
  • The menu bar and dock.
  • The battery.
  • Spotlight.
  • Exposé
  • Tweetie for Mac
  • The way the Adium duck(?) flaps it’s wings more than makes up for the lack of custom emotes on MSN :P
  • These speakers are pretty good and loud.
  • CrossOver seems to run games pretty well (although I’ve only tried Counter Strike: Source. Next I shall try Team Fortress 2.

    • The bad

  • Dragging. If you use the button, when you get to the edge it often depresses, if you use tapping, it holds on to the window/icon/whatever for a little bit after. (Is there anyway to make it let go as soon I let go?)
  • Tied in with above, when you get to the edge of the trackpad, it just stops and doesn’t continue like pretty much every Windows trackpad does.
  • The lack of sending custom emotes for Adium.
  • That damn @ button and ” button! :P
  • Why would I ever need to type §?
  • I also don’t see myself using ± very much either.
  • The eject button doesn’t seem to very responsive. Actually, now that I think about it, that’s probably a feature so that you don’t accidentally eject it.
  • Enter renames instead of opening.

    • Overall

    I love this thing. A lot of things just work, and so fluidly. I do believe I have been converted. I’m gonna try my best to not install Windows, although I think I might need to for college, since we’ll be using Visual Studio to code C#. But if anyone has any suggestions for this, please leave a comment. And to think, I used to always dismiss Mac, and now this looks like it’s gonna be the start of a beautiful relationship.


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24
May '09

Moblin v2.0 Beta Review

Category: Reviews,Thoughts - Tags: , , , , ,

The other day, I downloaded and created a LiveUSB installer for Moblin v2.0 Beta, because after seeing the preview video (below), I was just blown away by the interface, and planned on installing it onto my Aspire One. In mine, and many other’s opinions, it’s the first properly designed OS for netbooks. However, after trying out the LiveUSB, I quickly changed my mind about Moblin.

Yes, it still had the beautiful and fluid interface, but it was as buggy as hell. I always jump straight into betas when I see them, but this is by far the most buggy beta I’ve ever seen, and some things just didn’t make sense. You can add your Twitter account, and update your status from within the OS’s status tab. However that’s all it did, just allow you to update your status. It would have made sense to show your Twitter stream below it, but no. That was on the m_zone tab, basically a dashboard. There was just one problem. There was 8 boxes each containing a seemingly random (although prioritising replies) tweet, or a link to a song from your linked Last.fm account. The rest of the dashboard was nice though. Recent/most viewed web pages, and your agenda and tasks from you calendar.

So, that I could have gotten over. After all, I usually just use Twitter’s web interface. So it didn’t help that the web browser was horrible and buggy. Like, it’s a tabbed browser, but you can’t right click and open in new tab. Now that I think about it, I never tried Ctrl-Click, but that’s besides the point. The browser is built on Firefox, but rendering can often take a long time, and I couldn’t manage to download Flash Player. I also tried using the package manager and terminal to install it, but both failed, so I couldn’t test out flash in the browser.

And my last gripe (although this is most likely something they’re working on) is the built in IM. It only supports Jabber, Google Talk and some other service I can’t remember, so again I couldn’t really test this as I use Windows Live Messenger.

It may seem like I’ve been just bashing this OS based purely on a beta version, but I consider this more constructive criticism and definitely see potential. I do love the interface in general. Here’s hoping they combat the problems mentioned above, as well as any other bugs and launch a viable competitor to Ubuntu Netbook Remix and plain ol’ XP.

Here’s the preview video:


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8
Mar '09

First Impressions of the Cydia Store

Category: Reviews - Tags: ,

Last night I updated Cydia to the latest version, in order to access paid content. Jay Freeman (saurik) has developed the latest version of Cydia to take on Apple’s App Store directly. Until now very few apps on Cydia cost money, and if they did, the payment system was different between each app. Now with a unified system of payment through Amazon Payments (PayPal support coming soon), developers can now get return on their hard work.

Freeman launched the new store with an app of his own, Cyntact. This simple app displays contacts’ pictures in any contact listing, somewhat similar to the Facebook app’s friend listing. He has listed the app at $1, but plans to continue developing free apps for the iPhone, and this app is more to demonstrate the Cydia Store.

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2
Feb '09

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay overdue review of Japan

Category: Me,Reviews - Tags: , , ,

At TeenCamp Ireland, Klara asked me what my trip to Japan was like, then I realised… I never posted a review! So here it is, about 7 months later…

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3
Sep '08

Google Chrome manages to wow, but is also lacking

Category: Reviews - Tags: , , ,

So, I’ve had time now to mess about with Google Chrome, Google’s new web browser based on WebKit, and I have to say I’m quite impressed. Google have addressed most ends of what people really want from their browser, but have also missed out on a few important features.

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