Is it just me, or do the Android folk seem a bit touchy?

Ever since the iPhone 5 was announced a week ago, I've seen many a review of the device by respected tech journalists (I'm not jealous at all by the way).

The overwhelmingly positive reaction, coupled with the absolutely incredible pre-order demand from consumers leaves my own anticipation for the device sky high. I simply cannot wait to get my hands on it!

If you scroll down these reviews to the comments section however, you will notice a pattern. These forums seem to be crammed full of Android fans who feel they need to tell everyone who will listen that their Galaxy S3 is way better and could do everything that the iPhone 5 will do ages ago!

I'll admit that the name calling goes both ways, and as an Apple fan it is hard for me to be objective at times, but those droid devotees do seem to be extra irked at the moment and seem to have a need to be noticed!

It doesn't just stop with Android Consumers either. Androids biggest manufacturing cheerleaders (AKA Samsung) came up with this extremely negative, paranoid, and spiteful piece of marketing the other day. They are trying to come across as clever no doubt, but they just come across as having a huge inferiority complex in my humble opinion.

So the big question is, do they feel inferior to Apple and in their shadow, and if so, why? They obviously feel that their products are better than Apples, and so feel entitled to some sense of moral high ground over their rivals from Cupertino.

The media and and the masses still excitedly flock to Apple though in a way that they never do with a Samsung product, and I guess it is this that just doesn't sit well. Basically, they want to be Apple, and quite simply they are not.

So they dismiss Apple devotees as sheep who will gladly accept an inferior product just because of the Apple name, but this raises the question of what makes a product inferior?

S3 devotees will boast of screen size, 4G, NFC, and various other features that they feel makes their device superior to an iPhone. They will say that Apple doesn't change things enough or even sometimes at all, but is this really a bad thing?

Apple is all about attention to detail, and putting user experience first. They don't rush a new phone out every other week in the way it seems many Android phone makers seem to. They take their time, and they get it right with well built, beautiful products.

I know at the end of the day it is all about opinion and personal taste, and ultimately I can only assess these products in such terms. For me personally, I have tried to get to grips with Android. I picked up a Google Nexus 7 a couple of months ago, and after a couple of days playing with it, it has pretty much sat in a drawer gathering dust, and this is because it simply isn't exciting and unique like the iPad.

I also had a play with an S3 not long ago too. I was bored with it in minutes, and it felt way too big and really cheaply built. Again, it just wasn't exciting! The iPhone on the other hand just feels amazing!

Regardless of individual opinions though, I am sure this debate will run and run. The droid faithful will not lie down and go away I am sure. It's a shame they just can't enjoy their phones and not worry about Apple so much. Then again, they probably say the same about Apple fans. As long as we all know that our phone is actually the best, then who should really care!

Peter

Creating a System Image in Windows 7

My luck with laptops seems to go in odd/even cycles. My last laptop was a Dell D630 and it never gave me any trouble over a period of four years. It was an absolutely cracking little laptop, and I always had the feeling that when I finally came to change it, that I would have nothing but trouble with the next one.

Well, I was right! I had only had my new Dell E6420 for about 3 months when suddenly it began crashing and restarting itself all the time. I ran a chkdsk and it found and repaired a lot of problems on the hard disk. This is usually a sign that the hard disk has had it.

So I ran the Dell Diagnostics tool, and despite the fact that I could still boot into Windows 7, the diagnostics could not even detect that the hard drive was present. So, Dell agreed to ship me a replacement hard drive under warranty.

This was all well and good, except that now I was going to have to rebuild my laptop from scratch. Not a quick task considering how finely tuned my laptop is with everything I need to do my job. I was quite demoralised at how long it was going to take me to find all of my programs and licences, and get my laptop back to exactly the way I liked it.

However, I then looked into the Backup and Restore options in the Control Panel of Windows 7. I saw that you have the option to create a system image, so I decided to give it a try.

I was able to choose between a hard disk, a set of DVDs, or a network location. I had a 500gb USB hard drive available to me so I decided to use this. It would not let me proceed because the drive was formatted as FAT32, so I had to reformat it as NTFS, and then I was able to start my image backup.

It took several hours to complete, but finally my 155gb image backup was safely on the hard drive, and at the end of the process it gives you the option to create a boot CD which I did.

I then installed the new hard drive into the laptop, booted using the CD I had just made, and the boot utility gave me the option to re-image my laptop using the image on the USB hard drive.

I was still very skeptical that this could work I must admit, and I left the re-imaging process to run as it said it could take several hours to complete. After about an hour, I went to make a coffee, and when I returned I saw that my laptop was waiting at the Windows 7 logon prompt.

I logged in, and amazingly everything was just as before! All my programs were there. All my files and folders were there, my desktop background, absolutely everything.

So I was very happy and very impressed. So my tip to you would be to always create a Windows System Image Backup in addition to any regular data backups you are doing. It could save you a whole lot of time and trouble if you find yourself in this situation.

Peter

The iPhone 5 - What kept you?

It feels like we have been waiting for the iPhone 5 for a very long time, but that wait finally ended tonight. Yes, the phone that should have been here a year ago was at last revealed by Apples finest at an event in California.

The all new design is 18% thinner, 20% lighter, and the handset is also longer (although not wider) giving it a 16:9 ratio on a 4 inch retina display which is perfect for watching movies.

There is a new A6 chip which is twice as fast as its predecessor the A5, faster graphics, and also improved battery life.

There is a new lightening dock connector and this was key to making the iPhone 5 thinner. It looks very very thin. The handset comes in black and white and has a two tone back. Basically, all the leaks of previous weeks have proved to be correct, but when presented by Apple, it just looks so much better.

It will come loaded with iOS 6 and all the great new features that were introduced earlier this year at WWDC 12, and you can pre-order yours from Friday 14th September with the handsets released one week later on Friday 21st September.

Prices remain the same in the US, however there seems to be an increase of £29.00 in the UK which is slightly disappointing. You can get it in 16gb, 32gb, and 64gb as usual.

iOS 6 will be available to download on existing compatible iOS devices from Wednesday 19th September. This does not include the original iPad however or the iPhone 3GS.

I could say so much more about what looks like another truly amazing device designed by the increasingly legendary Sir Jonny Ive - but this would turn into the longest blog post ever.

So, if you want to know more, then head over to apple.com and you can get all the details you need. I for one like the look of it very much though and I can't wait to get my hands on one (in black).

And that's that! Share and enjoy folks!
Peter

New Kindle X-Ray Feature

One feature that I really like the look of on the new Kindles is X-Ray.

X-Ray on Kindle Fire

Basically, when you are watching a movie and an actor appears, and you think "where have I seen him before", simply click pause and IMDB will pop up and give you details of any actor in that particular scene!

This is a great idea and a very neat feature, and one which I hope will be present on iOS at some point. Would be great if Apple TV had an IMDB app and the ability to do this.

X-Ray on Kindle paperwhite

The new paperwhite e-reader also has a version of X-Ray, which allows you to search through the book for certain characters or terms, and it presents a timeline where these appear in the book. So if a character who has not been mentioned for several chapters suddenly pops up, you can use X-Ray to quickly remind yourself who this character is and when they first appeared.

Again, very very neat and I like this a lot. Will be very useful for people like me who only read a couple of pages a night.

New Kindle Prices

Surprsingly, Amazon have been really quick this time to make nearly all of these new devices available to us in the UK. Sadly, the only exception so far is the new paperwhite e-reader which looks very very nice.

Kindle Fire HD - £159 in 16GB
Kindle Fire HD - £199 in 32GB
All New Kindle Fire - £129

Nice looking devices at good prices, but sorry Jeff - that iPad is still going to take some beating for me!

Amazon introduce Kindle Fire HD and Kindle Paperwhite

A short time ago, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos took to the stage to introduce some new devices into the Kindle range.

The newest member of the e-reader family is the Kindle Paperwhite which comes with a lighted touchscreen and eight weeks of battery life.



Alongside this were three new Kindle Fire HD tablets, one of which has a larger 8.9 inch screen. The new devices boast improved WI-FI technology along with a feature called Kindle FreeTime which allows parents to set time limits for their children to access the devices.


No information on a UK release date as yet. Hopefully Amazon can be bothered to actually let us have the devices this time. Time will tell no doubt.

I can't say I'm hugely excited about any of these devices though. I think the Google Nexus 7 will beat the Fire HD tablets hands down, and if the rumoured iPad mini appears, then that will sweep all the competition away.

More details can be found at cnet.com for whom I must credit these images from the event.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

New Nokia Windows 8 Phone

Nokia held an event yesterday in partnership with Microsoft to introduce their first new handset running Windows Phone 8.

The Nokia Lumia 920 comes with a 4.5-inch screen which you can apparently use whilst wearing gloves. Also onboard is an 8 megapixel camera using Nokia Pureview technology, 32gb of storage, 1gb ram, and it comes in a range of colours!

Windows Phone 8 looks pretty sleek and is a natural evolution from its predecessor, and once Windows 8 itself gets up and running and established, then the whole system should work in a pretty seamless way, and your content should be highly available across your Windows devices much in the same way iOS works.

Although Nokia and Microsoft have a long way to go before they can even dream of catching up with iOS and Android, this handset in conjunction with the new software suggests to me that with time and patience, it can be done.

What I like about this, is that it dares to be different. Unlike Android, it is not trying to be a cheap iOS clone. It has its own identity. If they get it right, I predict that they can overtake Android in time.

The Nokia Lumia 920 will be out in the States first (surprise surprise), with release date for UK suggested to be around October/November!

It's finally happening!

If you are an Apple fan, then by now I'm sure you must know that invites have been sent out for an event next week in California (mine must be in the post I'm guessing)?

And if the invite is anything to go on, then it would be a huge surprise if Apple did not reveal the iPhone 5 on 12th September, and then released it for sale on Friday 21st.

This year, there seems to have been more leaked images than ever of what the device supposedly looks like. It would be a huge surprise if it turned out to be something completely different, but it would also be quite funny if Apple had fooled everyone and the phone in fact did not look like this;

This is what I expect to see though, and in terms of what the hardware can do, in conjunction with iOS 6, I think this phone could pack quite a punch.

The iPhone 5 has been a long time coming though. It should have been here a year ago really, and although the iPhone 4S is a cracking phone, and in my opinion still better than anything else out there, overall it was a disappointing stop gap model. It went on to be the best selling iPhone ever though, so what do I know?

So, all we can do now is wait for the event. I for one will be devouring the keynote as soon as it is available. Still can't believe I didn't get an invite though! Oh well!

Peter