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Slide this way

Posted on 16 Jun 2009 at 00:00

Paul Ockenden takes a real-world look at Nokia's E75 QWERTY slider phone, and wonders what the future holds for BlackBerry.

This facility isn't new: five years ago I was writing about installing a network card into a TiVo PVR to let me access it remotely via a WAP browser. Even Sky has had other remote recording applications available for the iPhone, but this is the first time Sky has released an official remote recording client. So how does it shape up?

Well I'd have to say that superficially it looks okay. Its user interface will be familiar to anyone who's used Sky's planner, with a scrolling blue grid of programme names from which you can highlight one to get further details, as well as set up remote recording. The trouble is this client can be painfully slow in panning around the programme data: it loads only one day's-worth of shows at a time, so to move forward you have to keep clicking on the next day, and scrolling down the list of channels again involves re-loading the page. This wouldn't matter so much if the search option worked well, but I've found it pretty useless, often failing to locate perfectly valid programme names. Also, the application works only in portrait mode, but surely for a grid-based control it would make more sense to be able to run in landscape?

Admittedly, this is Sky's first release of the application and no doubt it will improve over time, but I can't help wishing they had spent a few more weeks honing it before this release. For anyone who wants a really good remote recording application for the iPhone, I thoroughly recommend Tioti TV+, which is available from the App Store. Unlike this official Sky application it isn't free, but at £1.79 it will hardly break the bank, and most importantly, it works well.

A fistful of SIMs

A friend recently asked "do you have a recommendation for the best mobile broadband to go with my new netbook?" That's a question I'm hearing a lot these days, but the truth is that the mobile data market is moving so rapidly that if I pointed out a particular best deal that's available as I write (in late April), things will look very different when you read it in June. And to be honest, I reckon that for many netbook users it isn't actually sensible to settle on a particular contract deal. A great many people won't be using the netbook as their regular laptop, but will have a more grown-up machine for day-to-day use - the netbook is reserved for occasional jobs such as business trips, holidays and long journeys, so perhaps it will get used only a couple of times a month. In such a situation Pay As You Go (PAYG) data will be far more cost effective, as many of the providers offer special deals that are capped at a pound or two per day.

But far more important than the cost is the ability to actually use the particular network you've chosen: they all have black spots, as anyone who's travelled around the West Country or taken a train from Euston on the West Coast Mainline to Birmingham could testify. And, of course, besides these geographic black spots you'll find more of them deep within office buildings. Rather than trying to find one good network, I carry a bunch of PAYG data SIM cards from all the main UK networks, so I can nearly always be assured of a good signal wherever I am. The only thing you need to watch out for if you want to do the same is that you'll need an unlocked dongle or internal HSDPA card. The dongles supplied by the networks themselves are invariably locked to that network, but you can pick up reasonably priced SIM-free or unlocked kit on eBay. I'll usually perform a manual network scan on one of my phones to see which network is giving the strongest 3G signal, then try that SIM in the data dongle. This makes mobile data usage so much easier - no more holding the netbook up to the hotel window trying to find a faint signal!

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